Science Quotes

Eva’s only fault has been the one of wanting to know more, to experiment and search with her own sources the laws of the Universe, of her own body and to refuse the teachings from “above”. Eva, basically, represents the curiosity of science against the passive acceptance that belongs to faith.

~ Margherita Hack

I suspect that scientists are driven by the sense that the world out there - reality - contains a hidden order, and the scientist is trying to elucidate the hidden order in our reality. And that impulse is what the scientist shares with the mystic. The impulse to get to the bottom of things. To know how the world really works. To know the nature of things.

~ Michael Crichton

Io, Europa, Ganimedes puer, atque Calistolascivo nimium perplacuere Iovi.(Io, Europa, the boy Ganymede, and Callisto greatly pleased lustful Jupiter.)[Marius naming Jupiter's moons]

~ Simon Marius

Those, therefore, who effect to despise profane Science are themselves despicable. It is their own incapacity for true Thought of any serious kind, their vanity and pertness; nay more also! their own subconsciousness sense of their own shame and idleness, that induces them to build these flimsy fortification of pretentious ignorance.

~ Aleister Crowley

For all knowledge and wonder (which is the seed of knowledge) is an impression of pleasure in itself.

~ Francis Bacon

Science makes people reach selflessly for truth and objectivity; it teaches people to accept reality, with wonder and admiration, not to mention the deep awe and joy that the natural order of things brings to the true scientist.

~ Lise Meitner

I still find the moon more amazing than the fact men have walked on it.

~ Marty Rubin

Much as I admired the elegance of physical theories, which at that time geology wholly lacked, I preferred a life in the woods to one in the laboratory.

~ J. Tuzo Wilson

Innovation is the art at the eyes of artist, the science at the mind of scientist, and the bridge between the art and science.

~ Pearl Zhu

It necessarily follows that chance alone is at the source of every innovation, and of all creation in the biosphere. Pure chance, absolutely free but blind, at the very root of the stupendous edifice of evolution: this central concept of modern biology is no longer one among many other possible or even conceivable hypotheses. It is today the sole conceivable hypothesis, the only one that squares with observed and tested fact. And nothing warrants the supposition - or the hope - that on this score our position is ever likely to be revised. There is no scientific concept, in any of the sciences, more destructive of anthropocentrism than this one.

~ Jacques Monod

The worst question ever asked, is the one which is never asked.

~ Krishna Saagar

For every tree, we plant, we saves a life.

~ Lailah Gifty Akita

This gesture is one of the motifs of modernity's turn against the principle of imitating nature, that is to say, imitating predefined morphological expectations. It is still capable of perceiving message-totalities and autonomous thing-signals when no morphologically intact figures are left - indeed, precisely then. The sense for perfection withdraws from the forms of nature - probably because nature itself is in the process of losing its ontological authority. The popularization of photography also increasingly devalues the standard views of things. As the first edition of the visible, nature comes into discredit. It can no longer assert its authority as the sender of binding messages - for reasons that ultimately come from its disenchantment through being scientifically explored and technically outdone. After this shift, 'being perfect' takes on an altered meaning: it means having something to say that is more meaningful than the chatter of conventional totalities. Now the torsos and their ilk have their turn: the hour of those forms that do not remind us of anything has come. Fragments, cripples and hybrids formulate something that cannot be conveyed by the common whole forms and happy integrities; intensity beats standard perfection.

~ Peter Sloterdijk

It is true that a mathematician who is not somewhat of a poet, will never be a perfect mathematician.

~ Karl Weierstrass

Mars and my own stupidity keep trying to kill me.

~ Andy Weir

The method of science is tried and true. It is not perfect, it's just the best we have. And to abandon it, with its skeptical protocols, is the pathway to a dark age.

~ Carl Sagan

People blame science. Shit, man, people shouldn’t blame science. People should blame people.

~ Mira Grant

You know, rust is just oxidation. The same chemical process as fire. Oxygen interacts with steel, electrons drift from one element to the other. So really, rust is a slow fire. Isn't that weird? Water causes something to burn.

~ Leah Raeder

Briefly, in the act of composition, as an instrument there intervenes and is most potent, fire, flaming, fervid, hot; but in the very substance of the compound there intervenes, as an ingredient, as it is commonly called, as a material principle and as a constituent of the whole compound the material and principle of fire, not fire itself. This I was the first to call phlogiston.

