Science Quotes - Page 2

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  Science, my lad, is made up of mistakes, but they are mistakes which it is useful to make, because they lead little by little to the truth.

  Jules Verne

  Mistake, Experience, Littles

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• These earthly godfathers of Heaven's lights, that give a name to every fixed star, have no more profit of their shining nights than those that walk and know not what they are.

  William Shakespeare

  Stars, Night, Light

  William Shakespeare, Joseph Dennie, Samuel Johnson, Isaac Reed, George Steevens (1806). “The Plays of William Shakespeare: With the Corrections and Illustrations of Various Commentators”, p.10

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• I am sitting here 93 million miles from the sun on a rounded rock which is spinning at the rate of 1000 miles an hour... and my head pointing down into space with nothing between me and infinity but something called gravity which I can't even understand, and which you can't even buy any place so as to have some stored away for a gravityless day.

  Russell Baker

  Rocks, Space, Sitting

  Russell Baker (1983). “So This Is Depravity”, Pocket Books

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• For undemocratic reasons and for motives not of State, they arrive at their conclusions, largely inarticulate. Being void of self-expression they confide their views to none; but sometimes in a smoking room, one learns why things were done.

  Rudyard Kipling

  Self, Views, Expression

  Rudyard Kipling, M.M. Kaye (2002). “Rudyard Kipling: The Complete Verse”, Kyle Cathie Limited

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• The true scientist never loses the faculty of amazement.

  Hans Selye

  Scientist, Faculty, Amazement

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• Science cannot solve the ultimate mystery of nature. And that is because, in the last analysis, we ourselves are a part of the mystery that we are trying to solve.

  Max Planck

  Nature, Trying, Lasts

  Max Planck (1933). “Where is science going?”

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• Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge.

  Charles Darwin

  Inspirational, Confidence, Atheist

  Charles Darwin (2015). “Delphi Complete Works of Charles Darwin (Illustrated)”, p.6343, Delphi Classics

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• Nothing has such power to broaden the mind as the ability to investigate systematically and truly all that comes under thy observation in life.

  Marcus Aurelius

  Life, Power, Mind

  "Meditations" by Marcus Aurelius, Book III, (11), (c. 161 - 180 AD).

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• Irrationally held truths may be more harmful than reasoned errors.

  Thomas Huxley

  Truth, Lying, Errors

  'Science and Culture and Other Essays' (1881) 'The Coming of Age of the Origin of Species'

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• I believe in evidence. I believe in observation, measurement, and reasoning, confirmed by independent observers. I'll believe anything, no matter how wild and ridiculous, if there is evidence for it. The wilder and more ridiculous something is, however, the firmer and more solid the evidence will have to be.

  Isaac Asimov

  Believe, Independent, Roving

  Isaac Asimov (1982). “Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine”

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• Not only is the Universe stranger than we think, it is stranger than we can think.

  Werner Heisenberg

  Reality, Thinking, Engineering

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• There are two possible outcomes: if the result confirms the hypothesis, then you've made a measurement. If the result is contrary to the hypothesis, then you've made a discovery.

  Enrico Fermi

  Discovery, Two, Outcomes

  "Nuclear Principles in Engineering". Book by Tatjana Jevremovic, 2005.

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  Basic research is what I am doing when I don't know what I am doing.

  Wernher von Braun

  Wisdom, Witty, Humorous

  "Work, Society, and Culture". The New York Times, December 16, 1957.

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• When even the brightest mind in our world has been trained up from childhood in a superstition of any kind, it will never be possible for that mind, in its maturity, to examine sincerely, dispassionately, and conscientiously any evidence or any circumstance which shall seem to cast a doubt upon the validity of that superstition. I doubt if I could do it myself.

  Mark Twain

  Maturity, Our World, Childhood

  Mark Twain (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Mark Twain (Illustrated)”, p.4096, Delphi Classics

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• Common sense is not so common.

  Voltaire

  Life, Wisdom, Witty

  Dictionnaire Philosophique "Common Sense" (1765)

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• The great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.

  Isaac Newton

  Trust, Truth, Ocean

  Quoted in Christian Monitor, and Religious Intelligencer, 4 July 1812. An almost identical quotation by Newton, said to have been uttered "a little before he died," appears in Joseph Spence, Anecdotes, Observations, and Characters of Books and Men, published in 1820 but extant in manuscript form from around 1730. A paraphrase of Newton's words was printed in a note in a 1797 edition of TheWorks of Alexander Pope.

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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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• The first principle is that you must not fool yourself and you are the easiest person to fool.

  Richard P. Feynman

  Clever, Love Life, Ironic

  Richard P. Feynman (2015). “The Quotable Feynman”, p.345, Princeton University Press

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• 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.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Humility, Arrogance, Religion

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• Science says: 'We must live,' and seeks the means of prolonging, increasing, facilitating and amplifying life, of making it tolerable and acceptable, wisdom says: 'We must die,' and seeks how to make us die well.

  Miguel de Unamuno

  Death, Mean, Prolonging

  Essays and Soliloquies 'Arbitrary Reflections'

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• If we do not learn to eliminate waste and to be more productive and more efficient in the ways we use energy, then we will fall short of this goal [for the Nation to derive 20 percent of all the energy we use from the Sun, by 2000]. But if we use our technological imagination, if we can work together to harness the light of the Sun, the power of the wind, and the strength of rushing streams, then we will succeed.

  Jimmy Carter

  Fall, Hard Work, Light

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• Science may be described as the art of systematic over-simplification.

  Karl Popper

  Funny, Art, Crazy

  1982 Quoted in the Observer,1Aug.

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• I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.

  Albert Einstein

  Inspirational, Funny, Wisdom

  Albert Einstein (2003). “Einstein's 1912 manuscript on the special theory of relativity”, George Braziller

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• If you thought that science was certain - well, that is just an error on your part.

  Richard P. Feynman

  Errors, Certain, Wells

  Richard P. Feynman (2015). “The Quotable Feynman”, p.349, Princeton University Press

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• Aerodynamically, the bumble bee shouldn't be able to fly, but the bumble bee doesn't know it so it goes on flying anyway.

  Mary Kay Ash

  Inspirational, Motivational, Positive

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