TheBlackCat
2005-Oct-06, 12:14 AM
Post your favorite science-oriented quotes here.
The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds the most discoveries, is not 'Eureka!', but 'That's funny...'
-Isaac Asimov
The cloning of human is on most of the lists of things to worry about from Science, along with behaviour control, genetic engineering, transplanted heads, computer poetry and the unrestrained growth of plastic flowers.
-Lewis Thomas
Man is the lowest-cost, 150-pound, nonlinear, all-purpose computer system which can be mass-produced by unskilled labor.
-NASA in 1965
The materials of science are the materials of life itself. Science is part of the reality of living; it is the what, the how, and the why of everything in our experience.
-Rachel Carson
As an adolescent I aspired to lasting fame, I craved factual certainty, and I thirsted for a meaningful vision of human life - so I became a scientist. This is like becoming an archbishop so you can meet girls.
-M. Cartmill
Remember, if you’re not part of the solution, then you’re part of the precipitate!
-Eric Desch
It was a misfortune for the living world in particular, many scientists believe, that a carnivorous primate and not some more benign form of animal made the breakthrough.
-Edward O. Wilson
If rats are experimented on they will develop cancer.
-Morton's Law
Although nature commences with reason and ends in experience it is necessary for us to do the opposite, that is to commence with experience and from this to proceed to investigate the reason.
-Leonardo da Vinci
The modern physicist is a quantum theorist on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday and a student of gravitational theory on Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday. On Sunday he is neither, but is praying to his God that someone, preferably himself, will find the reconciliation between the two views.
-Norbert Wiener
The chess board is the world, the pieces are the phenomena of the universe, the rules of the game are what we call the laws of Nature. The player on the other side is hidden from us. We know that his play is always fair, just, and patient. But we also know, to our cost, that he never overlooks a mistake, or makes the smallest allowance for ignorance.
-Thomas Huxley
I shall try to correct errors when shown to be errors; and I shall adopt new views so fast as they shall appear to be true views.
-Abraham Lincoln
[note: although this is not a science quote, I see this as one of the fundamental tenants of science]
I maintain there is much more wonder in science than in pseudoscience. And in addition, to whatever measure this term has any meaning, science has the additional virtue, and it is not an inconsiderable one, of being true.
-Carl Sagan
Science is facts; just as houses are made of stone, so is science made of facts; but a pile of stones is not a house and a collection of facts is not necessarily science
-Henri Poincaré
Aristotle maintained that women have fewer teeth than men; although he was twice married, it never occurred to him to verify this statement by examining his wives’ mouths.
-Bertrand Russell
For most of human history we have searched for our place in the cosmos. Who are we? What are we? We find that we inhabit an insignificant planet of a hum-drum star lost in a galaxy tucked away in some forgotten corner of a universe in which there are far more galaxies than people. We make our world significant by the courage of our questions, and by the depth of our answers.
-Carl Sagan
In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion.
-Carl Sagan
What the founders of modern science...had to do, was not criticize and to combat certain faulty theories, and to correct or to replace them by better ones. They had to do something quite different. They had to destroy one world and replace it by another. The had to reshape the framework of our intellect itself, to restate and to reform its concepts, to evolve a new approach to Being, a new concept of knowledge, and a new concept of science-and even to replace a pretty natural approach, that of common sense, by another which is not natural at all.
-Alexandre Koyre
The radical novelty of modern science lies precisely in the rejection of the belief... that the forces which move the stars and atoms are contingent upon the preferences of the human heart.
-Walter Lippmann
In questions of science the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual
-Galileo Galilei
In science, "fact" can only mean "confirmed to such a degree that it would be perverse to withhold provisional assent." I suppose that apples might start to rise tomorrow, but the possibility does not merit equal time in physics classrooms.
-Stephen Jay Gould
A zygote is a gamete’s way of producing more gametes. This may be the purpose of the universe.
-Robert Heinlein
There are in fact two things, science and opinion; the former begets knowledge, the latter ignorance.
