SCIENCE QUOTES VI

quotations about science

The most exciting thing about being a scientist is not knowing and being wrong. Because that means there is a lot left to learn.

LAWRENCE M. KRAUSS

"Cosmic Connections", 2011


The great contribution of science is to demonstrate that a person can regard the world as chaos, but can find in himself a method of perceiving, within that chaos, small arrangements of order, that out of himself, and out of the order that previous scientists have generated, he can make things that are exciting and thrilling to make, that are deeply spiritual contributions to himself and to his friends. The scientist comes to the world and says, "I do not understand the divine source, but I know, in a way that I don't understand, that out of chaos I can make order, out of loneliness I can make friendship, out of ugliness I can make beauty."

EDWIN H. LAND

address at MIT, "Generation of Greatness: The Idea of a University in an Age of Science", May 22, 1957

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Science unfolds the wisdom of God.

JUAN DE PINEDA

attributed, Day's Collacon


Science is truth for life
Watch religion fall obsolete
Science Will be truth for life
Technology as nature

10,000 MANIACS

"Planned Obsolescence"


O star-eyed Science, hast thou wander'd there,
To waft us home the message of despair?

THOMAS CAMPBELL

Pleasures of Hope

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It was good that there should be a more diffused knowledge of the material world; and it was good, therefore, that there should be partisans of matter, believers in particles, zealots for tissue, who were ready to incur any odium and any labour that a few more men might learn a few more things.

WALTER BAGEHOT

Biographical Studies

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For decades now the picture of the world painted by the scientists had become strange, distant, unbelievable. Far easier, then, to ignore it than try to understand. Things were too complicated. Why bother? Turn on the telly, luv. Right.

GREGORY BENFORD

Timescape

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The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion that stands at the cradle of true art and true science.

ALBERT EINSTEIN

The World As I See It


Science is a method to keep yourself from kidding yourself.

EDWIN H. LAND

attributed, QFINANCE: The Ultimate Resource

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Every science owns kin with its sister science.

HYPATIA

attributed, Day's Collacon


By science men may learn the mysteries of the spirit world.

JOHN DEE

attributed, Day's Collacon

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Although I was first drawn to math and science by the certainty they promised, today I find the unanswered questions and the unexpected connections at least as attractive.

LISA RANDALL

Warped Passages

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The best scientist is open to experience and begins with romance -- the idea that anything is possible.

RAY BRADBURY

Los Angeles Times, August 9, 1976

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In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion.

CARL SAGAN

Keynote address to the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal, 1987

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All of science is nothing more than the refinement of everyday thinking.

ALBERT EINSTEIN

Out of My Later Years


In the history of science and throughout the whole course of its progress we see certain epochs following one another more or less rapidly. Some important view is expressed, it may be original or only revived; sooner or later it receives recognition; fellow workers spring up; the outcome of it finds its way into the schools; it is taught and handed down; and we observe, unhappily, that it does not in the least matter whether the view be true or false. In either case its course is the same; in either case it comes in the end to be a mere phrase, a lifeless word stamped on the memory.

JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE

The Maxims and Reflections of Goethe


Everything aspires to the light. You don't have to chase down a fly to get rid of it -- you just darken the room, leave a crack of light in a window, and out he goes. Works every time. We all have that instinct, that aspiration. Science can't dim that. All science can do is turn out the false lights so the true light can get us home.

TOBIAS WOLFF

Old School

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As our own species is in the process of proving, one cannot have superior science and inferior morals. The combination is unstable and self-destroying.

ARTHUR C. CLARKE

attributed, Clarke Foundation

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Weird Science
Plastic tubes and pots and pans
Bits and pieces and
Magic from the hand
We're makin'
Things I've never seen before
Behind bolted doors
Talent and imagination
Not what teacher said to do
Makin' dreams come true

OINGO BOINGO

"Weird Science"


Understanding science is necessary to make informed decisions on issues both private and public -- from individual health care to national defense.

JOHN DURANT

"John Durant plans a new era for the MIT Museum", MIT News, September 27, 2017