~ Georg Ernst Stahl

They had been talking about astrology, a forbidden science that was not pursued in the cloister. Narcissus had said that astrology was an attempt to arrange and order the many different types of human beings according to their natures and destinies. At this point Goldmund had objected: You're forever talking of differences - I've finally recognised a pet theory of yours. When you speak of the great difference that is supposed to exist between you and me, for instance, it seems to me that this difference is nothing but your strange determination to establish differences.Narcissus: Yes. You've hit the nail on the head. That's it: to you, differences are quite unimportant; to me, they are what matters most. I am a scholar by nature; science is my vocation. And science is, to quote your words, nothing but the 'determination to establish differences.' Its essence couldn't be defined more accurately. For us, the men of science, nothing is as important as the establishment of differences; science is the art of differentiation. Discovering in every man that which distinguishes him from others is to know him.

~ Hermann Hesse

You can flip a coin but Schrodinger's pet cat will still be in that box.

~ Scott Edward Shjefte

Time becomes meaningless without memory.

~ Jon Edgell

The ultimate goal of a meteorologist is to set up differential equations of the movements of the air and to obtain, as their integral, the general atmospheric circulation, and as particular integrals the cyclones, anticyclones, tornados, and thunderstorms.

~ Andrija Maurović

It becomes the urgent duty of mathematicians, therefore, to meditate about the essence of mathematics, its motivations and goals and the ideas that must bind divergent interests together.

~ Richard Courant

Science is not, as so many seem to think, something apart, which has to do with telescopes, retorts, and test-tubes, and especially with nasty smells, but it is a way of searching out by observation, trial and classification; whether the phenomena investigated be the outcome of human activities, or of the more direct workings of nature's laws. Its methods admit of nothing untidy or slip-shod; its keynote is accuracy and its goal is truth.

~ Archibald E. Garrod

I believe that this Nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to earth.

~ John F. Kennedy

For a dying man it is not a difficult decision [to agree to become the world's first heart transplant] ... because he knows he is at the end. If a lion chases you to the bank of a river filled with crocodiles, you will leap into the water convinced you have a chance to swim to the other side. But you would not accept such odds if there were no lion.

~ Christiaan Barnard

The philosopher seeks a generality beyond the boundaries of science, he attempts to frame a comprehensive and coherent framework of ideas within which the partial results of science may become more intelligible.

~ William Barrett

The unity of all science consists alone in its method, not in its material.

~ Karl Pearson

He [Alexander von Humboldt] was to science what Shakespeare was to the drama.

~ Robert G. Ingersoll

I think it's reasonable to suppose that one could oscillate between being biologically 20 and biologically 25 indefinitely.

~ Aubrey De Grey

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 success 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.

~ Charles A. Lindbergh

There is a reward structure in science that is very interesting: Our highest honors go to those who disprove the findings of the most revered among us. So Einstein is revered not just because he made so many fundamental contributions to science, but because he found an imperfection in the fundamental contribution of Isaac Newton.

~ Carl Sagan

[Audubon's works are] the most splendid monuments which art has erected in honor of ornithology.

~ Georges Cuvier

In the vestibule of the Manchester Town Hall are placed two life-sized marble statues facing each other. One of these is that of John Dalton ... the other that of James Prescott Joule. ... Thus the honour is done to Manchester's two greatest sons—to Dalton, the founder of modern Chemistry and of the atomic theory, and the laws of chemical-combining proportions; to Joule, the founder of modern physics and the discoverer of the Law of Conservation of Energy.One gave to the world the final proof ... that in every kind of chemical change no loss of matter occurs; the other proved that in all the varied modes of physical change, no loss of energy takes place.

~ Henry Enfield Roscoe

[Alexander von Humboldt was the] greatest scientific traveller who ever lived.

~ Charles Darwin

I do not believe in a Science that cannot wipe the tears of a widow, or bring a piece of bread to the starving mouth of an orphan. However sophisticated may be the scientific achievements, however well-spun may be the philosophy behind them, I do not call them Science, unless they are put to practice in the pursuit of easing the sufferings of the human society.

~ Abhijit Naskar

If you are a student of science and still haven't studied the works of Tesla, then your entire scientific education has been a waste of time. Because most of the technological wonders of 21st Century, which the modern humans are so proud of, are the product of one marvellous human mind - Nikola Tesla.

~ Abhijit Naskar

I am proud to say to you that, I am a scientist and I accept all religions to be biologically true and equal. My pursuit of understanding the human mind has taught me universal tolerance.

~ Abhijit Naskar

Philosophy lets you imagine the infinity, and Science makes you get there.

~ Abhijit Naskar