Quotes on Science

More than any other time in history, mankind faces a crossroads. One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness. The other, to total extinction. Let us pray we have the wisdom to choose correctly.

For every fact there is an infinity of hypotheses.

It may be said "In research, if you know what you are doing, then you shouldn't be doing it." In a sense, if the answer turns out to be exactly what you expected, then you have learned nothing new, although you may have had your confidence increased somewhat.

Perhaps... some day the precision of the data will be brought so far that the mathematician will be able to calculate at his desk the outcome of any chemical combination, in the same way, so to speak, as he calculates the motions of celestial bodies.

Mathematics is the key and door to the sciences.

I often say that when you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it; but when you cannot measure it, when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meagre and unsatisfactory kind.

Gradually, ... the aspect of science as knowledge is being thrust into the background by the aspect of science as the power of manipulating nature. It is because science gives us the power of manipulating nature that it has more social importance than art. Science as the pursuit of truth is the equal, but not the superior, of art. Science as a technique, though it may have little intrinsic value, has a practical importance to which art cannot aspire.

Music is the pleasure the human mind experiences from counting without being aware that it is counting.

One of my surgical giant friends had in his operating room a sign "If the operation is difficult, you aren't doing it right." What he meant was, you have to plan every operation You cannot ever be casual You have to realize that any operation is a potential fatality.

"Faith" as an imperative is a veto against science-in praxi, it means lies at any price.

Correlation doesn’t imply causation, but it does waggle its eyebrows suggestively and gesture furtively while mouthing ‘look over there.’

The fear of death is the most unjustified of all fears, for there's no risk of accident for someone who's dead.

Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution.

Science is a beautiful gift to humanity; we should not distort it.

Anyone who attempts to generate random numbers by deterministic means is, of course, living in a state of sin.

To know the history of science is to recognize the mortality of any claim to universal truth.

There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable.There is another theory which states that this has already happened.

The influence (for good or ill) of Plato's work is immeasurable. Western thought, one might say, has been Platonic or anti-Platonic, but hardly ever non-Platonic.

I was a science fiction geek. That lets you know that they come in all sizes and styles, right?

The best way to get students involved in science and want to follow either science careers or incorporate it in their lives or to achieve science literacy is to expose them to the various jobs in STEM. It's broad from biologists to electricians to nanotechnologists to building fusion engines. It's a wide range of things.

No science is immune to the infection of politics and the corruption of power. ... The time has come to consider how we might bring about a separation, as complete as possible, between Science and Government in all countries. I call this the disestablishment of science, in the same sense in which the churches have been disestablished and have become independent of the state.