-Hippocrates
The human mind is not capable of grasping the Universe. We are like a little child entering a huge library. The walls are covered to the ceilings with books in many different tongues. The child knows that someone must have written these books. It does not know who or how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written. But the child notes a definite plan in the arrangement of the books---a mysterious order which it does not comprehend, but only dimly suspects.
-Albert Einstein
Whatever a scientist is doing—reading, cooking, talking, playing—science thoughts are always there at the edge of the mind. They are the way the world is taking in; all this is seen is filtered through an everpresent scientific musing.
-Vivian Gornick
Do not undertake a scientific career in quest of fame or money. There are easier and better ways to reach them. Undertake it only if nothing else will satisfy you; for nothing is probably what you will receive. Your reward will be the widening of the horizon as you climb. And if you achieve that reward you will ask no other.
-Cecilia Payne Gaposchkin
If I could remember the names of all these particles... I'd be a botanist!
-Enrico Fermi
Measure what is measurable, and make measurable what is not so.
-Galileo Galilei
We are a bit of stellar matter gone wrong. We are physical machinery - puppets that strut and talk and laugh and die as the hand of time pulls the strings beneath. But there is one elementary inescapable answer. We are that which asks the question.
-Sir Arthur Eddington
No amount of experimentation can ever prove me right; a single experiment can prove me wrong.
-Albert Einstein
The fundamental laws necessary for the mathematical treatment of a large part of physics and the whole of chemistry are thus completely known, and the difficulty lies only in the fact that application of these laws leads to equations that are too complex to be solved.
-Paul Dirac
Human judges can show mercy. But against the laws of nature, there is no appeal
-Arthur C. Clarke
We have discovered the secret of life!
-Francis Crick, spoken after excitedly bursting into a Cambridge pub with James Watson to celebrate the fact that they had unraveled the structure of DNA
There is no doubt that human survival will continue to depend more and more on human intellect and technology. It is idle to argue whether this is good or bad. The point of no return was passed long ago, before anyone knew it was happening.
-Theodosius Dobzansky
May every young scientist remember and not fail to keep his eyes open for the possibility that an irritating failure of his apparatus to give consistent results may once or twice in a lifetime conceal an important discovery
-Patrick Blackett
Man masters nature not by force but by understanding. That is why science has succeeded where magic failed: because it has looked for no spell to cast on nature.
-Jacob Bronowski
Organic chemistry is the chemistry of carbon compounds. Biochemistry is the study of carbon compounds that crawl.
-Mike Adams
To say that science is logical is like saying that a painting is paint
-Leon Cooper
We live in a scientific age, yet we assume that knowledge of science is the prerogative of only a small number of human beings, isolated and priestlike in their laboratories. This is not true. The materials of science are the materials of life itself. Science is part of the reality of living; it is the way, the how and the why for everything in our experience.
-Rachel Carson
Suppose that we are wise enough to learn and know— and yet not wise enough to control our learning and knowledge, so that we use it to destroy ourselves? Even if that is so, knowledge remains better than ignorance.
-Isaac Asimov
The best scientist is open to experience and begins with romance— the idea that anything is possible
-Ray Bradbury
Remember, then, that it [science] is the guide of action; that the truth which it arrives at is not that which we can ideally contemplate without error, but that which we may act upon without fear; and you cannot fail to see that scientific thought is not an accompaniment or condition of human progress, but human progress itself.
-William Kingdom Clifford
Research is what I’m doing when I don’t know what I’m doing.
-Wernher von Braun
How I want a drink, alcoholic of course, after the heavy lectures involving quantum mechanics!
(This is a mnemonic phrase: the number of letters in each word of the phrase is a decimal digit of pi)
-Isaac Asimov
Science has a simple faith, which transcends utility. It is the faith that it is the privilege of man to learn to understand, and this is his mission.
-Vannevar Bush
Those who assert that the mathematical sciences say nothing of the beautiful or the good are in error. For these sciences say and prove a great deal about them; if they do not expressly mention them, but prove attributes which are their results or definitions, it is not true that they tell us nothing about them. The chief forms of beauty are order and symmetry and definiteness, which the mathematical sciences demonstrate in a special degree.
-Aristotle
There is a single light of science, and to brighten it anywhere is to brighten it everywhere.
