Motivational Quotes

Science

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

Best Quotes about Science

Oh, how much is today hidden by science! Oh, how much it is expected to hide!

Nietzsche, Friedrich

I am among those who think that science has great beauty. A scientist in his laboratory is not only a technician: he is also a child placed before natural phenomena which impress him like a fairy tale.

Marie Curie

A clear conscience is a soft pillow.

Proverb, German

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

Science is spectral analysis. Art is light synthesis.

Kraus, Karl

Faith is a fine invention when Gentleman can see -- but microscopes are prudent in an emergency

Dickinson, Emily

Conscience is the voice of the soul; the passions of the body.

Rousseau, Jean Jacques

My conscience hath a thousand several tongues, and every tongue brings in a several tale, and every tale condemns me for a villain.

Shakespeare, William

Conscience was the barmaid of the Victorian soul. Recognizing that human beings were fallible and that their failings, though regrettable, must be humored, conscience would permit, rather ungraciously perhaps, the indulgence of a number of carefully selected desires.

Joad, C. E. M.

10.

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

11.

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

Proverb, Chinese

12.

All science is either physics or stamp collecting.

Ernest Rutherford

13.

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.

14.

There are two kinds of truth; the truth that lights the way and the truth that warms the heart. The first of these is science, and the second is art. Without art science would be as useless as a pair of high forceps in the hands of a plumber. Without science art would become a crude mess of folklore and emotional quackery.

Chandler, Raymond

15.

To overturn orthodoxy is no easier in science than in philosophy, religion, economics, or any of the other disciplines through which we try to comprehend the world and the society in which we live.

Hubbard, Ruth

16.

The credit of advancing science has always been due to individuals and never to the age.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

17.

That is the essence of science: ask an impertinent question, and you are on the way to a pertinent answer.

Bronowski, Jacob

18.

A conscience without God is like a court without a judge.

Lamartine, Alphonse De

19.

But how is one to make a scientist understand that there is something unalterably deranged about differential calculus, quantum theory, or the obscene and so inanely liturgical ordeals of the precession of the equinoxes.

Artaud, Antonin

20.

Rules of society are nothing; ones conscience is the umpire.

Dudevant, Madame

21.

The most important scientific revolutions all include, as their only common feature, the dethronement of human arrogance from one pedestal after another of previous convictions about our centrality in the cosmos.

Stephen Jay Gould

22.

A seared conscience is one whose warning voice has been suppressed and perverted habitually, so that eventually instead of serving as a guide, it only confirms the person in his premeditatedly evil course.

Little, Robert J.

23.

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

Horton, Doug

24.

Honor is the moral conscience of the great.

D'Avenant

25.

The chief prerequisite for a escort is to have a flexible conscience and an inflexible politeness.

Blessington, Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of

26.

Perfect as the wing of a bird may be, it will never enable the bird to fly if unsupported by the air. Facts are the air of science. Without them a man of science can never rise.

Ivan Pavlov

27.

I think remorse ought to stop biting the consciences that feed it.

Nash, Ogden

28.

Science is intimately integrated with the whole social structure and cultural tradition. They mutually support one other -- only in certain types of society can science flourish, and conversely without a continuous and healthy development and application of science such a society cannot function properly.

Parsons, Talcott

29.

It is a good morning exercise for a research scientist to discard a pet hypothesis every day before breakfast. It keeps him young.

Konrad Lorenz

30.

The scientific mind does not so much provide the right answers as ask the right questions.

Levi-Strauss, Claude

31.

Conscience is the mirror of our souls, which represents the errors of our lives in their full shape.

Bancroft, George

32.

It doesn't matter whether you're talking about bombs or the intelligence quotients of one race as against another if a man is a scientist, like me, he'll always say Publish and be damned.

Bronowski, Jacob

33.

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

34.

In science, all facts no matter how trivial, enjoy democratic equality.

Mccarthy, Mary

35.

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

McDonough, Denny

36.

Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men.

Martin Luther King Jr.

37.

What a man calls his conscience is merely the mental action that follows a sentimental reaction after too much wine or love.

Rowland, Helen

38.

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

Ingersoll, Robert Green

39.

Aristotle could have avoided the mistake of thinking that women have fewer teeth than men, by the simple device of asking Mrs. Aristotle to keep her mouth open while he counted.

Russell, Bertrand

40.

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

41.

Man lives for science as well as bread.

James, William

42.

Reason often makes mistakes, but conscience never does.

Billings, Josh

43.

Conscience does make cowards of us all.

Shakespeare, William

44.

Do you see this egg? With this you can topple every theological theory, every church or temple in the world.

Diderot, Denis

45.

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.

46.

There is an insistent tendency among serious social scientists to think of any institution which features rhymed and singing commercials, intense and lachrymose voices urging highly improbable enjoyment, caricatures of the human esophagus in normal and impaired operation, and which hints implausibly at opportunities for antiseptic seduction as inherently trivial. This is a great mistake. The industrial system is profoundly dependent on commercial television and could not exist in its present form without it.

Galbraith, John Kenneth

47.

Furnished as all Europe now is with Academies of Science, with nice instruments and the spirit of experiment, the progress of human knowledge will be rapid and discoveries made of which we have at present no conception. I begin to be almost sorry I was born so soon, since I cannot have the happiness of knowing what will be known a hundred years hence.

Franklin, Benjamin

48.

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

49.

If they don't depend on true evidence, scientists are no better than gossips.

Fitzgerald, Penelope

50.

As soon as questions of will or decision or reason or choice of action arise, human science is at a loss.

Noam Chomsky