Scientist Quotes - Page 3

• My mother made me a scientist without ever intending to. Every other Jewish mother in Brooklyn would ask her child after school, So? Did you learn anything today? But not my mother. Izzy, she would say, did you ask a good question today? That difference - asking good questions - made me become a scientist.

  Isidor Isaac Rabi

  Mother, Children, School

  "Great Minds Start With Questions". Parents Magazine, September 1993.

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• The mind likes a strange idea as little as the body likes a strange protein and resists it with similar energy. It would not perhaps be too fanciful to say that a new idea is the most quickly acting antigen known to science.

  Wilfred Trotter

  Science, Ideas, Mind

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• If we watch ourselves honestly we shall often find that we have begun to argue against a new idea even before it has been completely stated.

  Wilfred Trotter

  Science, Ideas, Watches

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• If I would be a young man again and had to decide how to make my living, I would not try to become a scientist or scholar or teacher. I would rather choose to be a plumber or a peddler in hope to find that modest degree of independence still available under present circumstances.

  Albert Einstein

  Teacher, Science, Men

  Quoted in Reporter, 18 Nov. 1954

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• Most institutions demand unqualified faith; but the institution of science makes skepticism a virtue.

  Robert K. Merton

  Inspirational, Faith, Science

  Robert K. Merton (1973). “The Sociology of Science: Theoretical and Empirical Investigations”, p.265, University of Chicago Press

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• When I began my career as a cosmologist some twenty years ago, I was a convinced atheist. I never in my wildest dreams imagined that one day I would be writing a book purporting to show that the central claims of Judeo-Christian theology are in fact true, that these claims are straightforward deductions of the laws of physics as we now understand them. I have been forced into these conclusions by the inexorable logic of my own special branch of physics.

  Frank J. Tipler

  Christian, Dream, Atheist

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• The exquisite order displayed by our scientific understanding of the physical world calls for the divine.

  Vera Kistiakowsky

  Science, Order, Design

  "Evolution through the Back Door". www.freerepublic.com. June 15, 2003.

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• I find it quite improbable that such order came out of chaos. There has to be some organizing principle. God to me is a mystery, but is the explanation for the miracle of existence, why there is something instead of nothing.

  Allan Sandage

  God, Science, Order

  "Sizing up the Cosmos: An Astronomer's Quest" by John Noble Wilford, www.nytimes.com. March 12, 1991.

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• There must be no barriers for freedom of inquiry... There is no place for dogma in science. The scientist is free, and must be free to ask any question, to doubt any assertion, to seek for any evidence, to correct any errors.

  J. Robert Oppenheimer

  Science, Errors, Doubt

  "J. Robert Oppenheimer" by L. Barnett in Life Magazine, Volume 7, No. 9, International Edition (p. 58), October 24, 1949.

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• When confronted with the order and beauty of the universe and the strange coincidences of nature, it's very tempting to take the leap of faith from science into religion. I am sure many physicists want to. I only wish they would admit it.

  Tony Rothman

  Science, Order, Design

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• As we survey all the evidence, the thought insistently arises that some supernatural agency-or, rather, Agency-must be involved. Is it possible that suddenly, without intending to, we have stumbled upon scientific proof of the existence of a Supreme Being? Was it God who stepped in and so providentially crafted the cosmos for our benefit?

  George Greenstein

  Science, Agency, Origin Of Life

  George Greenstein (1988). “The symbiotic universe: life and mind in the cosmos”

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• Amazing fine tuning occurs in the laws that make this complexity possible. Realization of the complexity of what is accomplished makes it very difficult not to use the word 'miraculous' without taking a stand as to the ontological status of the word.

  George F. R. Ellis

  Science, Law, If There Is A God

  "The Anthropic Principle: Laws and Environments". Article in "The Anthropic Principle: Proceedings of the Second Venice Conference on Cosmology and Philosophy", book edited by F. Bertola and U. Curi, Cambridge University Press, p. 30, 1988.

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• It doesn’t matter how smart you are, Enigma is always smarter.

  Joan Clarke

  Smart, Science, Matter

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• A common sense interpretation of the facts suggests that a superintellect has monkeyed with physics.

  Fred Hoyle

  Science, If There Is A God, Common Sense

  "The Universe: Past and Present Reflections". "Annual Review of Astronomy and Astrophysics", volume 20, p. 16, September 1982.

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• Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen.

  Albert Einstein

  Inspirational, Funny, Leadership

  Albert Einstein (2015). “Bite-Size Einstein: Quotations on Just About Everything from the Greatest Mind of the Twentieth Century”, p.24, St. Martin's Press

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

  Thomas Huxley

  Beauty, Beautiful, Education

  "Biogenesis and Abiogenesis" (1870)

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• 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

  Change, Learning, Humility

  Keynote address at CSICOP conference in 1987. "Do Science and the Bible Conflict?" Book by Judson Poling, p. 30, 2003.

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• A 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.

  Max Planck

  Death, Truth, Growing Up

  Scientific Autobiography, and Other Papers "Scientific Autobiography" (1948) (translation by Frank Gaynor)

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• Science is not only compatible with spirituality; it is a profound source of spirituality.

  Carl Sagan

  God, Spiritual, Philosophy

  Carl Sagan (2011). “Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark”, p.54, Ballantine Books

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• The universe is not only queerer than we suppose; it is queerer than we can suppose

  Bill Bryson

  Funny, Knowledge, Science

  Bill Bryson (2014). “A Short History of Nearly Everything”, p.20, Lulu Press, Inc

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

  Francis Darwin

  Business, Science, Men

  Eugenics Review, Apr. 1914

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

  Richard P. Feynman

  Sex, Learning, Science

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• Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

  Arthur C. Clarke

  Science, Technology, Possible And Impossible

  Letter to the editor, Science, 19 Jan. 1968.

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• All religions, arts and sciences are branches of the same tree.

  Albert Einstein

  Inspirational, Art, Science

  Albert Einstein (2011). “Out of My Later Years: The Scientist, Philosopher, and Man Portrayed Through His Own Words”, p.10, Open Road Media

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

  Konrad Lorenz

  Morning, Good Day, Science

  On Aggression ch. 2 (1966)

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