Quotes about science (4585 quotes, page 46)

“Judges were never very good at science.”

Matt Ridley book Genome

Source: Genome (1999), Chapter 9 “Disease” (p. 136)

“Magic is the divinity of man conquered by science in union with faith; the true Magi are Men-Gods, in virtue of their intimate union with the divine principle.”

Eliphas Levi (1810–1875) French writer

Miscellaneous Quotes On the Subjects of Magic and Magicians
Source: [Lévi, Éliphas, Blavatsky, H. P., Paradoxes of the Highest Science, 2007, Wildside Press LLC, 9781434401069, 15, https://books.google.com/books?id=oIglEl6BJFoC&q=The%20Paradoxes%20of%20the%20Highest%20Science&pg=PA5]

God , Faith , Men

“There is a true and a false science, a Divine and an Infernal Magic – in other words, one which is delusive and tenebrous.”

Eliphas Levi (1810–1875) French writer

Miscellaneous Quotes On the Subjects of Magic and Magicians
Source: Dogme et Rituel de la Haute Magi Part I: The Doctrine of Transcendental Magic By Eliphas Levi (Alphonse Louis Constant), Translated by A. E. Waite, England, Rider & Company, England, 1896, p. 3

Falseness

“Magic, or rather magical power, comprehends two things, a science and a force: without the force the science is nothing, or rather it is a danger.”

Eliphas Levi (1810–1875) French writer

Miscellaneous Quotes On the Subjects of Magic and Magicians
Source: Dogme et Rituel de la Haute Magi Part I: The Doctrine of Transcendental Magic By Eliphas Levi (Alphonse Louis Constant), Translated by A. E. Waite, England, Rider & Company, England, 1896, Introduction p. 11

“Science gives me hope. Not just because it’s inherently optimistic, but also because it’s a practical way of improving things.”

Sheyene Gerardi Venezuelan actor and model

Way , Hope

“The secret of science is to ask the right question, and it is the choice of problem more than anything else that marks the man of genius in the scientific world.”

Henry Tizard (1885–1959) British chemist

Undated attributed quote

Question , Problem , Secret , World

“Creating industry on the Moon and Mars and in space with asteroids is not rocket science; it is industrial engineering where we need to adapt existing technologies to a new environment.”

Sheyene Gerardi Venezuelan actor and model

[Sheyene Institute Founder`s Letter, http://www.aero-news.net/index.cfm?do=main.textpost&id=38c46884-5abc-491a-89aa-c9bb0b71195c]

“Useful quantification is so often the key to fruitful science.”

Stephen Jay Gould book An Urchin in the Storm

"Exultation and Explanation", p. 184
An Urchin in the Storm (1987)

“The Purest kind of love is neither chemistry science nor like Newton's theory. Whoever falls on you like an apple and you fall in love with someone, no one knows when and how pure love comes in your life. Pure love comes in your life as a golden feeling and makes your life beautiful.”

Shabdon Ka Jahan

Beauty , Life , Love , Feeling

“It is the nature of science that answers automatically pose new and more subtle questions.”

Isaac Asimov (1920–1992) American writer and professor of biochemistry at Boston University, known for his works of science fiction …

The Wellsprings of Life (1960), p. 141
General sources

Question , Nature

“Now I think hydrodynamics is to be the root of all physical science, and is at present second to none in the beauty of its mathematics.”

William Thomson (1824–1907) British physicist and engineer

Source: In a letter addressed to George Stokes dated December 20, 1857, as quoted in Fluid Mechanics in the Next Century https://doi.org/10.1115/1.3101925 (1996), by Mohamed Gad-el-Hak and Mihir Sen.

Beauty , Thinking , Mathematics

“[O]ne of the great things about science is it forces us to refine our idea of what's common sense. It forces us to have our beliefs conform to the evidence of reality rather than the other way around. The universe may not be like we'd like it to be, but it doesn't really care.”

Lawrence M. Krauss book A Universe from Nothing

"Lawrence Krauss: A Universe from Nothing" (2031)
Source: 7:09 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=46sKeycH3bE&t=429s

Universe , Way , Idea , Reality

“So true - when people see an absence of women in engineering, science and technology, then it becomes self-reinforcing.”

