Quotes on Science

Imagine a survivor of a failed civilization with only a tattered book on aromatherapy for guidance in arresting a cholera epidemic. Yet, such a book would more likely be found amid the debris than a comprehensible medical text.

The human body was designed by a civil engineer. Who else would run a toxic waste pipeline through a recreational area ?

In the last analysis the entire field of psychology may reduce to biological electrochemistry.

It is odd, but on the infrequent occasions when I have been called upon in a formal place to play the bongo drums, the introducer never seems to find it necessary to mention that I also do theoretical physics.

If you aren't confused by quantum mechanics, you haven't really understood it.

Nothing in this world is to be feared... only understood.

All civilizations become either spacefaring or extinct.

Expertise in one field does not carry over into other fields. But experts often think so. The narrower their field of knowledge the more likely they are to think so.

The origin of all science is the desire to know causes, and the origin of all false science is the desire to accept false causes rather than none; or, which is the same thing, in the unwillingness to acknowledge our own ignorance.

The mere formulation of a problem is far more essential than its solution, which may be merely a matter of mathematical or experimental skills. To raise new questions, new possibilities, to regard old problems from a new angle requires creative imagination and marks real advances in science.

The nation behaves well if it treats the natural resources as assets which it must turn over to the next generation increased; and not impaired in value.

We may not be able to get certainty, but we can get probability, and half a loaf is better than no bread.

Poor is the pupil who does not surpass his master.

Only puny secrets need protection. Big discoveries are protected by public incredulity.

You may translate books of science exactly. ... The beauties of poetry cannot be preserved in any language except that in which it was originally written.

Science grows and Beauty dwindles.

Symmetry, as wide or as narrow as you may define its meaning, is one idea by which man through the ages has tried to comprehend and create order, beauty and perfection.

Nature is painting for us, day after day, pictures of infinite beauty.

Mathematics is much more than a language for dealing with the physical world. It is a source of models and abstractions which will enable us to obtain amazing new insights into the way in which nature operates. Indeed, the beauty and elegance of the physical laws themselves are only apparent when expressed in the appropriate mathematical framework.

If every one were cast in the same mould, there would be no such thing as beauty.

A tree is beautiful, but what's more, it has a right to life; like water, the sun and the stars, it is essential. Life on earth is inconceivable without trees. Forests create climate, climate influences peoples' character, and so on and so forth. There can be neither civilization nor happiness if forests crash down under the axe, if the climate is harsh and severe, if people are also harsh and severe. ... What a terrible future!