Science Quotes (333)
''Faith' as an imperative is a veto against science—in praxi, it means lies at any price.
The Antichrist (1888) collected in Twilight of the Idols, with The Antichrist and Ecce Homo, translated by Anthony M. Ludovici (2007), 140.
See also: | Faith (20)
'It's this accursed Science,' I cried. 'It's the very Devil. The mediaeval priests and persecutors were right, and the Moderns are all wrong. You tamper with it—and it offers you gifts. And directly you take them it knocks you to pieces in some unexpected way.'
The First Men in the Moon (1901), 144.
'Normal science' means research firmly based upon one or more past scientific achievements, achievements that some particular scientific community acknowledges for a time as supplying the foundation for its further practice.
The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962), 10.
'Science in itself' is nothing, for it exists only in the human beings who are its bearers. 'Science for its own sake' usually means nothing more than science for the sake of the people who happen to be pursuing it.
'Standpoints in Scientific Medicine', Disease, Life, and Man: Selected Essays (1958), 42.
See also: | Research (174)
...I may say that in my opinion true Science and true Religion neither are nor could be opposed.
Quoted in James Joseph Walsh, Religion and Health (1920), 15 .
See also: | Religion (58)
...Outer space, once a region of spirited international competition, is also a region of international cooperation. I realized this as early as 1959, when I attended an international conference on cosmic radiation in Moscow. At this conference, there were many differing views and differing methods of attack, but the problems were common ones to all of us and a unity of basic purpose was everywhere evident. Many of the papers presented there depended in an essential way upon others which had appeared originally in as many as three or four different languages. Surely science is one of the universal human activities.
I believe in logic, the sequence of cause and effect, and in science its only begotten son our law, which was conceived by the ancient Greeks, thrived under Isaac Newton, suffered under Albert Einstein…
That fragment of a 'creed for materialism' which a friend in college had once shown him rose through Donald's confused mind.
That fragment of a 'creed for materialism' which a friend in college had once shown him rose through Donald's confused mind.
Stand on Zanzibar (1969)
L'Art est fait pour troubler, la Science rassure.
Art is meant to disturb, science reassures.
Art is meant to disturb, science reassures.
Georges Braque Illustrated Notebooks:1917-1955, trans. S. Appelbaum (1971), 10.
La vraye science et le vray étude de l'homme c'est l'homme.
The true science and study of mankind is man.
The true science and study of mankind is man.
De la Sagesse (1601), 1991 edn, Preface.
See also: | Man (88)
Omnes scientiae sunt connexae et fovent auxiliis sicut partes ejusdem totius, quarum quaelibet opus suum peragit non propter se sed pro aliis.
All sciences are connected; they lend each other material aid as parts of one great whole, each doing its own work, not for itself alone, but for the other parts; as the eye guides the body and the foot sustains it and leads it from place to place.
All sciences are connected; they lend each other material aid as parts of one great whole, each doing its own work, not for itself alone, but for the other parts; as the eye guides the body and the foot sustains it and leads it from place to place.
Opus Tertium [1266- 1268], chapter 4, Latin text quoted in J. B. Bury, The Idea of Progress (1920), 355 (footnote to page 25). In J. S. Brewer (ed.), Fr. Rogeri Bacon Opera ... inedita (1859), 18.
Philosophia vero omnium mater artium.
Philosophy is true mother of the arts [of science].
Philosophy is true mother of the arts [of science].
Tusculanarum Disputationum Book 1. In Hoyt's New Cyclopedia of Practical Quotations as revised and expanded by Kate Louise Roberts (1922), 691.
See also: | Philosophy (54)
The Athanasian Creed is to me light and intelligible reading in comparison with much that now passes for science.
Geoffrey Keynes and Brian Hill (eds.), Samuel Butler’s Notebooks (1951), 125.
See also: | Book (34)
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.
Billions and Billions: Thoughts on Life and Death at the Brink of the Millenium (1998), 190.
See also: | Argument (4) | Authority (3) | Complexity (10) | Dogma (8) | Experiment (161) | Freedom (11) | Publication (51)
A contemporary poet has characterized this sense of the personality of art and of the impersonality of science in these words,—'Art is myself; science is ourselves. '
Victor Hugo in William Shakespeare, 1864.
Victor Hugo in William Shakespeare, 1864.
An Introduction to the Study of Experimental Medicine (1865), trans. Henry Copley Green (1957), 43.
See also: | Art (11)
A mere index hunter, who held the eel of science by the tail.
Index-hunter is a term used mockingly, meaning one who acquires superficial knowledge merely by consulting indexes. The '[holding] the eel of science by the tail' allusion was used in 1728 by Alexander Pope (q.v.).
Index-hunter is a term used mockingly, meaning one who acquires superficial knowledge merely by consulting indexes. The '[holding] the eel of science by the tail' allusion was used in 1728 by Alexander Pope (q.v.).
Peregrine Pickle xlii (1779), II, 57. Reference from The Oxford English Dictionary.
See also: | Learning (31)
A science is any discipline in which the fool of this generation can go beyond the point reached by the genius of the last generation.
Politics, Law and Ritual in Tribal Society (1965), 32.
See also: | Genius (40)
A science is said to be useful if its development tends to accentuate the existing inequalities in the distribution of wealth, or more directly promotes the destruction of human life.
In A Mathematician's Apology (1940, reprint with Foreward by C.P. Snow 1992), 113.
A scientist can discover a new star but he cannot make one. He would have to ask an engineer to do it for him.
The Design of Design (1969), 1
All science is full of statements where you put your best face on your ignorance, where you say: ... we know awfully little about this, but more or less irrespective of the stuff we don't know about, we can make certain useful deductions.
In Michael Dudley Sturge , Statistical and Thermal Physics (2003), 163.
All Science is necessarily prophetic, so truly so, that the power of prophecy is the test, the infallible criterion, by which any presumed Science is ascertained to be actually & verily science. The Ptolemaic Astronomy was barely able to prognosticate a lunar eclipse; with Kepler and Newton came Science and Prophecy.
On the Constitution of the Church and State (1830). In The Collected Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1976), John Cohner (ed.), Vol. 10, 118, footnote 1 on Coleridge's annotation.
All the sciences have a relation, greater or less, to human nature; and...however wide any of them may seem to run from it, they still return back by one passage or another. Even Mathematics, Natural Philosophy, and Natural Religion, are in some measure dependent on the science of MAN; since they lie under the cognizance of men, and are judged of by their powers and faculties.
A Treatise on Human Nature (1739-40), ed. L. A. Selby-Bigge (1888), introduction, xix.
Amidst the vicissitudes of the earth's surface, species cannot be immortal, but must perish, one after another, like the individuals which compose them. There is no possibility of escaping from this conclusion.
Principles of Geology (1837), Vol. 2, 202.
And as to the faculties of the mind, setting aside the arts grounded upon words, and especially that skill of proceeding upon generall, and infallible rules, called Science; which very few have, and but in few things; as being not a native faculty, born within us; nor attained, (as Prudence,) while we look after somewhat else.
Leviathan (1651), ed. C. B. Macpherson (1968), Part 1, Chapter 13, 183.
And one of the three great things in the world is gossip, you know. First there's religion; and then there's science; and there's—and then there's friendly gossip. Those are the three—the three great things.
From the Claremont Quarterly, Spring 1958. Transcript of a taped conversation between Robert Frost and British author Cecil Day Lewis which was broadcast on the BBC on 13 Sep 1957.
See also: | Religion (58)
And what is impossible to science?
'Outlines of a Critique of Political Economy', in K. Marx (ed.), Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 (1844), 204.
See also: | Impossible (11)
Aristotle discovered all the half-truths which were necessary to the creation of science.
Dialogues of Alfred North Whitehead: as recorded by Lucien Price (2001), Dialogue XLII.
As ideas are preserved and communicated by means of words, it necessarily follows that we cannot improve the language of any science, without at the same time improving the science itself; neither can we, on the other hand, improve a science without improving the language or nomenclature which belongs to it.
Elements of Chemistry (1790), trans. R. Kerr, Preface, xiv-v.
As to Science, she has never sought to ally herself to civil power. She has never attempted to throw odium or inflict social ruin on any human being. She has never subjected anyone to mental torment, physical torture, least of all to death, for the purpose of upholding or promoting her ideas. She presents herself unstained by cruelties and crimes. But in the Vatican—we have only to recall the Inquisition—the hands that are now raised in appeals to the Most Merciful are crimsoned. They have been steeped in blood!
History of the Conflict between Religion and Science (1875), xi.
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.
The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark (1997), 304.
See also: | Attitude (4) | Balance (4) | Contradiction (6) | Idea (66) | Nonsense (4) | Scepticism (2) | Scrutiny (3) | Truth (182)
Belief begins where science leaves off and ends where science begins.
In Fielding Hudson Garrison, An Introduction to the History of Medicine (1929), 14.
See also: | Belief (16)
Belief has no place as far as science reaches, and may be first permitted to take root where science stops.
'On Man', Disease, Life, and Man: Selected Essays (1958), 83.
See also: | Belief (16)
Books must follow sciences, and not sciences books.
A Proposition Touching the Compiling and Amendment of the Laws of England (written 1616).
See also: | Book (34)
Business should be like religion and science; it should know neither love nor hate.
Geoffrey Keynes and Brian Hill (eds.), Samuel Butler’s Notebooks (1951), 144.
But beyond the bright searchlights of science,
Out of sight of the windows of sense,
Old riddles still bid us defiance,
Old questions of Why and of Whence.
Out of sight of the windows of sense,
Old riddles still bid us defiance,
Old questions of Why and of Whence.
from Recent Development of Physical Science (p. 10)
But science is the collection of nature's answers.
Attributed.
See also: | Nature (203)
But science is the great instrument of social change, all the greater because its object is not change but knowledge, and its silent appropriation of this dominant function, amid the din of political and religious strife, is the most vital of all the revolutions which have marked the development of modern civilisation.
Decadence: Henry Sidgwick Memorial Lecture (1908), 55-6.
But, indeed, the science of logic and the whole framework of philosophical thought men have kept since the days of Plato and Aristotle, has no more essential permanence as a final expression of the human mind, than the Scottish Longer Catechism.
A Modern Utopia (1904, 2006), 14.
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.
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.
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 (), 81-82.
See also: | Education (94) | Freedom (11) | Government (21) | John Locke (31) | Scientist (48) | Slavery (2) | Technology (30)
Can we ring the bells backward? Can we unlearn the arts that pretend to civilize, and then burn the world? There is a march of science; but who shall beat the drums for its retreat?
Letter to George Dyer (20 Dec 1830). In Charles Lamb and Thomas Noon Talfourd (Ed.), Works: Including His Most Interesting Letters, (1867), 168.
See also: | Progress (98)
Decades spent in contact with science and its vehicles have directed my mind and senses to areas beyond their reach. I now see scientific accomplishments as a path, not an end; a path leading to and disappearing in mystery. Science, in fact, forms many paths branching from the trunk of human progress; and on every periphery they end in the miraculous. Following these paths far enough, one must eventually conclude that science itself is a miracle—like the awareness of man arising from and then disappearing in the apparent nothingness of space. Rather than nullifying religion and proving that 'God is dead,' science enhances spiritual values by revealing the magnitudes and minitudes—from cosmos to atom—through which man extends and of which he is composed.
A Letter From Lindbergh', Life (4 Jul 1969), 60B. In Eugene C. Gerhart, Quote it Completely! (1998), 409.
See also: | Accomplishment (6) | Atom (76) | Man (88) | Miracle (6) | Mystery (22) | Path (2) | Progress (98) | Science And Religion (53)
Don't confuse hypothesis and theory. The former is a possible explanation; the latter, the correct one. The establishment of theory is the very purpose of science.
Martin H. Fischer, Howard Fabing (ed.) and Ray Marr (ed.), Fischerisms (1944).
During my span of life science has become a matter of public concern and the l'art pour l'art standpoint of my youth is now obsolete. Science has become an integral and most important part of our civilization, and scientific work means contributing to its development. Science in our technical age has social, economic, and political functions, and however remote one's own work is from technical application it is a link in the chain of actions and decisions which determine the fate of the human race. I realized this aspect of science in its full impact only after Hiroshima.
— Max Born
My Life & My Views (1968), 49.
Engineering is quite different from science. Scientists try to understand nature. Engineers try to make things that do not exist in nature. Engineers stress invention. To embody an invention the engineer must put his idea in concrete terms, and design something that people can use. That something can be a device, a gadget, a material, a method, a computing program, an innovative experiment, a new solution to a problem, or an improvement on what is existing. Since a design has to be concrete, it must have its geometry, dimensions, and characteristic numbers. Almost all engineers working on new designs find that they do not have all the needed information. Most often, they are limited by insufficient scientific knowledge. Thus they study mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology and mechanics. Often they have to add to the sciences relevant to their profession. Thus engineering sciences are born.
