• Science
    Quotes
  • What's
    New
  • Science
    Stories
  • Chemistry
    Stories
  • Perpetual
    Motion
  • Newsletter
    Sign-up
  • Search
    search icon
  • Feedback
    email icon
  • Home
  • Text Menu
  • Science Store
  • News
  • Wall Calendar
  • Survey
  • Privacy
  • Terms of Use
TODAYINSCI ®

Find science on your birthday
TODAY IN SCIENCE HISTORY
Follow @todayinsci
Home > Category Index for Science Quotations > Category Index F > Category: Freedom

Freedom Quotes (36 quotes)

A central lesson of science is that to understand complex issues (or even simple ones), we must try to free our minds of dogma and to guarantee the freedom to publish, to contradict, and to experiment. Arguments from authority are unacceptable.
— Carl Sagan
Billions and Billions: Thoughts on Life and Death at the Brink of the Millenium (1998), 190.
Science quotes on:  |  Argument (22)  |  Authority (18)  |  Complexity (42)  |  Contradict (2)  |  Dogma (12)  |  Experiment (346)  |  Lesson (12)  |  Problem (149)  |  Publication (71)  |  Science (754)  |  Understanding (195)

All religions, arts and sciences are branches of the same tree. All these aspirations are directed toward ennobling man's life, lifting it from the sphere of mere physical existence and leading the individual towards freedom.
— Albert Einstein
'Moral Decay', Out of My Later Years (1937, 1995), 9.
Science quotes on:  |  Science And Art (48)  |  Science And Religion (129)

All the scientist creates in a fact is the language in which he enunciates it. If he predicts a fact, he will employ this language, and for all those who can speak and understand it, his prediction is free from ambiguity. Moreover, this prediction once made, it evidently does not depend upon him whether it is fulfilled or not.
— Henri Poincaré
The Value of Science (1905), in The Foundations of Science: Science and Hypothesis, The Value of Science, Science and Method(1946), trans. by George Bruce Halsted, 332.
Science quotes on:  |  Ambiguity (6)  |  Creation (115)  |  Dependence (17)  |  Employment (13)  |  Evidence (74)  |  Fact (277)  |  Fulfillment (6)  |  Language (60)  |  Prediction (37)  |  Scientist (186)  |  Speaking (25)  |  Understanding (195)

Americans have always believed that—within the law—all kinds of people should be allowed to take the initiative in all kinds of activities. And out of that pluralism has come virtually all of our creativity. Freedom is real only to the extent that there are diverse alternatives.
— John William Gardner
Speech to the Council on Foundations (16 May 1979). In 'Infinite Variety: The Nonprofit Sector', Grant's Magazine (1979), Vol. 2-3, 17.
Science quotes on:  |  Activity (40)  |  Allow (4)  |  Alternative (9)  |  Belief (116)  |  Creativity (37)  |  Diverse (3)  |  Extent (10)  |  Initiative (8)  |  Pluralism (2)

By a recent estimate, nearly half the bills before the U.S. Congress have a substantial science-technology component and some two-thirds of the District of Columbia Circuit Court's case load now involves review of action by federal administrative agencies; and more and more of such cases relate to matters on the frontiers of technology.
If the layman cannot participate in decision making, he will have to turn himself over, essentially blind, to a hermetic elite. ... [The fundamental question becomes] are we still capable of self-government and therefore freedom?
Margaret Mead wrote in a 1959 issue of Daedalus about scientists elevated to the status of priests. Now there is a name for this elevation, when you are in the hands of—one hopes—a benevolent elite, when you have no control over your political decisions. From the point of view of John Locke, the name for this is slavery.
— Gerald Holton
Quoted in 'Where is Science Taking Us? Gerald Holton Maps the Possible Routes', The Chronicle of Higher Education (18 May 1981). In Francis A. Schaeffer, A Christian Manifesto (1982), 80.
Science quotes on:  |  Education (154)  |  Elite (2)  |  Government (42)  |  John Locke (30)  |  Margaret Mead (4)  |  Science (754)  |  Scientist (186)  |  Slavery (5)  |  Technology (82)

