Motivational Quotes

Science

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

Best Quotes about Science

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

Lorenz, Konrad

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

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

Barr, Amelia E.

Individual science fiction stories may seem as trivial as ever to the blinder critics and philosophers of today -- but the core of science fiction, its essence has become crucial to our salvation if we are to be saved at all.

Asimov, Isaac

When I am in the company of scientists, I feel like a shabby curate who has strayed by mistake into a drawing room full of dukes.

Auden, W. H.

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

Rousseau, Jean Jacques

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

Dickinson, Emily

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

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

10.

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

Krasel, Cornelius

11.

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

12.

Conscience is our magnetic compass; reason our chart.

Cook, Joseph

13.

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

Martin Luther King Jr.

14.

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

Huxley, Thomas H.

15.

All science is either physics or stamp collecting.

Ernest Rutherford

16.

A man's moral conscience is the curse he had to accept from the gods in order to gain from them the right to dream.

Faulkner, William

17.

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

18.

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

Quincey, Thomas De

19.

Never do anything against conscience even if the state demands it.

Einstein, Albert

20.

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

21.

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

Proverb

22.

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

Hoffer, Eric

23.

In science the credit goes to the man who convinces the world, not the man to whom the idea first occurs.

Sir Francis Darwin

24.

If you look into your own heart, you find nothing wrong there, what is there to fear?

Confucius

25.

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.

26.

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

Huxley, Thomas H.

27.

Nothing shocks me. I'm a scientist.

Harrison Ford

28.

Science is what you know, philosophy what you don't know.

Russell, Bertrand

29.

Though the dungeon, the scourge, and the executioner be absent, the guilty mind can apply the goad and scorch with blows.

Lucretius

30.

Traditional scientific method has always been at the very best, 20 -- 20 hindsight. It's good for seeing where you've been. It's good for testing the truth of what you think you know, but it can't tell you where you ought to go.

Pirsig, Robert M.

31.

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

32.

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

33.

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

34.

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

Noam Chomsky

35.

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

Dudevant, Madame

36.

Science is nothing but developed perception, interpreted intent, common sense rounded out and minutely articulated.

George Santayana

37.

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

38.

The beginning of compunction is the beginning of a new life.

Eliot, George

39.

The voice of conscience is so delicate that it is easy to stifle it; but it is also so clear that it is impossible to mistake it.

Stael, Germaine De

40.

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

41.

The innocent seldom find an uncomfortable pillow.

Cowper, William

42.

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

43.

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

Horton, Doug

44.

Freedom of conscience entails more dangers than authority and despotism.

Foucault, Michel

45.

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

Mccarthy, Mary

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.

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

48.

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

49.

Man lives for science as well as bread.

James, William

50.

The microbe is so very small: You cannot take him out at all.

Belloc, Hilaire