Y.C. Fung and P. Tong, Classical and Computational Solid Mechanics (2001), 1.
Engineering or Technology is the making of things that did not previously exist, whereas science is the discovering of things that have long existed.
The Tower and the Bridge: The New Art of Structural Engineering (1983), 9.
Engineers use knowledge primarily to design, produce, and operate artifacts. … Scientists, by contrast, use knowledge primarily to generate more knowledge.
What Engineers Know and How They Know It (1990), 226. In Camilla Stivers, Democracy, Bureaucracy, and the Study of Administration (2001), 144.
Epistemology without contact with science becomes an empty scheme. Science without epistemology is—insofar as it is thinkable at all—primitive and muddled.
In Ralph Keyesr, The Quote Verifier, 51-52.
Even if the open windows of science at first make us shiver after the cozy indoor warmth of traditional humanizing myths, in the end the fresh air brings vigor, and the great spaces have a splendor of their own.
What I Believe (1925). In The Basic Writings of Bertrand Russell, 1903-1959 (1992), 370.
Even in Europe a change has sensibly taken place in the mind of man. Science has liberated the ideas of those who read and reflect, and the American example has kindled feelings of right in the people. An insurrection has consequently begun of science talents and courage against rank and birth, which have fallen into contempt. It has failed in its first effort, because the mobs of the cities, the instrument used for its accomplishment, debased by ignorance, poverty and vice, could not be restrained to rational action. But the world will soon recover from the panic of this first catastrophe.
Letter to John Adams (Monticello, 1813). In Thomas Jefferson and John P. Foley (ed.), The Jeffersonian Cyclopedia (1900), 49. From Paul Leicester Ford (ed.), The Writings of Thomas Jefferson (1892-99). Vol 4, 439.
Every science is made up entirely of anomalies rearranged to fit.
Continued on Next Rock (1970). Quoted in Continued on Next Rock (1970). Quoted in Gary Westfahl, Science Fiction Quotations (2005), 321
Every science thinks it is the science.
In Leonard and Thelma Spinrad, Speaker's Lifetime Library (1979), 220.
See also: | Quip (39)
Examining this water...I found floating therein divers earthy particles, and some green streaks, spirally wound serpent-wise...and I judge that some of these little creatures were above a thousand times smaller than the smallest ones I have ever yet seen, upon the rind of cheese, in wheaten flour, mould, and the like.
[The first recorded observation of protozoa.]
[The first recorded observation of protozoa.]
Letter to the Royal Society, London (7 Sep 1674). In John Carey, Eyewitness to Science (1997), 28.
Experimental geology has this in common with all other branches of our science, petrology and palaeontology included, that in the long run it withers indoors.
'Experiments in Geology', Transactions of the Geological Society of Glasgow (1958), 23, 25.
Facts are not science - as the dictionary is not literature.
Martin H. Fischer, Howard Fabing (ed.) and Ray Marr (ed.), Fischerisms (1944).
First causes are outside the realm of science.
An Introduction to the Study of Experimental Medicine (1865), trans. Henry Copley Green (1957), 66.
See also: | Cause (38)
Fishing has been styled 'a contemplative man's recreation,' … and science is only a more contemplative man's recreation.
A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers (1921), 15.
For a long time it has been known that the first systems of representations with which men have pictured to themselves the world and themselves were of religious origin. There is no religion that is not a cosmology at the same time that it is a speculation upon divine things. If philosophy and the sciences were born of religion, it is because religion began by taking the place of the sciences and philosophy.
The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life (1912), trans. J. W. Swain (2nd edition 1976), 9.
See also: | Religion (58)
For a scientist must indeed be freely imaginative and yet skeptical, creative and yet a critic. There is a sense in which he must be free, but another in which his thought must be very preceisely regimented; there is poetry in science, but also a lot of bookkeeping.
The Strange Case of the Spotted Mice and Other Classic Essays on Science (1996), 63.
For between true Science, and erroneous Doctrines, Ignorance is in the middle. Naturall sense and imagination, are not subject to absurdity. Nature it selfe cannot erre: and as men abound in copiousnesses of language; so they become more wise, or more mad than ordinary. Nor is it possible without Letters for any man to become either excellently wise, or (unless his memory be hurt by disease, or ill constitution of organs) excellently foolish. For words are wise men's counters, they do but reckon by them; but they are the money of fools that value them by the authority of an Aristotle, a Cicero, or a Thomas, or any other Doctor whatsoever, if but a man.
Leviathan (1651), ed. C. B. Macpherson (1968), Part 1, Chapter 4, 106.
See also: | Saint Thomas Aquinas (7) | Aristotle (72) | Marcus Tullius Cicero (7) | Ignorance (46) | Wisdom (31)
For oute of olde feldys, as men sey,
Comyth al this newe corn from yer to yere;
And out of olde bokis, in good fey,
Comyth al this newe science that men lere.
Comyth al this newe corn from yer to yere;
And out of olde bokis, in good fey,
Comyth al this newe science that men lere.
'The Parlement of Foules<'. In Geoffrey Chaucer and Henry Noble MacCracken (Ed.),The College Chaucer (1913), 465.
For science is ... like virtue, its own exceeding great reward.
'Science', a lecture delivered at the Royal Institution. The Works of Charles Kingsley (1880), 254.
See also: | Reward (5)
Freud expressed the opinion—not quite in earnest, though, it seeemed to me—that philosophy was the most decent form of sublimation of repressed sexuality, nothing more. In response I put the question, 'What then is science, particularly psychoanalytic psychology?' Whereup on he, visible a bit surprised, answered evasively: 'At least psychology has a social purpose.'
Recollection by Binswanger of conversation during his third visit to Vienna to see Freud (17-18 May 1913), in Gerhard Fichtner (ed.) and Arnold J. Pomerans (trans.), The Sigmund Freud-Ludwig Binswanger Correspondence 1908-1938 (2003), 237.
See also: | Sigmund Freud (40) | Opinion (24) | Philosophy (54) | Psychoanalysis (19) | Psychology (52) | Purpose (6) | Sexuality (8)
Go on, fair Science; soon to thee
Shall Nature yield her idle boast;
Her vulgar lingers formed a tree,
But thou hast trained it to a post.
Shall Nature yield her idle boast;
Her vulgar lingers formed a tree,
But thou hast trained it to a post.
'The meeting of the Dryads' (1830), Poems (1891), 152.
Great science is an art.
In Leonard and Thelma Spinrad, Speaker's Lifetime Library (1979), 220.
See also: | Quip (39)
Happy Birthday Mrs Chown! Tell your son to stop trying to fill your head with science—for to fill your heart with love is enough. Richard P. Feynman (the man you watched on BBC 'Horizon').
Note to the mother of Marcus Chown. Reproduced in Christopher Simon Sykes, No Ordinary Genius: The Illustrated Richard Feynman (1996), 161. Chown's mother, though usually disinterested in science, had given close attention to a 1981 BBC Horizon science documentary that profiled Feynman. This was Feynman's own choice of a birthday message, although Chown (then a physics graduate student at Caltech) had anticipated that the scientist would have helped him interest his mother in scientific things. Marcus Chown was a radio astronomer at Caltech and is now a writer and broadcaster.
See also: | Love (15)
Heraldry has been contemptuously termed 'the science of fools with long memories.'
The Pursuivant of Arms: Or, Heraldry Founded Upon Facts (1873), 3.
Histories make men wise; poets, witty; the mathematics, subtle; natural philosophy, deep; moral, grave; logic and rhetoric, able to contend.
'L. Of Studies,' Essays (1597). In Francis Bacon and Basil Montagu, The Works of Francis Bacon, Lord Chancellor of England (1852), 55.
History, as it lies at the root of all science, is also the first distinct product of man's spiritual nature, his earliest expression of what may be called thought
In James Wood, Dictionary of Quotations from Ancient and Modern, English and Foreign Sources (1893), 154:24.
History, if viewed as a repository for more than anecdote or chronology, could produce a decisive transformation in the image of science by which we are now possessed.
The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962), 1.
How often people speak of art and science as though they were two entirely different things, with no interconnection. An artist is emotional, they think, and uses only his intuition; he sees all at once and has no need of reason. A scientist is cold, they think, and uses only his reason; he argues carefully step by step, and needs no imagination. That is all wrong. The true artist is quite rational as well as imaginative and knows what he is doing; if he does not, his art suffers. The true scientist is quite imaginative as well as rational, and sometimes leaps to solutions where reason can follow only slowly; if he does not, his science suffers.
'Prometheus.' The Roving Mind (1983), Chap 25.
See also: | Art (11) | Artist (6) | Emotion (12) | Imagination (35) | Intuition (7) | Rational (4) | Reason (51) | Solution (31)
How science dwindles, and how volumes swell,
How commentators each dark passage shun,
And hold their farthing candle to the sun!
How commentators each dark passage shun,
And hold their farthing candle to the sun!
Edward Young and John Mitford, 'Love of Fame, the Universal Passion', Satire VII, The Poetical Works of Edward Young (1858), Vol. 2, 136. In James Wood, Dictionary of Quotations from Ancient and Modern, English and Foreign Sources (1893), 162:24.
Human science is an uncertain guess.
'Solomon on the Vanity of the World, Book I, On Knowledge'. In Matthew Prior, John Mitford (Ed.), The Poetical Works of Matthew Prior (1854), Vol. 2, 118.
See also: | Guess (3)
I admit that mathematical science is a good thing. But excessive devotion to it is a bad thing.
Interview with J.W. N. Sullivan, Contemporary Mind (1934). In John De Pillis, 777 Mathematical Conversation Starters (2002), 198.
I always rejoice to hear of your being still employed in experimental researches into nature, and of the success you meet with. The rapid progress true science now makes, occasions my regretting sometimes that I was born so soon: it is impossible to imagine the height to which may be carried, in a thousand years, the power of man over matter; we may perhaps learn to deprive large masses of their gravity, and give them absolute levity for the sake of easy transport. Agriculture may diminish its labour and double its produce; all diseases may by sure means be prevented or cured (not excepting even that of old age), and our lives lengthened at pleasure even beyond the antediluvian standard. Oh! that moral science were in as fair a way of improvement; that men would cease to be wolves to one another; and that human beings would at length learn what they now improperly call humanity!
Letter to Dr Priestley, 8 Feb 1780. In Memoirs of Benjamin Franklin (1845), Vol. 2, 152.
I am among those who think that science has great beauty. A scientist in his laboratory is not only a technician: he is also a child placed before natural phenomena which impress him like a fairy tale. We should not allow it to be believed that all scientific progress can be reduced to mechanisms, machines, gearings, even though such machinery has its own beauty.
During a debate in Madrid, ',The Future of Culture' (1933). In Eve Curie Labouisse, Eve Curie and Vincent Sheean, Madame Curie (1937), 341
I appeal to the contemptible speech made lately by Sir Robert Peel to an applauding House of Commons. 'Orders of merit,' said he, 'were the proper rewards of the military' (the desolators of the world in all ages). 'Men of science are better left to the applause of their own hearts.' Most learned Legislator! Most liberal cotton-spinner! Was your title the proper reward of military prowess? Pity you hold not the dungeon-keys of an English Inquisition! Perhaps Science, like creeds, would flourish best under a little persecution.
Chemical Recreations (1834), 232.
See also: | Men Of Science (66)
I conceive of nothing, in religion, science, or philosophy, that is more than the proper thing to wear, for a while.
Wild Talents (1932, 2006), 240.
I do not believe that the present flowering of science is due in the least to a real appreciation of the beauty and intellectual discipline of the subject. It is due simply to the fact that power, wealth and prestige can only be obtained by the correct application of science.
'Some Reflections on the Present Status of Organic Chemistry', in Science and Human Progress: Addresses at the Celebrations of the 50th Anniversary of the Mellon Institute (1963), 90.
See also: | Organic Chemistry (15)
I find it [science] analytical, pretentious and superficial—largely because it does not address itself to dreams, chance, laughter, feelings, or paradox—in other words,—all the things I love the most.
My Last Sigh, trans. Abigail Israel (1983), 174.
I grew up to be indifferent to the distinction between literature and science, which in my teens were simply two languages for experience that I learned together.
quoted in World Authors 1950 - 1970, by J. Wakeman (New York: H.W. Wilson, 1975) pp. 221-23
I have said that science is impossible without faith. … Inductive logic, the logic of Bacon, is rather something on which we can act than something which we can prove, and to act on it is a supreme assertion of faith … Science is a way of life which can only fluorish when men are free to have faith.
In Calyampudi Radhakrishna Rao, Statistics and Truth (1997), 31.
I have seen the science I worshipped, and the aircraft I loved, destroying the civilization I expected them to serve.
Quoted in 'Antiseptic Christianity', book review of Lindbergh, Of Flight and Life in Time magazine, (6 Sep 1948).