Every scientist, through personal study and research, completes himself and his own humanity. ... Scientific research constitutes for you, as it does for many, the way for the personal encounter with truth, and perhaps the privileged place for the encounter itself with God, the Creator of heaven and earth. Science shines forth in all its value as a good capable of motivating our existence, as a great experience of freedom for truth, as a fundamental work of service. Through research each scientist grows as a human being and helps others to do likewise.
— Pope John Paul II
Address to the members of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences (13 Nov 2000). In L'Osservatore Romano (29 Nov 2000), translated in English edition, 5.
Science quotes on:  |  Earth (210)  |  Encounter (6)  |  Existence (126)  |  Experience (115)  |  God (207)  |  Good (63)  |  Heaven (51)  |  Humanity (37)  |  Motivation (12)  |  Research (319)  |  Scientist (186)  |  Truth (399)

For the evolution of science by societies the main requisite is the perfect freedom of communication between each member and anyone of the others who may act as a reagent.
The gaseous condition is exemplified in the soiree, where the members rush about confusedly, and the only communication is during a collision, which in some instances may be prolonged by button-holing.
The opposite condition, the crystalline, is shown in the lecture, where the members sit in rows, while science flows in an uninterrupted stream from a source which we take as the origin. This is radiation of science. Conduction takes place along the series of members seated round a dinner table, and fixed there for several hours, with flowers in the middle to prevent any cross currents.
The condition most favourable to life is an intermediate plastic or colloidal condition, where the order of business is (1) Greetings and confused talk; (2) A short communication from one who has something to say and to show; (3) Remarks on the communication addressed to the Chair, introducing matters irrelevant to the communication but interesting to the members; (4) This lets each member see who is interested in his special hobby, and who is likely to help him; and leads to (5) Confused conversation and examination of objects on the table.
I have not indicated how this programme is to be combined with eating.
— James Clerk Maxwell
Letter to William Grylls Adams (3 Dec 1873). In P. M. Harman (ed.), The Scientific Letters and Papers of James Clerk Maxwell (1995), Vol. 2, 1862-1873, 949-50.
Science quotes on:  |  Collision (5)  |  Colloid (5)  |  Communication (32)  |  Conduction (3)  |  Confusion (15)  |  Crystal (20)  |  Dinner (5)  |  Eat (12)  |  Examination (42)  |  Gas (27)  |  Greeting (2)  |  Irrelevant (3)  |  Lecture (27)  |  Programme (2)  |  Radiation (12)  |  Remark (9)  |  Society (75)  |  Talk (15)

Formula for breakthroughs in research: Take young researchers, put them together in virtual seclusion, give them an unprecedented degree of freedom and turn up the pressure by fostering competitiveness.
— James Watson
In James Beasley Simpson, Simpson's Contemporary Quotations (1988), 145.
Science quotes on:  |  Breakthrough (6)  |  Pressure (17)  |  Research (319)

Fortunately somewhere between chance and mystery lies imagination, the only thing that protects our freedom, despite the fact that people keep trying to reduce it or kill it off altogether.
— Luis Buñuel
My Last Breath? (1984), 174.
Science quotes on:  |  Chance (67)  |  Imagination (106)  |  Kill (12)  |  Mystery (64)  |  Protection (13)  |  Reduction (19)

Freedom is the oxygen without which science cannot breathe.
— David Sarnoff
Electronics—Today and Tomorrow (1954), as quoted in Emily Davie (editor), Profile of America (1954).
Science quotes on:  |  Breathe (6)  |  Oxygen (30)  |  Science (754)

Freedom, the first-born of science.
— Thomas Jefferson
To Monsieur d'Ivernois. In Thomas Jefferson, Richard Holland Johnston, Thomas Jefferson Memorial Association of the United States, The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, Vol. 19, iii.
Science quotes on:  |  Birth (42)  |  First (28)  |  Science (754)

