Science Quotes - Page 9

• It is sometimes said that scientists are unromantic, that their passion to figure out robs the world of beauty and mystery. But is it not stirring to understand how the world actually works — that white light is made of colors, that color is the way we perceive the wavelengths of light, that transparent air reflects light, that in so doing it discriminates among the waves, and that the sky is blue for the same reason that the sunset is red? It does no harm to the romance of the sunset to know a little bit about it.

  Carl Sagan

  Passion, Sunset, White

  Carl Sagan, Ann Druyan (2011). “Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space”, p.154, Ballantine Books

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• Shall I refuse my dinner because I do not fully understand the process of digestion?

  Oliver Heaviside

  Engineering, Dinner, Digestion

  Oliver Heaviside (2008). “Electromagnetic Theory”, p.9, Cosimo, Inc.

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• If you are only skeptical, then no new ideas make it through to you.

  Carl Sagan

  Acceptance, Ideas, Rejection

  Carl Sagan (2011). “Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark”, p.391, Ballantine Books

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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

  Ideas, Mind, Acting

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

  Robert K. Merton

  Inspirational, Faith, Demand

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

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• Science increases our power in proportion as it lowers our pride.

  Claude Bernard

  Pride, Increase, Proportion

  Bulletin of New York Academy of Medicine, Volume IV, 1928.

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• Science commits suicide when it adopts a creed.

  Thomas Huxley

  Suicide, Believe, Belief

  Leonard Huxley, Thomas Henry Huxley (2011). “Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley”, p.422, Cambridge University Press

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• Science is nothing, but trained and organized common sense.

  Thomas Huxley

  Common Sense, Common, Organized

  'Collected Essays' (1893-94) 'The Method of Zadig'

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• Science can purify religion from error and superstition. Religion can purify science from idolatry and false absolutes.

  Pope John Paul II

  Errors, Catholic, Religion

  Letter to the Rev. George V. Coyne on June 01, 1988. "John Paul II on science and religion: reflections on the new view from Rome". Book edited by George Coyne, 1990.

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• 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.

  Steven Weinberg

  Life, Education, Money

  Steven Weinberg (2012). “Facing Up”, p.42, Harvard University Press

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• We know very little, and yet it is astonishing that we know so much, and still more astonishing that so little knowledge can give us so much power.

  Bertrand Russell

  Philosophical, Engineering, Giving

  Bertrand Russell (1985). “The ABC of relativity”, Signet

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• An ocean traveler has even more vividly the impression that the ocean is made of waves than that it is made of water.

  Arthur Eddington

  Ocean, Engineering, Water

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• Philosophy of science is about as useful to scientists as ornithology is to birds.

  Richard P. Feynman

  Philosophy, Engineering, Bird

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• The scientist believes in proof without certainty.

  Ashley Montagu

  Religious, Fear, Agnostic

  "Science and Creationism". Book by Ashley Montagu (Introduction, p. 9), 1984.

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• To say that a man is made up of certain chemical elements is a satisfactory description only for those who intend to use him as a fertilizer.

  Hermann Joseph Muller

  Men, Engineering, Use

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• Some things need to be believed to be seen.

  Guy Kawasaki

  Needs, Science Religion, Science God

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• Science...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.

  Carl Jung

  Understanding, Kind, Given

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• Who never walks save where he sees men's tracks makes no discoveries.

  J. G. Holland

  Men, Discovery, Track

  J. G. HOLLAND (1867). “KATHRINA: HER LIFE AND MINE, IN A POEM”, p.230

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• The technologies which have had the most profound effects on human life are usually simple. A good example of a simple technology with profound historical consequences is hay. ... It was hay that allowed populations to grow and civilizations to flourish among the forests of Northern Europe. Hay moved the greatness of Rome to Paris and London, and later to Berlin and Moscow and New York.

  Freeman Dyson

  Horse, New York, Technology

  "Infinite in All Directions" by Freeman Dyson, Ch. 8, (p. 135), 1988.

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• I have hardly ever known a mathematician who was capable of reasoning.

  Plato

  Plato, Math, Reasoning

  Plato (2016). “The Complete Works of Plato (Unabridged): From the greatest Greek philosopher, known for The Republic, Symposium, Apology, Phaedrus, Laws, Crito, Phaedo, Timaeus, Meno, Euthyphro, Gorgias, Parmenides, Protagoras, Statesman and Critias”, p.1375, e-artnow (Open Publishing)

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• That is the danger we now face. And this is why the intermixing of science and politics is a bad combination, with a bad history. We must remember the history, and be certain that what we present to the world as knowledge is disinterested and honest.

  Michael Crichton

  World, Faces, Honest

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• The soul without imagination is what an observatory would be without a telescope.

  Henry Ward Beecher

  Inspirational, War, Imagination

  Henry Ward Beecher (1858). “Life Thoughts”, p.56

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• ... you could claim that anything's real if the only basis for believing in it is that nobody's proved it doesn't exist!

  J. K. Rowling

  Real, Believe, Silly

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• The first man who said "fire burns" was employing scientific method, at any rate if he had allowed himself to be burnt several times. This man had already passed through the two stages of observation and generalization. He had not, however, what scientific technique demands - a careful choice of significant facts on the one hand, and, on the other hand, various means of arriving at laws otherwise than my mere generalization.

  Bertrand Russell

  Mean, Men, Hands

  "The Scientific Outlook".

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• If anybody says he can think about quantum physics without getting giddy, that only shows he has not understood the first thing about them.

  Niels Bohr

  Inspirational, Life, Thinking

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