Science Quotes

Science is nothing but developed perception, interpreted intent, common sense rounded out and minutely articulated.

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.

Science may set limits to knowledge, but should not set limits to imagination.

We must not forget that when radium was discovered no one knew that it would prove useful in hospitals. The work was one of pure science. And this is a proof that scientific work must not be considered from the point of view of the direct usefulness of it. It must be done for itself, for the beauty of science, and then there is always the chance that a scientific discovery may become like the radium a benefit for humanity.

I am among those who think that science has great beauty. A scientist in his laboratory is not only a technician: he is also a child placed before natural phenomena which impress him like a fairy tale.

A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.

Every science begins as philosophy and ends as art.

Science can only ascertain what is, but not what should be, and outside of its domain value judgements of all kinds remain necessary.

That is the essence of science: ask an impertinent question, and you are on your way to the pertinent answer.

When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.

It is a good morning exercise for a research scientist to discard a pet hypothesis every day before breakfast. It keeps him young.

The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not 'Eureka!' (I found it!) but 'That's funny ...'

There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact.

The cloning of humans 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.

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.

I believe that a scientist looking at nonscientific problems is just as dumb as the next guy.

Nothing shocks me. I'm a scientist.

Science has proof without any certainty. Creationists have certainty without any proof.

Perfect as the wing of a bird may be, it will never enable the bird to fly if unsupported by the air. Facts are the air of science. Without them a man of science can never rise.

There are in fact two things, science and opinion; the former begets knowledge, the latter ignorance.

As soon as questions of will or decision or reason or choice of action arise, human science is at a loss.

In science the credit goes to the man who convinces the world, not the man to whom the idea first occurs.

The important thing in science is not so much to obtain new facts as to discover new ways of thinking about them.

If scientific reasoning were limited to the logical processes of arithmetic, we should not get very far in our understanding of the physical world. One might as well attempt to grasp the game of poker entirely by the use of the mathematics of probability.

Science is nothing but trained and organized common sense, differing from the latter only as a veteran may differ from a raw recruit: and its methods differ from those of common sense only as far as the guardsman's cut and thrust differ from the manner in which a savage wields his club.

The great tragedy of Science - the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact.

Science is organized knowledge. Wisdom is organized life.

There are no such things as applied sciences, only applications of science.

All science is either physics or stamp collecting.

The effort to understand the universe is one of the very few things that lifts human life a little above the level of farce, and gives it some of the grace of tragedy.

Philosophers say a great deal about what is absolutely necessary for science, and it is always, so far as one can see, rather naive, and probably wrong.

The most important scientific revolutions all include, as their only common feature, the dethronement of human arrogance from one pedestal after another of previous convictions about our centrality in the cosmos.

Science is one thing, wisdom is another. Science is an edged tool, with which men play like children, and cut their own fingers.

The more I study science, the more I believe in God.

All science, even the divine science, is a sublime detective story. Only it is not set to detect why a man is dead; but the darker secret of why he is alive.

The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not 'Eureka!' (I found it!) but 'That's funny...'

No doubt those who really founded modern science were usually those whose love of truth exceeded their love of power.

Scientists make a guess and call it a hypothesis. 'Guess' is too short a word for a professor.

A University of Chicago professor said the greatest day in the world was when a water puppy crawled out on land and decided to stay. The water puppy, he said, went on to become a man. If he proves that, I am willing to give up Christmas, Thanksgiving, and New Year's Day, and to celebrate Water Puppy Day.

People like to imagine that because all our mechanical equipment moves so much faster, that we are thinking faster, too.

It is very easy to tell the difference between man-made and God-made objects. The more you magnify man-made objects, the cruder they look, but the more you magnify God-made objects, the more precise and intricate they appear.

Even if there is only one possible unified theory, it is just a set of rules and equations. What is it that breathes fire into the equations and makes a universe for them to describe?

The usual approach of science of constructing a mathematical model cannot answer the questions of why there should be a universe for the model to describe. Why does the universe go to all the bother of existing?

The whole history of science has been the gradual realization that events do not happen in an arbitrary manner, but that they reflect a certain underlying order, which may or may not be divinely inspired.

Science never solves a problem without creating ten more.

It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity.

Science is a first-rate piece of furniture for a man's upper chamber, if he has common sense on the ground floor.

Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men.

I'm astounded by people who want to 'know' the universe when it's hard enough to find your way around Chinatown.

Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.