I am afraid all we can do is to accept the paradox and try to accommodate ourselves to it, as we have done to so many paradoxes lately in modern physical theories. We shall have to get accustomed to the idea that the change of the quantity R, commonly called the 'radius of the universe', and the evolutionary changes of stars and stellar systems are two different processes, going on side by side without any apparent connection between them. After all the 'universe' is an hypothesis, like the atom, and must be allowed the freedom to have properties and to do things which would be contradictory and impossible for a finite material structure.
— Willem de Sitter
Kosmos (1932), 133.
Science quotes on:  |  Acceptance (28)  |  Accommodation (4)  |  Accustom (4)  |  Afraid (6)  |  Apparent (8)  |  Atom (157)  |  Change (106)  |  Change (106)  |  Connection (32)  |  Contradiction (20)  |  Difference (117)  |  Evolution (313)  |  Finite (10)  |  Hypothesis (145)  |  Idea (180)  |  Impossibility (29)  |  Material (47)  |  Modern (31)  |  Paradox (22)  |  Physical (19)  |  Process (79)  |  Property (37)  |  Quantity (20)  |  Radius (3)  |  Star (114)  |  Structure (84)  |  System (57)  |  Theory (319)  |  Universe (249)  |  Universe (249)

I belonged to a small minority of boys who were lacking in physical strength and athletic prowess. ... We found our refuge in science. ... We learned that science is a revenge of victims against oppressors, that science is a territory of freedom and friendship in the midst of tyranny and hatred.
[Referring to the science club he founded to escape bullying at his preparatory school.]
— Freeman Dyson
Essay 'To Teach or Not to Teach'. In From Eros to Gaia (1992), Vol. 5, 191. Partial quote in Oliver Sacks, Uncle Tungsten: Memories of a Chemical Boyhood (2001), 26. Different part of quote in Bill Swainson, Encarta Book of Quotations (2000), 299.
Science quotes on:  |  Belong (4)  |  Boy (13)  |  Hatred (7)  |  Minority (5)  |  Refuge (4)  |  Science (754)  |  Strength (22)  |  Territory (6)  |  Tyranny (2)

I hold every man a debtor to his profession; from the which as men of course do seek to receive countenance and profit, so ought they of duty to endeavour themselves, by way of amends, to be a help and ornament thereunto. This is performed, in some degree, by the honest and liberal practice of a profession; where men shall carry a respect not to descend into any course that is corrupt and unworthy thereof, and preserve themselves free from the abuses wherewith the same profession is noted to be infected: but much more is this performed, if a man be able to visit and strengthen the roots and foundation of the science itself; thereby not only gracing it in reputation and dignity, but also amplifying it in profession and substance.
— Sir Francis Bacon
Opening sentences of Preface, Maxims of Law (1596), in The Works of Francis Bacon: Law tracts. Maxims of the Law (1803), Vol. 4, 10.
Science quotes on:  |  Abuse (2)  |  Amplification (3)  |  Corruption (5)  |  Countenance (2)  |  Course (19)  |  Descent (7)  |  Dignity (7)  |  Endeavour (19)  |  Foundation (27)  |  Grace (5)  |  Help (10)  |  Honesty (10)  |  Infection (13)  |  Liberal (3)  |  Ornament (8)  |  Performance (16)  |  Practice (25)  |  Preservation (12)  |  Profession (23)  |  Profit (12)  |  Reputation (6)  |  Respect (19)  |  Root (15)  |  Science (754)  |  Substance (33)  |  Unworthy (4)  |  Visit (4)

I wandered away on a glorious botanical and geological excursion, which has lasted nearly fifty years and is not yet completed, always happy and free, poor and rich, without thought of a diploma or of making a name, urged on and on through endless, inspiring Godful beauty.
[Shortly after leaving university in 1863, without completing a degree, at age 25, he began his first botanical foot journey along the Wisconsin River to the Mississippi.]
— John Muir
The Story of My Boyhood and Youth (1913), 286.
Science quotes on:  |  Beauty (71)  |  Botany (29)  |  Diploma (2)  |  Excursion (4)  |  Geology (135)  |  Nature (475)  |  Wander (4)

