Scientific literacy is an intellectual vaccine against the claims of charlatans who would exploit ignorance.
- Neil deGrasse Tyson
Charlie Holloway (human): “What we hoped to achieve was to meet our makers. To get answers. Why they even made us in the first place.”
David (AI robot): “Why do you think your people made me?”
Charlie Holloway (human): “We made you because we could.”
David (AI robot): “Can you imagine how disappointing it would be for you to hear the same thing from your creator?”
Charlie Holloway (human): “I guess it's good you can't be disappointed.”
- Prometheus (2012)
In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion.
- Carl Sagan
When legacy firms fail to innovate, start-ups jump into the market and thrive at the establishment’s expense. That’s disruption.
- Gwynne Shotwell, SpaceX President
Science is best defined as a careful, disciplined, logical search for knowledge about any and all aspects of the universe, obtained by examination of the best available evidence and always subject to correction and improvement upon discovery of better evidence. What's left is magic. And it doesn't work.
- James Randi
Does it mean, if you don’t understand something, and the community of physicists don’t understand it, that means God did it? Is that how you want to play this game? Because if it is, here’s a list of things in the past that the physicists at the time didn’t understand [and now we do understand] [...]. If that’s how you want to invoke your evidence for God, then God is an ever-receding pocket of scientific ignorance that’s getting smaller and smaller and smaller as time moves on - so just be ready for that to happen, if that’s how you want to come at the problem.
- Neil deGrasse Tyson
The best answer to the question, “Will computers ever be as smart as humans?” is probably “Yes, but only briefly”.
- Vernor Vinge
The problem with quotes on the Internet is that it is hard to verify their authenticity.
- Abraham Lincoln
Study the science of art. Study the art of science. Develop your senses - especially learn how to see. Realize that everything connects to everything else.
- Leonardo da Vinci
Advances in medicine and agriculture have saved vastly more lives than have been lost in all the wars in history.
- Carl Sagan
In questions of science, the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual.
- Galileo Galilei
Infinities and indivisibles transcend our finite understanding, the former on account of their magnitude, the latter because of their smallness; Imagine what they are when combined.
- Galileo Galilei
Philosophy is written in that great book which ever lies before our eyes ... We cannot understand it if we do not first learn the language and grasp the symbols in which it is written. The book is written in the mathematical language ... without whos.
- Galileo Galilei
Those who came before us made certain that this country rode the first waves of the industrial revolution, the first waves of modern invention and the first wave of nuclear power. And this generation does not intend to founder in the backwash of the coming age of space. We mean to be part of it - we mean to lead it.
- President John F. Kennedy
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
- Arthur C. Clarke
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
The scientist does not study nature because it is useful to do so. He studies it because he takes pleasure in it, and he takes pleasure in it because it is beautiful. If nature were not beautiful it would not be worth knowing, and life would not be worth living. I am not speaking, of course, of the beauty which strikes the senses, of the beauty of qualities and appearances. I am far from despising this, but it has nothing to do with science. What I mean is that more intimate beauty which comes from the harmonious order of its parts, and which a pure intelligence can grasp.
- Henri Poincaré
The diversity of the phenomena of nature is so great, and the treasures hidden in the heavens so rich, precisely in order that the human mind shall never be lacking in fresh nourishment.
- Johannes Kepler
For I dipped into the Future, far as human eye could see; saw the vision of the world, and all the wonder that would be.
- Alfred, Lord Tennyson
First, inevitably, the idea, the fantasy, the fairy tale. Then, scientific calculation. Ultimately, fulfillment crowns the dream.
- Konstantin E. Tsiolkovsky
All of the books in the world contain no more information than is broadcast as video in a single large American city in a single year. Not all bits have equal value.
- Carl Sagan
Science is a way of thinking much more than it is a body of knowledge.
- Carl Sagan
Science is not only compatible with spirituality; it is a profound source of spirituality.
- Carl Sagan
But the fact that some geniuses were laughed at does not imply that all who are laughed at are geniuses. They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown.
