Science quotes
7K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
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"I trust and believe that the time spent in this voyage ... will produce its full worth in Natural History; and it appears to me the doing what little we can to increase the general stock of knowledge is as respectable an object of life, as one can in any likelihood pursue."
"Science knows only one commandment - contribute to science."
"Physics is mathematical not because we know so much about the physical world, but because we know so little; it is only its mathematical properties that we can discover."
"Where lies the line between sorcery and science? It is only a matter of terminology, my friend."
"Facts mean nothing when they are preempted by appearance. Do not underestimate the power of impression over reality."
"Man is a little germ that lives on an unimportant rock ball that revolves about a small star at the outskirts of an ordinary galaxy. ... I am absolutely amazed to discover myself on this rock ball rotating around a spherical fire. It's a very odd situation. And the more I look at things I cannot get rid of the feeling that existence is quite weird."
"I have deep faith that the principle of the universe will be beautiful and simple"
"We seem to have a compulsion these days to bury time capsules in order to give those people living in the next century or so some idea of what we are like."
"In formal logic, a contradiction is the signal of defeat, but in the evolution of real knowledge it marks the first step in progress toward a victory."
"Even in the vast and mysterious reaches of the sea we are brought back to the fundamental truth that nothing lives to itself."
"First you guess. Don't laugh, this is the most important step. Then you compute the consequences. Compare the consequences to experience. If it disagrees with experience, the guess is wrong. In that simple statement is the key to science. It doesn't matter how beautiful your guess is or how smart you are or what your name is. If it disagrees with experience, it's wrong. That's all there is to it."
"You can know the name of a bird in all the languages of the world, but when you're finished, you'll know absolutely nothing whatever about the bird... So let's look at the bird and see what it's doing -- that's what counts."
"Logic is neither an art nor a science but a dodge."
"The instinct of brutes and insects can be the effect of nothing else than the wisdom and skill of a powerful ever-living agent."
"To explain all nature is too difficult a task for any one man or even for any one age. Tis much better to do a little with certainty & leave the rest for others that come after than to explain all things by conjecture without making sure of any thing."
"Death is a release from the impressions of the senses, and from desires that make us their puppets, and from the vagaries of the mind, and from the hard service of the flesh."
"Modern mathematics, that most astounding of intellectual creations, has projected the mind's eye through infinite time and the mind's hand into boundless space."
"The recurrence of a phenomenon like Edison is not very likely. The profound change of conditions and the ever increasing necessity of theoretical training would seem to make it impossible. He will occupy a unique and exalted position in the history of his native land, which might well be proud of his great genius and undying achievements in the interest of humanity."
"The study of geometry is a petty and idle exercise of the mind, if it is applied to no larger system than the starry one. Mathematics should be mixed not only with physics but with ethics; that is mixed mathematics."
"Animals have genes for altruism, and those genes have been selected in the evolution of many creatures because of the advantage they confer for the continuing survival of the species."