I have tried to read philosophers of all ages and have found many illuminating ideas but no steady progress toward deeper knowledge and understanding. Science, however, gives me the feeling of steady progress: I am convinced that theoretical physics is actual philosophy. It has revolutionized fundamental concepts, e.g., about space and time (relativity), about causality (quantum theory), and about substance and matter (atomistics), and it has taught us new methods of thinking (complementarity) which are applicable far beyond physics.
— Max Born
My Life & My Views (1968), 48.
See also: | Knowledge (260) | Matter (51) | Philosophy (54) | Progress (98) | Quantum Physics (14) | Space-Time (6) | Theoretical Physics (5) | Thinking (29) | Understanding (64)
I liked science. It was about the only thing that stayed the same wherever we moved.
Time Gypsy (1998). In Gary Westfahl, Science Fiction Quotations: From the Inner Mind to the Outer Limits (2006), 323.
I spend money on war because it is necessary, but to spend it on science, that is pleasant to me. This object costs no tears; it is an honour to humanity,
Said to Lalande. Quoted in R. A. Gregory, Discovery, Or the Spirit and Service of Science (1916), 47-8.
I would liken science and poetry in their natural independence to those binary stars, often different in colour, which Herschel's telescope discovered to revolve round each other. 'There is one light of the sun,' says St. Paul, 'and another of the moon, and another of the stars: star differeth from star in glory.' It is so here. That star or sun, for it is both, with its cold, clear, white light, is SCIENCE: that other, with its gorgeous and ever-shifting hues and magnificent blaze, is POETRY. They revolve lovingly round each other in orbits of their own, pouring forth and drinking in the rays which they exchange; and they both also move round and shine towards that centre from which they came, even the throne of Him who is the Source of all truth and the Cause of all beauty.
'The alleged Antagonism between poetry and Chemistry.' In Jesse Aitken Wilson, Memoirs of George Wilson. Quoted in Natural History Society of Montreal, 'Reviews and Notices of Books,' The Canadian Naturalist and Geologist (1861) Vol. 6, 393.
See also: | Poetry (29)
If a man has a science to learn he must regularly and resolutely advance.
Quoted in James Boswell, The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. (1826), 35.
See also: | Progress (98)
If history and science have taught us anything, it is that passion and desire are not the same as truth. The human mind evolved to believe in the gods. It did not evolve to believe in biology.
Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge (1998, 1999), 286
See also: | Belief (16) | Biology (33) | Desire (5) | Evolution (215) | God (103) | History (45) | Human Mind (4) | Passion (4) | Truth (182)
If I may paraphrase Hobbes's well-known aphorism, I would say that 'books are the money of Literature, but only the counters of Science.'
'Universities: Actual and Ideal' (1874). In Collected Essays (1893), Vol. 3, 213.
If only the fit survive and if the fitter they are the longer they survive, then Volvox must have demonstrated its superb fitness more conclusively than any higher animal ever has.
The Great Chain of Life (1957), 22.
If science could get rid of consciousness, it would have disposed of the only stumbling block to its universal application.
'Reply to Francis V. Raab', The Philosophy of Brand Blanshard (1980) 807.
If the term education may be understood in so large a sense as to include all that belongs to the improvement of the mind, either by the acquisition of the knowledge of others or by increase of it through its own exertions, we learn by them what is the kind of education science offers to man. It teaches us to be neglectful of nothing — not to despise the small beginnings, for they precede of necessity all great things in the knowledge of science, either pure or applied.
'Science as a Branch of Education', lecture to the Royal Institution, 11 Jun 1858. Reprinted in The Mechanics Magazine (1858), 49, 11.
If we can combine our knowledge of science with the wisdom of wildness, if we can nurture civilization through roots in the primitive, man's potentialities appear to be unbounded, Through this evolving awareness, and his awareness of that awareness, he can emerge with the miraculous—to which we can attach what better name than 'God'? And in this merging, as long sensed by intuition but still only vaguely perceived by rationality, experience may travel without need for accompanying life.
A Letter From Lindbergh', Life (4 Jul 1969), 61. In Eugene C. Gerhart, Quote it Completely! (1998), 409.
See also: | Civilization (38) | God (103) | Knowledge (260) | Miracle (6) | Nurture (2) | Primitive (2) | Wisdom (31)
If we would serve science, we must extend her limits, not only as far as our own knowledge is concerned, but in the estimation of others.
Cellular Pathology, translated by Frank Chance (1860), x.
If, in the course of a thousand or two thousand years, science arrives at the necessity of renewing its points of view, that will not mean that science is a liar. Science cannot lie, for it's always striving, according to the momentary state of knowledge, to deduce what is true. When it makes a mistake, it does so in good faith. It's Christianity that's the liar. It's in perpetual conflict with itself.
In Adolf Hitler, Hugh Redwald Trevor-Roper, translated by Norman Cameron and R. H. Stevens, '14 October 1941', Secret Conversations (1941 - 1944) (1953), 51
In England, more than in any other country, science is felt rather than thought. … A defect of the English is their almost complete lack of systematic thinking. Science to them consists of a number of successful raids into the unknown.
The Social Function of Science (1939), 197.
In every thing that relates to science, I am a whole Encyclopaedia behind the rest of the world.
'The Old and the New Schoolmaster', in Elia (1823), 111.
See also: | Encyclopaedia (2)
In geology the effects to be explained have almost all occurred already, whereas in these other sciences effects actually taking place have to be explained.
Climate and Time in their Geological Relations: A Theory of Secular Change of the Earth's Climate (1875), 4.
See also: | Geology (104)
In honoring the Wright Brothers, it is customary and proper to recognize their contribution to scientific progress. But I believe it is equally important to emphasize the qualities in their pioneering life and the character in man that such a life produced. The Wright Brothers balanced sucess with modesty, science with simplicity. At Kitty Hawk their intellects and senses worked in mutual support. They represented man in balance, and from that balance came wings to lift a world.
Speech, quoted in Leonard Mosley, Lindbergh (2000), 347. In 1949, Lindbergh gave a speech when he received the Wright Brothers Memorial Trophy.
See also: | Balance (4) | Biography (143) | Character (7) | Intellect (36) | Life (110) | Man (88) | Modesty (2) | Pioneer (2) | Progress (98) | Represent (2) | Sense (23) | Simplicity (21) | Success (27) | Support (2) | Wing (2)
In matters of science, curiosity gratified begets not indolence, but new desires.
Theory of the Earth, with Proofs and Illustrations, Vol. 3, ed. Archibald Geikie (1899), 16.
In science one must search for ideas. If there are no ideas, there is no science. A knowledge of facts is only valuable in so far as facts conceal ideas: facts without ideas are just the sweepings of the brain and the memory.
Collected Works (1948), Vol.2, 348.
In science we have to consider two things: power and circumstance.
In James Wood, Dictionary of Quotations from Ancient and Modern, English and Foreign Sources (1893), 189:44.
In science we must be interested in things, not in persons.
In Eve Curie, Madame Curie (1938), 233.
In science, address the few; in literature, the many. In science, the few must dictate opinion to the many; in literature, the many, sooner or later, force their judgement on the few. But the few and the many are not necessarily the few and the many of the passing time: for discoverers in science have not un-often, in their own day, had the few against them; and writers the most permanently popular not unfrequently found, in their own day, a frigid reception from the many. By the few, I mean those who must ever remain the few, from whose dieta we, the multitude, take fame upon trust; by the many, I mean those who constitute the multitude in the long-run. We take the fame of a Harvey or a Newton upon trust, from the verdict of the few in successive generations; but the few could never persuade us to take poets and novelists on trust. We, the many, judge for ourselves of Shakespeare and Cervantes.
Caxtoniana: A Series of Essays on Life, Literature, and Manners (1863), Vol. 2, 329- 30.
See also: | William Harvey (17) | Literature (6) | Sir Isaac Newton (68) | Poet (7) | William Shakespeare (18)
In science, attempts at formulating hierarchies are always doomed to eventual failure. A Newton will always be followed by an Einstein, a Stahl by a Lavoisier; and who can say who will come after us? What the human mind has fabricated must be subject to all the changes—which are not progress—that the human mind must undergo. The 'last words' of the sciences are often replaced, more often forgotten. Science is a relentlessly dialectical process, though it suffers continuously under the necessary relativation of equally indispensable absolutes. It is, however, possible that the ever-growing intellectual and moral pollution of our scientific atmosphere will bring this process to a standstill. The immense library of ancient Alexandria was both symptom and cause of the ossification of the Greek intellect. Even now I know of some who feel that we know too much about the wrong things.
Voices in the Labyrinth: Nature, Man, and Science (1979), 46.
See also: | Albert Einstein (95) | Intellect (36) | Knowledge (260) | Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier (25) | Sir Isaac Newton (68) | Georg Ernst Stahl (4)
In science, reason is the guide; in poetry, taste. The object of the one is truth, which is uniform and indivisible; the object of the other is beauty, which is multiform and varied.
Lacon: Many Things in Few Words (1820-22, 1866), 33.
In the laboratory there are no fustian ranks, no brummagem aristocracies; the domain of Science is a republic, and all its citizens are brothers and equals, its princes of Monaco and its stonemasons of Cromarty meeting, barren of man-made gauds and meretricious decorations, upon the one majestic level!
'Three Thousand Years Among the Microbes.' In Mark Twain and John Sutton Tuckey (ed.), Which Was the Dream? and Other Symbolic Writings of the Later Years (1966), 446
In the space of one hundred and seventy-six years the Lower Mississippi has shortened itself two hundred and forty-two miles. That is an average of a trifle over one mile and a third per year. Therefore, any calm person, who is not blind or idiotic, can see that in the old Oolitic Silurian Period, must a million years ago next November, the Lower Mississippi River was upward of one million three hundred thousand miles long, and stuck out over the Gulf of Mexico like a fishing-rod. And by the same token any person can see that seven hundred and forty-two years from now the Lower Mississippi will be only a mile and three-quarters long, and Cairo and New Orleans will have their streets joined together, and be plodding comfortably along under a single mayor and a mutual board of aldermen. There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact.
Life on the Mississippi (1883, 2000), 173.
Index-learning turns no student pale,
Yet holds the eel of Science by the tail.
Index-learning is a term used to mock pretenders who acquire superficial knowledge merely by consulting indexes.
Yet holds the eel of Science by the tail.
Index-learning is a term used to mock pretenders who acquire superficial knowledge merely by consulting indexes.
The Dunciad (1728), Book 1, 279. Reference from The Oxford English Dictionary.
See also: | Learning (31)
Industrial Society is not merely one containing 'industry,' large-scale productive units capable of supplying man's material needs in a way which can eliminate poverty: it is also a society in which knowledge plays a part wholly different from that which it played in earlier social forms, and which indeed possesses a quite different type of knowledge. Modern science is inconceivable outside an industrial society: but modern industrial society is equally inconceivable without modern science. Roughly, science is the mode of cognition of industrial society, and industry is the ecology of science.
Thought and Change (1965), 179.
Inexact method of observation, as I believe, is one flaw in clinical pathology to-day. Prematurity of conclusion is another, and in part follows from the first; but in chief part an unusual craving and veneration for hypothesis, which besets the minds of most medical men, is responsible. Except in those sciences which deal with the intangible or with events of long past ages, no treatises are to be found in which hypothesis figures as it does in medical writings. The purity of a science is to be judged by the paucity of its recorded hypotheses. Hypothesis has its right place, it forms a working basis; but it is an acknowledged makeshift, and, at the best, of purpose unaccomplished. Hypothesis is the heart which no man with right purpose wears willingly upon his sleeve. He who vaunts his lady love, ere yet she is won, is apt to display himself as frivolous or his lady a wanton.
The Mechanism and Graphic Registration of the Heart Beat (1920), vii.
See also: | Conclusion (13) | Craving (2) | Event (12) | Flaw (4) | History (45) | Hypothesis (66) | Medicine (112) | Mind (74) | Pathology (3) | Paucity (2) | Physician (124) | Premature (2) | Purpose (6)
Is it not evident, in these last hundred years (when the Study of Philosophy has been the business of all the Virtuosi in Christendome) that almost a new Nature has been revealed to us? that more errours of the School have been detected, more useful Experiments in Philosophy have been made, more Noble Secrets in Opticks, Medicine, Anatomy, Astronomy, discover'd, than in all those credulous and doting Ages from Aristotle to us? So true it is that nothing spreads more fast than Science, when rightly and generally cultivated.
Of Dramatic Poesie (1684 edition), lines 258-67, in James T. Boulton (ed.) (1964), 44
See also: | Anatomy (19) | Aristotle (72) | Error (88) | Experiment (161) | Medicine (112) | Medicine (112) | Optics (5)
It is God who is the ultimate reason things, and the Knowledge of God is no less the beginning of science than his essence and will are the beginning of things.
Letter on a General Principle Useful in Explaining the Laws of Nature (1687).
It is not clear to anyone, least of all the practitioners, how science and technology in their headlong course do or should influence ethics and law, education and government, art and social philosophy, religion and the life of the affections. Yet science is an all-pervasive energy, for it is at once a mode of thought, a source of strong emotion, and a faith as fanatical as any in history.
