Quotes about Science
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Last modified: October 26, 2001

"Dare to be naive." - Richard Buckminster Fuller

"What lies before us and what lies behind us are small matters compared to what lies within us.  And when we bring what is within us out into the world, miracles happen." - Henry David Thoreau

"As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain; and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality." - Albert Einstein

"Where the telescope ends, the microscope begins.  Which of the two has the grander view?" - Victor Hugo

"The larger the island of knowledge, the greater the shoreline of wonder." - Ralph Sockman

"Common sense is that layer of prejudices which we acquire before we are sixteen." - Albert Einstein

"Curiosity is the very basis of education and if you tell me that curiosity killed the cat, I say only the cat died nobly." - Arnold Edinborough

"If you think education is expensive try ignorance." - Derek Bok

"Psychologist: A man who, when a good-looking girl enters a room, watches everybody else." - Anonymous

"Natural science does not simply describe and explain nature, it is part of the interplay between nature and ourselves." - Werner Heisenberg (1901-1976); 1932 Nobel prize winner for his developing the theory of quantum mechanics.

"I never said it. Honest. Oh, I said there are maybe 100 billion galaxies and 10 billion trillion stars. It's hard to talk about the Cosmos without using big numbers. I said "billion" many times on the Cosmos television series, which was seen by a great many people. But I never said "billions and billions." For one thing, it's too imprecise." - Carl Sagan (1934-1996), Billions & Billions

"Our job in physics is to see things simply, to understand a great many complicated phenomena, in terms of a few simple principles." - Steven Weinberg (1933- )

"The crocodile cannot turn its head. Like science, it must always go forward with all-devouring jaws." – Pyotr Leonidovich Kapitsa (1894-1984)

"I haven't failed, I've found 10,000 ways that don't work." - Thomas Edison (1847-1931)

"Scientists often make their greatest discoveries just at those moments when they follow their intuition instead of equations. In other words, when they behave the least ‘scientifically.’" – Alan Lightman (1948 - )

"Discovery consists of seeing what everybody has seen, thinking what nobody has thought." - Albert Szent-Gyorgyi (Nobel Laureate 1937; discoverer of Vitamins C and B2). From Physlink (http://www.physlink.com/)

"It has no fear." - Yasser Sierawan, chess Grand Master, describing one competitive advantage of IBM's Deep Blue chess computer, 1996

"Matter is less material and the mind less spiritual than is generally supposed. The habitual separation of physics and psychology, mind and matter is metaphysically indefensible." - Bertrand Russell

"You can’t depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus." - Mark Twain

"The best thing for being sad," replied Merlin, beginning to puff and blow, "is to learn something.  That is the only thing that never fails. You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honor trampled in the sewers by base minds.  There is only one thing for it then -- to learn.    Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting. Learning is the thing for you." - Terence H. White The Once and Future King

"Imagination is more important than knowledge." - Albert Einstein

"Restlessness and discontent are the first necessities of progress." - Thomas A. Edison

"Do you believe then that sciences would ever have arisen and become great if there had not beforehand been magicians, alchemists, astrologers, and wizards who thirsted and hungered after secret and forbidden powers?" - Friedrich Nietzsche

"Every creative act involves ... a new innocence of perception, liberated from the cataract of accepted belief." - Arthur Koestler

"Training is everything. The peach was once a bitter almond; cauliflower is nothing more than cabbage with a college education." - Mark Twain

"There is no inductive method which could lead to the fundamental concepts of physics. Failure to understand this fact constituted the basic philosophical error of so many investigators of the nineteenth century." - Albert Einstein (1879-1955)

A student recognizes Einstein in a train and asks: Excuse me, professor, but does New York stop by this train?

"To stimulate creativity, one must develop the childlike inclination for play and the childlike desire for recognition." - Albert Einstein (1879-1955)

"What a wonderful and amazing scheme have we here of the magnificent vastness of the Universe! So many Suns, so many Earths ...!" - Christian Huygens (1629-1695)

"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former." -- Albert Einstein (1879-1955)

"The mind of man may be compared to a music instrument with a certain range of notes, beyond which in both directions we have an infinitude of silence." -- John Tyndall (1820-1893)

"The mathematician's patterns, like the painter's or the poets, must be beautiful; the ideas, like the colours or the words, must fit together in a harmonious way. Beauty is the first test: there is no permanent place in the world for ugly mathematics." - G. H. Hardy (1877-1947), A Mathematician's Apology, 1940.

"If you cannot saw with a file or file with a saw, then you will be no good as an experimentalist." - Augustin Fresnel (1788-1827)

"An expert is someone who knows some of the worst mistakes that can be made in his subject and how to avoid them." - Werner Heisenberg (1901-1976)

"An important scientific innovation rarely makes its way by gradually winning over and converting its opponents: it rarely happens that Saul becomes Paul. What does happen is that its opponents gradually die out, and that the growing generation is familiarized with the ideas from the beginning." - Max Planck (1858-1947)

"The difference between what the most and the least learned people know is inexpressibly trivial in relation to that which is unknown." - Albert Einstein (1879-1955)

"Creative minds have always been known to survive any kind of bad training." - Anna Freud

"Kids' views are often just as valid as the teachers'. The best teachers are the ones that know that." - Morley Saefer

"Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem." [Entities should not be needlessly multiplied.] - Occam, William of (c. 1280-1349) Quodlibeta
[Known popularly as Occam's Razor, this quote is generally paraphrased as "If two theories explain the facts equally well then the simpler theory is to be preferred."]

"We should take care not to make intellect our god; it has powerful muscles but no personality." - Albert Einstein

"To myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me... If I have seen a little further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants." - Isaac Newton

"The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious.  It is the fundamental emotion that stands at the cradle of true art and true science. Whoever does not know it and can no longer wonder, no longer marvel, is as good as dead, and his eyes are dimmed." - Albert Einstein, The World As I See It

"Discoveries in pure science are not just about nature. They are about people as well. After Copernicus, we have taken a more humble view of our place in the cosmos. After Darwin, we have recognized new relatives hanging from the family tree. We need to be perodically shaken up. We need periodically to break free from the endless cycle of one generation passing dimly into the next, one human lifetime after another. Changing our world view helps us break free." - Alan Lightman, "Time for the Stars" in Dance for Two

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