SCIENCE QUOTES V

quotations about science

Although I was first drawn to math and science by the certainty they promised, today I find the unanswered questions and the unexpected connections at least as attractive.

LISA RANDALL

Warped Passages

Tags: Lisa Randall


The scientific attitude of mind involves a sweeping away of all other desires in the interests of the desire to know--it involves suppression of hopes and fears, loves and hates, and the whole subjective emotional life, until we become subdued to the material, able to see it frankly, without preconceptions, without bias, without any wish except to see it as it is, and without any belief that what it is must be determined by some relation, positive or negative, to what we should like it to be, or to what we can easily imagine it to be.

BERTRAND RUSSELL

Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays


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.

STEPHEN HAWKING

A Brief History of Time

Tags: Stephen Hawking


Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science.

CHARLES DARWIN

The Descent of Man

Tags: Charles Darwin


Science admires and bows to nature.

PAWEL STRZELECKI

attributed, Day's Collacon


Leave your faith in science's hands
Research might lead to your salvation
While you're in a state of suspended animation

PESTILENCE

"Suspended Animation"


Science is ever self-corrective.

PIERRE SIMON LAPLACE

attributed, The World's Sages, Thinkers and Reformers


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.

BERTRAND RUSSELL

What I Believe

Tags: Bertrand Russell


I believe that for permanent survival, man must balance science with other qualities of life, qualities of body and spirit as well as those of mind -- qualities he cannot develop when he lets mechanics and luxury insulate him too greatly from the earth to which he was born.

CHARLES LINDBERGH

speech at the Annual Wright Dinner at the Aero Club of Washington, 1949

Tags: Charles Lindbergh


The great contribution of science is to demonstrate that a person can regard the world as chaos, but can find in himself a method of perceiving, within that chaos, small arrangements of order, that out of himself, and out of the order that previous scientists have generated, he can make things that are exciting and thrilling to make, that are deeply spiritual contributions to himself and to his friends. The scientist comes to the world and says, "I do not understand the divine source, but I know, in a way that I don't understand, that out of chaos I can make order, out of loneliness I can make friendship, out of ugliness I can make beauty."

EDWIN H. LAND

address at MIT, "Generation of Greatness: The Idea of a University in an Age of Science", May 22, 1957

Tags: Edwin H. Land


Some people think that science is just all this technology around, but NO it's something much deeper than that. Science, scientific thinking, scientific method is for me the only philosophical construct that the human race has developed to determine what is reliably true.

SIR HARRY KROTO

"Ask a Nobel Laureate", September 23, 2010


Why does this magnificent applied science which saves work and makes life easier bring us so little happiness? The simple answer runs: Because we have not yet learned to make sensible use of it. In war it serves that we may poison and mutilate each other. In peace it has made our lives hurried and uncertain. Instead of freeing us in great measure from spiritually exhausting labor, it has made men into slaves of machinery, who for the most part complete their monotonous long day's work with disgust and must continually tremble for their poor rations. ... It is not enough that you should understand about applied science in order that your work may increase man's blessings. Concern for the man himself and his fate must always form the chief interest of all technical endeavours; concern for the great unsolved problems of the organization of labor and the distribution of goods in order that the creations of our mind shall be a blessing and not a curse to mankind. Never forget this in the midst of your diagrams and equations.

ALBERT EINSTEIN

speech at California Institute of Technology, The New York Times, February 16, 1931

Tags: Albert Einstein


By science men may learn the mysteries of the spirit world.

JOHN DEE

attributed, Day's Collacon

Tags: John Dee


Science is not a body of knowledge. It is a system of thought and of checks and balances. You know what the scientific method is? I'll tell you what it is. I'm going to tell you a way no one has ever told you: The scientific method is do whatever it takes to not fool yourself into thinking something is true that is not or that something is not true that is. That's the scientific method.

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON

"Neil DeGrasse Tyson Says Science Isn't Dead -- And You're The One Who's Saving It", Good Education, September 29, 2017


Human laws change, but science is divine, and its laws are eternal.

ALPHONSO X

attributed, Day's Collacon


Science unfolds the wisdom of God.

JUAN DE PINEDA

attributed, Day's Collacon


Any physical theory is always provisional, in the sense that it is only a hypothesis: you can never prove it. No matter how many times the results of experiments agree with some theory, you can never be sure that the next time the result will not contradict the theory. On the other hand, you can disprove a theory by finding even a single observation that disagrees with the predictions of the theory. As philosopher of science Karl Popper has emphasized, a good theory is characterized by the fact that it makes a number of predictions that could in principle be disproved or falsified by observation. Each time new experiments are observed to agree with the predictions the theory survives, and our confidence in it is increased; but if ever a new observation is found to disagree, we have to abandon or modify the theory.

STEPHEN HAWKING

A Brief History of Time

Tags: Stephen Hawking


O star-eyed Science, hast thou wander'd there,
To waft us home the message of despair?

THOMAS CAMPBELL

Pleasures of Hope

Tags: Thomas Campbell


Science fails to recognize the single most
Potent element of human existence
Letting the reins go to the unfolding
Is faith, faith, faith, faith

SYSTEM OF A DOWN

"Science"


Everything aspires to the light. You don't have to chase down a fly to get rid of it -- you just darken the room, leave a crack of light in a window, and out he goes. Works every time. We all have that instinct, that aspiration. Science can't dim that. All science can do is turn out the false lights so the true light can get us home.

TOBIAS WOLFF

Old School

Tags: Tobias Wolff