Famous Quotes & Sayings

Peter Sarnak

The Torus is my enemy!

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

The time has come to realise that an interpretation of the universe—even a positivist one—remains unsatisfying unless it covers the interior as well as the exterior of things; mind as well as matter. The true physics is that which will, one day, achieve the inclusion of man in his wholeness in a coherent picture of the world.

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

Is evolution a theory, a system, or a hypothesis? It is much more it is a general postulate to which all theories, all hypotheses, all systems must henceforward bow and which they must satisfy in order to be thinkable and true. Evolution is a light which illuminates all facts, a trajectory which all lines of thought must follow this is what evolution is.

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

That there is an evolution of one sort or another is now common ground among scientists. Whether or not that evolution is directed is another question.

Philip Pullman

But think of Adam and Eve like an imaginary number, like the square root of minus one: you can never see any concrete proof that it exists, but if you include it in your equations, you can calculate all manner of things that couldn't be imagined without it.

Philip Pullman

Imagination is a form of seeing

Queen Elizabeth II

This new power, which has proved itself to be such a terrifying weapon of destruction, is harnessed for the first time for the common good of our community.

Pythagoras

There is geometry in the humming of the strings, there is music in the spacing of the spheres.

Plato

Perhaps there is a pattern set up in the heavens for one who desires to see it, and having seen it, to find one in himself.

Plato

But he who has been earnest in the love of knowledge and of true wisdom, and has exercised his intellect more than any other part of him, must have thoughts immortal and divine. If he attain truth, and in so far as human nature is capable of sharing in immortality, he must altogether be immortal.

James Black

I wish I had my beta-blockers handy.

James Anthony Froude

Science rests on reason and experiment, and can meet an opponent with calmness; [but] a creed is always sensitive.

James Anthony Froude

The superstition of science scoffs at the superstition of faith.

Jacques Monod

Je cherche à comprendre.

Jacques Monod

In science, self-satisfaction is death. Personal self-satisfaction is the death of the scientist. Collective self-satisfaction is the death of the research. It is restlessness, anxiety, dissatisfaction, agony of mind that nourish science.

Henry A. Wallace

What we must understand is that the industries, processes, and inventions created by modern science can be used either to subjugate or liberate. The choice is up to us.

Henry Adams

My belief is that science is to wreck us, and that we are like monkeys monkeying with a loaded shell; we don't in the least know or care where our practically infinite energies come from or will bring us to.

Henry A. Kissinger

University politics make me long for the simplicity of the Middle East.

Henry David Thoreau

The universe is wider than our views of it.

Henry Ford

Mr Edison gave America just what was needed at that moment in history. They say that when people think of me, they think of my assembly line. Mr. Edison, you built an assembly line which brought together the genius of invention, science and industry.

Henry Ford

Any colour - so long as it's black.

Malcolm Wallop

We are a studying nation. Scholarship from science is important to the whole world and those people need to be able to be safe and secure in what they do.

Joseph Addison

Our sight is the most perfect and most delightful of all our senses.

John Charles Polanyi

Discoveries that are anticipated are seldom the most valuable. ... It's the scientist free to pilot his vessel across hidden shoals into open seas who gives the best value.

John Charles Polanyi

Some dreamers demand that scientists only discover things that can be used for good.

John Charles Polanyi

Science is an enterprise that can only flourish if it puts the truth ahead of nationality, ethnicity, class and color.

John Arbuthnot

John looked ruddy and plump, with a pair of cheeks like a trumpeter.

John Archibald Wheeler

In order to more fully understand this reality, we must take into account other dimensions of a broader reality.

John Archibald Wheeler

In any field, find the strangest thing and then explore it.

Martin Rees

Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

John Tukey

An approximate answer to the right problem is worth a good deal more than an exact answer to an approximate problem.

John Updike

Human was the music, natural was the static.

John Stuart Mill

The application of algebra to geometry ... has immortalized the name of Descartes, and constitutes the greatest single step ever made in the progress of the exact sciences.