Experiments Quotes - Page 10

• Nature holds no brief for the human experiment; it must stand or fall by its results.

  George Bernard Shaw

  Fall, Results, Mankind

  George Bernard Shaw (2015). “The Collected Plays of George Bernard Shaw (Illustrated): Including Renowned Titles like Pygmalion, Mrs. Warren’s Profession, Candida, Arms and The Man, Man and Superman, The Inca Of Perusalem, Macbeth Skit, Caesar and Cleopatra, Androcles And The Lion”, p.2851, e-artnow

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• We have solved, by fair experiment, the great and interesting question whether freedom of religion is compatible with order in government and obedience to the laws. And we have experienced the quiet as well as the comfort which results from leaving every one to profess freely and openly those principles of religion which are the inductions of his own reason and the serious convictions of his own inquiries.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Religious, Order, Law

  Thomas Jefferson (1854). “The Writings of Thomas Jefferson: Being His Autobiography, Correspondence, Reports, Messages, Addresses, and Other Writings, Official and Private : Published by the Order of the Joint Committee of Congress on the Library, from the Original Manuscripts, Deposited in the Department of State”, p.139

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• It yet remains a problem to be solved in human affairs, whether any free government can be permanent, where the public worship of God, and the support of religion, constitute no part of the policy or duty of the state in any assignable shape. The future experience of Christendom, and chiefly of the American states, must settle this problem, as yet new in the history of the world, abundant, as it has been, in experiments in the theory of government.

  Joseph Story

  Religious, Government, Support

  Joseph Story (1833). “Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States: With a Preliminary Review of the Constitutional History of the Colonies and States, Before the Adoption of the Constitution”, p.700

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• There are many examples of old, incorrect theories that stubbornly persisted, sustained only by the prestige of foolish but well-connected scientists... Many of these theories have been killed off only when some decisive experiment exposed their incorrectness... Thus the yeoman work in any science, and especially physics, is done by the experimentalist, who must keep the theoreticians honest.

  Michio Kaku

  Honesty, Example, Yeoman

  "Hyperspace: A Scientific Odyssey Through Parallel Universes, Time Warps, and the 10th Dimension". Book by Michio Kaku, March 24, 1994.

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• Doing for people what they can and ought to do for themselves is a dangerous experiment.

  Samuel Gompers

  People, Dangerous, Busybodies

  Samuel Gompers, John McBride, William Green (1922). “The American Federationist”

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• The trouble with tea is that originally it was quite a good drink. So a group of the most eminent British scientists put their heads together and made complicated biological experiments to find a way of spoiling it. To the eternal glory of British science, their labour bore fruit.

  George Mikes

  Tea, Together, Groups

  "How to Be an Alien: A Handbook for Beginners and More Advanced Pupils". Book by George Mikes, 1946.

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• If you double the number of experiments you do per year you're going to double your inventiveness.

  Jeff Bezos

  Technology, Years, Numbers

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• The most important and visible outcropping of the action bias in excellent companies is their willingness to try things out, to experiment. If you wait until you believe you are safe, sure to be without occasional foolish feelings, you've most likely waited too long.

  Tom Peters

  Believe, Long, Waiting

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• Capitalism has created the highest standard of living ever known on earth. The evidence is incontrovertible. The contrast between West and East Berlin is the latest demonstration, like a laboratory experiment for all to see. Yet those who are loudest in proclaiming their desire to eliminate poverty are loudest in denouncing capitalism. Man's well-being is not their goal.

  Ayn Rand

  Men, East Berlin, Goal

  Ayn Rand, Nathaniel Branden, Alan Greenspan, Robert Hessen (1986). “Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal”, p.126, Penguin

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• Try this thought experiment. Pretend you're a tyrant. Among your many liberty-destroying objectives are extermination of blacks, Jews and Catholics. Which would you prefer, a United States with political power centralized in Washington, powerful government agencies with detailed information on Americans and compliant states or power widely dispersed over 50 states, thousands of local jurisdictions and a limited federal government?

  Walter E. Williams

  Powerful, Agency, Government

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• A central lesson of science is that to understand complex issues (or even simple ones), we must try to free our minds of dogma and to guarantee the freedom to publish, to contradict, and to experiment. Arguments from authority are unacceptable.

  Carl Sagan

  Freedom, Science, Simple

  Carl Sagan (2011). “Billions & Billions: Thoughts on Life and Death at the Brink of the Millennium”, p.176, Ballantine Books

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• You look at science (or at least talk of it) as some sort of demoralising invention of man, something apart from real life, and which must be cautiously guarded and kept separate from everyday existence. But science and everyday life cannot and should not be separated. Science, for me, gives a partial explanation for life. In so far as it goes, it is based on fact, experience and experiment.

