Famous Quotes & Sayings

Auguste Comte

Positivism is a theory of knowledge according to which the only kind of sound knowledge available to human kind is that if science grounded in observation.

Arthur Koestler

Hitherto man had to live with the idea of death as an individual; from now onward mankind will have to live with the idea of its death as a species.

Arthur Koestler

Newton's apple and Cezanne's apple are discoveries more closely related than they seem.

Arthur Koestler

Einstein's space is no closer to reality than Van Gogh's sky.

Ayn Rand

We [entrepreneurs] required that you leave us free to function -- free to think and work as we choose ... -- free to earn our own profits and make our own fortunes ... Such was the price we asked, which you chose to reject as too high.

Bertrand Russell

I am compelled to fear that science will be used to promote the power of dominant groups rather than to make men happy.

Bertrand Russell

Scientific method, although in its more refined forms it may seem complicated, is in essence remarkably simply. It consists in observing such facts as will enable the observer to discover general laws governing facts of the kind in question. The two stages, first of observation, and second of inference to a law, are both essential, and each is susceptible of almost indefinite refinement. (1931)

Bertrand Russell

All exact science is dominated by the idea of approximation.

Bertrand Russell

Organic life, we are told, has developed gradually from the protozoon to the philosopher, and this development, we are assured, is indubitably an advance. Unfortunately it is the philosopher, not the protozoon, who gives us this assurance.

Bertrand Russell

A process which led from the amoeba to man appeared to the philosophers to be obviously a progress though whether the amoeba would agree with this opinion is not known.

Bertrand Russell

A hallucination is a fact, not an error; what is erroneous is a judgment based upon it.

Bertrand Russell

The fundamental concept in social science is Power, in the same sense in which Energy is the fundamental concept in physics.

Bertrand Russell

The universe may have a purpose, but nothing we know suggests that, if so, this purpose has any similarity to ours.

Benjamin Disraeli

The pursuit of science leads only to the insoluble.

Benjamin Disraeli

A nation has a fixed quantity of invention, and it will make itself felt.

Clyde Tombaugh

Unfortunately, a lot of the concepts in the Bible are based on ancient mythology that doesn't fit the findings of science.

Clyde Tombaugh

Young man, I am afraid you are wasting your time. If there were any more planets they would have been found long before this.

Ashleigh Brilliant

One good thing about my computer: it never asks why.

Arthur Helps

There is hardly a more common error than that of taking the man who has one talent, for a genius.

Sarah Hall

I was useless at science. I was never going to be an astrophysicist.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

... scientists have made no clear effort to become an important, independently active force of mankind. Whole congresses at a time, they back away from the suffering of others; it is more comfortable to stay within the bounds of science.

Albert Einstein

We scientists, whose tragic destination has been to help in making the methods of annihilation more gruesome and more effective, must consider it our solemn and transcendent duty to do all in our power in preventing these weapons from being used for the brutal purpose for which they were invented.

Albert Einstein

Every serious scientific worker is painfully conscious of this involuntary relegation to an ever-narrowing sphere of knowledge, which threatens to deprive the investigator of his broad horizon and degrades him to the level of a mechanic.

Albert Einstein

In conclusion I wish to say that in working at the problem here dealt with I have had the loyal assistance of my friend and colleague M. Besso, and that I am indebted to him for several valuable suggestions.

Albert Einstein

All the fifty years of conscious brooding have brought me no closer to answer the question, "What are light quanta?" Of course today every rascal thinks he knows the answer, but he is deluding himself.

Albert Einstein

Raffiniert ist der Herr Gott, aber boshaft ist er nicht. God is subtle, but he is not malicious.

Albert Einstein

If I could remember the names of all these particles, I'd be a botanist.

Albert Einstein

I know little about nature and hardly anything about men.

Albert Einstein

Physical concepts are free creations of the human mind, and are not, however it may seem, uniquely determined by the external world.

Albert Einstein

Experience alone can decide on truth.

Albert Einstein

One thing I have learned in a long life: that all our science, measured against reality, is primitive and childlike -- and yet it is the most precious thing we have.

Albert Einstein

Do you remember how electrical currents and 'unseen waves' were laughed at? The knowledge about man is still in its infancy.

Albert Einstein

Pure logical thinking cannot yield us any knowledge of the empirical world. All knowledge of reality starts from experience and ends in it.