quotations about science
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
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
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
Better for science that she should be free, in holy poverty, to go where she will and say what she knows, than that she should be hired out at so much a year to say things pleasing to the many, and to those who guide the many.
CHARLES KINGSLEY
"Soldiers of Science", The Works of Charles Kingsley
There is not a discovery in science, however revolutionary, however sparkling with insight, that does not arise out of what went before.
ISAAC ASIMOV
Adding a Dimension
Science is a subordinate category. When science offers itself as the final stage or form of knowing, it is guilty of a false quantity, in that it puts the accent, which belongs elsewhere, upon the penultimate.
NICHOLAS MURRAY BUTLER
lecture at Columbia University, March 4, 1908
Science is ever self-corrective.
PIERRE SIMON LAPLACE
attributed, The World's Sages, Thinkers and Reformers
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.
THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY
"On the Educational Value of the Natural History Sciences", Lay Sermons, Addresses and Reviews
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
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
Science is a method to keep yourself from kidding yourself.
EDWIN H. LAND
attributed, QFINANCE: The Ultimate Resource
So what is science, and why do we consider it so useful and important? Despite the Hollywood stereotypes, science is not about white lab coats and bubbling beakers or sparkling apparatuses. Science is a way of looking at the world using a specific toolbox--the scientific method.
DONALD PROTHERO
"The Holocaust, Denier's Playbook, and the Tobacco Smokescreen: Common Threads in the Thinking and Tactics of Denialists and Pseudoscientists", Philosophy of Pseudoscience: Reconsidering the Demarcation Problem
Science had better not free the minds of men too much, before it has tamed their instincts.
JEAN ROSTAND
The Substance of Men
O star-eyed Science, hast thou wander'd there,
To waft us home the message of despair?
THOMAS CAMPBELL
Pleasures of Hope
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
For decades now the picture of the world painted by the scientists had become strange, distant, unbelievable. Far easier, then, to ignore it than try to understand. Things were too complicated. Why bother? Turn on the telly, luv. Right.
GREGORY BENFORD
Timescape
Understanding science is necessary to make informed decisions on issues both private and public -- from individual health care to national defense.
JOHN DURANT
"John Durant plans a new era for the MIT Museum", MIT News, September 27, 2017
Science unfolds the wisdom of God.
JUAN DE PINEDA
attributed, Day's Collacon
Science admires and bows to nature.
PAWEL STRZELECKI
attributed, Day's Collacon