Famous Quotes & Sayings

Samuel Johnson

I do not see, Sir, that it is reasonable for a man to be angry at another, whom a woman has preferred to him; but angry he is, no doubt; and he is loath to be angry at himself.

Samuel Johnson

There prevails among men of letters, an opinion, that all appearance of science is particularly hateful to Women; and that therefore whoever desires to be well received in female assemblies, must qualify himself by a total rejection of all that is serious, rational, or important; must consider argument or criticism as perpetually interdicted; and devote all his attention to trifles, and all his eloquence to compliment.

Samuel Johnson

If a man has a science to learn he must regularly and resolutely advance.

Samuel Johnson

I will venture to say there is more learning and science within the circumference of ten miles from where we now sit [in London], than in all the rest of the kingdom.

Samuel Johnson

Hoc age ['do this'] is the great rule, whether you are serious or merry; whether ... learning science or duty from a folio, or floating on the Thames. Intentions must be gathered from acts.

Samuel Johnson

Round numbers are always false.

Samuel Johnson

Your manuscript is both good and original; but the part that is good is not original, and the part that is original is not good.

Ronald Reagan

I am not a scientist.

Ronald Reagan

Education is like a diamond with many facets: It includes the basic mastery of numbers and letters that give us access to the treasury of human knowledge, accumulated and refined through the ages; it includes technical and vocational training as well as instruction in science, higher mathematics, and humane letters.

Robertson Davies

But as a skeptic I am dubious about science as about everything else, unless the scientist is himself a skeptic, and few of them are. The stench of formaldehyde may be as potent as the whiff of incense in stimulating a naturally idolatrous understanding.

Robertson Davies

Very few [doctors] are men of science in any very serious sense; they're men of technique.

Robertson Davies

I would not for a moment have you suppose that I am one of those idiots who scorns Science, merely because it is always twisting and turning, and sometimes shedding its skin, like the serpent that is [the doctors'] symbol.

Robert Mayer

Truly I say to you, a single number has more genuine and permanent value than an expensive library full of hypotheses.

Robert M. Pirsig

Science values static patterns.

Robert M. Pirsig

One geometry cannot be more true than another; it can only be more convenient. Geometry is not true, it is advantageous.

Robert M. Pirsig

The major producer of the social chaos, the indeterminacy of thought and values that rational knowledge is supposed to eliminate, is none other than science itself.

Robert M. Pirsig

For every fact there is an infinity of hypotheses.

Robert Louis Stevenson

The greatest engineering is the engineering of men.

Vannevar Bush

The common idea that scientists reject a theory as soon as it leads to a contradiction is just not so. When they get something that works at all they plunge ahead with it and ignore its weak spots... scientists are just as bad as the rest of the public in following fads and being influenced by mass enthusiasm.

Vannevar Bush

Basic scientific research is scientific capital.

Vannevar Bush

Science can give mankind a better standard of living, better health and a better mental life, if mankind in turn gives science the sympathy and support so essential to its progress.

Vanna Bonta

'Impossible' is not a scientific term.

Stephen Leacock

The landlady of a boarding-house is a parallelogram - that is, an oblong angular figure, which cannot be described, but which is equal to anything

Stephen Leacock

Electricity is of two kinds, positive and negative. The difference is, I presume, that one comes a little more expensive, but is more durable; the other is a cheaper thing, but the moths get into it.

Thomas Malthus

Population, when unchecked, increases in a geometrical ratio. Subsistence increases only in an arithmetical ratio. A slight acquaintance with numbers will shew the immensity of the first power in comparison of the second.

Thomas Carlyle

Science has done much for us; but it is a poor science that would hide from us the great deep sacred infinitude of Nescience, on which all science swims as a mere superficial film.

Thomas Carlyle

The graceful minuet-dance of fancy must give place to the toilsome, thorny pilgrimage of understanding. On the transition from the age of romance to that of science.

Thomas Carlyle

There is something in man which your science cannot satisfy.

Thomas Carlyle

Thought once awakened does not again slumber; unfolds itself into a System of Thought; grows, in man after man, generation after generation, - till its full stature is reached, and such System of Thought can grow no farther, but must give place to another.

Thomas Carlyle

This world, after all our science and sciences, is still a miracle; wonderful, inscrutable, magical and more, to whosoever will think of it.

Thomas Carlyle

It is a mathematical fact that the casting of this pebble from my hand alters the centre of gravity of the universe.

Stephen Hawking

I think computer viruses should count as life. I think it says something about human nature that the only form of life we have created so far is purely destructive. We've created life in our own image.

Stephen Hawking

My goal is simple. It is a complete understanding of the universe, why it is as it is and why it exists at all.