Science: The Glorious Entertainment (1964), 3.
It is only when science asks why, instead of simply describing how, that it becomes more than technology. When it asks why, it discovers Relativity. When it only shows how, it invents the atom bomb, and then puts its hands over its eye and says, 'My God what have I done?
The Stalin in Soul (1973). Quoted in Gary Westfahl, Science Fiction Quotations (2005), 322.
It is unreasonable to expect science to produce a system of ethics—ethics are a kind of highway code for traffic among mankind—and the fact that in physics atoms which were yesterday assumed to be square are now assumed to be round is exploited with unjustified tendentiousness by all who are hungry for faith; so long as physics extends our dominion over nature, these changes ought to be a matter of complete indifference to you.
Letter to Oskar Pfister, 24 Feb 1928. Quoted in H. Meng and E. Freud (eds.), Psycho-Analysis and Faith: The Letters of Sigmund Freud and Oscar Pfister (1963), 123.
It must be admitted that science has its castes. The man whose chief apparatus is the differential equation looks down upon one who uses a galvanometer, and he in turn upon those who putter about with sticky and smelly things in test tubes. But all of these, and most biologists too, join together in their contempt for the pariah who, not through a glass darkly, but with keen unaided vision, observes the massing of a thundercloud on the horizon, the petal as it unfolds, or the swarming of a hive of bees. And yet sometimes I think that our laboratories are but little earthworks which men build about themselves, and whose puny tops too often conceal from view the Olympian heights; that we who work in these laboratories are but skilled artisans compared with the man who is able to observe, and to draw accurate deductions from the world about him.
The Anatomy of Science (1926), 170- 1.
See also: | Bee (5) | Cloud (2) | Deduction (10) | Differentiation (4) | Equation (19) | Flower (4) | Galvanometer (4) | Laboratory (29) | Observation (122) | Test Tube (2) | World (21)
It seems to me, that the only objects of the abstract sciences or of demonstration are quantity and number, and that all attempts to extend this more perfect species of knowledge beyond these bounds are mere sophistry and illusion.
An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (1748), ed. L. A. Selby-Bigge (1894), section 7, part 3, 163.
See also: | Demonstration (6) | Illusion (2) | Knowledge (260) | Number (32) | Quantity (3) | Sophistry (2)
It stands to the everlasting credit of science that by acting on the human mind it has overcome man's insecurity before himself and before nature.
Out of My Later Years (1995), 137.
It was like a new world opened to me, the world of science, which I was at last permitted to know in all liberty.
As quoted in Marie and Pierre Curie and the Discovery of Polonium and Radium, Nobel Lecture
See also: | Autobiography (40)
Knowledge is not happiness, and science
But an exchange of ignorance for that
Which is another kind of ignorance.
But an exchange of ignorance for that
Which is another kind of ignorance.
Manfred (1816), Act 2, Scene 4. In George Gordon Byron and Thomas Moore, The Works of Lord Byron (1837), 333.
Knowledge—it excites prejudices to call it science—is advancing as irresistibly, as majestically, as remorselessly as the ocean moves in upon the shore.
'The Poet at the Breakfast-Table', Chapter 10. The Atlantic Monthly (Oct 1872), 30, 428.
See also: | Knowledge (260)
Learning is the dictionary, but sense the grammar of science.
The Works of Laurence Sterne (1814), Vol. 6, 347.
Like all things of the mind, science is a brittle thing: it becomes absurd when you look at it too closely. It is designed for few at a time, not as a mass profession. But now we have megascience: an immense apparatus discharging in a minute more bursts of knowledge than humanity is able to assimilate in a lifetime. Each of us has two eyes, two ears, and, I hope, one brain. We cannot even listen to two symphonies at the same time. How do we get out of the horrible cacophony that assails our minds day and night? We have to learn, as others did, that if science is a machine to make more science, a machine to grind out so-called facts of nature, not all facts are equally worth knowing. Students, in other words, will have to learn to forget most of what they have learned. This process of forgetting must begin after each exam, but never before. The Ph.D. is essentially a license to start unlearning.
Voices In the Labyrinth: Nature, Man, and Science (1979), 2.
Logic is neither a science nor an art, but a dodge.
Quoted in Evelyn Abbott and Lewis Campbell, The Life and Letters of Benjamin Jowett, M.A., Master of Balliol College, Oxford (1897), Vol. 1, 131.
Man is made for science; he reasons from effects to causes, and from causes to effects; but he does not always reason without error. In reasoning, therefore, from appearances which are particular, care must be taken how we generalize; we should be cautious not to attribute to nature, laws which may perhaps be only of our own invention.
'Theory of the Earth', Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, 1788, 1, 273.
See also: | Cause (38) | Effect (10) | Error (88) | Law (108) | Man (88) | Nature (203) | Reason (51)
Mathematics is the key and door to the sciences.
Men love to wonder, and that is the seed of our science.
'Works and Days', Emerson's Complete Works (1883), 152.
See also: | Wonder (9)
Millions of our race are now supported by lands situated where deep seas once prevailed in earlier ages. In many districts not yet occupied by man, land animals and forests now abound where the anchor once sank into the oozy bottom.
Principles of Geology (1837), Vol. 1, 237.
Modern civilization depends on science … James Smithson was well aware that knowledge should not be viewed as existing in isolated parts, but as a whole, each portion of which throws light on all the other, and that the tendency of all is to improve the human mind, and give it new sources of power and enjoyment … narrow minds think nothing of importance but their own favorite pursuit, but liberal views exclude no branch of science or literature, for they all contribute to sweeten, to adorn, and to embellish life … science is the pursuit above all which impresses us with the capacity of man for intellectual and moral progress and awakens the human intellect to aspiration for a higher condition of humanity.
[Joseph Henry was the first Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, named after its benefactor, James Smithson. The first phrase is inscribed on the National Museum of American History, Washington, D.C.]
[Joseph Henry was the first Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, named after its benefactor, James Smithson. The first phrase is inscribed on the National Museum of American History, Washington, D.C.]
Respectfully Quoted: A Dictionary of Quotations (1989), 313.
Modern science has been a voyage into the unknown, with a lesson in humility waiting at every stop. Many passengers would rather have stayed home.
Pale Blue Dot (1994), 130.
My point of view is that science is essentially private, whereas the almost universal counter point of view, explicitly stated in many of the articles in the Encyclopaedia, is that it must be public.
Reflections of a Physicist (1950), 44.
See also: | Encyclopaedia (2)
My young friend, I wish that science would intoxicate you as much as our good Göttingen beer! Upon seeing a student staggering down a street.
Attributed. Quoted in G. Waldo Dunnington, Carl Friedrich Gauss: Titan of Science (2004), 416.
See also: | Achievement (29)
Myths and science fulfill a similar function: they both provide human beings with a representation of the world and of the forces that are supposed to govern it. They both fix the limits of what is considered as possible.
The Possible and the Actual (1982), 9.
See also: | Myth (9)
No disorders have employed so many quacks, as those that have no cure; and no sciences have exercised so many quills, as those that have no certainty.
Lacon: Many Things in Few Words (1820-22, 1866), 314.
No doubt science cannot admit of compromises, and can only bring out the complete truth. Hence there must be controversy, and the strife may be, and sometimes must be, sharp. But must it even then be personal? Does it help science to attack the man as well as the statement? On the contrary, has not science the noble privilege of carrying on its controversies without personal quarrels?
In his collected writings of 1861, preface. Quoted in Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, Vol. 75, 300.
See also: | Controversy (6)
No, our science is no illusion. But an illusion it would be to suppose that what science cannot give us we can get elsewhere.
The Future of an Illusion (1927), in James Strachey (ed.), The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud (1961), Vol. 21, 56.
Nor must we forget that in science there are no final truths.
The Raw and the Cooked: Mythologiques (1990), 7.
See also: | Truth (182)
Nothing before had ever made me thoroughly realise, though I had read various scientific books, that science consists in grouping facts so that general laws or conclusions may be drawn from them.
See also: | Fact (113)
Nothing has tended more to retard the advancement of science than the disposition in vulgar minds to vilify what they cannot comprehend.
In Maturin Murray Ballou, Treasury of Thought (1894), 459.
See also: | Progress (98)
Nothing tends so much to the corruption of science as to suffer it to stagnate; these waters must be troubled before they can exert their virtues.
In Tyron Edwards. A Dictionary of Thoughts (1908), 506.
See also: | Virtue (4)
Notwithstanding, therefore, that we have not witnessed of a large continent, yet, as we may predict the future occurrence of such catastrophes, we are authorized to regard them as part of the present order of Nature.
Principles of Geology (1837), Vol. 1, 94.
One of the most insidious and nefarious properties of scientific models is their tendency to take over, and sometimes supplant, reality.
Quoted in J. J. Zuckerman, 'The Coming Renaissance of Descriptive Chemistry', Journal of Chemical Education, 1986, 63, 830.
See also: | Model (11)
One only passes from the darkness of ignorance to the enlightenment of science if one re-reads with ever-increasing love the works of the ancients. Let the dogs bark, let the pigs grunt! I will nonetheless be a disciple of the ancients. All my care will be for them and the dawn will see me studying them.
In Le Goff, Les Intellectuels ou moyen age (1957), 14
See also: | Ignorance (46)
One thing I have learned in a long life: that all our science, measured against reality, is primitive and childlike—and yet is the most precious thing we have.
Banesh Hoffmann, Albert Einstein: Creator and Rebel (1972), Frontispiece.
Our emphasis on science has resulted in an alarming rise in world populations, the demand and ever-increasing emphasis of science to improve their standards and maintain their vigor. I have been forced to the conclusion that an over-emphasis of science weakens character and upsets life's essential balance.
In article Lindbergh wrote for Life magazine (1967). Quoted in Leonard Mosley, Lindbergh (2000), 370.
See also: | Balance (4) | Character (7) | Conclusion (13) | Demand (2) | Life (110) | Population (10) | Result (14) | Standard (3)
Our national policies will not be revoked or modified, even for scientists. If the dismissal of Jewish scientists means the annihilation of contemporary German science, then we shall do without science for a few years.
Reply to Max Planck (President of the Kaiser Wilhelm Society for the Advancement of Science) when he tried to petition the Fuhrer to stop the dismissal of scientists on political grounds.
Reply to Max Planck (President of the Kaiser Wilhelm Society for the Advancement of Science) when he tried to petition the Fuhrer to stop the dismissal of scientists on political grounds.
In E. Y. Hartshorne, The German Universities and National Socialism (1937), 112.
Out of man's mind in free play comes the creation Science. It renews itself, like the generations, thanks to an activity which is the best game of homo ludens: science is in the strictest and best sense a glorious entertainment.
Science: The Glorious Entertainment (1964), 110.
Paradoxical as it may at first appear, the fact is that, as W. H. George has said, scientific research is an art, not a science.
The Art of Scientific Investigation (1950, 1957), 138.
Philosophy is that part of science which at present people chose to have opinions about, but which they have no knowledge about. Therefore every advance in knowledge robs philosophy of some problems which formerly it had …and will belong to science.
'The Philosophy of Logical Atomism' (1918). In Betrand Russell and Robert Charles Marsh (Ed.), Logic and Knowledge: Essays, 1901-1950 (1988), 281.
Poetry creates life; Science dissects death.
Lectures and Addresses on Literary and Social Topics (1859), 123. In James Wood, Dictionary of Quotations from Ancient and Modern, English and Foreign Sources (1893), 382:26 .
See also: | Death (73)
Religious creeds are a great obstacle to any full sympathy between the outlook of the scientist and the outlook which religion is so often supposed to require ... The spirit of seeking which animates us refuses to regard any kind of creed as its goal. It would be a shock to come across a university where it was the practice of the students to recite adherence to Newton's laws of motion, to Maxwell's equations and to the electromagnetic theory of light. We should not deplore it the less if our own pet theory happened to be included, or if the list were brought up to date every few years. We should say that the students cannot possibly realise the intention of scientific training if they are taught to look on these results as things to be recited and subscribed to. Science may fall short of its ideal, and although the peril scarcely takes this extreme form, it is not always easy, particularly in popular science, to maintain our stand against creed and dogma.
Swarthmore Lecture (1929), Science and the Unseen World (1929), 54-6.
See also: | Education (94) | Enquiry (48) | James Clerk Maxwell (24) | Sir Isaac Newton (68) | Religion (58) | Theory (149)
Round about the accredited and orderly facts of every science there ever floats a sort of dustcloud of exceptional observations, of occurrences minute and irregular and seldom met with, which it always proves more easy to ignore than to attend to.
The Fractal Geometry of Nature (1977), 28.
Sarcastic Science, she would like to know,
In her complacent ministry of fear,
How we propose to get away from here
When she has made things so we have to go
Or be wiped out. Will she be asked to show
Us how by rocket we may hope to steer
To some star off there, say, a half light-year
Through temperature of absolute zero?
