Scientist Quotes - Page 15

• A new, self-employed architect scientist is the one in all the world who may accelerate realization of a high-standard survival for all, as now completely practical within the scope of available technology.

  R. Buckminster Fuller

  Technology, Self, Survival

  R. Buckminster Fuller (2009). “Ideas and Integrities: A Spontaneous Autobiographical Disclosure”, p.53, Estate of R. Buckminster Fuller

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• 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

  Doors, Views, Facts

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• The Russell Cosmogony with its new concepts of light, matter, energy, electricity and magnetism is a simple yet complete, consistent and workable cosmogony which will enable future scientists to visualize the universe as a unified whole, and will open the door to the New Age of Transmutation.

  Walter Russell

  Simple, Light, Doors

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• Progress is the exploration of our own error. Evolution is a consolidation of what have always begun as errors. And errors are of two kinds: errors that turn out to be true and errors that turn out to be false (which are most of them). But they both have the same character of being an imaginative speculation. I say all this because I want very much to talk about the human side of discovery and progress, and it seems to me terribly important to say this in an age in which most non-scientists are feeling a kind of loss of nerve.

  Jacob Bronowski

  Character, Loss, Two

  Jacob Bronowski (2008). “The Origins of Knowledge and Imagination”, p.84, Yale University Press

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• There is a spiritual capacity in carbon as there is a carbon component functioning in our highest spiritual experience. If some scientists consider that all this is merely a material process, then what they call matter, I call mind, soul, spirit, or consciousness. Possibly it is a question of terminology, since scientists too on occasion use terms that express awe and mystery. Most often, perhaps, they use the expression that some of the natural forms they encounter seem to be "telling them something."

  Thomas Berry

  Spiritual, Expression, Soul

  Thomas Berry (2011). “The Great Work: Our Way into the Future”, p.25, Crown

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• I also think we need to maintain distinctions - the doctrine of creation is different from a scientific cosmology, and we should resist the temptation, which sometimes scientists give in to, to try to assimilate the concepts of theology to the concepts of science.

  John Polkinghorne

  Thinking, Giving, Temptation

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• To overturn orthodoxy is no easier in science than in philosophy, religion, economics, or any of the other disciplines through which we try to comprehend the world and the society in which we live.

  Ruth Hubbard

  Philosophy, Science, Discipline

  Ruth Hubbard, Mary Sue Henifin, Barbara Fried (1982). “Biological woman--the convenient myth: a collection of feminist essays and a comprehensive bibliography”, Schenkman Books

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• One of the characteristics of successful scientists is having courage.

  Richard Hamming

  Successful, Characteristics

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• For a scientist must indeed be freely imaginative and yet skeptical, creative and yet a critic. There is a sense in which he must be free, but another in which his thought must be very preceisely regimented; there is poetry in science, but also a lot of bookkeeping.

  Peter Medawar

  Science, Imagination, Creative

  Peter Brian Medawar (1996). “The Strange Case of the Spotted Mice and Other Classic Essays on Science”, p.63, Oxford University Press, USA

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• When I practice, I am a philosopher. When I teach, I am a scientist. When I demonstrate, I am an artist.

  B.K.S. Iyengar

  Inspiring, Artist, Practice

  B.K.S. Iyengar (2014). “BKS Iyengar Yoga The Path to Holistic Health”, p.9, Dorling Kindersley Ltd

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• Theology offers you a working arrangement, which leaves the scientist free to continue his experiments and the Christian to continue his prayers.

  C. S. Lewis

  Christian, Prayer, Miracle

  C. S. Lewis (2003). “A Mind Awake: An Anthology of C. S. Lewis”, p.70, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• If the task of scientific methodology is to piece together an account of what scientists actually do, then the testimony of biologists should be heard with specially close attention. Biologists work very close to the frontier between bewilderment and understanding.
  Biology is complex, messy and richly various, like real life; it travels faster nowadays than physics or chemistry (which is just as well, since it has so much farther to go), and it travels nearer to the ground. It should therefore give us a specially direct and immediate insight into science in the making.

  Peter Medawar

  Real, Science, Giving

  Peter Brian Medawar (1969). “Induction and intuition in scientific thought”

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• I make Jessica Simpson look like a rock scientist.

  Tara Reid

  Rocks, Looks, Stupid Celebrity

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• I was married to Margaret Joan Howe in 1940. Although not a scientist herself she has contributed more to my work than anyone else by providing a peaceful and happy home.

  Frederick Sanger

  Love, Peace, Home

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• As neither of these two great research scientists was able to find the solution to the mystery, it is small wonder that none of their contemporaries were able to do so either.

  Robert Barany

  Idaho, Two, Research

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• We scientists have fantasies of being uniquely qualified to make great discoveries. Alas, reality is cruel: most of us are replaceable. For the vast majority of scientific contributions, if scientist X hadn't achieved it that year, scientist Y would have achieved the same result or something very similar soon thereafter.

  Jared Diamond

  Science, Reality, Discovery

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• We agreed with him in principal - we were little scientists, born and bred. But children robbed of love will dwell on magic.

  Barbara Kingsolver

  Children, Magic, Littles

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• Back in 1792, Dr. Benjamin Banneker, the famed African-American inventor and scientist in Washington, proposed a Department of Peace for the new Nation to his friends George Washington and Thomas Jefferson. His prophetic suggestion was not implemented; but now, more than 200 years later, the need for a Peace Department is too compelling to ignore.

  John Conyers

  Years, African American, Suggestions

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• Each generation of scientists stands upon the shoulders of those who have gone before.

  Owen Chamberlain

  Marijuana, Generations, Gone

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• If a scientist were to cut his ear off, no one would take it as evidence of a heightened sensibility.

  Peter Medawar

  Cutting, Luck, Ears

  Peter Brian Medawar (1996). “The Strange Case of the Spotted Mice and Other Classic Essays on Science”, p.86, Oxford University Press, USA

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• It is frequently the tragedy of the great artist, as it is of the great scientist, that he frightens the ordinary man.

  Loren Eiseley

  Art, Men, Tragedy

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• The priests used to say that faith can move mountains, and nobody believed them. Today the scientists say that they can level mountains, and nobody doubts them.

  Joseph Campbell

  Moving, Doubt, Atheism

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• Scientists can routinely predict a solar eclipse, to the minute, a millennium in advance. You can go to the witch doctor to lift the spell that causes your pernicious anaemia, or you can take Vitamin B12. If you want to save your child from polio, you can pray or you can inoculate. If you're interested in the sex of your unborn child, you can consult plumb-bob danglers all you want . . . but they'll be right, on average, only one time in two. If you want real accuracy . . . try amniocentesis and sonograms. Try science.

  Carl Sagan

  Sex, Children, Real

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• What is the origin of the urge, the fascincation that drives physicists, mathematicians, and presumably other scientists as well? Psychoanalysis suggests that it is sexual curiosity. You start by asking where little babies come from, one thing leads to another, and you find yourself preparing nitroglycerine or solving differential equations. This explanation is somewhat irritating, and therefore probably basically correct.

  David Ruelle

  Baby, Science, Finding Yourself

  David Ruelle (1993). “Chance and Chaos”, p.164, Princeton University Press

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• It is really quite amazing by what margins competent but conservative scientists and engineers can miss the mark, when they start with the preconceived idea that what they are investigating is impossible.

  Arthur C. Clarke

  Ideas, Missing, Conservative

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