Science Quotes - Page 15

• Vanity of science. Knowledge of physical science will not console me for ignorance of morality in time of affliction, but knowledge of morality will always console me for ignorance of physical science.

  Blaise Pascal

  Time, Ignorance, Knowledge

  c.1654-1662 Pense es, no.23.

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• Wisest is she who knows she does not know.

  Jostein Gaarder

  Philosophy, Doe, Knows

  Jostein Gaarder (2010). “Sophie's World”, p.66, Hachette UK

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• Science is simply common sense at its best, that is, rigidly accurate in observation, and merciless to fallacy in logic.

  Thomas Huxley

  Common Sense, Logic, Classroom

  Thomas Henry Huxley (1902). “An Introduction to the Study of Zoology, Illustrated by the Crayfish”

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• I often say that when you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it; but when you cannot measure it, when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meagre and unsatisfactory kind.

  Lord Kelvin

  Math, Numbers, Measurement

  Popular Lectures and Addresses "Electrical Units of Measurement" (1889).

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• Almost everything that distinguishes the modern world from earlier centuries is attributable to science, which achieved its most spectacular triumphs in the seventeenth century.

  Bertrand Russell

  Triumph, World, Modern

  Bertrand Russell (2004). “History of Western Philosophy”, p.484, Routledge

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• When people thought the earth was flat, they were wrong. When people thought the earth was spherical, they were wrong. But if you think that thinking the earth is spherical is just as wrong as thinking the earth is flat, then your view is wronger than both of them put together.

  Isaac Asimov

  Atheist, Epic, Thinking

  "The Relativity of Wrong". Book by Isaac Asimov, 1996.

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• In scientific work, those who refuse to go beyond fact rarely get as far as fact.

  Thomas Huxley

  Work, Facts, Scientist

  Methods and Results The Progress of Science (p. 62)

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• Seek simplicity, and distrust it.

  Alfred North Whitehead

  Creativity, Simplicity, Problem Solving

  The Concept of Nature ch. 7 (1920)

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• Science says the first word on everything, and the last word on nothing.

  Victor Hugo

  Lasts, Firsts, Last Words

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• I don't feel frightened by not knowing things, by being lost in the mysterious universe without any purpose - which is the way it really is, as far as I can tell. Possibly. It doesn't frighten me.

  Richard P. Feynman

  Death, Knowledge, Mysterious Universe

  "Horizon (The Pleasure of Finding Things Out)". Documentary (November 23, 1981), later published in "No Ordinary Genius: The Illustrated Richard Feynman" edited by Christopher Sykes (p. 239), 1994.

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• It is unworthy of excellent men to lose hours like slaves in the labor of calculation which could be relegated to anyone else if machines were used.

  Gottfried Leibniz

  Men, Machines, Slave

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• One may say the eternal mystery of the world is its comprehensibility.

  Albert Einstein

  Love, Life, God

  Albert Einstein (2016). “The Albert Einstein Collection: Essays in Humanism, The Theory of Relativity, and The World As I See It”, p.117, Open Road Media

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• Science is nothing but developed perception, interpreted intent, common sense rounded out and minutely articulated.

  George Santayana

  Common Sense, Perception, Development

  The Life of Reason: Reason in Science, Ch. 11

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• 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

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• If any student comes to me and says he wants to be useful to mankind and go into research to alleviate human suffering, I advise him to go into charity instead. Research wants real egotists who seek their own pleasure and satisfaction, but find it in solving the puzzles of nature.

  Albert Szent-Gyorgyi

  Nature, Real, Suffering

  Attributed to Szent-Györgyi in "The Development of Spatial Cognition" by Robert Cohen, 1985.

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• Anyone who attempts to generate random numbers by deterministic means is, of course, living in a state of sin.

  John von Neumann

  Mean, Numbers, Computer

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• The credit of advancing science has always been due to individuals and never to the age.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Birthday, Age, Credit

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• The capacity to blunder slightly is the real marvel of DNA. Without this special attribute, we would still be anaerobic bacteria and there would be no music.

  Lewis Thomas

  Real, Dna, Errors

  Lewis Thomas (1990). “A Long Line of Cells Collected Essays”

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• Science is organized common sense where many a beautiful theory was killed by an ugly fact.

  Thomas Huxley

  Beautiful, Common Sense, Ugly

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• I maintain there is much more wonder in science than in pseudoscience. And in addition, to whatever measure this term has any meaning, science has the additional virtue, and it is not an inconsiderable one, of being true.

  Carl Sagan

  Atheist, Religion, Wonder

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• The whole history of science has been the gradual realization that events do not happen in an arbitrary manner, but that they reflect a certain underlying order, which may or may not be divinely inspired.

  Stephen Hawking

  God, Order, History

  Stephen Hawking (2009). “A Brief History Of Time: From Big Bang To Black Holes”, p.104, Random House

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• It is a popular delusion that the scientific enquirer is under an obligation not to go beyond generalisation of observed facts...but anyone who is practically acquainted with scientific work is aware that those who refuse to go beyond the facts, rarely get as far.

  Thomas Huxley

  Facts, Delusion, Obligation

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• The difference between science and the fuzzy subjects is that science requires reasoning while those other subjects merely require scholarship.

  Robert A. Heinlein

  Differences, Fuzzy, Scholarship

  Robert A. Heinlein (1987). “Time Enough for Love”, p.324, Penguin

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• Faith is a fine invention When gentlemen can see, But microscopes are prudent In an emergency.

  Emily Dickinson

  Faith, Knowledge, Gentleman

  c.1860 Complete Poems, no.185 (first published 1891).

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• We must not forget that when radium was discovered no one knew that it would prove useful in hospitals. The work was one of pure science. And this is a proof that scientific work must not be considered from the point of view of the direct usefulness of it. It must be done for itself, for the beauty of science, and then there is always the chance that a scientific discovery may become like the radium a benefit for humanity.

  Marie Curie

  Discovery, Views, Humanity

  Marie Curie's lecture at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New York, May 14, 1921.

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