Why wait for Science to supply the how
When any amateur can tell it now?
The way to go away should be the same
As fifty million years ago we came—
If anyone remembers how that was
I have a theory, but it hardly does.
In her complacent ministry of fear,
How we propose to get away from here
When she has made things so we have to go
Or be wiped out. Will she be asked to show
Us how by rocket we may hope to steer
To some star off there, say, a half light-year
Through temperature of absolute zero?
Why wait for Science to supply the how
When any amateur can tell it now?
The way to go away should be the same
As fifty million years ago we came—
If anyone remembers how that was
I have a theory, but it hardly does.
'Why Wait for Science/' In Edward Connery Latham (ed.), The Poetry of Robert Frost: The Collected Poems, Complete and Unabridged (1979), 395.
Science always goes abreast with the just elevation of the man, keeping step with religion and metaphysics; or, the state of science is an index of our self-knowledge.
In James Wood, Dictionary of Quotations from Ancient and Modern, English and Foreign Sources (1893), 382:23.
See also: | Religion (58)
Science arises from the discovery of Identity amid Diversity.
The Principles of Science: A Treatise on Logic and Scientific Method (1874), 1.
Science as such assuredly has no authority, for she can only say what is, not what is not.
'Is Life Worth Living?' (1895). In The Will to Believe and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy (1897), 56.
See also: | Proof (38)
Science begets knowledge; opinion, ignorance.
In Fielding Hudson Garrison, An Introduction to the History of Medicine (1929), 14.
Science burrows its insulted head in the filth of slaughterous inventions.
Article in the Evening Standard (Sep 1936). Maxims and Reflections (1947), 176.
Science can never be a closed book. It is like a tree, ever growing, ever reaching new heights. Occasionally the lower branches, no longer giving nourishment to the tree, slough off. We should not be ashamed to change our methods; rather we should be ashamed never to do so.
Papers of Charles V. Chapin, M.D.: A Review of Public Health Realities (1934), 55.
See also: | Progress (98)
Science can tell us what exists; but to compare the worths, both of what exists and of what does not exist, we must consult not science, but what Pascal calls our heart.
'The Will to Believe' (1896). In The Will to Believe and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy (1897), 22.
Science cannot describe individuals, but only types. If human societies cannot be classified, they must remain inaccessible to scientific description.
'Montesquieu's Contribution to the Rise of Social Science' (1892), in Montesquieu and Rousseau. Forerunners of Sociology, trans. Ralph Manheim (1960), 9.
See also: | Society (16)
Science confounds everything; it gives to the flowers an animal appetite, and takes away from even the plants their chastity.
In Maturin Murray Ballou, Treasury of Thought (1894), 459.
See also: | Flower (4)
Science corrects the old creeds, sweeps away, with every new perception, our infantile catechisms, and necessitates a faith commensurate with the grander orbits and universal laws which it discloses.
Hialmer Day Gould and Edward Louis Hessenmueller, Best Thoughts of Best Thinkers (1904), 330.
Science could not fill the hole in my soul.
Speaking at Westfield State College's 157th Commencement. Quoted on webpage www.wsc.ma.edu/math/faculty/fleron/quotes.
See also: | Hostage (2)
Science deals exclusively with things as they are in themselves.
In James Wood, Dictionary of Quotations from Ancient and Modern, English and Foreign Sources (1893), 382:25.
Science does not rest upon solid bedrock. The bold structure of its theories rises, as it were, above a swamp. It is like a building erected on piles. The piles are driven down from above into the swamp, but not down to any natural or 'given' base; and when we cease our attempts to drive our piles into a deeper layer, it is not because we have reached firm ground. We simply stop when we are satisfied that they are firm enough to carry the structure, at least for the time being. (1959)
The Logic of Scientific Discovery: Logik Der Forschung (2002), 94.
See also: | Theory (149)
Science emerges from the other progressive activities of man to the extent that new concepts arise from experiments and observations, and that the new concepts in turn lead to further experiments and observations.
as quoted by Marshall Bates in The Nature of Natural History (1950), p.4
Science has always been too dignified to invent a good back-scratcher.
In Edward Anthony, O Rare Don Marquis (1962), 354.
Science has been arranging, classifying, methodizing, simplifying, everything except itself. It has made possible the tremendous modern development of power of organization which has so multiplied the effective power of human effort as to make the differences from the past seem to be of kind rather than of degree. It has organized itself very imperfectly. Scientific men are only recently realizing that the principles which apply to success on a large scale in transportation and manufacture and general staff work to apply them; that the difference between a mob and an army does not depend upon occupation or purpose but upon human nature; that the effective power of a great number of scientific men may be increased by organization just as the effective power of a great number of laborers may be increased by military discipline.
'The Need for Organization in Scientific Research', in Bulletin of the National Research Council: The National Importance of Scientific and Industrial Research (Oct 1919), Col 1, Part 1, No. 1, 8.
See also: | Army (4) | Classification (27) | Human Nature (27) | Manufacturing (4) | Men Of Science (66) | Organization (5) | Success (27) | Transportation (3)
Science has been seriously retarded by the study of what is not worth knowing and of what is not knowable.
Attributed. In James Wood, Dictionary of Quotations from Ancient and Modern, English and Foreign Sources (1893), 382:30.
See also: | Study (19)
Science has done much for us; but it is a poor science that would hide from us the great deep sacred infinitude of Nescience, on which all science swims as a mere superficial film.
In James Wood, Dictionary of Quotations from Ancient and Modern, English and Foreign Sources (1893), 382:31 .
Science has not solved difficulties, only shifted the points of difficulty.
In James Wood, Dictionary of Quotations from Ancient and Modern, English and Foreign Sources (1893), 382:32 .
See also: | Difficulty (8)
Science has nothing to be ashamed of, even in the ruins of Nagasaki.
Science and Human Values (1961), 83.
Science has succeeded to poetry, no less in the little walks of children than with men. Is there no possibility of averting this sore evil?
Letter to Coleridge (23 Oct 1802). In Edwin W. Marrs, Jr. (ed.), The Letters of Charles and Mary Anne Lamb (1976), Vol. 2, 81-2.
See also: | Poetry (29)
Science is not a sacred cow—but there are a large number of would-be sacred cowherds busily devoting quantities of time, energy and effort to the task of making it one, so they can be sacred cowherds.
Introduction to Prologue to Analog (1962)
Science is a cemetery of dead ideas, even though life may issue from them.
Tragic Sense of Life (1913), translated by John Ernest Crawford Flitch (1954), 90.
See also: | Idea (66)
Science is a first-rate piece of furniture for a man's upper chamber, if he has common sense on the ground-floor. But if a man hasn't got plenty of good common sense, the more science he has the worse for his patient.
The Poet at the Breakfast Table (1872), 126.
Science is a first-rate piece of furniture for a man's upper chamber, if he has common sense on the ground floor. But if a man hasn't got plenty of good common sense, the more science he has the worse for his patient.
'The Poet at the Breakfast-Table', Chapter 5. The Atlantic Monthly (May 1872), 29, 607.
Science is a progressive activity. The outstanding peculiarity of man is that he stumbled onto the possibility of progressive activities. Such progress, the accumulation of experience from generation to generation, depended first on the development of language, then of writing and finally of printing. These allowed the accumulation of tradition and of knowledge, of the whole aura of cultural inheritance that surrounds us. This has so conditioned our existence that it is almost impossible for us to stop and examine the nature of our culture. We accept it as we accept the air we breathe; we are as unconscious of our culture as a fish, presumably, is of water.
The Nature of Natural History 1950)
Science is a system of statements based on direct experience, and controlled by experimental verification. Verification in science is not, however, of single statements but of the entire system of a sub-system of such statements.
The Unity of Science (1934), trans. M. Black, 42.
See also: | Scientific Method (53)
Science is a way of thinking much more than it is a body of knowledge.
Broca's Brain (1986), 15.
Science is a way to not fool ourselves.
Attributed. Contact webmaster if you know a primary print source.
See also: | Fool (9)
Science is a wonderful thing if one does not have to earn one's living at it. One should earn one's living by work of which one is sure one is capable. Only when we do not have to be accountable to anybody can we find joy in scientific endeavor.
Reply to a 24 Mar 1951 letter from a student uncertain whether to pursue astronomy, while not outstanding in mathematics. In Albert Einstein, Helen Dukas (ed.) and Banesh Hoffmann (ed.), Albert Einstein, The Human Side (1981), 57.
See also: | Biography (143)
Science is a wonderful thing, but it has not yet succeeded in maximizing pleasure and minimizing pain, and that's all we asked of it.
In Dr. N Sreedharan, Quotations of Wit and Wisdom (2007), 68.
Science is an allegory that asserts that the relations between the parts of reality are similar to the relations between terms of discourse.
Poetry and Mathematics (1929), 96-7.
Science is an enterprise that can only flourish if it puts the truth ahead of nationality, ethnicity, class and color.
from a speech at the University of California at Berkeley (1994) quoted in Encyclopedia of World Biography, 2nd ed., Gale Research, (1998)
Science is an essentially anarchic enterprise: theoretical anarchism is more humanitarian and more likely to encourage progress than its law-and-order alternatives.
Against Method: Outline of an Anarchistic Theory of Knowledge (1975), 9.
Science is an ocean. It is as open to the cockboat as the frigate. One man carries across it a freightage of ingots, another may fish there for herrings.
In James Wood, Dictionary of Quotations from Ancient and Modern, English and Foreign Sources (1893), 382:34.
Science is analytical, descriptive, informative. Man does not live by bread alone, but by science he attempts to do so. Hence the deadliness of all that is purely scientific.
'Art', Essays (1948), Sec. 2, 13.
Science is being daily more and more personified and anthromorphized into a god. By and by they will say that science took our nature upon him, and sent down his only begotten son, Charles Darwin, or Huxley, into the world so that those who believe in him, etc.; and they will burn people for saying that science, after all, is only an expression for our ignorance of our own ignorance.
Geoffrey Keynes. and Brian Hill (eds.), Samuel Butler’s Notebooks (1951), 233.
Science is bound to language.
'On the Semiotic Dimension of Ecological Theory: The Case of Island Biogeography', Biology and Philosophy, 1986, 1, 378.
See also: | Language (32)
Science is built up with facts, as a house is with stones. But a collection of facts is no more a science than a heap of stones is a house.
Science and Hypothesis trans. George Bruce Halsted (1905), 101.
See also: | Fact (113)
Science is busy with the hither-end of things, not the thither-end.
In James Wood, Dictionary of Quotations from Ancient and Modern, English and Foreign Sources (1893), 382:35.
Science is complex and chilling. The mathematical language of science is understood by very few. The vistas it presents are scary—an enormous universe ruled by chance and impersonal rules, empty and uncaring, ungraspable and vertiginous. How comfortable to turn instead to a small world, only a few thousand years old, and under God's personal; and immediate care; a world in which you are His peculiar concern.
The 'Threat' of Creationism. In Ashley Montagu (ed.), Science and Creationism (1984), 192.
See also: | Age Of The Earth (8) | Chance (26) | Comfort (4) | Complexity (10) | Creationist (5) | Fear (15) | God (103) | Mathematics (190) | Religion (58) | Universe (108)
Science is continually correcting what it has said. Fertile corrections... science is a ladder... poetry is a winged flight... An artistic masterpiece exists for all time... Dante does not efface Homer.
Quoted in Pierre Biquard, Frederic Joliot-Curie: The Man and his Theories (1961), trans. Geoffrey Strachan (1965), 168.
Science is dangerous. There is no question but that poison gas, genetic engineering, and nuclear weapons and power stations are terrifying. It may be that civilization is falling apart and the world we know is coming to an end. In that case, why no turn to religion and look forward to the Day of Judgment, ... [being] lifted into eternal bliss ... [and] watching the scoffers and disbelievers writhe forever in torment.
The 'Threat' of Creationism. In Ashley Montagu (ed.), Science and Creationism (1984), 192.
See also: | Civilization (38) | Creationist (5) | Dangerous (3) | Fear (15) | Genetic Engineering (11) | Nuclear Power (3) | Poison (15) | Religion (58)
Science is dangerous; we have to keep it most carefully chained and muzzled.
Brave New World (1932, 1998), 225.
See also: | Dangerous (3)
Science is forever rewriting itself.
In Leonard and Thelma Spinrad, Speaker's Lifetime Library (1979), 220.
See also: | Quip (39)
Science is one thing, wisdom is another. Science is an edged tool, with which men play like children, and cut their own fingers. If you look at the results which science has brought in its train, you will find them to consist almost wholly in elements of mischief. See how much belongs to the word 'Explosion' alone, of which the ancients knew nothing.
Attributed in Robert L. Weber, More Random Walks in Science (1982), 48.
Science is organized knowledge. Wisdom is organized life.