If mankind is to profit freely from the small and sporadic crop of the heroically gifted it produces, it will have to cultivate the delicate art of handling ideas. Psychology is now able to tell us with reasonable assurance that the most influential obstacle to freedom of thought and to new ideas is fear; and fear which can with inimitable art disguise itself as caution, or sanity, or reasoned skepticism, or on occasion even as courage.
— Wilfred Trotter
'The Commemoration of Great Men', Hunterian Oration, Royal College of Surgeons (15 Feb 1952) British Medical Journal (20 Feb 1932), 1, 317-20. The Collected Papers of Wilfred Trotter, FRS (1941), 30.
Science quotes on:  |  Art (63)  |  Assurance (5)  |  Caution (8)  |  Courage (14)  |  Crop (7)  |  Cultivation (7)  |  Delicacy (2)  |  Fear (47)  |  Handle (3)  |  Hero (8)  |  Idea (180)  |  Influence (41)  |  Innovation (24)  |  Mankind (95)  |  Obstacle (8)  |  Product (23)  |  Profit (12)  |  Reason (146)  |  Reasonable (3)  |  Sanity (4)  |  Skepticism (9)  |  Thought (143)

Individual events. Events beyond law. Events so numerous and so uncoordinated that, flaunting their freedom from formula, they yet fabricate firm form.
— John Wheeler
'Frontiers of Time', cited in At Home in the Universe (1994), 283. Quoted in James Gleick, Genius: the Life and Science of Richard Feynman (1993), 93.
Science quotes on:  |  Coordination (4)  |  Event (40)  |  Firm (4)  |  Form (46)  |  Formula (23)  |  Individual (45)  |  Law (243)  |  Numerous (5)

It is better to go near the truth and be imprisoned than to stay with the wrong and roam about freely, master Galilei. In fact, getting attached to falsity is terrible slavery, and real freedom is only next to the right.
— Mehmet Murat ildan
From the play Galileo Galilei (2001) .
Science quotes on:  |  Falsity (7)  |  Galileo Galilei (63)  |  Right (37)  |  Slavery (5)  |  Truth (399)  |  Wrong (32)

It is true that physics gives a wonderful training in precise, logical thinking-about physics. It really does depend upon accurate reproducible experiments, and upon framing hypotheses with the greatest possible freedom from dogmatic prejudice. And if these were the really important things in life, physics would be an essential study for everybody.
— Anthony Standen
In Science is a Sacred Cow (1950), 90-91.
Science quotes on:  |  Dependence (17)  |  Dogmatism (5)  |  Essential (34)  |  Experiment (346)  |  Hypothesis (145)  |  Importance (85)  |  Life (379)  |  Logic (118)  |  Physics (142)  |  Precision (19)  |  Prejudice (25)  |  Reproducibility (2)  |  Study (117)  |  Thinking (140)  |  Training (12)

Let nobody be afraid of true freedom of thought. Let us be free in thought and criticism; but, with freedom, we are bound to come to the conclusion that science is not antagonistic to religion, but a help to it.
— Baron William Thomson Kelvin
Quoted in Arthur Holmes, 'The Faith of the Scientist', The Biblical World (1916), 48 7.
Science quotes on:  |  Science And Religion (129)  |  Thought (143)

Over the years, many Americans have made sacrifices in order to promote freedom and human rights around the globe: the heroic actions of our veterans, the lifesaving work of our scientists and physicians, and generosity of countless individuals who voluntarily give of their time, talents, and energy to help others—all have enriched humankind and affirmed the importance of our Judeo-Christian heritage in shaping our government and values.
— George Herbert Walker Bush
Message on the observance of Christmas (8 Dec 1992). In William J. Federer, A Treasury of Presidential Quotations (2004), 300.
Science quotes on:  |  Scientist (186)

