Science Quotes

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.