In Joey Green, Philosophy on the Go (2007), 128
Science is really about describing the way the universe works in one aspect or another in all branches of science—how a life-form works, how this works, how that works. ... You have to have a natural curiosity for that.
Quoted in press release 'Steven Chu Named Sixth Lab Director' (2004) on Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory websire.
Science is the ascertainment of facts and the refusal to regard facts as permanent.
In Leonard and Thelma Spinrad, Speaker's Lifetime Library (1979), 220.
Science is the attempt to make the chaotic diversity of our sense- experience correspond to a logically uniform system of thought.
Out of my Later Years (1950), 98.
See also: | Enquiry (48)
Science is the great antidote to the poison of enthusiasm and superstition.
An Inquiry into the Nature And Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776), Book 5, Ch. 1. In Andrew S. Skinner (ed.), The Wealth of Nations: Books IV-V (1999), 384.
See also: | Superstition (15)
Science is the knowledge of Consequences, and dependance of one fact upon another.
Leviathan (1651), ed. C. B. Macpherson (1968), Part 1, Chapter 5, 115.
See also: | Fact (113)
Science is the one human activity that is truly progressive. The body of positive knowledge is transmitted from generation to generation.
The Realm of the Nebulae (1936), 1.
See also: | Knowledge (260)
Science is the reduction of the bewildering diversity of unique events to manageable uniformity within one of a number of symbol systems, and technology is the art of using these symbol systems so as to control and organize unique events. Scientific observation is always a viewing of things through the refracting medium of a symbol system, and technological praxis is always handling of things in ways that some symbol system has dictated. Education in science and technology is essentially education on the symbol level.
Essay in Daedalus (Spring1962), 279.
Science is the topography of ignorance. From a few elevated points we triangulate vast spaces, inclosing infinite unknown details. We cast the lead, and draw up a little sand from abysses we may never reach with our dredges.
'Border Lines of Knowledge in Some Provinces of Medical Science', an introductory lecture to the Medical Class of Harvard University (6 Nov 1861). In Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes (1892), 211.
Science is uncertain. Theories are subject to revision; observations are open to a variety of interpretations, and scientists quarrel amongst themselves. This is disillusioning for those untrained in the scientific method, who thus turn to the rigid certainty of the Bible instead. There is something comfortable about a view that allows for no deviation and that spares you the painful necessity of having to think.
The 'Threat' of Creationism. In Ashley Montagu (ed.), Science and Creationism (1984), 192.
See also: | Bible (14) | Comfort (4) | Creationist (5) | Deviation (2) | Religion (58) | Scientific Method (53) | Theory (149) | Thinking (29) | Uncertainty (7)
Science is what you more or less know and philosophy is what you do not know.
'The Philosophy of Logical Atomism' (1918). In Betrand Russell and Robert Charles Marsh (Ed.), Logic and Knowledge: Essays, 1901-1950 (1988), 281.
See also: | Philosophy (54)
Science is wonderful at destroying metaphysical answers, but incapable of providing substitute ones. Science takes away foundations without providing a replacement. Whether we want to be there or not, science has put us in the position of having to live without foundations. It was shocking when Nietzsche said this, but today it is commonplace; our historical position—and no end to it is in sight—is that of having to philosophise without 'foundations'.
Quoted in Hilary Putnam (ed.), The Many Faces of Realism: The Paul Carns Lectures (1987), 29.
Science is wonderful: for years uranium cost only a few dollars a ton until scientists discovered you could kill people with it.
In Evan Esar, 20,000 Quips and Quotes, 703.
Science is wonderfully equipped to answer the question 'How?' but it gets terribly confused when you ask the question 'Why?'
Columbia Forum (1969), in Voices in the Labyrinth: Nature, Man and Science (1977), 8.
Science is, I believe, nothing but trained and organised common sense, differing from the latter only as a veteran may differ from a raw recruit: and its methods differ from those of common sense only so far as the guardsman's cut and thrust differ from the manner in which a savage wields his club.
'On the Educational Value of the Natural History Sciences' (1854). In Collected Essays (1893), Vol. 3, 45.
See also: | Common Sense (15)
Science is, I believe, nothing but trained and organized common-sense, differing from the latter only as a veteran may differ from a raw recruit; and its methods differ from those of common-sense only so far as the guardsman's cut and thrust differ from the manner in which a savage wields his club.
Science and Education (1902), 46.
See also: | Common Sense (15)
Science itself, no matter whether it is the search for truth or merely the need to gain control over the external world, to alleviate suffering, or to prolong life, is ultimately a matter of feeling, or rather, of desire-the desire to know or the desire to realize.
New Perspectives in Physics (1962), 196.
Science lives only in quiet places, and with odd people, mostly poor.
In James Wood, Dictionary of Quotations from Ancient and Modern, English and Foreign Sources (1893), 382:42.
Science must have originated in the feeling of something being wrong.
In James Wood, Dictionary of Quotations from Ancient and Modern, English and Foreign Sources (1893), 382:29.
Science never cheered up anyone. The truth about the human situation is just too awful.
Timequake (1997), 105.
Science never makes an advance until philosophy authorizes it to do so.
Essay on Freud (1937). Quoted in Charles W. Misner, Kip S. Thorne and John Archibald Wheeler, Gravitation (1973), 1208.
Science no longer is in the position of observer of nature, but rather recognizes itself as part of the interplay between man and nature. The scientific method ... changes and transforms its object: the procedure can no longer keep its distance from the object.
The Representation of Nature in Contemporary Physics', Symbolism in Religion and Literature (1960), 231. Cited in John J. Stuhr, Philosophy and the Reconstruction of Culture (1993), 139.
See also: | Change (26) | Man (88) | Nature (203) | Object (6) | Procedure (2) | Recognize (2) | Scientific Method (53)
Science of to-day—the superstition of to-morrow. Science of to-morrow—the superstition of to-day.
The Book of The Damned (1919), 157
Science owes more to the steam engine than the steam engine owes to science.
Attributed.
See also: | Steam Engine (13)
Science preceded the theory of science, and is independent of it. Science preceded naturalism, and will survive it.
The Foundations of Belief: Being Notes Introductory to the Study of Theology (1895), 134.
Science proceeds more by what it has learned to ignore than what it takes into account.
Found in David Hatcher Childress and Bill Clendenon, Atlantis & the Power System of the Gods (2002), 191. [Quote may be questionable since no major source found by Webmaster. If you have information on a primary source, please contact Webmaster.]
Science says the first word on everything, and the last word on nothing.
Things of the Infinite: Intellectual Autobiography, trans. L. O'Rourke (1907).
See also: | Word (24)
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.
'Arbitrary Reflections', Essays and Soliloquies, translated by John Ernest Crawford Flitch (1925), 154. In Robert Andrews, The Columbia Dictionary of Quotations (1993), 844:9.
Science seems to me to teach in the highest and strongest manner the great truth which is embodied in the Christian conception of entire surrender to the will of God. Sit down before fact as a little child, be prepared to give up every preconceived notion, follow humbly wherever and to whatever abysses nature leads, or you shall learn nothing. I have only begun to learn content and peace of mind since I have resolved at all risks to do this.
Letter to Charles Kingsley (23 Sep 1860). In L. Huxley, The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley (1903), Vol. 1, 316.
Science stands, a too competant servant, behind her wrangling underbred masters, holding out resources, devices, and remedies they are too stupid to use. … And on its material side, a modern Utopia must needs present these gifts as taken.
A Modern Utopia (1904, 2006), 49.
Science surpasses the old miracles of mythology.
'Progress of Culture', an address read to the Phi Beta Kappa Society at Cambridge, 18 July 1867. In Emerson's Complete Works (1883), Vol. 8, 197.
See also: | Myth (9)
Science teaches us, in effect, to submit our reason to the truth and to know and judge of things as they are—that is to say, as they themselves choose to be and not as we would have them to be.
Tragic Sense of Life (1913), translated by John Ernest Crawford Flitch (1954), 193.
Science unfolded her treasures and her secrets to the desperate demands of men, and placed in their hands agencies and apparatus almost decisive in their character.
Reflecting on the outcome of World War I, and an ominous future.
Reflecting on the outcome of World War I, and an ominous future.
The Second World War: The Gathering Storm (1948, 1986), Vol. 1, 35. Quoting himself from his earlier book, The Aftermath: Being a Sequel to The World Crisis (1929).
Science was many things, Nadia thought, including a weapon with which to hit other scientists.
Red Mars (1992). In Gary Westfahl, Science Fiction Quotations: From the Inner Mind to the Outer Limits (2006), 323.
Science when well-digested is nothing but good sense and reason.
'Maxims, No. 43'. In Jehiel Keeler Hoyt, The Cyclopedia of Practical Quotations (1881, 1896), 538.
Science without conscience is the death of the soul.
Science would not be what it is if there had not been a Galileo, a Newton or a Lavoisier, any more than music would be what it is if Bach, Beethoven and Wagner had never lived. The world as we know it is the product of its geniuses—and there may be evil as well as beneficent genius—and to deny that fact, is to stultify all history, whether it be that of the intellectual or the economic world.
What is Science? (1921), 73.
See also: | Galileo Galilei (50) | Genius (40) | Intellect (36) | Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier (25) | Sir Isaac Newton (68)
SCIENCE! thou fair effusive ray
From the great source of mental Day,
Free, generous, and refin'd!
Descend with all thy treasures fraught,
Illumine each bewilder'd thought,
And bless my labour'g mind.
From the great source of mental Day,
Free, generous, and refin'd!
Descend with all thy treasures fraught,
Illumine each bewilder'd thought,
And bless my labour'g mind.
'Hymn to Science' (1739). In Robin Dix (ed.), The Poetical Works of Mark Akenside (1996), 406.
Science, as long as it limits itself to the descriptive study of the laws of nature, has no moral or ethical quality and this applies to the physical as well as the biological sciences.
'Social Responsibility and the Scientist', New Scientist, 22 October 1970, 166.
See also: | Ethics (13)
Science, illuminating ray!
Fair mental beam, extend thy sway, And shine from pole to pole!
From thy accumulated store,
O'er every mind thy riches pour, Excite from low desires to soar, And dignify the soul.
Fair mental beam, extend thy sway, And shine from pole to pole!
From thy accumulated store,
O'er every mind thy riches pour, Excite from low desires to soar, And dignify the soul.
'Botany', I. From Poems on Conchology and Botany (1831), 176.
See also: | Poem (47)
Science, while it penetrates deeply the system of things about us, sees everywhere, in the dim limits of vision, the word mystery.
Corals and Coral Islands, 3rd edition (1890), 17-18.
See also: | Mystery (22)
Scientific truth will out, you can't hide the sun under a stone.
The Disposessed: An Ambiguous Utopia (1974). Quoted in Gary Westfahl, Science Fiction Quotations (2005), 322.
See also: | Truth (182)
Scientists study the world as it is, engineers create the world that never has been.
Society lives by faith, develops by science. (7 May 1870)
Amiel's Journal: The Journal Intime of Henri-Frédéric Amiel, trans. Humphry Ward (1893), 169.
See also: | Faith (20)
Society rests upon conscience, not upon science.
In James Wood, Dictionary of Quotations from Ancient and Modern, English and Foreign Sources (1893), 396:36.
See also: | Society (16)
Something is wanting to science until it has been humanised.
In James Wood, Dictionary of Quotations from Ancient and Modern, English and Foreign Sources (1893), 399:18.
The aim of science is not to open the door to infinite wisdom, but to set a limit to infinite error.
Play, The Life of Galileo (1939, 1994), scene 9, 74.
The aim of science is, on the one hand, as complete a comprehension as possible of the connection between perceptible experiences in their totality, and, on the other hand, the achievement of this aim by employing a minimum of primary concepts and relations.
H. Cuny, Albert Einstein: The Man and his Theories (1963), 128.
The aim of scientific work is truth. While we internally recognise something as true, we judge, and while we utter judgements, we assert.
Frege m.s., after 1879 (Manuskcripte edition 2), trans. Ivor Grattan-Guinness.
See also: | Truth (182)
The aims of pure basic science, unlike those of applied science, are neither fast-flowing nor pragmatic. The quick harvest of applied science is the useable process, the medicine, the machine. The shy fruit of pure science is understanding.
Life, 9 January 1950.
See also: | Applied Science (7)
The banker asks, 'how much?' The scientist asks, 'how come?'
In Leonard and Thelma Spinrad, Speaker's Lifetime Library (1979), 220.
See also: | Quip (39)
The cause and root of nearly all evils in the sciences is this — that while we falsely admire and extol the powers of the human mind we neglect to seek for its true helps.
Aphorism 9,' Novum Organum, Book I (1620)
The Constitution never sanctioned the patenting of gadgets. Patents serve a higher end—the advance of science.
Concurring in Great A. & P. Teas Co.. V. Supermarket Equip. Corp. 340 U.S. 147, 155 (1950). In Eugene C. Gerhart, Quote it Completely! (1998), 802.