-Isaac Asimov
The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds the most discoveries, is not 'Eureka!', but 'That's funny...'
-Isaac Asimov
The cloning of human is on most of the lists of things to worry about from Science, along with behaviour control, genetic engineering, transplanted heads, computer poetry and the unrestrained growth of plastic flowers.
-Lewis Thomas
Man is the lowest-cost, 150-pound, nonlinear, all-purpose computer system which can be mass-produced by unskilled labor.
-NASA in 1965
The materials of science are the materials of life itself. Science is part of the reality of living; it is the what, the how, and the why of everything in our experience.
-Rachel Carson
As an adolescent I aspired to lasting fame, I craved factual certainty, and I thirsted for a meaningful vision of human life - so I became a scientist. This is like becoming an archbishop so you can meet girls.
-M. Cartmill
Remember, if you’re not part of the solution, then you’re part of the precipitate!
-Eric Desch
It was a misfortune for the living world in particular, many scientists believe, that a carnivorous primate and not some more benign form of animal made the breakthrough.
-Edward O. Wilson
If rats are experimented on they will develop cancer.
-Morton's Law
Although nature commences with reason and ends in experience it is necessary for us to do the opposite, that is to commence with experience and from this to proceed to investigate the reason.
-Leonardo da Vinci
The modern physicist is a quantum theorist on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday and a student of gravitational theory on Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday. On Sunday he is neither, but is praying to his God that someone, preferably himself, will find the reconciliation between the two views.
-Norbert Wiener
The chess board is the world, the pieces are the phenomena of the universe, the rules of the game are what we call the laws of Nature. The player on the other side is hidden from us. We know that his play is always fair, just, and patient. But we also know, to our cost, that he never overlooks a mistake, or makes the smallest allowance for ignorance.
-Thomas Huxley
I shall try to correct errors when shown to be errors; and I shall adopt new views so fast as they shall appear to be true views.
-Abraham Lincoln
[note: although this is not a science quote, I see this as one of the fundamental tenants of science]
I maintain there is much more wonder in science than in pseudoscience. And in addition, to whatever measure this term has any meaning, science has the additional virtue, and it is not an inconsiderable one, of being true.
-Carl Sagan
Science is facts; just as houses are made of stone, so is science made of facts; but a pile of stones is not a house and a collection of facts is not necessarily science
-Henri Poincaré
Aristotle maintained that women have fewer teeth than men; although he was twice married, it never occurred to him to verify this statement by examining his wives’ mouths.
-Bertrand Russell
For most of human history we have searched for our place in the cosmos. Who are we? What are we? We find that we inhabit an insignificant planet of a hum-drum star lost in a galaxy tucked away in some forgotten corner of a universe in which there are far more galaxies than people. We make our world significant by the courage of our questions, and by the depth of our answers.
-Carl Sagan
In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion.
-Carl Sagan
What the founders of modern science...had to do, was not criticize and to combat certain faulty theories, and to correct or to replace them by better ones. They had to do something quite different. They had to destroy one world and replace it by another. The had to reshape the framework of our intellect itself, to restate and to reform its concepts, to evolve a new approach to Being, a new concept of knowledge, and a new concept of science-and even to replace a pretty natural approach, that of common sense, by another which is not natural at all.
-Alexandre Koyre
The radical novelty of modern science lies precisely in the rejection of the belief... that the forces which move the stars and atoms are contingent upon the preferences of the human heart.
-Walter Lippmann
In questions of science the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual
-Galileo Galilei
In science, "fact" can only mean "confirmed to such a degree that it would be perverse to withhold provisional assent." I suppose that apples might start to rise tomorrow, but the possibility does not merit equal time in physics classrooms.
-Stephen Jay Gould
A zygote is a gamete’s way of producing more gametes. This may be the purpose of the universe.
-Robert Heinlein
There are in fact two things, science and opinion; the former begets knowledge, the latter ignorance.
-Hippocrates
The human mind is not capable of grasping the Universe. We are like a little child entering a huge library. The walls are covered to the ceilings with books in many different tongues. The child knows that someone must have written these books. It does not know who or how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written. But the child notes a definite plan in the arrangement of the books---a mysterious order which it does not comprehend, but only dimly suspects.
