Famous Quotes & Sayings

Oliver Goldsmith

The world is like a vast sea: mankind like a vessel sailing on its tempestuous bosom. ... [T]he sciences serve us for oars.

Oliver Goldsmith

The mind is ever ingenious in making its own distress.

Marcus Tullius Cicero

Mathematics is an obscure field, an abstruse science, complicated and exact; yet so many have attained perfection in it that we might conclude almost anyone who seriously applied himself would achieve a measure of success.

Marcus Tullius Cicero

There is no statement so absurd that no philosopher will make it.

Marcus Tullius Cicero

Aristoteles quidem ait: 'Omnes ingeniosos melancholicos esse.' Aristotle says that all men of genius are melancholy.

Mark Twain

When even the brightest mind in our world has been trained up from childhood in a superstition of any kind, it will never be possible for that mind, in its maturity, to examine sincerely, dispassionately, and conscientiously any evidence or any circumstance which shall seem to cast a doubt upon the validity of that superstition. I doubt if I could do it myself.

Mark Twain

I am not one of those who in expressing opinions confine themselves to facts.

Ernst Mach

Physics is experience, arranged in economical order.

Ernst Mach

Science itself, therefore, may be regarded as a minimal problem, consisting of the completest possible presentment of facts with the least possible expenditure of thought.

Ernst Mach

Strange as it may sound, the power of mathematics rests on its evasion of all unnecessary thought and on its wonderful saving of mental operations.

Ernst Mayr

It is curious how often erroneous theories have had a beneficial effect for particular branches of science.

Ernst Mayr

Two forms or species are sympatric, if they occur together, that is if their areas of distribution overlap or coincide. Two forms (or species) are allapatric, if they do not occur together, that is if they exclude each other geographically. The term allopatric is primarily useful in denoting geographic representatives.

Science is great, but it's got to be translational into a viable product.

Janna Levin

Ambiguity is very interesting in writing; it's not very interesting in science.

John Pierce

This is what we do. We put together different sciences and technologies to make things.

Harry Emerson Fosdick

Every year the inventions of science weave more inextricably the web that binds man to man, group to group, nation to nation.

Harry Emerson Fosdick

One could almost phrase the motto of our modern civilization thus: Science is my shepherd; I shall not want.

Harry Emerson Fosdick

...while science gives us implements to use, science alone does not determine for what ends they will be employed. Radio is an amazing invention. Yet now that it is here, one suspects that Hitler never could have consolidated his totalitarian control over Germany without its use. One never can tell what hands will reach out to lay hold on scientific gifts, or to what employment they will be put. Ever the old barbarian emerges, destructively using the new civilization.

Herbert Spencer

Only when Genius is married to Science can the highest results be produced.

Herbert Spencer

So far from science being irreligious, as many think, it is the neglect of science that is irreligious-it is the refusal to study the surrounding creation that is irreligious.

Herbert Spencer

Those who have never entered upon scientific pursuits know not a tithe of the poetry by which they are surrounded.

Herbert Spencer

Science is organized knowledge.

Henry David Thoreau

It will be seen that we contemplate a time when man's will shall be law to the physical world, and he shall no longer be deterredby such abstractions as time and space, height and depth, weight and hardness, but shall indeed be the lord of creation.

Henry David Thoreau

Let us consider under what disadvantages Science has hitherto labored before we pronounce thus confidently on her progress.

Henry David Thoreau

Linnæus, setting out for Lapland, surveys his "comb" and "spare shirt," "leathern breeches" and "gauze cap to keep off gnats," with as much complacency as Bonaparte a park of artillery for the Russian campaign. The quiet bravery of the man is admirable.

Henry David Thoreau

Almost any mode of observation will be successful at last, for what is most wanted is method.

Henry David Thoreau

The science of Humboldt is one thing, poetry is another thing. The poet to-day, notwithstanding all the discoveries of science, and the accumulated learning of mankind, enjoys no advantage over Homer.

Henry David Thoreau

Our science, so called, is always more barren and mixed with error than our sympathies.

Henry David Thoreau

If words were invented to conceal thought, newspapers are a great improvement of a bad invention

Henry David Thoreau

When our life ceases to be inward and private, conversation degenerates into mere gossip.

Henry David Thoreau

What are the libraries of science but files of newspapers?

Henry David Thoreau

The fact which interests us most is the life of the naturalist. The purest science is still biographical. Nothing will dignify and elevate science while it is sundered so wholly from the moral life of its devotee.

Henry David Thoreau

Fishing has been styled 'a contemplative man's recreation,' ... and science is only a more contemplative man's recreation.