Modern Science Quotes

• The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not 'Eureka!' but 'That's funny...'

  Isaac Asimov

  Inspirational, Funny, Motivational

  "Betting On a Bass That Belts Them Out; Singing Fish Becomes Season’s Unlikely Hit" by Darragh Johnson, The Washington Post, July 30, 2000.

  104 Copy quote

  Show source

• A religion old or new, that stressed the magnificence of the universe as revealed by modern science, might be able to draw forth reserves of reverence and awe hardly tapped by the conventional faiths. Sooner or later such a religion will emerge.

  Carl Sagan

  Science, Religion, Stressed

  Carl Sagan, Ann Druyan (2011). “Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space”, p.71, Ballantine Books

  62 Copy quote

  Show source

• However far modern science and techniques have fallen short of their inherent possibilities, they have taught mankind at least one lesson; nothing is impossible.

  Lewis Mumford

  Positive, Science, Technology

  "Technics and Civilization". Book by Lewis Mumford. Chapter 8, section 13, 1934.

  16 Copy quote

  Show source

• In science it often happens that scientists say, "You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken..."

  Carl Sagan

  Change, Science, Theoretical Physics

  Keynote address at CSICOP conference, 1987.

  29 Copy quote

  Show source

• The radical novelty of modern science lies precisely in the rejection of the belief... that the forces which move the stars and atoms are contingent upon the preferences of the human heart.

  Walter Lippmann

  Stars, Lying, Moving

  Walter Lippmann (1960). “A Preface To Morals”, p.127, Transaction Publishers

  65 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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

  Change, Learning, Humility

  Keynote address at CSICOP conference in 1987. "Do Science and the Bible Conflict?" Book by Judson Poling, p. 30, 2003.

  55 Copy quote

  Show source

• Men love to wonder, and that is the seed of science.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Love, Math, Science

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1971). “The Collected Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Society and solitude”, p.79, Harvard University Press

  19 Copy quote

  Show source

• What art was to the ancient world, Science is to the modern; the distinctive faculty. In the minds of men, the useful has succeeded to the beautiful.

  Benjamin Disraeli

  Beautiful, Art, Men

  Benjamin Disraeli (1863). “Coningsby, Or, The New Generation”, p.113

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Innovation and renewal are required to keep a laboratory on the frontiers of science.

  Burton Richter

  Innovation, Renewal, Laboratory

  54 Copy quote

• In questions of science, the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual.

  Galileo Galilei

  Truth, Inspiration, Independent

  "Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men". Book by François Arago, as translated by Baden Powell, Robert Grant, and William Fairbairn, p. 365, 1859.

  89 Copy quote

  Show source

• We all have faith in something: usually a mixture of some personal beliefs with modern science. I am not like that. Mostly I just believe in what personally has worked for me.

  James Altucher

  Believe, Mixtures, Have Faith

  6 Copy quote

• Western science is approaching a paradigm shift of unprecedented proportions, one that will change our concepts of reality and of human nature, bridge the gap between ancient wisdom and modern science, and reconcile the differences between Eastern spirituality and Western pragmatism.

  Stanislav Grof

  Reality, Bridges, Differences

  Stanislav Grof (1985). “Beyond the Brain: Birth, Death, and Transcendence in Psychotherapy”, p.16, SUNY Press

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• The publication in 1859 of the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin made a marked epoch in my own mental development, as it did in that of human thought generally. Its effect was to demolish a multitude of dogmatic barriers by a single stroke, and to arouse a spirit of rebellion against all ancient authorities whose positive and unauthenticated statements were contradicted by modern science.

  Francis Galton

  Science, Development, Spirit

  Francis Galton (2015). “Memories of My Life”, p.211, Routledge

  53 Copy quote

  Show source

• In recent times, modern science has developed to give mankind, for the first time in the history of the human race, a way of securing a more abundant life which does not simply consist in taking away from someone else.

  Karl Taylor Compton

  Wisdom, Race, Giving

  6 Copy quote

• Paul Davies takes us on a logically and rhetorically compelling modern search for human agency. This outstanding analysis, well informed by naturalistic views of our evolved affective nature, is the kind of philosophical work that is essential for a field to move forward when ever-increasing findings from modern science are inconsistent with traditional philosophical arguments. This book is for all who wish to immerse themselves in the modern search for free will. It is steeped in the rich liqueur of current scientific and philosophical perspectives and delusions.