Science had better not free the minds of men too much, before it has tamed their instincts.
— Jean Rostand
The Substance of Man (1962), 19.
Science quotes on:  |  Instinct (21)  |  Men (12)  |  Mind (236)  |  Science (754)

Science is a game—but a game with reality, a game with sharpened knives ... If a man cuts a picture carefully into 1000 pieces, you solve the puzzle when you reassemble the pieces into a picture; in the success or failure, both your intelligences compete. In the presentation of a scientific problem, the other player is the good Lord. He has not only set the problem but also has devised the rules of the game?ut they are not completely known, half of them are left for you to discover or to deduce. The experiment is the tempered blade which you wield with success against the spirits of darkness—or which defeats you shamefully. The uncertainty is how many of the rules God himself has permanently ordained, and how many apparently are caused by your own mental inertia, while the solution generally becomes possible only through freedom from its limitations.
— Erwin Schrödinger
Quoted in Walter Moore, Schrödinger: Life and Thought (1989), 348.
Science quotes on:  |  Blade (3)  |  Competition (15)  |  Cut (9)  |  Darkness (8)  |  Deduction (34)  |  Defeat (5)  |  Discovery (318)  |  Experiment (346)  |  Failure (52)  |  Game (25)  |  Inertia (6)  |  Intelligence (64)  |  Knife (6)  |  Limitation (7)  |  Mind (236)  |  Picture (16)  |  Piece (7)  |  Presentation (8)  |  Problem (149)  |  Reality (57)  |  Rule (44)  |  Science (754)  |  Sharp (5)  |  Solution (103)  |  Spirit (42)  |  Success (93)  |  Uncertainty (22)

See with what entire freedom the whaleman takes his handful of lamps—often but old bottles and vials, though. ... He burns, too, the purest of oil. ... It is sweet as early grass butter in April. He goes and hunts for his oil, so as to be sure of its freshness and genuineness, even as the traveler on the prairie hunts up his own supper of game.
[Describing the whale oil lamps that provided copious illumination for the whalemen throughout their ship, which contrasts with the darkness endured by sailors on merchant ships.]
— Herman Melville
In Moby-Dick (1851, 1892), 401.
Science quotes on:  |  April (2)  |  Bottle (5)  |  Burning (12)  |  Butter (4)  |  Energy (89)  |  Freshness (3)  |  Game (25)  |  Grass (5)  |  Hunting (3)  |  Illumination (8)  |  Lamp (7)  |  Oil (16)  |  Prairie (2)  |  Purity (7)  |  Supper (3)  |  Traveler (7)  |  Vial (3)

That the enthusiasm which characterizes youth should lift its parricide hands against freedom and science would be such a monstrous phenomenon as I cannot place among possible things in this age and country.
[Expressing confidence in the next generation to preserve the freedom of the human mind, and of the press, which grew out of America's Declaration of Independence.]
— Thomas Jefferson
Letter to a student, William Green Mumford (18 Jun 1799), In Merrill D. Peterson, Thomas Jefferson and the New Nation (1970), 616.
Science quotes on:  |  America (23)  |  Characterization (3)  |  Country (33)  |  Enthusiasm (19)  |  Hand (18)  |  Impossibility (29)  |  Monstrous (2)  |  Phenomenon (100)  |  Science (754)  |  Youth (29)

The hypothesis that man is not free is essential to the application of scientific method to the study of human behavior. The free inner man who is held responsible for the behavior of the external biological organism is only a prescientific substitute for the kinds of causes which are discovered in the course of a scientific analysis.
— Bhurrhus Frederic Skinner
Science and Human Behavior (1953), 447.
Science quotes on:  |  Analysis (70)  |  Behavior (8)  |  Biology (73)  |  Cause (101)  |  Discovery (318)  |  External (16)  |  Hypothesis (145)  |  Kind (21)  |  Man (239)  |  Organism (58)  |  Substitute (7)

