Science Quotes
339 quotes
"The Seven Social Sins are: Wealth without work. Pleasure without conscience. Knowledge without character. Commerce without morality. Science without humanity. Worship without sacrifice. Politics without principle.From a sermon given by Frederick Lewis Donaldson in Westminster Abbey, London, on March 20, 1925."
"I'm sure the universe is full of intelligent life. It's just been too intelligent to come here."
"Everything must be made as simple as possible. But not simpler."
"That which can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence."
"The good thing about science is that it's true whether or not you believe in it."
"Science is not only compatible with spirituality; it is a profound source of spirituality."
"A thinker sees his own actions as experiments and questions--as attempts to find out something. Success and failure are for him answers above all."
"For me, I am driven by two main philosophies: know more today about the world than I knew yesterday and lessen the suffering of others. You'd be surprised how far that gets you."
"Though my soul may set in darkness, it will rise in perfect light; I have loved the stars too fondly to be fearful of the night."
"For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring."
"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence."
"Who is more humble? The scientist who looks at the universe with an open mind and accepts whatever the universe has to teach us, or somebody who says everything in this book must be considered the literal truth and never mind the fallibility of all the human beings involved?"
"You never change things by fighting the existing reality.To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete."
"We are stuck with technology when what we really want is just stuff that works."
"I suppose it is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail."
"Even if there is only one possible unified theory, it is just a set of rules and equations. What is it that breathes fire into the equations and makes a universe for them to describe? The usual approach of science of constructing a mathematical model cannot answer the questions of why there should be a universe for the model to describe. Why does the universe go to all the bother of existing?"
"I like the scientific spirit—the holding off, the being sure but not too sure, the willingness to surrender ideas when the evidence is against them: this is ultimately fine—it always keeps the way beyond open—always gives life, thought, affection, the whole man, a chance to try over again after a mistake—after a wrong guess."
"If there is any religion that could respond to the needs of modern science, it would be Buddhism."
"Your assumptions are your windows on the world. Scrub them off every once in a while, or the light won't come in."
"First we thought the PC was a calculator. Then we found out how to turn numbers into letters with ASCII — and we thought it was a typewriter. Then we discovered graphics, and we thought it was a television. With the World Wide Web, we've realized it's a brochure."
"Art is unquestionably one of the purest and highest elements in human happiness. It trains the mind through the eye, and the eye through the mind. As the sun colors flowers, so does art color life."
"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science."
"How inappropriate to call this planet "Earth,"when it is clearly "Ocean."
"We are a way for the cosmos to know itself."
"The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed."
"I went to school in drag, in art school and my day was completely different because everybody thought I was a chick. You should see me as a chick. So I went as a girl, as like an experiment and it worked really well and everyone was really nice to me but I couldn't talk obviously...you know train conductors were really cool to me on my commute...HA! I looked hot as a chick!"
"[In the Universe it may be that] Primitive life is very common and intelligent life is fairly rare. Some would say it has yet to occur on Earth."
"It is impossible to escape the impression that people commonly use false standards of measurement — that they seek power, success and wealth for themselves and admire them in others, and that they underestimate what is of true value in life."
"No, our science is no illusion. But an illusion it would be to suppose that what science cannot give us we can get elsewhere."
"People cited violation of the First Amendment when a New Jersey schoolteacher asserted that evolution and the Big Bang are not scientific and that Noah's ark carried dinosaurs. This case is not about the need to separate church and state; it's about the need to separate ignorant, scientifically illiterate people from the ranks of teachers."
"Religion is a culture of faith; science is a culture of doubt."
"If it weren't for greed, intolerance, hate, passion and murder, you would have no works of art, no great buildings, no medical science, no Mozart, no Van Gough, no Muppets and no Louis Armstrong."
"The beauty of a living thing is not the atoms that go into it, but the way those atoms are put together."
"Science is a way of thinking much more than it is a body of knowledge."
"A reliable way to make people believe in falsehoods is frequent repetition, because familiarity is not easily distinguished from truth. Authoritarian institutions and marketers have always known this fact."
"To surrender to ignorance and call it God has always been premature, and it remains premature today."
"It is a slightly arresting notion that if you were to pick yourself apart with tweezers, one atom at a time, you would produce a mound of fine atomic dust, none of which had ever been alive but all of which had once been you."
"She had studied the universe all her life, but had overlooked its clearest message: For small creatures such as we the vastness is bearable only through love."
"In what terms should we think of these beings, nonhuman yet possessing so very many human-like characteristics? How should we treat them? Surely we should treat them with the same consideration and kindness as we show to other humans; and as we recognize human rights, so too should we recognize the rights of the great apes? Yes."
"It is a curious situation that the sea, from which life first arose should now be threatened by the activities of one form of that life. But the sea, though changed in a sinister way, will continue to exist; the threat is rather to life itself."
"Another glorious Sierra day in which one seems to be dissolved and absorbed and sent pulsing onward we know not where. Life seems neither long nor short, and we take no more heed to save time or make haste than do the trees and stars. This is true freedom, a good practical sort of immortality."
"Gravity explains the motions of the planets, but it cannot explain who sets the planets in motion."
"John Muir, Earth — planet, Universe[Muir's home address, as inscribed on the inside front cover of his first field journal]"
"God is an ever receding pocket of scientific ignorance."
"The idea that God is an oversized white male with a flowing beard, who sits in the sky and tallies the fall of every sparrow is ludicrous. But if by 'God,' one means the set of physical laws that govern the universe, then clearly there is such a God. This God is emotionally unsatisfying... it does not make much sense to pray to the law of gravity."
"Extinction is the rule. Survival is the exception."
"I agree with people like Richard Dawkins that mankind felt the need for creation myths. Before we really began to understand disease and the weather and things like that, we sought false explanations for them. Now science has filled in some of the realm – not all – that religion used to fill."
"To find the universal elements enough; to find the air and the water exhilarating; to be refreshed by a morning walk or an evening saunter... to be thrilled by the stars at night; to be elated over a bird's nest or a wildflower in spring — these are some of the rewards of the simple life."
"In terms of doing things I take a fairly scientific approach to why things happen and how they happen. I don't know if there's a god or not..."
"Many of us saw religion as harmless nonsense. Beliefs might lack all supporting evidence but, we thought, if people needed a crutch for consolation, where's the harm? September 11th changed all that."
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