Scientist Quotes - Page 2

• A scientist is a mimosa when he himself has made a mistake, and a roaring lion when he discovers a mistake of others.

  Albert Einstein

  Mistake, Memorable, Academic Life

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• No great mind has ever existed without a touch of madness.

  Aristotle

  Inspirational, Motivational, Self

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• Science is simply common sense at its best.

  Thomas Huxley

  Motivational, Math, Science

  Thomas Henry Huxley (1902). “An Introduction to the Study of Zoology, Illustrated by the Crayfish”

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• The human mind likes a strange idea as little as the body likes a strange protein and resists it with a similar energy.

  William Beveridge

  Peace, Science, Ideas

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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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• The reason why new concepts in any branch of science are hard to grasp is always the same; contemporary scientists try to picture the new concept in terms of ideas which existed before.

  Freeman Dyson

  Science, Ideas, Trying

  Freeman Dyson (2013). “FROM EROS TO GAIA”, p.133, Pantheon

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• Life is not easy for any of us. But what of that? We must have perseverance and above all confidence in ourselves.

  Marie Curie

  Inspirational, Strength, Confidence

  "Madame Curie: A Biography". Book by Eve Curie Labouisse translated by Vincent Sheean, 1937.

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• There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact.

  Mark Twain

  Math, Science, Return

  Life on the Mississippi ch. 17 (1883)

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• Who is more humble? The scientist who looks at the universe with an open mind and accepts whatever the universe has to teach us, or somebody who says everything in this book must be considered the literal truth and never mind the fallibility of all the human beings involved?

  Carl Sagan

  Inspirational, Life, Truth

  Carl Sagan, Tom Head (2006). “Conversations with Carl Sagan”, p.145, Univ. Press of Mississippi

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• Historians of a generation ago were often shocked by the violence with which scientists rejected the history of their own subject as irrelevant; they could not understand how the members of any academic profession could fail to be intrigued by the study of their own cultural heritage. What these historians did not grasp was that scientists will welcome the history of science only when it has been demonstrated that this discipline can add to our understanding of science itself and thus help to produce, in some sense, better scientists.

  I. Bernard Cohen

  Science, Discipline, Understanding

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• A scientific man ought to have no wishes, no affections, - a mere heart of stone.

  Charles Darwin

  Heart, Science, Men

  Charles Darwin, R. C. Stauffer (1987). “Charles Darwin's Natural Selection: Being the Second Part of His Big Species Book Written from 1856 to 1858”, p.279, Cambridge University Press

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• One could not be a successful scientist without realizing that, in contrast to the popular conception supported by newspapers and mothers of scientists, a goodly number of scientists are not only narrow-minded and dull, but also just stupid.

  James D. Watson

  Success, Mother, Truth

  James D. Watson (2011). “The Double Helix: A Personal Account of the Discovery of the Structure of DNA”, p.25, Simon and Schuster

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

  Richard P. Feynman

  Philosophy, Science, Engineering

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• I have little patience with scientists who take a board of wood, look for its thinnest part, and drill a great number of holes where drilling is easy.

  Albert Einstein

  Inspirational, Patience, Memorable

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• ... the scientist would maintain that knowledge in of itself is wholly good, and that there should be and are methods of dealing with misuses of knowledge by the ruffian or the bully other than by suppressing the knowledge.

  Percy Williams Bridgman

  Science, Bully, Ruffian

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• We are in the ordinary position of scientists of having to be content with piecemeal improvements: we can make several things clearer, but we cannot make anything clear.

  Frank P. Ramsey

  Science, Ordinary, Improvement

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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 lasting pleasures of contact with the natural world are not reserved for scientists but are available to anyone who will place himself under the influence of earth, sea and sky and their amazing life.

  Rachel Carson

  Sky, Sea, Amazing Life

  Rachel Carson (2011). “The Sense of Wonder”, p.45, Open Road Media

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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, Science

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

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• Scientists are complaining that the new dinosaur movie shows dinosaurs with lemurs, who didn't evolve for another million years. They're afraid the movie will give kids a mistaken impression. What about the fact that the dinosaurs are singing and dancing?

  Jay Leno

  Dance, Kids, Years

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• They are ill discoverers that think there is no land, when they can see nothing but sea.

  Francis Bacon

  Life, Nature, Travel

  'The Advancement of Learning' (1605) bk. 2, ch. 7, sect. 5

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• Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, and not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science.

  Charles Darwin

  Positive, Confidence, Ignorance

  Charles Darwin (2015). “Darwin on Evolution: Words of Wisdom from the Father of Evolution”, p.33, Skyhorse Publishing, Inc.

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• No one should approach the temple of science with the soul of a money changer.

  Thomas Browne

  Science, Soul, Temples

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• Science is nothing but developed perception, interpreted intent, common sense rounded out and minutely articulated.

  George Santayana

  Science, Common Sense, Perception

  The Life of Reason: Reason in Science, Ch. 11

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• May every young scientist remember and not fail to keep his eyes open for the possibility that an irritating failure of his apparatus to give consistent results may once or twice in a lifetime conceal an important discovery.

  Patrick Blackett, Baron Blackett

  Failure, Eye, Science

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