  Jaak Panksepp

  Moving, Book, Philosophical

  4 Copy quote

• Are science and Christianity friends? The answer to that is an emphatic yes, for any true science will be perfectly compatible with the truths we know by God's revelation. But this science is not naturalistic, while modern science usually is.

  Albert Mohler

  Answers, Christianity, Modern

  10 Copy quote

• What happened at Hiroshima was not only that a scientific breakthrough had occurred and that a great part of the population of a city had been burned to death, but that the problem of the relation of the triumphs of modern science to the human purposes of man had been explicitly defined.

  Archibald MacLeish

  Death, Men, Cities

  7 Copy quote

• I cannot conceive of a personal God who would directly influence the actions of individuals, or would directly sit in judgment on creatures of his own creation. I cannot do this in spite of the fact that mechanistic causality has, to a certain extent, been placed in doubt by modern science. My religiosity consists in a humble admiration of the infinitely superior spirit that reveals itself in the little that we, with our weak and transitory understanding, can comprehend of reality. Morality is of the highest importance - but for us, not for God.

  Albert Einstein

  Humble, Reality, Understanding

  51 Copy quote

• I believe that ideas such as absolute certitude, absolute exactness, final truth, etc. are figments of the imagination which should not be admissible in any field of science... This loosening of thinking seems to me to be the greatest blessing which modern science has given to us. For the belief in a single truth and in being the possessor thereof is the root cause of all evil in the world.

  Max Born

  Believe, Thinking, Blessing

  36 Copy quote

• We are nothing but the product of billions of years of molecules coming together and ratcheting up through natural selection, we are composed only of highways of fluids and chemicals sliding along roadways within billions of dancing cells, trillions of synaptic conversations hum in parallel, this vast egglike fabric of micron-thin circuitry runs algorithms undreamt of in modern science, and these neural programs give rise to our decision making, loves, desires, fears, and aspirations. That understanding would be a numinous experience, better than anything ever proposed in anyone's holy text.

  David Eagleman

  Running, Cells, Years

  Source: www.goodreads.com

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• What the founders of modern science ... had to do, was not criticize and to combat certain faulty theories, and to correct or to replace them by better ones. They had to do something quite different. They had to destroy one world and replace it by another. They had to reshape the framework of our intellect itself, to restate and to reform its concepts, to evolve a new approach to Being, a new concept of knowledge, and a new concept of science - and even to replace a pretty natural approach, that of common sense, by another which is not natural at all.

  Alexandre Koyre

  Knowledge, Science, Common Sense

  "Galileo to Plato". Journal of the History of Ideas, 1957.

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• This is an age of science. ... All important fields of activity from the breeding of bees to the administration of an empire, call for an understanding of the spirit and the technique of modern science. The nations that do not cultivate the sciences cannot hold their own.

  Wickliffe Rose

  Science, Understanding, Important

  7 Copy quote

• The capacity to tolerate complexity and welcome contradiction, not the need for simplicity and certainty, is the attribute of an explorer. Centuries ago, when some people suspended their search for absolute truth and began instead to ask how things worked, modern science was born. Curiously, it was by abandoning the search for absolute truth that science began to make progress, opening the material universe to human exploration.

  Heinz Pagels

  People, Simplicity, Progress

  7 Copy quote

• I should like to say that I am as proud of my Chinese heritage and background as I am devoted to modern science, a part of human civilization of Western origin, to which I have dedicated and I shall continue to dedicate my work.

  Chen-Ning Yang

  Science, Civilization, Chinese

  Chen Ning Yang (2005). “Selected Papers, 1945-1980, with Commentary”, p.247, World Scientific

  23 Copy quote

  Show source

• The miracle of modern science. The LEP pours millions into your department, Foaly, and all you can do is send Mud Boys to the toilet.

  Eoin Colfer

  Boys, Miracle, Toilets

  Eoin Colfer (2005). “Artemis Fowl: The Eternity Code - Book #3”, Miramax

  4 Copy quote

  Show source