Motivational Quotes

Science

From man or angel the great Architect did wisely to conceal, and not divulge his secrets to be scanned by them who ought rather admire; or if they list to try conjecture, he his fabric of the heavens left to their disputes, perhaps to move his laughter at their quaint opinions wide hereafter, when they come to model heaven calculate the stars, how they will wield the mighty frame, how build, unbuild, contrive to save appearances, how gird the sphere with centric and eccentric scribbled o'er, and epicycle, orb in orb.

- Milton, John

Best Quotes about Science

The true science and study of man, is man himself.

Charron, Pierre

O conscience, upright and stainless, how bitter a sting to thee is a little fault!

Dante Alighieri

In science,'fact'can only mean'confirmed to such a degree that it would be perverse to withhold provisional assent.'I suppose that apples might start to rise tomorrow, but the possibility does not merit equal time in physics classrooms.

Stephen Jay Gould

Formal symbolic representation of qualitative entities is doomed to its rightful place of minor significance in a world where flowers and beautiful women abound.

Einstein, Albert

The real accomplishment of modern science and technology consists in taking ordinary men, informing them narrowly and deeply and then, through appropriate organization, arranging to have their knowledge combined with that of other specialized but equally ordinary men. This dispenses with the need for genius. The resulting performance, though less inspiring, is far more predictable.

Galbraith, John Kenneth

As an adolescent I aspired to lasting fame, I craved factual certainty, and I thirsted for a meaningful vision of human life - so I became a scientist. This is like becoming an archbishop so you can meet girls.

M. Cartmill

A man's conscience, like a warning line on the highway, tells him what he shouldn't do -- but it does not keep him from doing it.

Clark, Frank A.

The sciences do not try to explain, they hardly even try to interpret, they mainly make models. By a model is meant a mathematical construct which, with the addition of certain verbal interpretations describes observed phenomena. The justification of such a mathematical construct is solely and precisely that it is expected to work.

Neumann, John Von

True science investigates and brings to human perception such truths and such knowledge as the people of a given time and society consider most important. Art transmits these truths from the region of perception to the region of emotion.

Tolstoy, Count Leo

10.

Science, which cuts its way through the muddy pond of daily life without mingling with it, casts its wealth to right and left, but the puny boatmen do not know how to fish for it.

Herzen, Alexander

11.

Nevertheless, in order to imbue civilization with sound principles and enliven it with the spirit of the gospel, it is not enough to be illumined with the gift of faith and enkindled with the desire of forwarding a good cause. For this end it is necessary to take an active part in the various organizations and influence them from within. And since our present age is one of outstanding scientific and technical progress and excellence, one will not be able to enter these organizations and work effectively from within unless he is scientifically competent, technically capable and skilled in the practice of his own profession.

Pope John XXIII

12.

God may forgive your sins, but your nervous system won t.

13.

What the hell is nostalgia doing in a science-fiction film? With the whole universe and all the future to play in, Lucas took his marvelous toys and crawled under the fringed cloth on the parlor table, back into a nice safe hide hole, along with Flash Gordon and the Cowardly Lion and Luke Skywalker and the Flying Aces and the Hitler Jugend. If there's a message there, I don't think I want to hear it.

Guin, Ursula K. Le

14.

Science has proof without any certainty. Creationists have certainty without any proof.

Ashley Montague

15.

There are no better terms available to describe [The] difference between the approach of the natural and the social sciences than to call the former objective and the latter subjective. ... While for the natural scientist the contrast between objective facts and subjective opinions is a simple one, the distinction cannot as readily be applied to the object of the social sciences. The reason for this is that the object, the facts of the social sciences are also opinions -- not opinions of the student of the social phenomena, of course, but opinions of those whose actions produce the object of the social scientist.

Hayek, Friedrich August Von

16.

Science may be described as the art of systematic over-simplification.

Popper, Karl

17.

Where everything is possible miracles become commonplaces, but the familiar ceases to be self-evident.

Hoffer, Eric

18.

There is not much that even the most socially responsible scientists can do as individuals, or even as a group, about the social consequences of their activities.

Hobsbawm, E. J.

19.

Science is facts; just as houses are made of stones, so is science made of facts; but a pile of stones is not a house and a collection of facts is not necessarily science.

