Famous Quotes & Sayings

Niels Bohr

Every sentence I utter must be understood not as an affirmation, but as a question.

Niels Bohr

Those who are not shocked when they first come across quantum theory cannot possibly have understood it.

Nassau William Senior

We propose in the following Treatise to give an outline of the Science which treats of the Nature, the Production, and the Distribution of Wealth. To that Science we give the name of Political Economy.

Nassau William Senior

The time I trust will come, perhaps within the lives of some of us, when the outline of this science will be clearly made out and generally recognised, when its nomenclature will be fixed, and its principles form a part of elementary instruction.

Morris Kline

There is no rigorous definition of rigor.

Morris Kline

The stone that Dr. Johnson once kicked to demonstrate the reality of matter has become dissipated in a diffuse distribution of mathematical probabilities. The ladder that Descartes, Galileo, Newton, and Leibniz erected in order to scale the heavens rests upon a continually shifting, unstable foundation.

John Ruskin

I wish they would use English instead of Greek words. When I want to know why a leaf is green, they tell me it is coloured by "chlorophyll," which at first sounds very instructive; but if they would only say plainly that a leaf is coloured green by a thing which is called "green leaf," we should see more precisely how far we had got.

John Ruskin

The work of science is to substitute facts for appearances, and demonstrations for impressions.

John Ruskin

Science deals exclusively with things as they are in themselves.

John Ruskin

Science lives only in quiet places, and with odd people, mostly poor.

John Polkinghorne

The test of a theory is its ability to cope with all the relevant phenomena, not its a priori 'reasonableness'. The latter would have proved a poor guide in the development of science, which often makes progress by its encounter with the totally unexpected and initially extremely puzzling.

John Quincy Adams

The attainment of knowledge is the high and exclusive attribute of man, among the numberless myriads of animated beings, inhabitants of the terrestrial globe. On him alone is bestowed, by the bounty of the Creator of the universe, the power and the capacity of acquiring knowledge. Knowledge is the attribute of his nature which at once enables him to improve his condition upon earth, and to prepare him for the enjoyment of a happier existence hereafter.

Mason Cooley

Rule of science: only exclude purpose, and Nature will reveal her causes.

Marvin Minsky

It would be as useless to perceive how things 'actually look' as it would be to watch the random dots on untuned television screens.

Michio Kaku

It is often stated that of all the theories proposed in this century, the silliest is quantum theory. In fact, some say that the only thing that quantum theory has going for it is that it is unquestionably correct.

Michael J. Fox

'Why do you think it is...', I asked Dr. Cook ... 'that brain surgery, above all else-even rocket science-gets singled out as the most challenging of human feats, the one demanding the utmost of human intelligence?' [Dr. Cook answered,] 'No margin for error.'

Oscar Wilde

It is only the unimaginative who ever invents. The true artist is known by the use he makes of what he annexes.

Lucretius

See with what force yon river's crystal stream Resists the weight of many a massy beam. To sink the wood the more we vainly toil, The higher it rebounds, with swift recoil. Yet that the beam would of itself ascend No man will rashly venture to contend. Thus too the flame has weight, though highly rare, Nor mounts but when compelled by heavier air.

Lucretius

Anything made out of destructible matter Infinite time would have devoured before. But if the atoms that make and replenish the world Have endured through the immense span of the past Their natures are immortal-that is clear. Never can things revert to nothingness!

Louis Kronenberger

Nominally a great age of scientific inquiry, ours has become an age of superstition about the infallibility of science; of almost mystical faith in its non-mystical methods; above all-which perhaps most explains the expert's sovereignty-of external verities; of traffic-cop morality and rabbit-test truth.

Louis Kronenberger

The test of interesting people is that subject matter doesn't matter.

Michael Crichton

The past history of human belief is a cautionary tale. We have killed thousands of our fellow human beings because we believed they had signed a contract with the devil, and had become witches. We still kill more than a thousand people each year for witchcraft. In my view, there is only one hope for humankind to emerge from what Carl Sagan called "the demon-haunted world" of our past. That hope is science.

Michael Crichton

Everyone has a hidden agenda. Except me!

Michael Crichton

God creates dinosaurs, God kills dinosaurs, God creates man, man kills God, man brings back dinosaurs.

Michael Crichton

That is the danger we now face. And this is why the intermixing of science and politics is a bad combination, with a bad history. We must remember the history, and be certain that what we present to the world as knowledge is disinterested and honest.

Michael Crichton

Do you know what we call opinion in the absence of evidence? We call it prejudice.

Michel de Montaigne

It is only certain that there is nothing certain, and that nothing is more miserable or more proud than man.

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

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.

But theyve got it pretty much down to a science now,

Carrie Vaughn

I would ask, 'Have you read '1984'? Have you read 'Brave New World'? If so, I'm sorry, but you read science fiction.'

Jean Paul

In science the new is an advance; but in morals, as contradicting our inner ideals and historic idols, it is ever a retrogression.