“No flamboyant phrase, just straightforward science.”

— Peter Franken

describing Ted Maiman's paper announcing the first operational laser. In an interview http://www.aip.org/history/ohilist/4612.html by Joan Bromberg on March 8, 1985, at University of Arizona. Niels Bohr Library & Archives, American Institute of Physics, College Park, MD USA.
Context: It is a fantastic letter. Very understated. He calls it an optical maser, it’s as if a maser was made to run in the optical. No flamboyant phrase, just straightforward science.

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Peter Franken 2

American physicist 1928–1999

Peter Franken (1928–1999) American physicist

“Establishing by observation that there is just one black swan falsifies "all swans are white". This is an unexceptional and undeniable point. However, using it as grounds to support a falsificationist philosophy of science is not as straightforward as it might seem.”

Alan Chalmers book What Is This Thing Called Science?

Source: What Is This Thing Called Science? (Third Edition; 1999), Chapter 7, The limitations of falsificationism, p. 87.

“You'll often hear the phrase "science doesn't know everything." Well, of course it doesn't know everything. But just because science doesn't know everything doesn't mean that it knows nothing.”

Stephen Fry (1957) English comedian, actor, writer, presenter, and activist

“What if criticism is a science as well as an art? Not a "pure" or "exact" science, of course, but these phrases belong to a nineteenth-century cosmology which is no longer with us.”

Northrop Frye (1912–1991) Canadian literary critic and literary theorist

"Quotes", Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays (1957), Polemical Introduction

“The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not 'Eureka!', but 'That's funny …”

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

Attributed in the "quote of the day" source code of the “Fortune” computer program (June 1987); more at "The Most Exciting Phrase in Science Is Not ‘Eureka!’ But ‘That’s funny …’" at Quote Investigator https://quoteinvestigator.com/2015/03/02/eureka-funny/
General sources

“The self is a simplification of the notion of soul, created to serve the purposes of the modern sciences of psychology and economics, both of which want you to be happy in a simple, straightforward way they can count.”

Harvey Mansfield (1932) Author, professor

How to Understand Politics: What the Humanities Can Say to Science (2007)

“"Tough love" is just the right phrase: love for the rich and privileged, tough for everyone else.”

Noam Chomsky (1928) american linguist, philosopher and activist

Powers and Prospects, 1996, p.137
Quotes 1990s, 1995-1999

“Just then, in my great tiredness and discouragement, the phrase "Reverence for Life" struck me like a flash. As far as I knew, it was a phrase I had never heard nor ever read.”

Albert Schweitzer (1875–1965) French-German physician, theologian, musician and philosopher

Reverence for Life (1969)
Context: At sunset of the third day, near the village of Igendja, we moved along an island set in the middle of the wide river. On a sandback to our left, four hippopotamuses and their young plodded along in our same direction. Just then, in my great tiredness and discouragement, the phrase "Reverence for Life" struck me like a flash. As far as I knew, it was a phrase I had never heard nor ever read. I realized at once that it carried within itself the solution to the problem that had been torturing me. Now I knew that a system of values which concerns itself only with our relationship to other people is incomplete and therefore lacking in power for good. Only by means of reverence for life can we establish a spiritual and humane relationship with both people and all living creatures within our reach. Only in this fashion can we avoid harming others, and, within the limits of our capacity, go to their aid whenever they need us.

“All life is just a progression toward, and then a recession from, one phrase— 'I love you.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald book The Offshore Pirate

Quoted, Short Stories
Source: The Offshore Pirate

“[…] if I am asked for a single phrase to characterize my role as Professor of the Public Understanding of Science, I think I would claim Advocate for Disinterested Truth.”

Richard Dawkins book A Devil's Chaplain

"Science, Genetics and Ethics: Memo for Tony Blair"
A Devil's Chaplain (2003)

“No flamboyant phrase, just straightforward science.”

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