-Albert Einstein
Whatever a scientist is doing—reading, cooking, talking, playing—science thoughts are always there at the edge of the mind. They are the way the world is taking in; all this is seen is filtered through an everpresent scientific musing.
-Vivian Gornick
Do not undertake a scientific career in quest of fame or money. There are easier and better ways to reach them. Undertake it only if nothing else will satisfy you; for nothing is probably what you will receive. Your reward will be the widening of the horizon as you climb. And if you achieve that reward you will ask no other.
-Cecilia Payne Gaposchkin
If I could remember the names of all these particles... I'd be a botanist!
-Enrico Fermi
Measure what is measurable, and make measurable what is not so.
-Galileo Galilei
We are a bit of stellar matter gone wrong. We are physical machinery - puppets that strut and talk and laugh and die as the hand of time pulls the strings beneath. But there is one elementary inescapable answer. We are that which asks the question.
-Sir Arthur Eddington
No amount of experimentation can ever prove me right; a single experiment can prove me wrong.
-Albert Einstein
The fundamental laws necessary for the mathematical treatment of a large part of physics and the whole of chemistry are thus completely known, and the difficulty lies only in the fact that application of these laws leads to equations that are too complex to be solved.
-Paul Dirac
Human judges can show mercy. But against the laws of nature, there is no appeal
-Arthur C. Clarke
We have discovered the secret of life!
-Francis Crick, spoken after excitedly bursting into a Cambridge pub with James Watson to celebrate the fact that they had unraveled the structure of DNA
There is no doubt that human survival will continue to depend more and more on human intellect and technology. It is idle to argue whether this is good or bad. The point of no return was passed long ago, before anyone knew it was happening.
-Theodosius Dobzansky
May every young scientist remember and not fail to keep his eyes open for the possibility that an irritating failure of his apparatus to give consistent results may once or twice in a lifetime conceal an important discovery
-Patrick Blackett
Man masters nature not by force but by understanding. That is why science has succeeded where magic failed: because it has looked for no spell to cast on nature.
-Jacob Bronowski
Organic chemistry is the chemistry of carbon compounds. Biochemistry is the study of carbon compounds that crawl.
-Mike Adams
To say that science is logical is like saying that a painting is paint
-Leon Cooper
We live in a scientific age, yet we assume that knowledge of science is the prerogative of only a small number of human beings, isolated and priestlike in their laboratories. This is not true. The materials of science are the materials of life itself. Science is part of the reality of living; it is the way, the how and the why for everything in our experience.
-Rachel Carson
Suppose that we are wise enough to learn and know— and yet not wise enough to control our learning and knowledge, so that we use it to destroy ourselves? Even if that is so, knowledge remains better than ignorance.
-Isaac Asimov
The best scientist is open to experience and begins with romance— the idea that anything is possible
-Ray Bradbury
Remember, then, that it [science] is the guide of action; that the truth which it arrives at is not that which we can ideally contemplate without error, but that which we may act upon without fear; and you cannot fail to see that scientific thought is not an accompaniment or condition of human progress, but human progress itself.
-William Kingdom Clifford
Research is what I’m doing when I don’t know what I’m doing.
-Wernher von Braun
How I want a drink, alcoholic of course, after the heavy lectures involving quantum mechanics!
(This is a mnemonic phrase: the number of letters in each word of the phrase is a decimal digit of pi)
-Isaac Asimov
Science has a simple faith, which transcends utility. It is the faith that it is the privilege of man to learn to understand, and this is his mission.
-Vannevar Bush
Those who assert that the mathematical sciences say nothing of the beautiful or the good are in error. For these sciences say and prove a great deal about them; if they do not expressly mention them, but prove attributes which are their results or definitions, it is not true that they tell us nothing about them. The chief forms of beauty are order and symmetry and definiteness, which the mathematical sciences demonstrate in a special degree.
-Aristotle
There is a single light of science, and to brighten it anywhere is to brighten it everywhere.
-Isaac Asimov