Progress In Science Quotes

• Progress in science depends on new techniques, new discoveries and new ideas, probably in that order.

  Sydney Brenner

  Science, Discovery, Order

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• To raise new questions, new possibilities, to regard old problems from a new angle, requires creative imagination and marks real advance in science.

  Albert Einstein

  Real, Creativity, Science

  Albert Einstein, Leopold Infeld (1966). “Evolution of Physics”, p.92, Simon and Schuster

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• Our entire much-praised technological progress, and civilization generally, could be compared to an axe in the hand of a pathological criminal.

  Albert Einstein

  Love, Life, Motivational

  Letter to Heinrich Zangger (1917), as quoted in "Albert Einstein: A Biography" by Albrecht Fölsing, (p. 399), 1997.

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• Progress is made by trial and failure; the failures are generally a hundred times more numerous than the successes ; yet they are usually left unchronicled.

  William Ramsay

  Progress, Trials, Hundred

  William Ramsay (1909). “Essays Biographical and Chemical”

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• Imagination is more important than knowledge.

  Albert Einstein

  Inspirational, Positive, Leadership

  Albert Einstein (2015). “Bite-Size Einstein: Quotations on Just About Everything from the Greatest Mind of the Twentieth Century”, p.32, St. Martin's Press

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• Progress in science comes when experiments contradict theory.

  Richard P. Feynman

  Science, Progress, Theory

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• Scientific progress makes moral progress a necessity; for if man's power is increased, the checks that restrain him from abusing it must be strengthened.

  Madame de Stael

  Men, Progress, Moral

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• All progress depends on the unreasonable man.

  George Bernard Shaw

  Change, Success, Creativity

  Man and Superman "Maxims for Revolutionists" (1903) See Hawthorne 18

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

  Isaac Asimov

  Inspirational, Funny, Motivational

  "Betting On a Bass That Belts Them Out; Singing Fish Becomes Season’s Unlikely Hit" by Darragh Johnson, The Washington Post, July 30, 2000.

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  The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.

  George Bernard Shaw

  Life, Motivational, Change

  Man and Superman "Maxims for Revolutionists" (1903) See Hawthorne 18

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• Progress in science is often built on wrong theories that are later corrected. It is better to be wrong than to be vague.

  Freeman Dyson

  Progress, Theory, Built

  "The Scientist As Rebel". Book by Freeman Dyson, 2006.

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  Without deviation from the norm, progress is not possible.

  Frank Zappa

  Positive, Inspiring, Science

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• Technological progress has merely provided us with more efficient means for going backwards.

  Aldous Huxley

  Mean, Technology, Progress

  Aldous Huxley (1937). “Ends and Means: An Inquiry Into the Nature of Ideals and Into the Methods Employed for Their Realization”, p.9, Transaction Publishers

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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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• False facts are highly injurious to the progress of science, for they often endure long; but false views, if supported by some evidence, do little harm, for every one takes a salutary pleasure in proving their falseness.

  Charles Darwin

  Views, Theory Of Evolution, Long

  Descent of Man Ch. 21, Appleton, New York (1871)

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• Men love to wonder, and that is the seed of science.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Love, Math, Science

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1971). “The Collected Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Society and solitude”, p.79, Harvard University Press

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• If we will only allow that, as we progress, we remain unsure, we will leave opportunities for alternatives.

  Richard P. Feynman

  Science, Opportunity, Progress

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• The scientist is a practical man and his are practical (i.e., practically attainable) aims. He does not seek the ultimate but the proximate. He does not speak of the last analysis but rather of the next approximation. His are not those beautiful structures so delicately designed that a single flaw may cause the collapse of the whole. The scientist builds slowly and with a gross but solid kind of masonry. If dissatisfied with any of his work, even if it be near the very foundations, he can replace that part without damage to the remainder.

  Gilbert N. Lewis

  Beautiful, Science, Men

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• I can live with doubt and uncertainty and not knowing. I think it is much more interesting to live not knowing than to have answers that might be wrong. If we will only allow that, as we progress, we remain unsure, we will leave opportunities for alternatives. We will not become enthusiastic for the fact, the knowledge, the absolute truth of the day, but remain always uncertain … In order to make progress, one must leave the door to the unknown ajar.

  Richard P. Feynman

  Science, Opportunity, Thinking

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• In science it often happens that scientists say, "You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken..."

  Carl Sagan

  Change, Science, Theoretical Physics

  Keynote address at CSICOP conference, 1987.

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• Reduction is at the heart of progress in science.

  Jon Elster

  Heart, Progress, Reduction

  Jon Elster (1989). “Nuts and Bolts for the Social Sciences”, p.74, Cambridge University Press

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• Those who are really convinced that they have made progress in science would not demand freedom for the new views to continue side by side with the old, but the substitution of the new views for the old.

  Vladimir Lenin

  Views, Progress, Sides

  Vladimir Ilʹich Lenin, V. I. Lenin (1927). “Collected works of V. I. Lenin”

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• Freedom is absolutely necessary for the progress in science and the liberal arts.

  Baruch Spinoza

  Art, Freedom, Philosophical

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• The pretention that some of us are better than others, I don't think is a very good thing. And who is contributing what to our progress in science is not so obvious and many who don't get that Nobel Prize are better than people... than some of us that do get the Nobel Prize. I think we should not be interested in prizes, we should be interested in learning about nature.

  Jack Steinberger

  Thinking, People, Progress

  Interview with Adam Smith, www.nobelprize.org. July 2008.

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• Again men have been kept back as by a kind of enchantment from progress in science by reverence for antiquity, by the authority of men counted great in philosophy, and then by general consent.

  Francis Bacon

  Philosophy, Men, Progress

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