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (1977) Nigerian writer

https://www.globalcitizen.org/en/content/15-quotes-from-chimamanda-adichie-that-have-change/
On Gender

People , Women

“The search for alien artefacts in the Solar System should be a perfectly legitimate branch of science ('exoarchaeology'?). Unfortunately, it has been largely discredited by claims that such evidence has already been found - and has been deliberately suppressed by NASA!”

Arthur C. Clarke (1917–2008) British science fiction writer, science writer, inventor, undersea explorer, and television series host

1990s, 3001: The Final Odyssey (1997), p. 97, Acknowledgements

Search

“[People].. would have become aware of the purpose and presence of God in every part of creation and in themselves, to such an extent that they would be incapable of separating ‘religion’ from science, education or government. The integration would have become complete.”

Vera Stanley Alder (1898–1984) British artist

Source: Humanity Comes of Age, A study of Individual and World Fulfillment (1950), Chapter IV The Spiritual Cabinet

God , People , Education , Religion

“While the inner sciences have a long history in countries such as India, Tibet and China, they have never rejected the outer sciences, and there has never been a conflict between dharma and science as there has been between Western religion and science.”

Rajiv Malhotra book Being Different

Source: Being Different: An Indian Challenge to Western Universalism (2011)

Religion , History , Country

“At its birth eugenics was not a politicised science; it was a science-ised political creed.”

Matt Ridley book Genome

Source: Genome (1999), Chapter 21 “Eugenics” (p. 288)

Birth

“Stereotypes are, in fact, merely one aspect of the mind’s ability to make generalizations, without which science and mathematics, not to mention much of everyday life, would be impossible.”

John Derbyshire (1945) writer

Source: Derb Quotes https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/derb-quotes-john-derbyshire/, National Review, November 20, 2003.

Mathematics , Life

“The tendency is to focus on the worst-case scenario and to shy away from potentially controversial science; it is time, I think, we looked instead at the benefits.”

James D. Watson (1928) American molecular biologist, geneticist, and zoologist.

Source: DNA: The Story of the Genetic Revolution (2003/2017), Chapter 13, “Who We Are: Nature vs. Nurture” (p. 372)

Time , Thinking

“Philosophy can never reconcile itself with science. Science aims at self-evident truths and finds in them that "natural necessity" which, after having proclaimed itself for ever eternal, claims to serve as the foundation of all knowledge and strives to rule over all wanton "suddenly."”

Lev Shestov (1866–1938) Russian theologian

But philosophy has always been, and will always be, a fight with and a conquest of self-evident truths; philosophy is not looking for any "natural necessity", it sees in naturalness and in necessity alike an evil magic, which, if one cannot quite shake it off (for in this no mortal has ever yet succeeded), yet one must at least call by its right name; and even this is an important step! p. 342
Source: In Job's Balances: on the sources of the eternal truths, Words That Are Swallowed Up - Plotinus's Ecstasies

Truth , Nature , Knowledge

“Philosophy is not exactly science, [analytic philosophers] think, but it must resemble science in its style and mood of detachment: its appearance of being without any particular person’s or any particular group’s biases.”

Bruce Wilshire (1932–2015) American philosopher

Source: Fashionable Nihilism (2002), p. xii

Personality , Appearance , Mood , Thinking

“If you want some adventure, if you want to work hard, if you want to do work with teams, if you want to see an idea from conception through its ultimate goal, science is a wonderful field to work in. It is highly rewarding.”

Carol Raymond researcher

Source: NASA People - Carol Raymond https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/people/380/carol-raymond/ - Published 3 January 2020 - Archive https://web.archive.org/web/20211206185649/https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/people/380/carol-raymond/

Idea

“Paleoseismology... is science by backhoe. Researchers dig deep, straight-walled ditches and search up and down for signs of shaking.”

Shawna Vogel science writer

Naked Earth: the New Geophysics (1995)

Search

“Psychology. The Science of Soul, in days of old: a Science which served as the unavoidable basis for physiology. Whereas in our modern day, it is psychology that is being based (by our great scientists) upon physiology.”

