Quotes on Science

I have seen many phases of life; I have moved in imperial circles, I have been a Minister of State; but if I had to live my life again, I would always remain in my laboratory, for the greatest joy of my life has been to accomplish original scientific work, and, next to that, to lecture to a set of intelligent students.

On certain occasions, the eyes of the mind can supply the want of the most powerful telescopes, and lead to astronomical discoveries of the highest importance.

To endow animals with human emotions has long been a scientific taboo. But if we do not, we risk missing something fundamental, about both animals and us.

You can do the best science in the world but unless emotion is involved it's not really very relevant. Conservation is based on emotion. It comes from the heart and one should never forget that.

What we do may be small, but it has a certain character of permanence; and to have produced anything of the slightest permanent interest, whether it be a copy of verses or a geometrical theorem, is to have done something utterly beyond the powers of the vast majority of men.

The self-fulfilling prophecy is, in the beginning, a false definition of the situation evoking a new behavior which makes the originally false conception come true. The specious validity of the self-fulfilling prophecy perpetuates a reign of error. For the prophet will cite the actual course of events as proof that he was right from the very beginning.

Vanity of science. Knowledge of physical science will not console me for ignorance of morality in time of affliction, but knowledge of morality will always console me for ignorance of physical science.

If there is a problem you can't solve, then there is an easier problem you can't solve: find it.

If the misery of the poor be caused not by the laws of nature, but by our institutions, great is our sin.

It is not always the magnitude of the differences observed between species that must determine specific distinctions, but the constant preservation of those differences in reproduction.

Every science has for its basis a system of principles as fixed and unalterable as those by which the universe is regulated and governed. Man cannot make principles; he can only discover them.

Experimental confirmation of a prediction is merely a measurement. An experiment disproving a prediction is a discovery.

I was captured for life by chemistry and by crystals.

Science is like sex: sometimes something useful comes out, but that is not the reason we are doing it

Necessity is the mistress and guide of nature. Necessity is the theme and inventress of nature, her curb and her eternal law.

Without analysis, no synthesis.

Practical sciences proceed by building up; theoretical science by resolving into components.

What we believe, endorse, agree with, and depend on is representable and, increasingly, represented on the Web. We all have to ensure that the society we build with the Web is the sort we intend.

Never was there a dogma more calculated to foster indolence, and to blunt the keen edge of curiosity, than the assumption of the discordance between the former and the existing causes of change.

It is an occupational risk of biologists to claim, towards the end of their careers, that the problems which they have not solved are insoluble.

When you see the natural and almost universal craving in English sick for their 'tea,' you cannot but feel that nature knows what she is about. ... A little tea or coffee restores them. ... There is nothing yet discovered which is a substitute to the English patient for his cup of tea.