Famous Quotes & Sayings

Ambrose Bierce

PROBOSCIS, n. The rudimentary organ of an elephant which serves him in place of the knife-and-fork that Evolution has as yet denied him. For purposes of humor it is popularly called a trunk.

Ambrose Bierce

MAGNETISM, n. Something acting upon a magnet. The two definitions immediately foregoing are condensed from the works of one thousand eminent scientists, who have illuminated the subject with a great white light, to the inexpressible advancement of human knowledge.

Ambrose Bierce

Dentist: a prestidigitator who, putting metal into your mouth, pulls coin out of your pocket.

Ambrose Bierce

To bother about the best method of accomplishing an accidental result.

Anthony Burgess

I didn't think; I experimented.

Alexis Carrel

The best way of increasing the [average] intelligence of scientists would be to reduce their number.

Alexis Carrel

It seems that the increased number of scientific workers, their being split up into groups whose studies are limited to a small subject, and over-specialization have brought about a shrinking of intelligence. There is no doubt that the quality of any human group decreases when the number of the individuals composing this group increases beyond certain limits... The best way to increase the intelligence of scientists would be to decrease their number.

Richard P. Feynman

I've always been very one-sided about science, and when I was younger, I concentrated almost all my effort on it.

Dan Shechtman

Let us advance science to create a better world for all.

Barbara Thompson

LWS is kind of science with an edge.

Edgar Allan Poe

... -ev'n with us the breath Of Science dims the mirror of our joy...

Edgar Allan Poe

A poem in my opinion, is opposed to a work of science by having for its immediate object, pleasure, not truth.

Elbert Hubbard

Two-thirds of all preachers, doctors and lawyers are hanging on to the coat tails of progress, shouting, whoa! while a good many of the rest are busy strewing banana peels along the line of march.

Elbert Hubbard

In these days, a man who says a thing cannot be done is quite apt to be interrupted by some idiot doing it.

Edsger Dijkstra

Computer science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes.

Aristotle

Hippocrates is an excellent geometer but a complete fool in everyday affairs.

Aristotle

The male has more teeth than the female in mankind, and sheep and goats, and swine. This has not been observed in other animals. Those persons which have the greatest number of teeth are the longest lived; those which have them widely separated, smaller, and more scattered, are generally more short lived.

Aristotle

The least deviation from truth will be multiplied later.

Aristotle

A line is not made up of points. ... In the same way, time is not made up parts considered as indivisible 'nows.' Part of Aristotle's reply to Zeno's paradox concerning continuity.

Aristotle

We, on the other hand, must take for granted that the things that exist by nature are, either all or some of them, in motion.

Aristotle

For any two portions of fire, small or great, will exhibit the same ratio of solid to void; but the upward movement of the greater is quicker than that of the less, just as the downward movement of a mass of gold or lead, or of any other body endowed with weight, is quicker in proportion to its size.

Aristotle

Here and elsewhere we shall not obtain the best insight into things until we actually see them growing from the beginning.

Aristotle

He who thus considers things in their first growth and origin ... will obtain the clearest view of them.

Aristotle

Since we think we understand when we know the explanation, and there are four types of explanation (one, what it is to be a thing; one, that if certain things hold it is necessary that this does; another, what initiated the change; and fourth, the aim), all these are proved through the middle term.

Aristotle

In all things which have a plurality of parts, and which are not a total aggregate but a whole of some sort distinct from the parts, there is some cause.

Aristotle

The chief forms of beauty are order and symmetry and definiteness, which the mathematical sciences demonstrate in a special degree.

Dixie Lee Ray

A nuclear power plant is infinently safer than eating, because 300 people choke to death on food every year.

Scripps is a science institute. We don't want to be suing the county.

Although such research [into the paranormal] has yet to produce anything in the way of a repeatable controlled experiment, its practitioners argue that its revolutionary potentialities justify its continuation. My own feeling is that after a century of total failure it has become a bloody bore.

Science is what scientists do, not what nonscientists think they do or ought to be doing. Wetenschap is wat wetenschappers doen.

Democritus

These differences, they say, are three: shape, arrangement, and position; because they hold that what is differs only in contour, inter-contact, inclination.

Democritus

All things happen by virtue of necessity.

Democritus

Everything existing in the universe is the fruit of chance and necessity.