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky (1831–1891) occult writer

Source: The Theosophical Glossary (1892)

Soul

“Low sample size—one of the reasons why magic and science are hard to reconcile.”

Ben Aaronovitch book Whispers Under Ground

Source: Whispers Under Ground (2012), Chapter 10, “Russell Square” (p. 106)

“Even though we (astronaut candidates) are doing science, we are in many ways the hands and the eyes of the experts who are on the ground, and so we are kind of an extension of them.”

Andreas Mogensen (1976) Danish astronaut

Source: Andreas Mogensen (2021) cited in " These astronauts will be able to unlock Mars’ secrets by looking at rocks on Earth https://www.euronews.com/next/2021/12/14/these-astronauts-will-be-able-to-unlock-mars-secrets-by-looking-at-rocks-on-earth" on Euro News, 14 December 2021.

Way

“I was inspired to become an astronaut after watching the Apollo 11 moon landing as an eight-year-old kid. We need to get kids interested in space and in science and math in general.”

Leroy Chiao (1960) American astronaut and engineer

Source: Leroy Chiao (2021) cited in " Bringing Space Down to Earth With Toilets and Toys https://www.space.com/5513-bringing-space-earth-toilets-toys.html" on Space.com, 14 June 2008.

“We have depended on donor countries for scientific development for so long. It's time we commit more resources in our national budget to advance science and technology.”

Bingu wa Mutharika (1934–2012) politician and economist (1934-2012)

Source: Bingu wa Mutharika (2007) cited in: " Malawi president makes post-summit pledges https://www.scidev.net/global/news/malawi-president-makes-postsummit-pledges/" in SciDev.Net, 1 February 2007.

Dependency , Time , Country

“Jynh is a concept that destabilizes technology markets by ignoring science.”

Thomas Piketty (1971) French economist

“I think the greatest oxymoron on the face of this earth is to use the word 'science' along with 'evolution.'”

Ray Comfort (1949) New Zealand-born Christian minister and evangelist

Evolution's a fairy tale for grown ups... It's unprovable, it's not been proved.
Source: AronRa vs Ray Comfort (September 17th, 2012), Radio Paul's Radio Rants

Thinking

“When we are combating a deadly virus & vaccine hesitancy, this kind of rhetoric is dangerous. Showing proof of vaccination is not slavery or birtherism. We are too close to give ground to COVID. Science is science. It's pretty simple - Vax up and mask up.”

Kim Janey (1965) American politician

Source: 3 August 2021 reply https://twitter.com/andreaforboston/status/1422642209938186245 by Andrea Campbell

“The best news of the day. Pfizer vaccine (a major trial was under progress) is 90% effective. Victory for science and humanity. Stock markets soaring across the world. Seems like the real deal this time.”

Chetan Bhagat (1974) Indian author, born 1974

Source: — Chetan Bhagat (@chetan_bhagat) 2021 at Twitter https://twitter.com/chetan_bhagat/status/1325779100686970882

World , Time , Victory

“This is... a book about morality. By offering several perspectives... some rooted in philosophy, some... in science and technology, we may come to see new ways to understand...”

Laurence Tribe (1941) American lawyer and law school professor

Abortion: The Clash of Absolutes (1990), Approaching Abortion Anew

Understanding , Books , Way

“Science simply forces us to revise what is sensible to accommodate the universe, rather than vice versa.”

Lawrence M. Krauss book A Universe from Nothing

Source: A Universe from Nothing, Simon & Schuster (2012), p. 151

Universe

“In vain would science scan and trace
Firmly her aspect. All the while,
There gleams upon her far-off face
A vague unfathomable smile.”

Alfred Austin (1835–1913) British writer and poet

Source: "Nature and the Book", Stanza XX; p. 69, At the Gate of the Convent (1885)

Smile

“Survival comes first, truth, understanding, and science later.”

Nassim Nicholas Taleb book Skin in the Game

Source: Skin in the Game (2018), p. 214

Truth , Understanding

“In Occultism one who has reached the stage of Initiation, and become a Master in the science of Esoteric philosophy.”