The Dark Ages may return—the Stone Age may return on the gleaming wings of Science; and what might now shower immeasureable material blessings upon mankind may even bring about its total destruction. Beware! I say. Time may be short.
Referring to the discovery of how to atomic energy.
Referring to the discovery of how to atomic energy.
Speech at Fulton, Missouri (5 Mar 1946). Maxims and Reflections (1947), 164.
The End of our Foundation is the knowledge of Causes; and secret motions of things; and the enlarging of the bounds of Human Empire, to the effecting of all things possible.
'New Atlantis' (1626) in James Spedding, Robert Ellis and Douglas Heath (eds.), The Works of Francis Bacon (1887-1901), Vol. 3, 156.
See also: | Knowledge (260)
The fundamental concepts of physical science, it is now understood, are abstractions, framed by our mind, so as to bring order to an apparent chaos of phenomena.
(written in the 1920's)
The game of status seeking, organized around committees, is played in roughly the same fashion in Africa and in America and in the Soviet Union. Perhaps the aptitude for this game is a part of our genetic inheritance, like the aptitude for speech and for music. The game has had profound consequences for science. In science, as in the quest for a village water supply, big projects bring enhanced status; small projects do not. In the competition for status, big projects usually win, whether or not they are scientifically justified. As the committees of academic professionals compete for power and influence, big science becomes more and more preponderant over small science. The large and fashionable squeezes out the small and unfashionable. The space shuttle squeezes out the modest and scientifically more useful expendable launcher. The Great Observatory squeezes out the Explorer. The centralized adduction system squeezes out the village well. Fortunately, the American academic system is pluralistic and chaotic enough that first-rate small science can still be done in spite of the committees. In odd corners, in out-of the-way universities, and in obscure industrial laboratories, our Fulanis are still at work.
From Eros to Gaia (1992), 19.
See also: | Space Shuttle (5)
The grand aim of science is to cover the greatest possible number of experimental facts by logical deduction from the smallest number of hypotheses or axioms.
'The Problem of Space, Ether, and the Field in Physics', Sonja Bargmann (trans.), Ideas and Opinions by Albert Einstein (1954), 282. In Jong-Ping Hsu and Yuanzhong Zhang, Lorentz and Poincaré Invariance (2001), 190.
The highest reach of human science is the recognition of human ignorance.
Hialmer Day Gould and Edward Louis Hessenmueller, Best Thoughts of Best Thinkers (1904), 330.
See also: | Ignorance (46)
The history of science is the saga of nature defying common sense.
Quotations: Superultramodern Science and Philosophy (2005).
The important thing in science is not so much to obtain new facts as to discover new ways of thinking about them.
Quoted in Arthur Koestler and J. R. Smithies, Beyond Reductionism (1958), 115.
The inspirational value of the space program is probably of far greater importance to education than any input of dollars... A whole generation is growing up which has been attracted to the hard disciplines of science and engineering by the romance of space.
Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins, Buzz Aldrin, Edwin E. Aldrin et al., First on the Moon (1970), 376.
The learning of true propositions, dogmatically delivered, is not science.
In Suggestions on Academical Organisation with Especial Reference to Oxford (1868), 301.
The most heated defenders of a science, who cannot endure the slightest sneer at it, are commonly those who have not made very much progress in it and are secretly aware of this defect.
Aphorisms trans. R. J. Hollingdale (1990), 82.
The origin of all science is in the desire to know causes; and the origin of all false science and imposture is in the desire to accept false causes rather than none; or, which is the same thing, in the unwillingness to acknowledge our own ignorance.
'Burke and the Edinburgh Phrenologists', The Atlas, 15 Feb 1829.
The progress of science has always been the result of a close interplay between our concepts of the universe and our observations on nature. The former can only evolve out of the latter and yet the latter is also conditioned greatly by the former. Thus in our exploration of nature, the interplay between our concepts and our observations may sometimes lead to totally unexpected aspects among already familiar phenomena.
'Weak Interactions and Nonconservation of Parity', Nobel Lecture, 11 Dec 1957. In Nobel Lectures: Physics 1942-1962 (1964), 417.
See also: | Concept (10) | Exploration (22) | Nature (203) | Obervation (2) | Progress (98) | Universe (108)
The prohibition of science would be contrary to the Bible, which in hundreds of places teaches us how the greatness and the glory of God shine forth marvelously in all His works, and is to be read above all in the open book of the heavens. And let no one believe that the reading of the most exalted thoughts which are inscribed upon these pages is to be accomplished through merely staring up at the radiance of the stars. There are such profound secrets and such lofty conceptions that the night labors and the researches of hundreds and yet hundreds of the keenest minds, in investigations extending over thousands of years would not penetrate them, and the delight of the searching and finding endures forever.
As stated by William H. Hobbs, 'The Making of Scientific Theories,' Address of the president of Michigan Academy of Science at the Annual Meeting, Ann Arbor (28 Mar 1917) in Science (11 May 1917), N.S. 45, No. 1167, 443.
The pursuit of science has often been compared to the scaling of mountains, high and not so high. But who amongst us can hope, even in imagination, to scale the Everest and reach its summit when the sky is blue and the air is still, and in the stillness of the air survey the entire Himalayan range in the dazzling white of the snow stretching to infinity? None of us can hope for a comparable vision of nature and of the universe around us. But there is nothing mean or lowly in standing in the valley below and awaiting the sun to rise over Kinchinjunga.
Truth and Beauty: Aesthetics and Motivations in Science (1987), 26.
See also: | Endeavour (3)
The real name for 'science' is magic.
Jeffty is Five (1977). Quoted in Gary Westfahl, Science Fiction Quotations (2005), 322.
See also: | Magic (4)
The reproaches against science for not having yet solved the problems of the universe are exaggerated in an "unjust and malicious manner; it has truly not had time enough yet for these great achievements. Science is very young—-a human activity which developed late.
The Question of a Weltanschauung? (1932), in James Strachey (ed.), The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud (1964), Vol. 22, 173.
The science of the modern school … is in effect … the acquisition of imperfectly analyzed misstatements about entrails, elements, and electricity…
Mankind in the Making (1903), 206.
The sciences are found, like Hercules's oxen, by tracing them backward; and old sciences are unravelled like old stockings, by beginning at the foot.
The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift (1803), 388.
See also: | Research (174)
The sciences are of a sociable disposition, and flourish best in the neighborhood of each other; nor is there any branch of learning but may be helped and improved by assistance drawn from other arts.
'On the Study of Law', Commentaries on the Laws of England (1765-69). Introduction. In Tyron Edwards. A Dictionary of Thoughts (1908), 506.
See also: | Cooperation (6)
The sciences throw an inexpressible grace over our compositions, even where they are not immediately concerned; as their effects are discernible where we least expect to find them.
'A Dialogue Concerning Oratory', The Works of Tacitus By Cornelius Tacitus (1854), Vol. 2, 439.
The sciences, even the best,—mathematics and astronomy,—are like sportsmen, who seize whatever prey offers, even without being able to make any use of it.
Emerson's Complete Works (1883),62.
The scientist believes in proof without certainty, the bigot in certainty without proof.
Ashley Montagu (ed.), Science and Creationism (1984), Introduction, 9.
The scientist discovers a new type of material or energy and the engineer discovers a new use for it.
The Development of Design (1981), 19. In Camilla Stivers, Democracy, Bureaucracy, and the Study of Administration (2001), 143.
The strangest thing of all is that our ulama these days have divided science into two parts. One they call Muslim science, and one European science. Because of this they forbid others to teach some of the useful sciences. They have not understood that science is that noble thing that has no connection with any nation, and is not distinguished by anything but itself. Rather, everything that is known is known by science, and every nation that becomes renowned becomes renowned through science. Men must be related to science, not science to men. How very strange it is that the Muslims study those sciences that are ascribed to Aristotle with the greatest delight, as if Aristotle were one of the pillars of the Muslims. However, if the discussion relates to Galileo, Newton, and Kepler, they consider them infidels. The father and mother of science is proof, and proof is neither Aristotle nor Galileo. The truth is where there is proof, and those who forbid science and knowledge in the belief that they are safeguarding the Islamic religion are really the enemies of that religion. Lecture on Teaching and Learning (1882).
In Nikki R. Keddie, An Islamic Response to Imperialism (1983), 107.
See also: | Aristotle (72) | Europe (3) | Galileo Galilei (50) | Johannes Kepler (33) | Nation (11) | Sir Isaac Newton (68) | Proof (38) | Truth (182)
The strength of all sciences, which consisteth in their harmony, each supporting the other, is as the strength of the old man's fagot in the band; for were it not better for a man in a fair room to set up one great light, or branching candlestick of lights, than to go about with a small watch-candle into every corner.
The Works of Francis Bacon (1877), 123
The study of economics does not seem to require any specialised gifts of an unusually high order. Is it not, intellectually regarded, a very easy subject compared with the higher branches of philosophy and pure science? Yet good, or even competent, economists are the rarest of birds. An easy subject, at which very few excel! The paradox finds its explanation, perhaps, in that the master-economist must possess a rare combination of gifts. He must reach a high standard in several different directions and must combine talents not often found together. He must be mathematician, historian, statesman, philosopher—in some degree. He must understand symbols and speak in words. He must contemplate the particular in terms of the general, and touch abstract and concrete in the same flight of thought. He must study the present in the light of the past for the purposes of the future. No part of man's nature or his institutions must lie entirely outside his regard. He must be purposeful and disinterested in a simultaneous mood; as aloof and incorruptible as an artist, yet sometimes as near the earth as a politician.
'Alfred Marshall: 1842-1924' (1924). In Geoffrey Keynes (ed.), Essays in Biography (1933), 170.
See also: | Economics (12) | Historian (5) | Intellect (36) | Mathematician (56) | Paradox (7) | Philosophy (54) | Statesman (2) | Talent (5)
The study of science teaches young men to think, while study of the classics teaches them to express thought.
In Tyron Edwards. A Dictionary of Thoughts (1908), 506.
See also: | Thinking (29)
The success of the paradigm... is at the start largely a promise of success ... Normal science consists in the actualization of that promise... Mopping up operations are what engage most scientists throughout their careers. They constitute what I am here calling normal science... That enterprise seems an attempt to force nature into the preformed and relatively inflexible box that the paradigm supplies. No part of the aim of normal science is to call forth new sorts of phenomena; indeed those that will not fit the box are often not seen at all. Nor do scientists normally aim to invent new theories, and they are often intolerant of those invented by others.
The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962), 23-4.
The superstition of science scoffs at the superstition of faith.
Attributed.
See also: | Faith (20)
The task of science is to stake out the limits of the knowable, and to center consciousness within them.
In Bernard E. Farber, A Teacher's Treasury of Quotations (1985), 264.
The term Science should not be given to anything but the aggregate of the recipes that are always successful. All the rest is literature.
Moralités (1932). In Bill Swainson and Anne H. Soukhanov. Encarta Book of Quotations (2000), 951.
The unreasonable efficiency of mathematics in science is a gift we neither understand nor deserve.
Quoted in Robert J. Scully, The Demon and the Quantum (2007), 191.
See also: | Mathematics (190)
The ways of science are unpredicatable: it can get men up to the moon, but it cannot get pigeons down from public buildings.
In Evan Esar, 20,000 Quips and Quotes, 703.
The weeds of a seemingly learned and brilliant but actually trivial and empty philosophy of Nature which, after having been replaced some 50 years ago by the exact sciences, is now once more dug up by pseudo scientists from the lumber room of human fallacies, and like a trollop, newly attired in elegant dress and make-up, is smuggled into respectable company, to which she does not belong.
'Sign of the Times', Journal für Praktische Chemie (1877), 15, 473, trans. W. H. Brock.
The whole history of science has been the gradual realization that events do not happen in an arbitrary manner, but that they reflect a certain underlying order, which may or may not be divinely inspired.
A Brief History of Time (1998), 127.
The work of science is to substitute facts for appearances, and demonstrations for impressions.
In James Wood, Dictionary of Quotations from Ancient and Modern, English and Foreign Sources (1893), 464:02.
See also: | Fact (113)
The year which has passed ... has not been unproductive in contributions of interest and value, in those sciences to which we are professedly more particularly addicted, as well as in every other walk of scientific research. It has not, indeed, been marked by any of those striking discoveries which at once revolutionize, so as to speak, the department of science on which they bear.
Summary of the year in which the Darwin-Wallace communication was read. 'Presidential Address', Proceedings of the Linnean Society, 24 May (1859), viii.
There are no enemies in science, professor, only phenomena to study.
Movie, The Thing (from Another World) (1951). In Gary Westfahl, Science Fiction Quotations: From the Inner Mind to the Outer Limits (2006), 320.
There are no peoples however primitive without religion and magic. Nor are there, it must be added at one, any savage races lacking in either the scientific attitude, or in science, though this lack has been frequently attributed to them.
Magic, Science and Religion (1954), 17.
