Famous Quotes & Sayings

Georg C. Lichtenberg

There is no greater impediment to progress in the sciences than the desire to see it take place too quickly.

Georg C. Lichtenberg

Above all things expand the frontiers of science: without this the rest counts for nothing.

Friedrich Nietzsche

Science rushes headlong, without selectivity, without "taste," at whatever is knowable, in the blind desire to know all at any cost.

Friedrich Nietzsche

The finest and healthiest thing about science is, as in the mountains, the brisk air blowing around in it.--The spiritually delicate (such as artists) shun and slander science owing to this air.

Friedrich Nietzsche

Since Copernicus, man seems to have got himself on an inclined plane-now he is slipping faster and faster away from the center into-what? into nothingness? into a 'penetrating sense of his nothingness?' ... all science, natural as well as unnatural-which is what I call the self-critique of knowledge-has at present the object of dissuading man from his former respect for himself, as if this had been but a piece of bizarre conceit.

Friedrich Nietzsche

There is no better soporific and sedative than skepticism.

Gertrude Stein

The nineteenth century believed in science but the twentieth century does not.

Ian Hacking

Experimental work provides the strongest evidence for scientific realism. This is not because we test hypotheses about entities. It is because entities that in principle cannot be 'observed' are manipulated to produce a new phenomena [sic] and to investigate other aspects of nature.

Ian Hacking

Philosophers of science constantly discuss theories and representation of reality, but say almost nothing about experiment, technology, or the use of knowledge to alter the world. This is odd, because 'experimental method' used to be just another name for scientific method.... I hope [to] initiate a Back-to-Bacon movement, in which we attend more seriously to experimental science. Experimentation has a life of its own.

Enrico Fermi

Young man, if I could remember the names of these particles, I would have been a botanist.

Enrico Fermi

There are two possible outcomes: if the result confirms the hypothesis, then you've made a measurement. If the result is contrary to the hypothesis, then you've made a discovery.

Jawaharlal Nehru

Science and technology have freed humanity from many burdens and given us this new perspective and great power. This power can be used for the good of all. If wisdom governs our actions; but if the world is mad or foolish, it can destroy itself just when great advances and triumphs are almost without its grasp.

Jasper Fforde

For every expert there is an equal and opposite expert.

Hippocrates

And if this were so in all cases, the principle would be established, that sometimes conditions can be treated by things opposite to those from which they arose, and sometimes by things like to those from which they arose.

Hippocrates

Correct is to recognize what diseases are and whence they come; which are long and which are short; which are mortal and which are not; which are in the process of changing into others; which are increasing and which are diminishing; which are major and which are minor; to treat the diseases that can be treated, but to recognize the ones that cannot be, and to know why they cannot be; by treating patients with the former, to give them the benefit of treatment as far as it is possible.

Hippocrates

I have clearly recorded this: for one can learn good lessons also from what has been tried but clearly has not succeeded, when it is clear why it has not succeeded.

Evelyn Waugh

If politicians and scientists were lazier, how much happier we should all be

Evan Esar

[Statistics] The science that can prove everything except the usefulness of statistics.

Evan Esar

A bacteriologist is a man whose conversation always start with the germ of an idea.

Evan Esar

[Statistics] Fiction in its most uninteresting form.

Evan Esar

Statistics: The only science that enables different experts using the same figures to draw different conclusions.

Isaac Watts

No science is speedily learned by the noblest genius without tuition.

Isaac Newton

Are not all Hypotheses erroneous, in which Light is supposed to consist in Pression or Motion, propagated through a fluid Medium? For in all these Hypotheses the Phaenomena of Light have been hitherto explain'd by supposing that they arise from new Modifications of the Rays; which is an erroneous Supposition.

Isaac Newton

[1.] And first I suppose that there is diffused through all places an aethereal substance capable of contraction & dilatation, strongly elastick, & in a word, much like air in all respects, but far more subtile. 2. I suppose this aether pervades all gross bodies, but yet so as to stand rarer in their pores then in free spaces, & so much ye rarer as their pores are less ... 3. I suppose ye rarer aether within bodies & ye denser without them, not to be terminated in a mathematical superficies, but to grow gradually into one another.

Isaac Newton

Hypotheses non fingo. I frame no hypotheses.

Isaac Newton

Therefore, the causes assigned to natural effects of the same kind must be, so far as possible, the same.

Isaac Newton

Therefore to the same natural effects we must, as far as possible, assign the same causes.

Isaac Newton

I have been much amused at ye singular phenomena resulting from bringing of a needle into contact with a piece of amber or resin fricated on silke clothe. Ye flame putteth me in mind of sheet lightning on a small-how very small-scale.

Isaac Newton

Against filling the Heavens with fluid Mediums, unless they be exceeding rare, a great Objection arises from the regular and very lasting Motions of the Planets and Comets in all manner of Courses through the Heavens.

Isaac Newton

The Synthesis consists in assuming the Causes discovered and established as Principles, and by them explaining the Phænomena proceeding from them, and proving the Explanations.

Isaac Newton

Do not Bodies and Light act mutually upon one another; that is to say, Bodies upon Light in emitting, reflecting, refracting and inflecting it, and Light upon Bodies for heating them, and putting their parts into a vibrating motion wherein heat consists?

Isaac Newton

We are not to consider the world as the body of God: he is an uniform being, void of organs, members, or parts; and they are his creatures, subordinate to him, and subservient to his will.

Isaac Newton

I do not think that this [the universe] can be explained only by natural causes, and are forced to impute to the wisdom and ingenuity of an intelligent.