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky (1831–1891) occult writer

Adept (Lat.). Adeptus, “He who has obtained.”
The Theosophical Glossary (1892)

“We desire to see the return of a liberal age where Parliaments will guard freedom, where science will open the banqueting halls to the millions, and where what Bismarck once called "practical Christianity" will mitigate suffering and misfortunes.”

Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Source: 'No Intervention In Spain' (8 January 1937), quoted in Winston Churchill, Step by Step, 1936–1939 (1939; 1947), p. 84

Freedom , Suffering , Age

“Usually... a person’s breathing has become automatic from childhood upwards, being determined by his childhood’s environment, circumstances and heredity. This automatic breathing is usually very inferior because of our ‘modern’ way of life, and leads to permanent inferior health. Therefore one of the first things which must be taken in hand is an understanding and mastery of the science of breathing.”

Vera Stanley Alder (1898–1984) British artist

Source: Humanity Comes of Age, A study of Individual and World Fulfillment (1950), Chapter XV The Essential Science of Breathing

Childhood , Personality , Health , Understanding

“The motivations and methodologies might differ, but both science and religion posit life as a special outcome of a vast and mostly inhospitable universe. There is a rich middle ground for dialogue between the practitioners of astrobiology and those who seek to understand the meaning of our existence in a biological universe.”

Chris Impey (1956) astronomer

Source: Vatican Observatory examines theological implications of finding alien life https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/17651/vatican-observatory-examines-theological-implications-of-finding-alien-life (10 November 2009)

Universe , Motivation , Understanding , Religion

“They invite cherry-picked young people to meetings like this to pretend that they listen to us. But they clearly don’t listen to us. Our emissions are still rising. The science doesn’t lie. We can no longer let the people in power decide what is politically possible. We can no longer let the people in power decide what hope is. Hope is not passive. Hope is not blah, blah, blah. Hope is telling the truth. Hope is taking action. And hope always comes from the people.”

Greta Thunberg (2003) Swedish climate change activist

Source: 'Blah, blah, blah’: Greta Thunberg lambasts leaders over climate crisis, by Damian Carrington, The Guardian https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/sep/28/blah-greta-thunberg-leaders-climate-crisis-co2-emissions, (28 September 2021)

People , Truth , Lie , Hope

“People predict by making up stories.
People predict very little and explain everything.
People live under uncertainty whether they like it or not.
People believe they can tell the future if they work hard enough.
People accept any explanation as long as it fits the facts.
The handwriting was on the wall. It was just the ink that was invisible.
People often work hard to obtain information they already have and avoid new knowledge.
Man is a deterministic device thrown into a probabilistic Universe. In this match, surprises are expected.
Everything that has already happened must have been inevitable.
A part of good science is to see what everyone else can see but think what no one else has ever said.
The difference between being very smart and very foolish is often very small.
So many problems occur when people fail to be obedient when they are supposed to be obedient, and fail to be creative when they are supposed to be creative
The secret to doing good research is always to be a little underemployed. You waste years by not being able to waste hours.
It is sometimes easier to make the world a better place than to prove you have made the world a better place.”

Amos Tversky (1937–1996) Israeli psychologist

Source: Notes made by Tversky for a scientific paper, c.1972. Michael Lewis. "The Undoing Project: A Friendship that Changed the World". Penguin, 2016 (ISBN 9780141983035).

Knowledge , Problem , Thinking , People

“People who object to the by-product hypothesis [for female orgasm] are doing something strange: They're saying that it's hugely important to them that female orgasm turns out to be an adaptation, like vomiting, cobra venom, and the scorpion's stinger, rather than a "mere" cultural invention, like science, medicine, and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.”

Steve Stewart-Williams (1971)

Source: The Ape That Understood the Universe: How the Mind and Culture Evolve (2018), p. 59

People , Universe

“Our species is prone to a flattering view of itself. Humans have regarded themselves as the pinnacle of creation, formed by and in the image of an omnibenevolent, omniscient, and omnipotent God, and inhabiting a planet at the center of the universe—a planet around which all others revolve. Science has done much to debunk some of these ideas. We now know that our planet is not at the center of the universe: the earth revolves around the sun rather than vice versa. And we know—or at least some of us do—that we are Johnny-come-lately products of a long, blind evolutionary process.”