The laws expressing the relations between energy and matter are, however, not solely of importance in pure science. They necessarily come first in order ... in the whole record of human experience, and they control, in the last resort, the rise or fall of political systems, the freedom or bondage of nations, the movements of commerce and industry, the origin of wealth and poverty, and the general physical welfare of the race.
— Frederick Soddy
In Matter and Energy (1912), 10-11.
Science quotes on:  |  Commerce (7)  |  Control (37)  |  Energy (89)  |  Experience (115)  |  Expression (35)  |  First (28)  |  General (9)  |  Human (131)  |  Importance (85)  |  Industry (42)  |  Law (243)  |  Matter (122)  |  Movement (29)  |  Nation (32)  |  Necessity (67)  |  Order (52)  |  Origin (28)  |  Physical (19)  |  Physical Science (28)  |  Politics (40)  |  Poverty (18)  |  Pure Science (6)  |  Race (32)  |  Record (15)  |  Relation (30)  |  Solely (2)  |  System (57)  |  Wealth (23)  |  Welfare (7)  |  Whole (31)

The mathematician is entirely free, within the limits of his imagination, to construct what worlds he pleases. What he is to imagine is a matter for his own caprice; he is not thereby discovering the fundamental principles of the universe nor becoming acquainted with the ideas of God. If he can find, in experience, sets of entities which obey the same logical scheme as his mathematical entities, then he has applied his mathematics to the external world; he has created a branch of science.
— Antoine-Thomson d' Abbadie
Aspects of Science: Second Series (1926), 92.
Science quotes on:  |  Acquaintance (6)  |  Branch (21)  |  Construction (27)  |  Creation (115)  |  Discovery (318)  |  Entity (6)  |  Experience (115)  |  External (16)  |  Fundamental (46)  |  God (207)  |  Idea (180)  |  Imagination (106)  |  Limit (30)  |  Logic (118)  |  Mathematician (95)  |  Pleasure (45)  |  Principle (87)  |  Scheme (6)  |  Science (754)  |  Science And Religion (129)  |  Set (9)  |  Universe (249)  |  World (165)

The nature of things betrays itself more readily under the vexations of art than in its natural freedom.
— Sir Francis Bacon
The Great Instauration. In James Spedding, The Works of Francis Bacon: Translations of the Philosophical Works (1869), 48.
Science quotes on:  |  Natural (27)  |  Nature (475)  |  Science And Art (48)  |  Vexation (2)

The year that Rutherford died (1938 [sic]) there disappeared forever the happy days of free scientific work which gave us such delight in our youth. Science has lost her freedom. Science has become a productive force. She has become rich but she has become enslaved and part of her is veiled in secrecy. I do not know whether Rutherford would continue to joke and laugh as he used to.
— Pyotr Leonidovich Kapitsa
'Notes from Here and There', Science Policy News (1969), 1, No 2, 33.
Science quotes on:  |  Happiness (55)  |  Money (82)  |  Sir Ernest Rutherford (30)  |  Secret (33)  |  Slave (9)

There is an influence which is getting strong and stronger day by day, which shows itself more and more in all departments of human activity, and influence most fruitful and beneficial—the influence of the artist. It was a happy day for the mass of humanity when the artist felt the desire of becoming a physician, an electrician, an engineer or mechanician or—whatnot—a mathematician or a financier; for it was he who wrought all these wonders and grandeur we are witnessing. It was he who abolished that small, pedantic, narrow-grooved school teaching which made of an aspiring student a galley-slave, and he who allowed freedom in the choice of subject of study according to one's pleasure and inclination, and so facilitated development.
— Nikola Tesla
'Roentgen Rays or Streams', Electrical Review (12 Aug 1896). Reprinted in The Nikola Tesla Treasury (2007), 307. By Nikola Tesla
Science quotes on:  |  Artist (15)  |  Aspiration (6)  |  Beneficial (5)  |  Choice (36)  |  Development (97)  |  Electrician (2)  |  Engineer (25)  |  Fruitful (7)  |  Grandeur (9)  |  Inclination (9)  |  Influence (41)  |  Mathematician (95)  |  Pedantry (2)  |  Physician (167)  |  Pleasure (45)  |  Slave (9)  |  Witness (8)  |  Wonder (54)