- Carl Sagan
Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
- Carl Sagan
After a certain high level of technical skill is achieved, science and art tend to coalesce in esthetics, plasticity, and form. The greatest scientists are always artists as well.
- Albert Einstein
The human mind is not capable of grasping the Universe. We are like a little child entering a huge library. The walls are covered to the ceilings with books in many different tongues. The child knows that someone must have written these books. It does not know who or how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written. But the child notes a definite plan in the arrangement of the books---a mysterious order which it does not comprehend, but only dimly suspects.
- Albert Einstein
When I examine myself and my methods of thought, I come close to the conclusion that the gift of fantasy has meant more to me than my talent for absorbing positive knowledge.
- Albert Einstein
The whole of science is nothing more than a refinement of everyday thinking.
- Albert Einstein
Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.
- Albert Einstein
The grand aim of all science is to cover the greatest number of empirical facts by logical deduction from the smallest number of hypotheses or axioms.
- Albert Einstein
If we knew what we were doing, it wouldn't be called research, would it?
- Albert Einstein
Life would be stunted and narrow if we could feel no significance in the world around us beyond that which can be weighed and measured with the tools of the physicist or described by the metrical symbols of the mathematician.
- Arthur Eddington
There once was a brainy baboon, Who always breathed down a bassoon, For he said, "It appears that in billions of years I shall certainly hit on a tune".
- Arthur Eddington
We have found a strange footprint on the shores of the unknown. We have devised profound theories, one after another, to account for its origins. At last, we have succeeded in reconstructing the creature that made the footprint. And lo! It is our own.
- Arthur Eddington
We have found that where science has progressed the farthest, the mind has but regained from nature that which the mind put into nature.
- Arthur Eddington
We often think that when we have completed our study of one we know all about two, because "two" is "one and one." We forget that we still have to make a study of "and."
- Arthur Eddington
Who will observe the observers?
- Arthur Eddington
He had read much, if one considers his long life; but his contemplation was much more than his reading. He was wont to say that if he had read as much as other men he should have known no more than other men.
- Isaac Asimov
The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom.
- Isaac Asimov
There is a single light of science, and to brighten it anywhere is to brighten it everywhere.
- Isaac Asimov
Science is the power of Man.
- Ikari Gendo “Neon Genesis Evangelion”
The discovery of natural law is a meeting with God.
- F. Dessauer
The more we know of things, the more we know of God.
- Baruch Spinoza
The order, the symmetry, the harmony enchant us…God is pure order. He is the originator of universal harmony.
- Gottfried Leibniz
Science ain’t an exact science.
- Twelve Monkeys
We should be most careful about retreating from the specific challenge of our age. We should be reluctant to turn our back upon the frontier of this epoch... We cannot be indifferent to space, because the grand slow march of our intelligence has brought us, in our generation, to a point from which we can explore and understand and utilize it. To turn back now would be to deny our history, our capabilities.
- James Michener
Today, everybody remembers Galileo. How many can name the bishops and professors who refused to look through his telescope?
- James Hogan
As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain. And as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality.
- Einstein
Einstein never accepted quantum mechanics because of this element of chance and uncertainty. He said: God does not play dice. It seems that Einstein was doubly wrong. The quantum effects of black holes suggests that not only does God play dice, He sometimes throws them where they cannot be seen.
- Steven Hawking
That's the whole problem with science. You've got a bunch of empiricists trying to describe things of unimaginable wonder.
- Calvin and Hobbes
The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not "Eureka!" but "That's funny..."
- Isaac Asimov
I believe that a scientist looking at nonscientific problems is just as dumb as the next guy.
- Richard Feynman
We are at the very beginning of time for the human race. It is not unreasonable that we grapple with problems. But there are tens of thousands of years in the future. Our responsibility is to do what we can, learn what we can, improve the solutions, and pass them on.
- Richard Feynman
You can know the name of a bird in all the languages of the world, but when you're finished, you'll know absolutely nothing whatever about the bird... So let's look at the bird and see what it's doing -- that's what counts. I learned very early the difference between knowing the name of something and knowing something.