What is now proved was once only imagined.

For the wise men of old the cardinal problem had been how to conform the soul to reality. For magic and applied science alike the problem is how to subdue reality to the wishes of men.

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.

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.

Anyone who says that they can contemplate quantum mechanics without becoming dizzy has not understood the concept in the least.

I viewed my fellow man not as a fallen angel, but as a risen ape.

If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it?

No amount of experimentation can ever prove me right; a single experiment can prove me wrong.

The grand aim of all science is to cover the greatest number of empirical facts by logical deduction from the smallest number of hypotheses or axioms.

Man's conquest of Nature turns out, in the moment of its consummation, to be Nature's conquest of Man.

If the solar system was brought about by an accidental collision, then the appearance of organic life on this planet was also an accident, and the whole evolution of Man was an accident too. If so, then all our present thoughts are mere accidents - the accidental by-product of the movement of atoms. And this holds for the thoughts of the materialists and astronomers as well as for anyone else's. But if their thoughts - i.e., of Materialism and Astronomy - are merely accidental by-products, why should we believe them to be true?

I see no reason for believing that one accident should be able to give me a correct account of all the other accidents.

It's like expecting that the accidental shape taken by the splash when you upset a milk-jug should give you a correct account of how the jug was made and why it was upset.

Astronomy compels the soul to look upwards and leads us from this world to another.

A mathematician is a blind man in a dark room looking for a black cat which isn't there.

Physics is like sex: sure, it may give some practical results, but that's not why we do it.

Physics is like sex: sure, it may give some practical results, but that's not why we do it.

Natural selection, the unconscious, automatic, blind yet essentially non-random process that Darwin discovered, has no purpose in mind. If it can be said to play the role of watchmaker in nature, it is the blind watchmaker.

All theoretical chemistry is really physics; and all theoretical chemists know it.

If you are obliged to neglect any thing, let it be your chemistry. It is the least useful and the least amusing to a country gentleman of all the ordinary branches of science.

If one could conclude as to the nature of the Creator from a study of his creation it would appear that God has a special fondness for stars and beetles.

Every great advance in science has issued from a new audacity of the imagination.

Mathematics is the language with which God has written the universe.

To those who do not know mathematics it is difficult to get across a real feeling as to the beauty, the deepest beauty, of nature. If you want to learn about nature, to appreciate nature, it is necessary to understand the language that she speaks in.

Science is not about building a body of known 'facts'. It is a method for asking awkward questions and subjecting them to a reality-check, thus avoiding the human tendency to believe whatever makes us feel good.

Paley's argument is made with passionate sincerity and is informed by the best biological scholarship of his day, but it is wrong, gloriously and utterly wrong.

Whenever science makes a discovery, the devil grabs it while the angels are debating the best way to use it.

As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain, and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality.

Science is facts; just as houses are made of stones, so is science made of facts; but a pile of stones is not a house and a collection of facts is not necessarily science.

The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is at all comprehensible.

Until man duplicates a blade of grass, nature can laugh at his so-called scientific knowledge.

The Law of conservation of energy tells us we can't get something for nothing, but we refuse to believe it.

I keep the subject of my inquiry constantly before me, and wait till the first dawning opens gradually, by little and little, into a full and clear light.

To me there has never been a higher source of earthly honor or distinction than that connected with advances in science.

Why is it that you physicists always require so much expensive equipment? Now the Department of Mathematics requires nothing but money for paper, pencils, and erasers...and the Department of Philosophy is better still. It doesn't even ask for erasers.

Now my own suspicion is that the Universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose.

Science is the tool of the Western mind and with it more doors can be opened than with bare hands. It is part and parcel of our knowledge and obscures our insight only when it holds that the understanding given by it is the only kind there is.

It is those who know little, and not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science.

Nothing before had ever made me thoroughly realise, though I had read various scientific books, that science consists in grouping facts so that general laws or conclusions may be drawn from them.

I love fools� experiments. I am always making them.

A scientific man ought to have no wishes, no affections, -- a mere heart of stone.

The fact of evolution is the backbone of biology, and biology is thus in the peculiar position of being a science founded on an improved theory, is it then a science or faith?

In science one tries to tell people, in such a way as to be understood by everyone, something that no one ever knew before. But in poetry, it's the exact opposite.

If the brain were so simple we could understand it, we would be so simple we couldn't.

If the brain were so simple we could understand it, we would be so simple we couldn't.