There must be no barriers to freedom of inquiry. There is no place for dogma in science. The scientist is free, and must be free to ask any question, to doubt any assertion, to seek for any evidence, to correct any errors. ... Our political life is also predicated on openness. We know that the only way to avoid error is to detect it and that the only way to detect it is to be free to inquire. And we know that as long as men are free to ask what they must, free to say what they think, free to think what they will, freedom can never be lost, and science can never regress.
— J. Robert Oppenheimer
Life (10 Oct 1949). Quoted in Lincoln Kinnear Barnett, Writing on Life (1951), 380.
Science quotes on:  |  Assertion (16)  |  Barrier (4)  |  Dogma (12)  |  Doubt (56)  |  Enquiry (69)  |  Error (141)  |  Openness (2)  |  Politics (40)  |  Question (130)  |  Scientist (186)

Those who take refuge behind theological barbed wire fences, quite often wish they could have more freedom of thought, but fear the change to the great ocean of truth as they would a cold bath.
— Luther Burbank
Quoted in Dr. D. M. Brooks, The Necessity of Atheism (1933), 341.
Science quotes on:  |  Bath (4)  |  Change (106)  |  Cold (21)  |  Fear (47)  |  Fence (6)  |  Ocean (42)  |  Refuge (4)  |  Theology (16)  |  Thought (143)  |  Truth (399)  |  Wish (17)

We need go back only a few centuries to find the great mass of people depending on religion for the satisfaction of practically all their wishes. From rain out of the sky to good health on earth, they sought their desires at the altars of their gods. Whether they wanted large families, good crops, freedom from pestilence, or peace of mind, they conceived themselves as dependent on the favor of heaven. Then science came with its alternative, competitive method of getting what we want. That is science’s most important attribute. As an intellectual influence it is powerful enough, but as a practical way of achieving man’s desires it is overwhelming.
— Harry Emerson Fosdick
In 'The Real Point of Conflict between Science and Religion', collected in Living Under Tension: Sermons On Christianity Today (1941), 140-141.
Science quotes on:  |  Altar (2)  |  Attribute (9)  |  Century (31)  |  Crop (7)  |  Desire (37)  |  Earth (210)  |  Family (11)  |  God (207)  |  Good (63)  |  Health (85)  |  Important (11)  |  Influence (41)  |  Intellectual (8)  |  Overwhelming (6)  |  People (64)  |  Pestilence (6)  |  Powerful (5)  |  Practical (17)  |  Rain (14)  |  Religion (101)  |  Satisfaction (25)  |  Science And Religion (129)  |  Sky (27)  |  Want (16)  |  Wish (17)

While we maintain the unity of the human species, we at the same time repel the depressing assumption of superior and inferior races of men. There are nations more susceptible of cultivation, more highly civilized, more ennobled by mental cultivation than others—but none in themselves nobler than others. All are in like degree designed for freedom.
— Baron Alexander von Humboldt
Cosmos: A Sketch of a Physical Description of the Universe (1845-62), trans. E. C. Otte (1849), Vol 1, 368.
Science quotes on:  |  Civilization (77)  |  Human (131)  |  Race (32)

[In the case of research director, Willis R. Whitney, whose style was to give talented investigators as much freedom as possible, you may define "serendipity" as] the art of profiting from unexpected occurrences. When you do things in that way you get unexpected results. Then you do something else and you get unexpected results in another line, and you do that on a third line and then all of a sudden you see that one of these lines has something to do with the other. Then you make a discovery that you never could have made by going on a direct road.
— Irving Langmuir
Quoted in Guy Suits, 'Willis Rodney Whitney', National Academy of Sciences, Biographical Memoirs (1960), 355.
Science quotes on:  |  Direct (7)  |  Discovery (318)  |  Occurrence (19)  |  Profit (12)  |  Research (319)  |  Result (103)  |  Serendipity (7)  |  Unexpected (9)  |  Willis R. Whitney (15)



