Science Quotes

The intensest feeling of the beauty of a cloud lighted by the setting sun, is no hindrance to my knowing that the cloud is a vapour of water, subject to all the laws of vapours in a state of suspension; and I am just as likely to allow for, and act on, these physical laws whenever there is occasion to do so, as if I had been incapable of perceiving any distinction between beauty and ugliness.

~ John Stuart Mill

Societies would _not_ be better off if everyone were like Mr Spock, all rationality and no emotion. Instead, a balance - a teaming up of the internal rivals - is optimal for brains. ... Some balance of the emotional and rational systems is needed, and that balance may already be optimized by natural selection in human brains.

~ David Eagleman

Questions of personal priority, however interesting they may be to the persons concerned, sink into insignificance in the prospect of any gain of deeper insight into the secrets of nature.

~ William Thomson

An oyster has hardly any more reasoning power than a scientist has; and so it it is reasonably certain that this one jumped to the conclusion that the nineteen million years was a preparation for him; but that would be just like an oyster, which is the most conceited animal there is, except man. And anyway, this one could not know, at that early date, that he was only an incident in a scheme, and that there was some more in the scheme yet.

~ Mark Twain

The universe seems to be a lot like a car or a computer, in that it's designed to be user-friendly, which doesn't necessarily require the user to have a clue what's going on under the hood.

~ Michelle Templet

Sovereignty unconditionally belongs neither to the people of the nation nor to some supernatural power but to the human mind, to the science and to the high ethical values!

~ Mehmet Murat Ildan

Nothing is easier than yesterday's solutions.

~ Roger Sperry

Theories cannot claim to be indestructible. They are only the plough which the ploughman uses to draw his furrow and which he has every right to discard for another one, of improved design, after the harvest. To be this ploughman, to see my labours result in the furtherance of scientific progress, was the height of my ambition, and now the Swedish Academy of Sciences has come, at this harvest, to add the most brilliant of crowns.

~ Paul Sabatier

He is a unicorn. I want to gently capture him and bring him back to my lab for research.

~ Amanda Mosher

Good judgment comes by way of experience, which comes of bad judgment.

~ Wolf Pascoe

It wasn't long after the discovery of modern anesthesia that people began to die of it.

~ Wolf Pascoe

Mundane, boring stories--not interesting ones--are the ideal in an operating room.

~ Wolf Pascoe

The universe is perfect. All fault lies within the self.

~ Whitney Hale

Boy! There are times when I get the feeling that science develops things that are supposed to be good for us, but that just make trouble.”Dr. Tresselt’s blue eyes seemed to throw out sparks of amusement. “I know how you feel, Joe,” he said. “But my stars, boy, nobody can be alive and never have any trouble! Being alive is just meeting troubles every day and overcoming them. Just to stand up straight against the pull of gravity is a fight, isn’t it?

~ Jay Williams

Energetically speaking, antimatter is the mirror image of matter, so the two instantly cancel each other out if they come in contact.Keeping antimatter isolated from matter is a challenge, of course, because everything on earth is made of matter. The samples have to be stored without ever touching anything at all—even air.

~ Dan Brown

Those who have dissected or inspected many [bodies] have at least learnt to doubt, while others who are ignorant of anatomy and do not take the trouble to attend it are in no doubt at all.

~ Giovanni Battista Morgagni

I submit a body of facts which cannot be invalidated. My opinions may be doubted, denied, or approved, according as they conflict or agree with the opinions of each individual who may read them; but their worth will be best determined by the foundation on which they rest—the incontrovertible facts.

~ William Beaumont

I doubt that Fleming could have obtained a grant for the discovery of penicillin on that basis [a requirement for highly detailed research plans] because he could not have said, 'I propose to have an accident in a culture so that it will be spoiled by a mould falling on it, and I propose to recognize the possibility of extracting an antibiotic from this mould.

~ Hans Selye

Scientific knowledge advances haltingly and is stimulated by contention and doubt.

~ Claude Lévi-Strauss

Science is implausible to untutored human common sense, but that in no way casts doubt on the correctness of well-established scientific findings. Feelings of transcendence are simply that—feelings—and, as such, have no capacity to reveal truths about a world external to the people who have them.

