SCIENCE QUOTES VI

quotations about science

Science becomes dangerous only when it imagines that it has reached its goal.

GEORGE BERNARD SHAW

The Doctor's Dilemma

Tags: George Bernard Shaw


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


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

Tags: Isaac Asimov


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

Tags: Nicholas Murray Butler


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


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 is the whore of industry and the handmaiden of war.

EDWARD ABBEY

A Voice Crying in the Wilderness (Vox Clamantis in Deserto)

Tags: Edward Abbey


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

Tags: Gregory Benford


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


Scientists actively approach the door to knowledge--the boundary of the domain of what we know. We question and explore and we change our views when facts and logic force us to do so. We are confident only in what we can verify through experiments or in what we can deduce from experimentally confirmed hypotheses.

LISA RANDALL

Knocking on Heaven's Door

Tags: Lisa Randall


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

Tags: Carl Sagan


Don't tell me about the scientific advances of the twentieth century. So men are planning a trip to the moon. So computers run every large industry in America. So body organs are being transplanted like perennials. Big deal! You show me a washer that will launder a pair of socks and return them to you as a pair, and I'll light a firecracker.

ERMA BOMBECK

Forever, Erma

Tags: Erma Bombeck


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"


Scientific knowledge is a body of statements of varying degrees of certainty -- some most unsure, some nearly sure, none absolutely certain.

RICHARD FEYNMAN

The Pleasure of Finding Things Out

Tags: Richard Feynman


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

Tags: Nicholas Sparks


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

Tags: Arthur C. Clarke


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


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

Tags: Ray Bradbury


Science, for all its independent marvels, depends on sense. Science is a powerful tool, and like any other power tool, can be used well or badly. For it to foster understanding rather than constant confusion in this age of alternative and competing "truths" on every important topic, we need to use it more sensibly.

DAVID L. KATZ

"Science And Sense In A Post-Truth World: How Do We Know?", Huffington Post, September 29, 2017


Alas! A scientific man ought to have no wishes, no affections -- a mere heart of stone.

CHARLES DARWIN

letter to T. H. Huxley, July 9, 1857

Tags: Charles Darwin