Henri Poincare

20.

They tend to be suspicious, bristly, paranoid-type people with huge egos they push around like some elephantiasis victim with his distended testicles in a wheelbarrow terrified no doubt that some skulking ingrate of a clone student will sneak into his very brain and steal his genius work.

Burroughs, William S.

21.

The great tragedy of science is the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact.

Huxley, Thomas H.

22.

If politicians and scientist were lazier, how much happier we should all be.

Waugh, Evelyn

23.

Science fiction writers foresee the inevitable, and although problems and catastrophes may be inevitable, solutions are not.

Asimov, Isaac

24.

Art is meant to disturb. Science reassures.

Braque, Georges

25.

Everybody's a mad scientist, and life is their lab. We're all trying to experiment to find a way to live, to solve problems, to fend off madness and chaos.

Cronenberg, David

26.

There does not exist a category of science to which one can give the name applied science. There are science and the applications of science, bound together as the fruit of the tree which bears it.

Pasteur, Louis

27.

Conscience is our magnetic compass; reason our chart.

Cook, Joseph

28.

Our ideas must be as broad as Nature if they are to interpret Nature.

Doyle, Sir Arthur Conan

29.

The person that loses their conscience has nothing left worth keeping.

Walton, Izaak

30.

The conscience is the sacred haven of the liberty of man.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

31.

Science is the systematic classification of experience.

Lewes, George Henry

32.

Conscience does make cowards of us all.

Shakespeare, William

33.

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

Froude, James A.

34.

Can a society in which thought and technique are scientific persist for a long period, as, for example, ancient Egypt persisted, or does it necessarily contain within itself forces which must bring either decay or explosion?

Russell, Bertrand

35.

Reason, observation, and experience; the holy trinity of science.

Ingersoll, Robert Green

36.

Science may set limits to knowledge, but should not set limits to imagination.

Bertrand Russell

37.

Researchers, with science as their authority, will be able to cut [Animals] up, alive, into small pieces, drop them from a great height to see if they are shattered by the fall, or deprive them of sleep for sixteen days and nights continuously for the purposes of an iniquitous monograph... Animal trust, undeserved faith, when at last will you turn away from us? Shall we never tire of deceiving, betraying, tormenting animals before they cease to trust us?

Colette, Sidonie Gabrielle

38.

Conscience is the window of our spirit, evil is the curtain.

Horton, Doug

39.

There is no greater impediment to progress in the sciences than the desire to see it take place too quickly.

Lichtenberg, Georg C.

40.

Interestingly, according to modern astronomers, space is finite. This is a very comforting thought - particularly for people who can never remember where they left things.

Allen, Woody

41.

There comes a time when every scientist, even God, has to write off an experiment.

James, P. D.

42.

Freedom of conscience entails more dangers than authority and despotism.

Foucault, Michel

43.

Science is all metaphor.

Leary, Timothy

44.

Conscience is the inner voice which warns us that someone may be looking.

Mencken, H. L.

45.

While conscience is our friend, all is at peace; however once it is offended, farewell to a tranquil mind.

Montagu, Lady Mary Wortley

46.

Two things fill me with constantly increasing admiration and awe, the longer and more earnestly I reflect on them: the starry heavens without and the moral law within.

Kant, Immanuel

47.

Conscience is a man's compass.

Gogh, Vincent Van

48.

If we knew all the laws of Nature, we should need only one fact, or the description of one actual phenomenon, to infer all the particular results at that point. Now we know only a few laws, and our result is vitiated, not, of course, by any confusion or irregularity in Nature, but by our ignorance of essential elements in the calculation. Our notions of law and harmony are commonly confined to those instances which we detect; but the harmony which results from a far greater number of seemingly conflicting, but really concurring, laws, which we have not detected, is still more wonderful. The particular laws are as our points of view, as, to the traveler, a mountain outline varies with every step, and it has an infinite number of profiles, though absolutely but one form. Even when cleft or bored through it is not comprehended in its entireness.

Thoreau, Henry David

49.

If a superior give any order to one who is under him which is against that man's conscience, although he do not obey it yet he shall not be dismissed.

Francis of Assisi, St.

50.

He who sacrifices his conscience to ambition burns a picture to obtain the ashes.

Proverb, Chinese