~ Russell Blackford

Love is a chemical reaction, but it cannot be fully understood or defined by science. And though a body cannot exist without a soul, it too cannot be fully understood or defined by science. Love is the most powerful form of energy, but science cannot decipher its elements. Yet the best cure for a sick soul is love, but even the most advanced physician cannot prescribe it as medicine.

~ Suzy Kassem

What actually happens when you die is that your brain stops working and your body rots, like Rabbit did when he died and we buried him in the earth at the bottom of the garden. And all his molecules were broken down into other molecules and they went into the earth and were eaten by worms and went into the plants and if we go dig in the same place in 10 years there will be nothing except his skeleton left. And in 1,000 years even his skeleton will be gone. But that is all right because he is part of the flowers and the apple tree and the hawthorn bush now.When people die they are sometimes put into coffins which means that they don't mix with the earth for a very long time until the wood of the coffin rots.But Mother was cremated. This means that she was put into a coffin and burnt and ground up and turned into ash and smoke. I do not know what happens to the ash and I couldn't ask at the crematorium because I didn't go to the funeral. But the smoke goes out of the chimney and into the air and sometimes I look up into the sky and I think that there are molecules of Mother up there, or in clouds over Africa or the Antartic, or coming down as rain in rainforests in Brazil, or in snow somewhere.

~ Mark Haddon

...Why is it, that from the moment you enter medical school to the moment you retire, that the only disorder you will ever diagnosis with a physics book - is obesity? This is biology folks, it's endocrinology, it's physiology - physics has nothing to do with it. The law of thermodynamics is always true, [but] the energy balance equation is irrelevant...

~ Gary Taubes

the Z-particle Pure energy—no mass at all. It may well be thesmallest building block in nature. Matter is nothing but trapped energy.

~ Dan Brown

In the hands of Science and indomitable energy, results the most gigantic and absorbing may be wrought out by skilful combinations of acknowledged data and the simplest means.

~ George Biddell Airy

Leonardo believed his research had thepotential to convert millions to a more spiritual life. Last year he categorically proved the existence ofan energy force that unites us all. He actually demonstrated that we are all physically connected… that the molecules in your body are intertwined with the molecules in mine… that there is a single force moving within all of us.

~ Dan Brown

Humanity stands ... before a great problem of finding new raw materials and new sources of energy that shall never become exhausted. In the meantime we must not waste what we have, but must leave as much as possible for coming generations.

~ Svante Arrhenius

Religion is the subjective experience. Science is the objective reality. To argue either is a ridiculous waste of time and energy.

~ Steve Maraboli

Science, which is only another name for truth, now holds religious charlatans, self-deceivers and God agents in a certain degree of check--agents and employees, I mean, of a mythical, medieval, man-made God, anthropomorphic in constitution.

~ Luther Burbank

History in its broadest aspect is a record of man's migrations from one environment to another.

~ Ellsworth Huntington

The doctrine of a soul that outlives the body is anything but righteous, because it necessarily devalues the lives we live on this earth.

~ Steven Pinker

Dissection ... teaches us that the body of man is made up of certain kinds of material, so differing from each other in optical and other physical characters and so built up together as to give the body certain structural features. Chemical examination further teaches us that these kinds of material are composed of various chemical substances, a large number of which have this characteristic that they possess a considerable amount of potential energy capable of being set free, rendered actual, by oxidation or some other chemical change. Thus the body as a whole may, from a chemical point of view, be considered as a mass of various chemical substances, representing altogether a considerable capital of potential energy.

~ Michael Foster

Scientific physiology has the task of determining the functions of the animal body and deriving them as a necessary consequence from its elementary conditions.

~ Carl Ludwig

The evidence suggests that you would be more likely to select the tempting chocolate cake when your mind is loaded with digits. System 1 has more influence on behavoir when System 2 is busy, and it has a sweet tooth.

~ Kahneman Daniel

Eve and the apple was the first great step in experimental science.

~ James Bridie

Curiosity lies in a hidden corner of the scientific mind.

~ Eraldo Banovac

Nature answers every question.

~ Lailah Gifty Akita

Science is a satisfactory curiosity.

~ Lailah Gifty Akita

Real scientists do not take vacations. They take field trips...

~ Edward O. Wilson

Science is not an intelligence test. Intuition is important, knowing what kind of questions to ask. The other thing is a passion for getting to the core of the problem.

~ Torsten Wiesel