quotations about science
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
The most exciting thing about being a scientist is not knowing and being wrong. Because that means there is a lot left to learn.
LAWRENCE M. KRAUSS
"Cosmic Connections", 2011
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
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 an intellectual journey, and to me, it's not the destination, it's the journeyto get there. It's a way of thinking and it's an intellectual curiosity, a desire to know how the world works, and to know what the fundamental principles of the world are, and to know our place in it. I think once we stop asking questions like "what is the age of the universe," or "how are the instructions of DNA carried out on a microscopic level," once we stop asking questions like that, we're dead.
ALAN LIGHTMAN
"An Interview with Dr. Alan Lightman: At the Intersection of the Sciences and Humanities", aegis, spring 2006
In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion.
CARL SAGAN
Keynote address to the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal, 1987
Science is truth for life
Watch religion fall obsolete
Science Will be truth for life
Technology as nature
10,000 MANIACS
"Planned Obsolescence"
Every science owns kin with its sister science.
HYPATIA
attributed, Day's Collacon
I consider it an error in scientific communication that, most of the time, merely the polished and flawless results of natural research are displayed, as in an art show. And exhibit of the finished product alone has many drawbacks and dangers for both its creator and its users. The creator of the product will be only too ready to demonstrate perfection and flawlessness while concealing gaps, uncertainties and discordant contradictions of his insight into nature. He thus belittles the meaning of the real process of natural research. The user of the product will not appreciate the rigorous demands made on the natural scientist when the latter has to reveal and describe the secrets of nature in a practical way. He will never learn to think for himself and to cope by himself.
WILHELM REICH
Ether, God and Devil
The immense advantage of positive science over theology, metaphysics, politics, and judicial right consists in this--that, in place of the false and fatal abstractions set up by these doctrines, it posits true abstractions which express the general nature and logic of things, their general relations, and the general laws of their development.
MIKHAIL BAKUNIN
God and the State
Science is not the total answer; this I know, this I have learned in my lifetime. And that leaves me with the belief that miracles, no matter how inexplicable or unbelievable, are real and can occur without regard to the natural order of things.
NICHOLAS SPARKS
The Notebook
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
As our own species is in the process of proving, one cannot have superior science and inferior morals. The combination is unstable and self-destroying.
ARTHUR C. CLARKE
attributed, Clarke Foundation
The best scientist is open to experience and begins with romance -- the idea that anything is possible.
RAY BRADBURY
Los Angeles Times, August 9, 1976
In the history of science and throughout the whole course of its progress we see certain epochs following one another more or less rapidly. Some important view is expressed, it may be original or only revived; sooner or later it receives recognition; fellow workers spring up; the outcome of it finds its way into the schools; it is taught and handed down; and we observe, unhappily, that it does not in the least matter whether the view be true or false. In either case its course is the same; in either case it comes in the end to be a mere phrase, a lifeless word stamped on the memory.
JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE
The Maxims and Reflections of Goethe
Weird Science
Plastic tubes and pots and pans
Bits and pieces and
Magic from the hand
We're makin'
Things I've never seen before
Behind bolted doors
Talent and imagination
Not what teacher said to do
Makin' dreams come true
OINGO BOINGO
"Weird Science"
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"
By science men may learn the mysteries of the spirit world.
JOHN DEE
attributed, Day's Collacon
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.
ALBERT EINSTEIN
The World As I See It