- Richard Feynman
If I could explain it to the average person, I wouldn't have been worth the Nobel Prize.
- Richard Feynman
Our imagination is stretched to the utmost, not, as in fiction, to imagine things which are not really there, but just to comprehend those things which 'are' there.
- Richard Feynman
The Wright Brothers created the single greatest cultural force since the invention of writing. The airplane became the first World Wide Web, bringing people, languages, ideas, and values together.
- Bill Gates
When you think about flying, it's nuts really. Here you are at about 40,000 feet, screaming along at 700 miles an hour and you're sitting there drinking Diet Pepsi and eating peanuts. It just doesn't make any sense.
- David Letterman
The desire to fly is an idea handed down to us by our ancestors who, in their grueling travels across trackless lands in prehistoric times, looked enviously on the birds soaring freely through space, at full speed, above all obstacles, on the infinite highway of the air.
- Wilbur Wright
Equipped with his five senses, man explores the universe around him and calls the adventure Science.
- Edwin Powell Hubble
Science is a wonderful thing if one does not have to earn one's living at it.
- Albert Einstein
There were two kinds of physicists in Berlin: on the one hand there was Einstein, and on the other all the rest.
- Rudolph Ladenburg
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
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
There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact.
- Mark Twain
The scientist is not a person who gives the right answers; he's one who asks the right questions.
- Claude Lévi-Strauss
We know very little, and yet it is astonishing that we know so much, and still more astonishing that so little knowledge can give us so much power.
- Bertrand Russell
To know the history of science is to recognize the mortality of any claim to universal truth.
- Evelyn Fox Keller
Science is built up of facts, as a house is built of stones; but an accumulation of facts is no more a science than a heap of stones is a house.
- Henri Poincare
The scientist, by the very nature of his commitment, creates more and more questions, never fewer. Indeed the measure of our intellectual maturity, one philosopher suggests, is our capacity to feel less and less satisfied with our answers to better problems.
- G.W. Allport
Every great advance in science has issued from a new audacity of imagination.
- John Dewey
We are at the very beginning of time for the human race. It is not unreasonable that we grapple with problems. But there are tens of thousands of years in the future. Our responsibility is to do what we can, learn what we can, improve the solutions, and pass them on.
- Richard P. Feynman
To say that science is logical is like saying that a painting is paint.
- Leon Cooper
Science investigates; religion interprets. Science gives man knowledge, which is power; religion gives man wisdom, which is control. Science deals mainly with facts; religion deals mainly with values. The two are not rivals.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
It is science alone that can solve the problems of hunger and poverty, of insanitation and illiteracy, of superstition and deadening custom and tradition, of vast resources running to waste, or a rich country inhabited by starving people... Who indeed could afford to ignore science today? At every turn we have to seek its aid... The future belongs to science and those who make friends with science.
- Jawaharlal Nehru
It is a good principle in science not to believe any 'fact'---however well attested---until it fits into some accepted frame of reference. Occasionally, of course, an observation can shatter the frame and force the construction of a new one, but that is extremely rare. Galileos and Einsteins seldom appear more than once per century, which is just as well for the equanimity of mankind.
- Arthur C. Clarke
If you see an antimatter version of yourself running towards you, think twice before embracing.
- J. Richard Gott III
Revere those things beyond science which really matter and about which it is so difficult to speak.
- Werner Heisenberg
It is harder to crack prejudice than an atom.
- Albert Einstein
When a conjecture inspires new hopes or creates new fears, action is indicated. There is an important asymmetry between hope, which leads to actions that will test its basis, and fear, which leads to restriction of options frequently restricting testing of the basis for the fear. As we know only too well, many of our hopes do not survive their tests. However, fears accumulate untested. Our inventory of untested fears has always made humanity disastrously vulnerable to thought control. While science was independent of politics, its greatest triumph was the reduction of that vulnerability.
- Arthur Kantrowitz, Dartmouth College (1994)