Quotes on Science

There is a fifth dimension, beyond that which is known to man. It is a dimension as vast as space and as timeless as infinity. It is the middle ground between light and shadow, between science and superstition.

You must not talk about 'ain't and can't' when you speak of this great wonderful world round you, of which the wisest man knows only the very smallest corner, and is, as the great Sir Isaac Newton said, only a child picking up pebbles on the shore of a boundless ocean.

The idea of a method that contains firm, unchanging, and absolutely binding principles for conducting the business of science meets considerable difficulty when confronted with the results of historical research. We find, then, that there is not a single rule, however plausible, and however firmly grounded in epistemology, that is not violated at some time or another.

I cannot stress often enough that what science is all about is not proving things to be true but proving them to be false.

The perplexity of life arises from there being too many interesting things in it for us to be interested properly in any of them.

Evolution advances, not by a priori design, but by the selection of what works best out of whatever choices offer. We are the products of editing, rather than of authorship.

GUILLOTINE, n. A machine which makes a Frenchman shrug his shoulders with good reason.

All the effects of Nature are only the mathematical consequences of a small number of immutable laws.

It is mere rubbish thinking, at present, of origin of life; one might as well think of origin of matter.

For oute of olde feldys, as men sey,_x000D_ _x000D_ Comyth al this newe corn from yer to yere;_x000D_ _x000D_ And out of olde bokis, in good fey,_x000D_ _x000D_ Comyth al this newe science that men lere.

This survival of the fittest implies multiplication of the fittest.

All science is either physics or stamp collecting.

I hope I have helped to raise the profile of science and to show that physics is not a mystery but can be understood by ordinary people.

I'm a pessimist because of intelligence, but an optimist because of will.

What's the go of that? What's the particular go of that?

It is difficult to discriminate the voice of truth from amid the clamor raised by heated partisans.

If anybody says he can think about quantum physics without getting giddy, that only shows he has not understood the first thing about them.

The word 'chance' then expresses only our ignorance of the causes of the phenomena that we observe to occur and to succeed one another in no apparent order. Probability is relative in part to this ignorance, and in part to our knowledge.

All of my knowledge, of both science and religion, I incorporate into the classical tradition of my painting.

An attempt to study the evolution of living organisms without reference to cytology would be as futile as an account of stellar evolution which ignored spectroscopy.

True science teaches us to doubt and, in ignorance, to refrain.