  Rosalind Franklin

  Real, Science, Men

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• What is a scientist?... We give the name scientist to the type of man who has felt experiment to be a means guiding him to search out the deep truth of life, to lift a veil from its fascinating secrets, and who, in this pursuit, has felt arising within him a love for the mysteries of nature, so passionate as to annihilate the thought of himself.

  Maria Montessori

  Love, Life, Mean

  Maria Montessori (2013). “The Montessori Reader”, p.28, Simon and Schuster

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• I'm convinced that a controlled disrespect for authority is essential to a scientist. All the good experimental physicists I have known have had an intense curiosity that no Keep Out sign could mute. Physicists do, of course, show a healthy respect for High Voltage, Radiation, and Liquid Hydrogen signs. They are not reckless. I can think of only six who have been killed on the job.

  Luis Walter Alvarez

  Jobs, Science, Thinking

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• If we can possibly avoid wrecking this little planet of ours, we will, But-there must be risks! There must be. In experimental work there always are!

  George Herbert

  Science, Risk, Littles

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• In experimental philosophy, propositions gathered from phenomena by induction should be considered either exactly or very nearly true notwithstanding any contrary hypotheses, until yet other phenomena make such propositions either more exact or liable to exceptions.

  Isaac Newton

  Philosophy, Science, Liable

  Isaac Newton, I. Bernard Cohen, Anne Whitman (1999). “The Principia: Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy”, p.796, Univ of California Press

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• In going on with these Experiments, how many pretty systems do we build, which we soon find ourselves oblig'd to destroy! If there is no other Use discover'd of Electricity, this, however, is something considerable, that it may help to make a vain Man humble.

  Benjamin Franklin

  Humble, Science, Men

  Benjamin Franklin (1972). “Benjamin Franklin: a biography in his own words”

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• In recent weeks we learned that scientists have created human embryos in test tubes solely to experiment on them. This is deeply troubling, and a warning sign that should prompt all of us to think through these issues very carefully.

  George W. Bush

  Science, Thinking, Issues

  Remarks on Stem Cell Research, delivered 9 August 2001

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• It is madness and a contradiction to expect that things which were never yet performed should be effected, except by means hitherto untried.

  Francis Bacon

  Mean, Science, Madness

  Francis Bacon (1813). “The Novum Organum Scientiarum: In Two Parts”, p.2

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• It is very different to make a practical system and to introduce it. A few experiments in the laboratory would prove the practicability of system long before it could be brought into general use. You can take a pipe and put a little coal in it, close it up, heat it and light the gas that comes out of the stem, but that is not introducing gas lighting. I'll bet that if it were discovered to-morrow in New York that gas could be made out of coal it would be at least five years before the system would be in general use.

  Thomas A. Edison

  New York, Science, Light

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• It was a great step in science when men became convinced that, in order to understand the nature of things, they must begin by asking, not whether a thing is good or bad, noxious or beneficial, but of what kind it is? And how much is there of it? Quality and Quantity were then first recognised as the primary features to be observed in scientific inquiry.

  James Clerk Maxwell

  Science, Men, Discovery

  James Clerk Maxwell, W. D. Niven (2003). “The Scientific Papers of James Clerk Maxwell”, p.217, Courier Corporation

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• Let the experiment be made.

  Benjamin Franklin

  Science, Made

  Benjamin Franklin, Edmund Sears Morgan (2007). “Not Your Usual Founding Father: Selected Readings from Benjamin Franklin”, p.113, Yale University Press

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• My Design in this Book is not to explain the Properties of Light by Hypotheses, but to propose and prove them by Reason and Experiments: In order to which, I shall premise the following Definitions and Axioms.

  Isaac Newton

  Book, Science, Light

  Opticks Book One, Part I

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• Natural science is founded on minute critical views of the general order of events taking place upon our globe, corrected, enlarged, or exalted by experiments, in which the agents concerned are placed under new circumstances, and their diversified properties separately examined. The body of natural science, then, consists of facts; is analogy,-the relation of resemblance of facts by which its different parts are connected, arranged, and employed, either for popular use, or for new speculative improvements.

  Humphry Davy

  Views, Order, Different

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• No isolated experiment, however significant in itself, can suffice for the experimental demonstration of any natural phenomenon; for the "one chance in a million" will undoubtedly occur, with no less and no more than its appropriate frequency, however surprised we may be that it should occur to us.

  Ronald Fisher

  Science, May, Chance

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