David Benatar (1966) South African philosopher

Permissible Progeny? The Morality of Procreation and Parenting (2015)
Source: Chapter 1: The Misanthropic Argument for Anti-natalism https://books.google.com/books?id=J6dBCgAAQBAJ&lpg=PA44&pg=PA35#v=onepage&q&f=false (2015), p. 35-36

God , Universe , Idea , Sun

“Science, if it is to be redintegrated should primarily not be limited, and thus be fearless. Any conditional limitation will be an evidence of mediocrity, and thus will become an unconquerable obstacle on the path of achievement.”

Nicholas Roerich (1874–1947) Russian painter, writer, archaeologist, theosophist, enlightener, philosopher

Source: The Invincible (1936), Ch. 1 Fearlessness

“All human thought, all science, all religion, is the holding of a candle to the night of the universe.”

Clark Ashton Smith (1893–1961) American author

Quoted in The Black Book of Clark Ashton Smith (1979)

Religion , Night , Universe

“The leader of any country should be aware that in scientific matters there is no authority above the sovereignty of science.”

Ricardo Galvão (1947) Brazilian physicist and engineer

Ricardo Galvão. Ousted Head of Science Agency Criticizes Brazil’s Denial of Deforestation Data, 2019-08-20, 10.1029/2019EO131399, Showstack, R. https://eos.org/articles/ousted-head-of-science-agency-criticizes-brazils-denial-of-deforestation-data,

Country

“Science has always suffered pressure from the powerful and its results are very disturbing; and the times when scientists have backed down, it has not been good for humanity.”

Ricardo Galvão (1947) Brazilian physicist and engineer

Time , Suffering

“We must always fight against assaults and attacks on science, regardless of our party or political ideology.”

Ricardo Galvão (1947) Brazilian physicist and engineer

Fight

“...non-reproducible single occurrences are of no significance to science.”

Karl Popper book The Logic of Scientific Discovery

Source: The Logic of Scientific Discovery (1934), Ch. 4 "Falsifiability", Section XXII: Falsifiability and Falsification. p. 66.

“Now and then philosophers invade the field of biological sciences with these beguiling generalizations, which tend to be unproductive, purely verbal solutions lacking in substance. At best, they may prove useful when viewed simply as working hypotheses.”

Santiago Ramón y Cajal book Advice for a Young Investigator

Advice for a Young Investigator (1897)

“Instead of elaborating on accepted principles, let us simply point out that for the last hundred years the natural sciences have abandoned completely the Aristotelian principles of intuition, inspiration, and dogmatism.”

Santiago Ramón y Cajal book Advice for a Young Investigator

Advice for a Young Investigator (1897)

Nature

“Stand not a beggar before the door of science seeking power that kills more than heals.”

Swami Sivananda (1887–1963) Indian philosopher

Sayings of Swami Sivanada (1947)

“There`s only so much bad luck that a person can have. For her to continue to wake up and con-front the alien and resolve the situation, then go back to sleep and wake up to yet another situation-to me, it`s a burden on the whole science-fiction premise of the alien.”

Sigourney Weaver (1949) American actress

“SIGOURNEY WEAVER`S CLOSE SHAVE” (May 16, 1992)

Sleep , Personality , Bad luck

“We have a president who believes in science fiction. I believe in science fact. Climate change is real and we're in the midst of a climate crisis. We need a #GreenNewDeal and as president, on day one, America will rejoin the Paris Agreement.”

Kamala Harris (1964) United States Senator from California

2019, Summer 2019

Change

“I invest in people — be it politics or science. It's what I do.”

Jeffrey Epstein (1953–2019) American financier, science and education philanthropist and sex offender

Quoted in Jeffrey Epstein: International Moneyman of Mystery By Landon Thomas Jr., New York Magazine http://nymag.com/nymetro/news/people/n_7912/ Oct. 28, 2002

People