Motivational Quotes

Science

Everything is becoming science fiction. From the margins of an almost invisible literature has sprung the intact reality of the 20th century.

- Ballard, J. G.

Best Quotes about Science

Conscience is the dog that can't bite, but never stops barking.

Proverb

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

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

Popper, Karl

Science has explained nothing; the more we know the more fantastic the world becomes and the profounder the surrounding darkness.

Huxley, Aldous

Since we are assured that the all-wise Creator has observed the most exact proportions of number, weight and measure in the make of all things, the most likely way therefore to get any insight into the nature of those parts of the Creation which come within our observation must in all reason be to number, weigh and measure.

Hales, Stephen

Science is all metaphor.

Leary, Timothy

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

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.

The mythology of science asserts that with many different scientists all asking their own questions and evaluating the answers independently, whatever personal bias creeps into their individual answers is cancelled out when the large picture is put together. This might conceivably be so if scientists were women and men from all sorts of different cultural and social backgrounds who came to science with very different ideologies and interests. But since, in fact, they have been predominantly university-trained white males from privileged social backgrounds, the bias has been narrow and the product often reveals more about the investigator than about the subject being researched.

Hubbard, Ruth

10.

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

Bertrand Russell

11.

When we say science we can either mean any manipulation of the inventive and organizing power of the human intellect: or we can mean such an extremely different thing as the religion of science, the vulgarized derivative from this pure activity manipulated by a sort of priestcraft into a great religious and political weapon.

Lewis, Wyndham

12.

A bad conscience has a very good memory

13.

Whatever the scientists may say, if we take the supernatural out of life, we leave only the unnatural.

Barr, Amelia E.

14.

Science means simply the aggregate of all the recipes that are always successful. All the rest is literature.

Valery, Paul

15.

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

16.

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

17.

The one thing that doesn't abide by majority rule is a person's conscience.

Lee, Harper

18.

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

19.

The first rule of intelligent tinkering is to save all the parts.

Ehrlich, Paul

20.

Science is a game we play with God, to find out what his rules are.

Krasel, Cornelius

21.

Conscience is our magnetic compass; reason our chart.

Cook, Joseph

22.

Science fiction films are not about science. They are about disaster, which is one of the oldest subjects of art.

Sontag, Susan

23.

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

Einstein, Albert

24.

Conscience does make cowards of us all.

Shakespeare, William

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 is but an image of the truth.

Bacon, Francis

27.

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

Bronowski, Jacob

28.

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

Asimov, Isaac

29.

In the depths of every heart, there is a tomb and a dungeon, though the lights, the music, and revelry above may cause us to forget their existence, and the buried ones, or prisoners whom they hide. But sometimes, and oftenest at midnight, those dark receptacles are flung wide open. In an hour like this, when the mind has a passive sensibility, but no active strength; when the imagination is a mirror, imparting vividness to all ideas, without the power of selecting or controlling them; then pray that your grieves may slumber, and the brotherhood of remorse not break their chain.

Hawthorne, Nathaniel

30.

In everything that relates to science, I am a whole Encyclopaedia behind the rest of the world.

Lamb, Charles

31.

It is not easy to imagine how little interested a scientist usually is in the work of any other, with the possible exception of the teacher who backs him or the student who honors him.

Rostand, Jean

32.

If it can't be expressed in figures, it's not science it's opinion.

Long, Lazarus

33.

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

Louis Pasteur

34.

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

Bancroft, George

35.

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

36.

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

37.

I maintain there is much more wonder in science than in pseudoscience. And in addition, to whatever measure this term has any meaning, science has the additional virtue, and it is not an inconsiderable one, of being true.

Carl Sagan

38.

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

39.

Nothing shocks me. I'm a scientist.

Harrison Ford

40.

Honor is the moral conscience of the great.

D'Avenant

41.

Art has a double face, of expression and illusion, just like science has a double face: the reality of error and the phantom of truth.

Daumal, Rene

42.

The worst state of affairs is when science begins to concern itself with art.

Klee, Paul

43.

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

44.

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

Huxley, Thomas H.

45.

Science is analytical, descriptive, informative. Man does not live by bread alone, but by science he attempts to do so. Hence the deadliness of all that is purely scientific.

Gill, Eric

46.

Scientists are peeping toms at the keyhole of eternity.

Koestler, Arthur

47.

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

48.

For undemocratic reasons and for motives not of State, they arrive at their conclusions -- largely inarticulate. Being void of self-expression they confide their views to none; but sometimes in a smoking room, one learns why things were done.

Kipling, Rudyard

49.

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.

50.

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