Carl Sagan Thumbnail At the heart of science is an essential balance between two seemingly contradictory attitudes--an openness to new ideas, no matter how bizarre or counterintuitive they may be, and the most ruthless skeptical scrutiny of all ideas, old and new. This is how deep truths are winnowed from deep nonsense. -- Carl Sagan

More quotes:     Name Index    Isaac Newton    Lord Kelvin    Charles Darwin    Albert Einstein    Aristotle    Michio Kaku    Srinivasa Ramanujan    Carl Sagan    Florence Nightingale    Atomic  Bomb    Biology    Chemistry    Deforestation    Engineering

Sitewide search within all Today In Science History pages:
Custom Quotations Search - custom search within only our quotations pages:


Visit our Science and Scientist Quotations index for more Science Quotes from archaeologists, biologists, chemists, geologists, inventors and inventions, mathematicians, physicists, pioneers in medicine, science events and technology.

Names index: | A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | J | K | L | M | N | O | P | Q | R | S | T | U | V | W | X | Y | Z |

Categories index: | 1 | 2 | A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | J | K | L | M | N | O | P | Q | R | S | T | U | V | W | X | Y | Z |



Please add a link from your own site or blog if you find this site useful.
Author Icon by Ian Ellis
who invites your feedback
Thank you for sharing the site with Tweets, Facebook and Stumble Upon.






Explore 100 Famous Scientist Quotes Pages

Click above to expand
- 100 -
Sophie Germain
Gertrude Elion
Ernest Rutherford
James Chadwick
Marcel Proust
William Harvey
Johann Goethe
John Keynes
Carl Gauss
Paul Feyerabend
- 90 -
Antoine Lavoisier
Lise Meitner
Charles Babbage
Ibn Khaldun
Euclid
Ralph Emerson
Robert Bunsen
Frederick Banting
Andre Ampere
Winston Churchill
- 80 -
John Locke
Bronislaw Malinowski
Bible
Thomas Huxley
Alessandro Volta
Erwin Schrodinger
Wilhelm Roentgen
Louis Pasteur
Bertrand Russell
Jean Lamarck
- 70 -
Samuel Morse
John Wheeler
Nicolaus Copernicus
Robert Fulton
Pierre Laplace
Humphry Davy
Thomas Edison
Lord Kelvin
Theodore Roosevelt
Carolus Linnaeus
- 60 -
Francis Galton
Linus Pauling
Immanuel Kant
Martin Fischer
Robert Boyle
Karl Popper
Paul Dirac
Avicenna
James Watson
William Shakespeare
- 50 -
Stephen Hawking
Niels Bohr
Nikola Tesla
Rachel Carson
Max Planck
Henry Adams
Richard Dawkins
Werner Heisenberg
Alfred Wegener
John Dalton
- 40 -
Pierre Fermat
Edward Wilson
Johannes Kepler
Gustave Eiffel
Giordano Bruno
JJ Thomson
Thomas Kuhn
Leonardo DaVinci
Archimedes
David Hume
- 30 -
Andreas Vesalius
Rudolf Virchow
Richard Feynman
James Hutton
Alexander Fleming
Emile Durkheim
Benjamin Franklin
Robert Oppenheimer
Robert Hooke
Charles Kettering
- 20 -
Carl Sagan
James Maxwell
Marie Curie
Rene Descartes
Francis Crick
Hippocrates
Michael Faraday
Srinivasa Ramanujan
Francis Bacon
Galileo Galilei
- 10 -
Aristotle
John Watson
Rosalind Franklin
Michio Kaku
Isaac Asimov
Charles Darwin
Sigmund Freud
Albert Einstein
Florence Nightingale
Isaac Newton

Scroll above for more
Scientist Quotes Index
Today in Science History ©  1999 - 2013 by Todayinsci ®