Famous Quotes & Sayings

Antoine Lavoisier

In every combustion there is disengagement of the matter of fire or of light. A body can burn only in pure air [oxygen]. There is no destruction or decomposition of pure air and the increase in weight of the body burnt is exactly equal to the weight of air destroyed or decomposed. The body burnt changes into an acid by addition of the substance that increases its weight. Pure air is a compound of the matter of fire or of light with a base. In combustion the burning body removes the base, which it attracts more strongly than does the matter of heat, which appears as flame, heat and light.

Antoine Lavoisier

Mathematicians come to the solution of a problem by the simple arrangement of the data, and reducing the reasoning to such simple operations, to judgments so brief, that they never lose sight of the evidence that serves as their guide.

Sheldon Lee Glashow

My parents, once I made it clear to them that I wanted to do science, they were totally sympathetic.

Jack Horner

'Jurassic Park' has a lot of science in it - and a lot of it is wrong - but if it was all accurate, it would be a documentary.

Bjarne Stroustrup

Most of the programmers in ten years will be us, and we won't get much smarter.

Carl Jung

Science...is part and parcel of our knowledge and obscures our insight only when it holds that the understanding given by it is the only kind there is.

Olivia Wilde

I've always been a fan of science fiction.

Paul Verhoeven

Science fiction is about worlds you don't know and worlds you can create, like in 'Avatar'.

Science fiction frees you to go anyplace and examine anything.

Bertrand Russell

Can a society in which thought and technique are scientific persist for a long period, as, for example, ancient Egypt persisted, or does it necessarily contain within itself forces which must bring either decay or explosion?

Bertrand Russell

Religion and Science are two aspects of social life, of which the former has been important as far back as we know anything of man

Bertrand Russell

The pure mathematician, like the musician, is a free creator of his world of ordered beauty.

William Shakespeare

The wind-shak'd surge, with high and monstrous main, Seems to cast water on the burning Bear, And quench the guards of the ever-fixed pole.

James Hansen

You have no time to do the science if you're talking to the media.

Allen Covert

I think if I did do something in another genre, it would be science fiction; I'm a big sci fi nerd.

Barbara Thompson

The long ones were just devastating. Science stopped.

James Surowiecki

Unfortunately, there is something of a flaw in this idealized picture of the way the scientific community discovers truth. And the flaw is that most scientific work never gets noticed. Study after study has shown that most scientific papers are read by almost no one, while a small number of papers are read by many people.

James Lovelock

No one who has experienced the intense involvement of computer modeling would deny that the temptation exists to use any data input that will enable one to continue playing what is perhaps the ultimate game of solitaire.

James M. Barrie

The man of science appears to be the only man who has something to say just now, and the only man who does not know how to say it.

John Desmond Bernal

The region of the mysterious is rapidly shrinking.

John Desmond Bernal

We are still too close to the birth of the universe to be certain about its death.

John Desmond Bernal

Her [Rosalind Franklin] devotion to research showed itself at its finest in the last months of her life. Although stricken with an illness which she knew would be fatal, she continued to work right up to the end.

John Desmond Bernal

The greater the man, the more he is soaked in the atmosphere of his time; only thus can he get a wide enough grasp of it to be able to change substantially the pattern of knowledge and action.

John Desmond Bernal

It is characteristic of science that the full explanations are often seized in their essence by the percipient scientist long in advance of any possible proof.

John Dewey

Man is merely a frequent effect, a monstrosity is a rare one, but both are equally natural, equally inevitable, equally part of the universal and general order. And what is strange about that? All creatures are involved in the life of all others, consequently every species... all nature is in a perpetual state of flux. Every animal is more or less a human being, every mineral more or less a plant, every plant more or less an animal... There is nothing clearly defined in nature.

John Calvin

Knowledge of the sciences is so much smoke apart from the heavenly science of Christ.

John B. S. Haldane

Shelley and Keats were the last English poets who were at all up to date in their chemical knowledge.

John B. S. Haldane

There can be no truce between science and religion.

John B. S. Haldane

A discussion between Haldane and a friend began to take a predictable turn. The friend said with a sigh, 'It's no use going on. I know what you will say next, and I know what you will do next.' The distinguished scientist promptly sat down on the floor, turned two back somersaults, and returned to his seat. 'There,' he said with a smile. 'That's to prove that you're not always right.'

Johan Huizinga

The new knowledge has not yet settled in culture. It has not yet been integrated in a new cosmic conception.

Joan Robinson

science progresses by trial and error, and when it is forbidden to admit error there can be no progress.

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

In history an additional result is commonly produced by human actions beyond that which they aim at and obtain -- that which they immediately recognize and desire. They gratify their own interest; but something further is thereby accomplished, latent in the actions in question, though not present to their consciousness, and not included in their design.

Frank Lloyd Wright

Science can give us only the tools in the box, these mechanical miracles that it has already given us. But of what use to us are miraculous tools until we have mastered the humane, cultural use of them? We do not want to live in a world where the machine has mastered the man; we want to live in a world where man has mastered the machine.