Famous Quotes & Sayings

Steven Weinberg

Rational argument can be defeated by refusing to argue rationally.

Ridley Scott

Blade Runner appears regularly, two or three times a year in various shapes and forms of science fiction. It set the pace for what is essentially urban science fiction, urban future and it's why I've never re-visited that area because I feel I've done it.

Ridley Scott

I think if I'm going to do a science fiction, I'm going to go down a new path that I want to do.

If you think there are no new frontiers, watch a boy ring the front doorbell on his first date.

Richard Hamming

It is better to do the right problem the wrong way than the wrong problem the right way.

Richard Hamming

There are wavelengths that people cannot see, there are sounds that people cannot hear, and maybe computers have thoughts that people cannot think.

Richard Hamming

Newton said, "If I have seen further than others, it is because I've stood on the shoulders of giants." These days we stand on each other's feet!

Richard Hamming

A parable: A man was examining the construction of a cathedral. He asked a stone mason what he was doing chipping the stones, and the mason replied, "I am making stones." He asked a stone carver what he was doing. "I am carving a gargoyle." And so it went, each person said in detail what they were doing. Finally he came to an old woman who was sweeping the ground. She said. "I am helping build a cathedral." ...Most of the time each person is immersed in the details of one special part of the whole and does not think of how what they are doing relates to the larger picture.

Combinatorial analysis, in the trivial sense of manipulating binomial and multinomial coefficients, and formally expanding powers of infinite series by applications ad libitum and ad nauseamque of the multinomial theorem, represented the best that academic mathematics could do in the Germany of the late 18th century.

Certain functions appear so often that it is convenient to give them names. These are collectively called special functions. There are many examples and no single way of looking at them can illuminate all examples or even all the important properties of a single example of a special function.

John Calvin

Knowledge of the sciences is so much smoke apart from the heavenly science of Christ.

John B. S. Haldane

Shelley and Keats were the last English poets who were at all up to date in their chemical knowledge.

John B. S. Haldane

There can be no truce between science and religion.

John B. S. Haldane

A discussion between Haldane and a friend began to take a predictable turn. The friend said with a sigh, 'It's no use going on. I know what you will say next, and I know what you will do next.' The distinguished scientist promptly sat down on the floor, turned two back somersaults, and returned to his seat. 'There,' he said with a smile. 'That's to prove that you're not always right.'

Johan Huizinga

The new knowledge has not yet settled in culture. It has not yet been integrated in a new cosmic conception.

Joan Robinson

science progresses by trial and error, and when it is forbidden to admit error there can be no progress.

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

In history an additional result is commonly produced by human actions beyond that which they aim at and obtain -- that which they immediately recognize and desire. They gratify their own interest; but something further is thereby accomplished, latent in the actions in question, though not present to their consciousness, and not included in their design.

Frank Lloyd Wright

Science can give us only the tools in the box, these mechanical miracles that it has already given us. But of what use to us are miraculous tools until we have mastered the humane, cultural use of them? We do not want to live in a world where the machine has mastered the man; we want to live in a world where man has mastered the machine.

Heinrich Heine

You cannot feed the hungry on statistics.

Hilary Putnam

Science is wonderful at destroying metaphysical answers, but incapable of providing substitute ones. Science takes away foundations without providing a replacement. Whether we want to be there or not, science has put us in the position of having to live without foundations. It was shocking when Nietzsche said this, but today it is commonplace; our historical position-and no end to it is in sight-is that of having to philosophise without 'foundations'.

Hilaire Belloc

The microbe is so very small: You cannot take him out at all.

Heraclitus

There is a stability in the Universe because of the orderly and balanced process of change, the same measure coming out as going in, as if reality were a huge fire that inhaled and exhaled equal amounts.

Henry Ward Beecher

Intelligence increases mere physical ability one half. The use of the head abridges the labor of the hands.

Henry James

[Thomas Henry] Huxley is a very genial, comfortable being-yet with none of the noisy and windy geniality of some folks here, whom you find with their backs turned when you are responding to the remarks that they have made you.

Henry Clay

Statistics are no substitute for judgment.

Heinz Pagels

Science has explored the microcosmos and the macrocosmos; we have a good sense of the lay of the land. The great unexplored frontier is complexity.

Heinz Pagels

Science cannot resolve moral conflicts, but it can help to more accurately frame the debates about those conflicts.

Heinz Pagels

The visible world is the invisible organization of energy.

Steven Wright

I have a quantum car. Every time I look at the speedometer I get lost.

Steven Spielberg

I want to be the Cecil B. DeMille of science fiction.

Robert Boyle

The generality of men are so accustomed to judge of things by their senses that, because the air is indivisible, they ascribe but little to it, and think it but one remove from nothing.

Tom Stoppard

There would be this algebraic equation with an equals sign in the middle, and all the components would have different letters of the alphabet. It would come out right with x+z^2+t/q=y+co, and the co would be clothes off!

Tom Stoppard

The days of the digitals are numbered. The metaphor is built into them like a self-destruct mechanism.