Scientist Quotes - Page 10

• It is not only visitors to the zoo who are fascinated but uneasy in the presence of chimpanzees; the same is true of scientists. The more they learn about these great apes, the deeper our identity crisis seems to become. The resemblance between humans and chimpanzees is not only external. If we look straight and deep into a chimpanzee’s eyes, an intelligent, self-assured personality looks back at us. If they are animals, what must we be?

  Frans de Waal

  Zoos, Eye, Animal

  Frans de Waal (2007). “Chimpanzee Politics: Power and Sex Among Apes”, p.3, JHU Press

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• When the wrong question is being asked, it usually turns out to be because the right question is too difficult. Scientists ask questions they can answer. That is, it is often the case that the operations of a science are not a consequence of the problematic of that science, but that the problematic is induced by the available means.

  Richard Lewontin

  Mean, Answers, Operations

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• Scientists don't believe anything.Scientists test things.

  Simon Conway Morris

  Believe, Tests, Don't Believe

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• The natural pattern of current astronomy is provided by the cryptic unity of nature itself (belief in which is the chief act of faith of the scientist).

  Nigel Calder

  Unity, Patterns, Belief

  Nigel Calder (1969). “Violent universe: an eye-witness account of the commotion in astronomy 1968-69”

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• The very foundation of science is to keep the door open to doubt. Precisely because we keep questioning everything, especially our own premises, we are always ready to improve our knowledge. Therefore a good scientist is never ‘certain’. Lack of certainty is precisely what makes conclusions more reliable than the conclusions of those who are certain: because the good scientist will be ready to shift to a different point of view if better elements of evidence, or novel arguments emerge. Therefore certainty is not only something of no use, but is in fact damaging, if we value reliability.

  Carlo Rovelli

  Doors, Views, Doubt

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• I wanted to be a scientist. I did a thesis on lions. But I realised photography can show things writing can't. Lions were my professor of photography.

  Yann Arthus-Bertrand

  Photography, Writing, Lions

  "Photographer Yann Arthus-Bertrand's best shot" by Andrew Pulver, www.theguardian.com. September 23, 2009.

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• The theist and the scientist are rival interpreters of nature, the one retreats as the other advances.

  Joseph McCabe

  Atheism, Rivals, Retreat

  "The Existence of God". Book by Joseph McCabe, 1913.

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• And I'm a stodgy old scientist who believes, naively, that there exists an external world, that there exist objective truths about that world, and that my job is to discover some of them.

  Alan Sokal

  Jobs, Believe, Objective Truth

  Alan Sokal (2010). “Beyond the Hoax: Science, Philosophy and Culture”, p.141, OUP Oxford

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• And so, I was not a military test pilot, but as soon as NASA expressed an interest in flying scientists and people who were not military test pilots, that was an epiphany that just came like a stroke of lightning.

  Story Musgrave

  Military, People, Flying

  "NASA Distinguished Service Medal". The Academy of Achievement Interview, www.achievement.org. May 22, 1997.

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• Well managed and healthy oceans are vital to the survival of small island states, such as the Maldives. This important book shows how scientists and governments can better protect the world's oceans.

  Mohamed Nasheed

  Ocean, Book, Islands

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• You see, I am a very conventional scientist, really.

  Martin Fleischmann

  Conventional

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• Scientists are really very conscious of the fact that they stand on the shoulders of an enormous tree of preceding workers and that their own contribution is not so enormous.

  Martin Fleischmann

  Tree, Facts, Conscious

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• Sweden rejected fluoridation in the 1970s, and in this excellent book these three scientists have confirmed the wisdom of that decision. Our children have not suffered greater tooth decay, as World Health Organization figures attest, and in turn our citizens have not borne the other hazards fluoride may cause

  Arvid Carlsson

  Children, Book, Organization

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• I recognized that teaching and research institutions vitally depend on the involvement of active scientists also in management functions.

  Richard Ernst

  Teaching, Research, Management

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• We think that it is the best scientists working in the frontier fields of science who are best able to judge what is good and what is bad - if any - in the application of their scientific research.

  Kenichi Fukui

  Thinking, Judging, Research

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• Elegance? It may seem odd to non-scientists, but there is an aesthetic in software as there is in every other area of intellectual endeavour. Truly great programmers are like great poets or great mathematicians - they can achieve in a few lines what lesser mortals can only approach in three volumes

  John Naughton

  Intellectual, Three, Lines

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• A wise and well-informed humanist has taken the time to look lovingly and wonderingly at the living world around him, and to study the ways in which scientists have tried to analyze the world... THE BEST INTRODUCTION TO NATURAL HISTORY THAT HAS YET BEEN WRITTEN.

  Marston Bates

  Wise, Taken, Looks

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• Unequal Democracy is the sort of book to which every political scientist should aspire--it is methodologically rigorous, conceptually serious, and above all, it addresses urgent concerns of our fellow citizens. As Bartels shows, much of what we think we know about the politics of economic inequality is dead wrong. Bartels's perplexing and often unexpected discoveries should help refocus the gathering public debate about inequality and what to do about it.

  Robert D. Putnam

  Book, Thinking, Economic Inequality

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• Scientists have no proof that life was not the result of an act of creation.

  Robert Jastrow

  Creation, Proof, Results

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• I'm a medical doctor and a biomedical scientist.

  Steven Hatfill

  Doctors, Medical, Biomedical

  "Text of Hatfill's Statement". www.foxnews.com. August 11, 2002.

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• Science is what scientists do.

  Dennis Flanagan

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• The trouble is that you won't get the scientists to agree on a course of action. It is almost instinctive in science to accept contrary views, because disagreeing gives you guidance to experimental tests of ideas - your own and those offered by others...

  Frederick Seitz

  Views, Ideas, Giving

  Interview for the George C. Marshall Institute, September 3, 1997.

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• There are scientists who will tell you that spirit, because it can’t be measured, doesn’t exist. Bollocks. It does exist.

  Sam Allardyce

  Inspirational, Spiritual, Science

  "Sam Allardyce, the man: England's new boss from childhood to heart scare and being football's Mr Fix It" by Michael Gadd, www.mirror.co.uk. July 21, 2016.

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• No one really understood music unless he was a scientist, her father had declared, and not just a scientist, either, oh, no, only the real ones, the theoreticians, whose language was mathematics. She had not understood mathematics until he had explained to her that it was the symbolic language of relationships. "And relationships," he had told her, "contained the essential meaning of life."

  Pearl S. Buck

  Life, Real, Father

  Pearl S. Buck (2013). “The Goddess Abides: A Novel”, p.10, Open Road Media

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• When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong. Perhaps the adjective 'elderly' requires definition. In physics, mathematics, and astronautics it means over thirty; in the other disciplines, senile decay is sometimes postponed to the forties. There are, of course, glorious exceptions; but as every researcher just out of college knows, scientists of over fifty are good for nothing but board meetings, and should at all costs be kept out of the laboratory!

  Arthur C. Clarke

  Mean, College, Elderly

  Profiles of the Future ch. 2 (1962).

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