See also: | Religion (58)
There are seven sins in the world: wealth without work, pleasure without conscience, knowledge without character, commerce without morality, science without humanity, worship without sacrifice, and politics without principle.
Respectfully Quoted: A Dictionary of Quotations (1989), 319.
There is no national science, just as there is no national multiplication table; what is national is no longer science.
The Note-Books of Anton Tchekhov (1967), trans. S. S. Koteliansky and L. Woolf, 4.
See also: | Mathematics (190)
There is only one nature—the division into science and engineering is a human imposition, not a natural one. Indeed, the division is a human failure; it reflects our limited capacity to comprehend the whole.
from Recent Development of Physical Science (p. 10)
There prevails among men of letters, an opinion, that all appearance of science is particularly hateful to Women; and that therefore whoever desires to be well received in female assemblies, 'must qualify himself by a total rejection of all that is serious, rational, or important; must consider argument or criticism as perpetually interdicted; and devote all his attention to trifles, and all his eloquence to compliment.
The Rambler, Number 173, 12 Nov 1751. In W. J. Bate and Albrecht B. Strauss (eds.), The Rambler (1969), Vol. 3, 152-3.
This was what the universities were turning out nowadays. The science-is-a-sacred-cow boys. People who believe you could pour mankind into a test-tube and titrate it, and come up with all the answers to the problems of the human race.
The Day the World Ended (1953). Quoted in Gary Westfahl, Science Fiction Quotations (2005), 320-321.
This world, after all our science and sciences, is still a miracle; wonderful, inscrutable, magical and more, to whosoever will think of it.
The Carlyle Anthology (1876), 230.
Those who think 'Science is Measurement' should search Darwin's works for numbers and equations.
'David H. Hubel', in Larry R. Squire (ed.), The History of Neuroscience in Autobiography (1996), Vol. 1, 313.
Though the parallel is not complete, it is safe to say that science will never touch them unaided by its practical applications. Its wonders may be catalogued for purposes of education, they may be illustrated by arresting experiments, by numbers and magnitudes which startle or fatigue the imagination but they will form no familiar portion of the intellectual furniture of ordinary men unless they be connected, however remotely, with the conduct of ordinary life.
Decadence (1908), 53.
Through it [Science] we believe that man will be saved from misery and degradation, not merely acquiring new material powers, but learning to use and to guide his life with understanding. Through Science he will be freed from the fetters of superstition; through faith in Science he will acquire a new and enduring delight in the exercise of his capacities; he will gain a zest and interest in life such as the present phase of culture fails to supply.
'Biology and the State', The Advancement of Science: Occasional Essays & Addresses (1890), 108-9.
See also: | (14) | Delight (4) | Faith (20) | Learning (31) | Life (110) | Power (8) | Superstition (15) | Understanding (64)
To err is human; to try to prevent recurrence of error is science.
Saying. In Ashton Applewhite, William R. Evans and Andrew Frothingham, And I Quote (2003), 32.
See also: | Error (88)
To one, science is an exalted goddess; to another it is a cow which provides him with butter.
Xenien (1796). In Carl Sagan, Broca's Brain (1986), 38.
To the natural philosopher, to whom the whole extent of nature belongs, all the individual branches of science constitute the links of an endless chain, from which not a single link can be detached without destroying the harmony of the whole.
'Astronomy', Friedrich Schoedler and Henry Medlock (trans.) The Book of Nature (1858), 140.
See also: | Nature (203)
To this day, we see all around us the Promethean drive to omnipotence through technology and to omniscience through science. The effecting of all things possible and the knowledge of all causes are the respective primary imperatives of technology and of science. But the motivating imperative of society continues to be the very different one of its physical and spiritual survival. It is now far less obvious than it was in Francis Bacon's world how to bring the three imperatives into harmony, and how to bring all three together to bear on problems where they superpose.
'Science, Technology and the Fourth Discontinuity' (1982). Reprinted in The Advancement of Science, and its Burdens (1986), 183.
Today's science is tomorrow's technology.
The Legacy of Hiroshima (1962), 146.
See also: | Technology (30)
Today, nothing is unusual about a scientific discovery's being followed soon after by a technical application: The discovery of electrons led to electronics; fission led to nuclear energy. But before the 1880's, science played almost no role in the advances of technology. For example, James Watt developed the first efficient steam engine long before science established the equivalence between mechanical heat and energy.
Edward Teller with Judith L. Shoolery, Memoirs: A Twentieth-Century Journey in Science and Politics (2001), 42.
See also: | Technology (30)
Trace Science, then, with Modesty thy guide,
First strip off all her equipage of Pride,
Deduct what is but Vanity or Dress,
Or Learning's Luxury or idleness,
Or tricks, to show the stretch of the human brain
Mere curious pleasure or ingenious pain.
First strip off all her equipage of Pride,
Deduct what is but Vanity or Dress,
Or Learning's Luxury or idleness,
Or tricks, to show the stretch of the human brain
Mere curious pleasure or ingenious pain.
'Essay On Man', The Works of Alexander Pope (1751), Vol. 3, 31-32.
See also: | Learning (31)
True poetry is truer than science, because it is synthetic, and seizes at once what the combination of all the sciences is able, at most, to attain as a final result. (31 Oct 1852)
Amiel's Journal: The Journal Intime of Henri-Frédéric Amiel, trans. Humphry Ward (1893), 30.
See also: | Poetry (29)
Unfortunately, where there is no experiment of exact science to settle the matter, it takes as much time and trouble to pull down a falsehood as to build up a truth.
Robert Martin (ed.), 'General Remarks on the Practice of Medicine', The Collected Works of Dr. P. M. Latham (1873), Vol. 11, 398.
Unless science is controlled by a greater moral force, it will become the Antichrist prophesied by the early Christians.
Quoted in 'Antiseptic Christianity', book review of Lindbergh, Of Flight and Life in Time magazine, (6 Sep 1948).
See also: | Morality (10)
We are in the grip of a scientific materialism, caught in a vicious cycle where our security today seems to depend on regimentation and weapons which will ruin us tomorrow.
Quoted in 'Antiseptic Christianity', book review of Lindbergh, Of Flight and Life in Time magazine, (6 Sep 1948).
We live an age of science and of abounding accumulation of material things. These did not create the Declaration. Our Declaration created them. … If we are to maintain the great heritage which has been bequeathed to us, we must be like-minded as the fathers who created it.
Address at a Celebration of the 150th Anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, Philadelphia (5 Jul 1926). In William J. Federer, A Treasury of Presidential Quotations (2004), 252.
See also: | Technology (30)
We live in a society exquisitely dependent on science and technology, in which hardly anyone knows anything about science and technology
In M. P. Singh, Quote Unquote: A Handbook of Quotations (2007), 262, but without source reference. Although widely seen, webmaster has found no authoritative reference or primary print source for its origin. Can you help?
We must have the real thing before we can have a science of a thing.
Thomas Carlyle: A History of His Life in London, 1834-1881 (1884), 173.
When science starts to be interpretive
it is more unscientific even than mysticism.
it is more unscientific even than mysticism.
'Self-Protection', David Herbert Lawrence, The Works of D.H. Lawrence (1994), 436.
See also: | Poem (47)
When the aggregate amount of solid matter transported by rivers in a given number of centuries from a large continent, shall be reduced to arithmetical computation, the result will appear most astonishing to those...not in the habit of reflecting how many of the mightiest of operations in nature are effected insensibly, without noise or disorder.
Principles of Geology (1837), Vol. 1, 230.
Where lies the line between sorcery and science? It is only a matter of terminology, my friend.
Cyber Way (1990), 204.
See also: | Magic (4)
Wisdom alone is a science of other sciences, and of itself.
— Plato
&039;Charmides, or Temperance,&039; in The Dialogues of Plato, translated by B. Jowett (1892) 3rd ed., Vol I, 25.
See also: | Wisdom (31)
Without a commitment to science and rationality in its proper domain, there can be no solution to the problems that engulf us. Still, the Yahoos never rest.
Ever Since Darwin (1980),146.
Without an acquaintance with chemistry, the statesman must remain a stranger to the true vital interests of the state, to the means of its organic development and improvement; ... The highest economic or material interests of a country, the increased and more profitable production of food for man and animals, ... are most closely linked with the advancement and diffusion of the natural sciences, especially of chemistry.
Familiar Letters on Chemistry (1851), 3rd edn., 19.
See also: | Agriculture (8) | Chemistry (79) | Chemistry (79) | Country (3) | Development (9) | Economics (12) | Improvement (4) | Knowledge (260) | Nation (11) | Production (5) | Profit (3) | Statesman (2)
Without deductive logic science would be entirely useless. It is merely a barren game to ascend from the particular to the general, unless afterwards we can reverse the process and descend from the general to the particular, ascending and descending like angels on Jacob's ladder.
The Aims of Education and Other Essays (1967), 52.
See also: | Logic (50)
Yesterday's dreams are today's science
In Leonard and Thelma Spinrad, Speaker's Lifetime Library (1979), 220.
See also: | Quip (39)
You look at science (or at least talk of it) as some sort of demoralising invention of man, something apart from real life, and which must be cautiously guarded and kept separate from everyday existence. But science and everyday life cannot and should not be separated. Science, for me, gives a partial explanation for life. In so far as it goes, it is based on fact, experience and experiment.
Letter to Ellis Franklin, no date, possibly summer 1940 whilst Rosalind was an undergraduate at Cambridge. Cited in Brenda Maddox, The Dark Lady of DNA (2002), 60-1.
[An engineer's] invention causes things to come into existence from ideas, makes world conform to thought; whereas science, by deriving ideas from observation, makes thought conform to existence.
Types of Technology', Research in Philosophy & Technology (1978), Vol. 1, 244.
[I doubt that in today's world, I and Francis Crick would ever have had our Eureka moment.] I recently went to my staircase at Clare College, Cambridge and there were women there! he said, with an enormous measure of retrospective sexual frustration. There have been a lot of convincing studies recently about the loss of productivity in the Western male. It may be that entertainment culture now is so engaging that it keeps people satisfied. We didn't have that. Science was much more fun than listening to the radio. When you are 16 or 17 and in that inherently semi-lonely period when you are deciding whether to be an intellectual, many now don't bother.
(Response when asked how he thought the climate of scientific research had changed since he made his discovery of the structure of life in 1953.)
(Response when asked how he thought the climate of scientific research had changed since he made his discovery of the structure of life in 1953.)
Quoted by Tim Adams, The Observer newspaper (London).
See also: | Biography (143)
[I] grew up as a disciple of science. I know its fascination. I have felt the godlike power man derives from his machines.
Quoted in 'Antiseptic Christianity', book review of Lindbergh, Of Flight and Life in Time magazine, (6 Sep 1948).
[I]t is truth alone—scientific, established, proved, and rational truth—which is capable of satisfying nowadays the awakened minds of all classes. We may still say perhaps, 'faith governs the world,'—but the faith of the present is no longer in revelation or in the priest—it is in reason and in science. (15 Nov 1876)
Amiel's Journal: The Journal Intime of Henri-Frédéric Amiel, trans. Humphry Ward (1893), 234.
[John] Dalton was a man of regular habits. For fifty-seven years he walked out of Manchester every day; he measured the rainfall, the temperature—a singularly monotonous enterprise in this climate. Of all that mass of data, nothing whatever came. But of the one searching, almost childlike question about the weights that enter the construction of these simple molecules—out of that came modern atomic theory. That is the essence of science: ask an impertinent question, and you are on the way to the pertinent answer.
The Ascent of Man (1973), 153.
[Science doesn't deal with facts; indeed] fact is an emotion-loaded word for which there is little place in scientific debate.
quoted in A Dictionary of Scientific Quotations by Alan L. MacKay (Bristol, 1991)
See also: | Debate (2)
[Science] dissipates errors born of ignorance about our true relations with nature, errors the more damaging in that the social order should rest only on those relations. TRUTH! JUSTICE! Those are the immutable laws. Let us banish the dangerous maxim that it is sometimes useful to depart from them and to deceive or enslave mankind to assure its happiness.
Exposition du Système du Monde (1796), 2, 312, trans. Charles Coulston Gillispie, Pierre-Simon Laplace 1749-1827: A Life in Exact Science (1997), 175.
See also: | Damage (2) | Dangerous (3) | Deceive (2) | Error (88) | Ignorance (46) | Immutable (2) | Law (108) | Mankind (25) | Maxim (2) | Nature (203) | Relationship (5) | Social Order (3) | Truth (182) | Usefulness (11)
[Science] is the literature of God written on the stars—the trees—the rocks—and more important because [of] its marked utilitarian character.
Quoted in Allan Peskin, Garfield: A Biography (1978), 57.
See also: | Astronomy (57) | Biology (33) | Geology (104) | Importance (8) | Rock (19) | Star (43) | Tree (12)
[The] great fairy Science, who is likely to be queen of all the fairies for many a year to come, can only do you good, and never do you harm…
The Water-babies (1886), 98.
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