Famous Quotes & Sayings

Stephen Hawking

I would rather be right than rigorous.

Stephen Hawking

So long as the universe had a beginning, we could suppose it had a creator. But if the universe is really completely self-contained, having no boundary or edge, it would have neither beginning nor end: it would simply be. What place, then, for a creator?

Stephen Hawking

One is always a long way from solving a problem until one actually has the answer.

Stephen Hawking

So Einstein was wrong when he said, "God does not play dice." Consideration of black holes suggests, not only that God does play dice, but that he sometimes confuses us by throwing them where they can't be seen.

Stephen Hawking

Not only does God play dice, but... he sometimes throws them where they cannot be seen.

Stephen Hawking

Maybe I'm being a bit harsh on philosophers, but they have not been very kind to me... I have been variously called nominalist, an instrumentalist, a positivist, a realist, and several other ists. The technique seems refutation by denigration: If you can attach a label to my approach, you don't have to say what is wrong with it... I am sure that Einstein, Heisenberg and Dirac didn't worry about whether they were realists or instrumentalists.

Stephen Hawking

There could be whole antiworlds and antipeople made out of antiparticles. However, if you ever meet your antiself, don't shake hands! You would both vanish in a great flash of light.

Stephen Hawking

There are grounds for cautious optimism that we may now be near the end ofthe search for the ultimate laws of nature.

Stephen Hawking

Science predicts that many different kinds of universe will be spontaneously created out of nothing. It is a matter of chance which we are in.

Stephen Hawking

More often than politicians, but not as often as they should.

Stephen Hawking

We live in the most probable of all possible worlds.

Sigourney Weaver

I don't really see science fiction as fiction. I can imagine colonies on Mars and everything.

Sigmund Freud

The reproaches against science for not having yet solved the problems of the universe are exaggerated in an unjust and malicious manner; it has truly not had time enough yet for these great achievements. Science is very young--a human activity which developed late.

Sigmund Freud

When someone abuses me I can defend myself, but against praise I am defenceless.

Sigmund Freud

In the last analysis the entire field of psychology may reduce to biological electrochemistry.

Sigmund Freud

It is unreasonable to expect science to produce a system of ethics-ethics are a kind of highway code for traffic among mankind-and the fact that in physics atoms which were yesterday assumed to be square are now assumed to be round is exploited with unjustified tendentiousness by all who are hungry for faith; so long as physics extends our dominion over nature, these changes ought to be a matter of complete indifference to you.

Sigmund Freud

When we attempt to imagine death, we perceive ourselves as spectators.

Sigmund Freud

No, our science is no illusion. But an illusion it would be to suppose that what science cannot give us we can get elsewhere.

Pope John Paul II

Science can purify religion from error and superstition. Religion can purify science from idolatry and false absolutes.

Pierre de Fermat

And perhaps, posterity will thank me for having shown that the ancients did not know everything.

Pierre Charron

The true science and study of mankind is man.

Ralph Richardson

I like talking to engineers best. They built bridges, they're very precise, very disciplined, yet I find they have roving minds.

James Lovelock

No one who has experienced the intense involvement of computer modeling would deny that the temptation exists to use any data input that will enable one to continue playing what is perhaps the ultimate game of solitaire.

Soren Kierkegaard

In a mathematical proposition, for example, the objectivity is given, but therefore its truth is also an indifferent truth.

Stephen Wolfram

The thing that got me started on the science that I've been building now for about 20 years or so was the question of okay, if mathematical equations can't make progress in understanding complex phenomena in the natural world, how might we make progress?

Stephen Wolfram

...All the wonders of our universe can in effect be captured by simple rules, yet ... there can be no way to know all the consequences of these rules, except in effect just to watch and see how they unfold.

Thomas Hobbes

The most noble and profitable invention of all other, was that of SPEECH, consisting of Names or Appellations, and their Connexion; whereby men register their Thoughts; recall them when they are past; and also declare them one to another for mutuall utility and conversation; without which, there had been amongst men, neither Commonwealth, nor Society, nor Contract, nor Peace, no more than amongst Lyons, Bears, and Wolves.

Thomas Hobbes

And therefore in geometry (which is the only science that it hath pleased God hitherto to bestow on mankind), men begin at settling the significations of their words; which settling of significations, they call definitions, and place them in the beginning of their reckoning.

Thomas Hobbes

Whatsoever accidents Or qualities our sense make us think there be in the world, they are not there, but are seemings and apparitions only. The things that really are in the world without us, are those motions by which these seemings are caused. And this is the great deception of sense, which also is by sense to be corrected. For as sense telleth me, when I see directly, that the colour seemeth to be in the object; so also sense telleth me, when I see by reflection, that colour is not in the object.

Thomas Hobbes

To conclude, The Light of humane minds is Perspicuous Words, but by exact definitions first snuffed, and purged from ambiguity; Reason is the pace; Encrease of Science, the way; and the Benefit of man-kind, the end.

Thomas Hobbes

Science is the knowledge of consequences, and dependence of one fact upon another.

Tim Berners-Lee

WorldWideWeb: Proposal for a HyperText Project

Thomas Love Peacock

They have poisoned the Thames and killed the fish in the river. A little further development of the same wisdom and science will complete the poisoning of the air, and kill the dwellers on the banks. I almost think it is the destiny of science to exterminate the human race.