Motivational Quotes

Science

Again and again I am brought up against it, and again and again I resist it: I don't want to believe it, even though it is almost palpable: the vast majority lack an intellectual conscience; indeed, it often seems to me that to demand such a thing is to be in the most populous cities as solitary as in the desert.

- Nietzsche, Friedrich

Best Quotes about Science

Science is an integral part of culture. It's not this foreign thing, done by an arcane priesthood. It's one of the glories of the human intellectual tradition.

Gould, Stephen Jay

When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.

Arthur C. Clarke

There are no such things as applied sciences, only applications of science.

Louis Pasteur

In many walks of life, a conscience is a more expensive encumbrance than a wife or a carriage.

Quincey, Thomas De

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

Montagu, Lady Mary Wortley

Religions are the great fairy tales of conscience.

Santayana, George

Dissent is the native activity of the scientist, and it has got him into a good deal of trouble in the last years. But if that is cut off, what is left will not be a scientist. And I doubt whether it will be a man.

Bronowski, Jacob

Science is Christian, not when it condemns itself to the letter of things, but when, in the infinitely little, it discovers as many mysteries and as much depth and power as in the infinitely great.

Quinet, Edgar

Conscience is thoroughly well-bred and soon leaves off talking to those who do not wish to hear it.

Butler, Samuel

10.

Our lifetime may be the last that will be lived out in a technological society.

Clarke, Arthur C.

11.

We grow with years more fragile in body, but morally stutter, and can throw off the chill of a bad conscience almost at once.

Smith, Logan Pearsall

12.

When the number of factors coming into play in a phenomenological complex is too large scientific method in most cases fails.

Einstein, Albert

13.

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

Huxley, Thomas H.

14.

Neurophysiologists will not likely find what they are looking for, for that which they are looking for is that which is looking.

Floyd, Keith

15.

Truth in science can best be defined as the working hypothesis best suited to open the way to the next better one.

Lorenz, Konrad

16.

A body of work such as Pasteur's is inconceivable in our time: no man would be given a chance to create a whole science. Nowadays a path is scarcely opened up when the crowd begins to pour in.

Rostand, Jean

17.

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

Dante Alighieri

18.

A man ceases to be a beginner in any given science and becomes a master in that science when he has learned that he is going to be a beginner all his life.

Collingwood, Robin G.

19.

Science has not solved problems, only shifted the points of problems.

Parkhurst, Charles H.

20.

Let me arrest thy thoughts; wonder with me, why plowing, building, ruling and the rest, or most of those arts, whence our lives are blest, by cursed Cain's race invented be, and blest Seth vexed us with Astronomy.

Donne, John

21.

If anybody says he can think about quantum physics without getting giddy, that only shows he has not understood the first thing about them.

Bohr, Niels

22.

I know of no department of natural science more likely to reward a man who goes into it thoroughly than anthropology. There is an immense deal to be done in the science pure and simple, and it is one of those branches of inquiry which brings one into contact with the great problems of humanity in every direction.

Huxley, Thomas H.

23.

We must not forget that when radium was discovered no one knew that it would prove useful in hospitals. The work was one of pure science. And this is a proof that scientific work must not be considered from the point of view of the direct usefulness of it. It must be done for itself, for the beauty of science, and then there is always the chance that a scientific discovery may become like the radium a benefit for humanity.

Marie Curie

24.

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

25.

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

26.

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

Froude, James A.

27.

I believe that a scientist looking at nonscientific problems is just as dumb as the next guy.

Richard Feynman

28.

The pace of science forces the pace of technique. Theoretical physics forces atomic energy on us; the successful production of the fission bomb forces upon us the manufacture of the hydrogen bomb. We do not choose our problems, we do not choose our products; we are pushed, we are forced -- by what? By a system which has no purpose and goal transcending it, and which makes man its appendix.

Fromm, Erich

29.

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

30.

The product of mental labor -- science -- always stands far below its value, because the labor-time necessary to reproduce it has no relation at all to the labor-time required for its original production.

Marx, Karl

31.

One science only will one genius fit; so vast is art, so narrow human wit.

Pope, Alexander

32.

There's not a whole lot of new atoms out there.

McDonough, Denny

33.

Science is simply common sense at its best--that is, rigidly accurate in observation, and merciless to fallacy in logic.

Huxley, Thomas H.

34.

Honor is the moral conscience of the great.

D'Avenant

35.

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

36.

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

37.

Isn't it marvelous how those scientists know the names of all those stars?

38.

Conscience is the internal perception of the rejection of a particular wish operating within us.

Freud, Sigmund

39.

The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not'Eureka!'(I found it!) but'That's funny ...'

Isaac Asimov

40.

Science is the century-old endeavor to bring together by means of systematic thought the perceptible phenomena of this world into as thorough-going an association as possible.

Einstein, Albert

41.

There is only one way to achieve happiness on this terrestrial ball, and that is to have either a clear conscience or none at all.

Nash, Ogden

42.

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

Charron, Pierre

43.

The cloning of humans is on most of the lists of things to worry about from Science, along with behaviour control, genetic engineering, transplanted heads, computer poetry and the unrestrained growth of plastic flowers.

Lewis Thomas

44.

The negative cautions of science are never popular. If the experimentalist would not commit himself, the social philosopher, the preacher, and the pedagogue tried the harder to give a short-cut answer.

Mead, Margaret

45.

Science is not about control. It is about cultivating a perpetual sense of wonder in the face of something that forever grows one step richer and subtle than our latest theory about it. It is about reverence, not mastery.

Powers, Richard

46.

All science is either physics or stamp collecting.

Ernest Rutherford

47.

We are living now, not in the delicious intoxication induced by the early successes of science, but in a rather grisly morning-after, when it has become apparent that what triumphant science has done hitherto is to improve the means for achieving unimproved or actually deteriorated ends.

Huxley, Aldous

48.

In science men have discovered an activity of the very highest value in which they are no longer, as in art, dependent for progress upon the appearance of continually greater genius, for in science the successors stand upon the shoulders of their predecessors; where one man of supreme genius has invented a method, a thousand lesser men can apply it.

Russell, Bertrand

49.

Vanity of science. Knowledge of physical science will not console me for ignorance of morality in time of affliction, but knowledge of morality will always console me for ignorance of physical science.

Pascal, Blaise

50.

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