Famous Quotes & Sayings

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

Is evolution a theory, a system, or a hypothesis? It is much more it is a general postulate to which all theories, all hypotheses, all systems must henceforward bow and which they must satisfy in order to be thinkable and true. Evolution is a light which illuminates all facts, a trajectory which all lines of thought must follow this is what evolution is.

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

That there is an evolution of one sort or another is now common ground among scientists. Whether or not that evolution is directed is another question.

Philip Pullman

But think of Adam and Eve like an imaginary number, like the square root of minus one: you can never see any concrete proof that it exists, but if you include it in your equations, you can calculate all manner of things that couldn't be imagined without it.

Queen Elizabeth II

This new power, which has proved itself to be such a terrifying weapon of destruction, is harnessed for the first time for the common good of our community.

Pythagoras

There is geometry in the humming of the strings, there is music in the spacing of the spheres.

Plato

Perhaps there is a pattern set up in the heavens for one who desires to see it, and having seen it, to find one in himself.

Plato

But he who has been earnest in the love of knowledge and of true wisdom, and has exercised his intellect more than any other part of him, must have thoughts immortal and divine. If he attain truth, and in so far as human nature is capable of sharing in immortality, he must altogether be immortal.

Hans Selye

The true scientist never loses the faculty of amazement.

Harlan Ellison

People don't die from the old diseases any more. They die from new ones, but that's Progress, isn't it? Isn't it?

Gustave Flaubert

Snicker on hearing his name: 'the gentleman who thinks we are descended from the apes.'

Gustave Flaubert

DOCTOR. Always preceded by 'The good'. Among men, in familiar conversation, 'Oh! balls, doctor!' Is a wizard when he enjoys your confidence, a jack-ass when you're no longer on terms. All are materialists: 'you can't probe for faith with a scalpel.'

Gilbert K. Chesterton

Science is the study of the admitted laws of existence, which cannot prove a universal negative about whether those laws could ever be suspended by something admittedly above them. It is as if we were to say that a lawyer was so deeply learned in the American Constitution that he knew there could never be a revolution in America..

Gilbert K. Chesterton

The thing that cannot be defined is the first thing; the primary fact.

John Dryden

Who thinks all Science, as all Virtue, vain; Who counts Geometry and numbers Toys...

John Maynard Smith

Scientific theories tell us what is possible; myths tell us what is desirable. Both are needed to guide proper action.

John Lahr

Accustomed to the veneer of noise, to the shibboleths of promotion, public relations, and market research, society is suspicious of those who value silence.

John Banville

No two things the same, the equals sign a scandal.

Joseph Lister

The frequency of disastrous consequences in compound fracture, contrasted with the complete immunity from danger to life or limb in simple fracture, is one of the most striking as well as melancholy facts in surgical practice.

Joseph Lister

If we had nothing but pecuniary rewards and worldly honours to look to, our profession would not be one to be desired. But in its practice you will find it to be attended with peculiar privileges, second to none in intense interest and pure pleasures. It is our proud office to tend the fleshly tabernacle of the immortal spirit, and our path, rightly followed, will be guided by unfettered truth and love unfeigned. In the pursuit of this noble and holy calling I wish you all God-speed.

Joseph Butler

The only distinct meaning of the word "natural" is stated, fixed, or settled; since what is natural as much requires and presupposes an intelligent agent to render it so, i.e. to effect it continually or at stated times, as what is supernatural or miraculous does to effect it for once.

Leland Stanford

Many writers upon the science of political economy have declared that it is the duty of a nation first to encourage the creation of wealth; and second, to direct and control its distribution. All such theories are delusive.

Joseph Needham

But Chinese civilization has the overpowering beauty of the wholly other, and only the wholly other can inspire the deepest love and the profoundest desire to learn.

Joseph Parker

When science advances religion goes along with it; science builds the altar at which religion prays.

Joseph Priestley

But it is not given to every electrician to die in so glorious a manner as the justly envied Richmann.

Josh Billings

[Science is] the literature of truth.

Otto von Bismarck

Politics is no exact science.

Maria Mitchell

In my younger days, when I was painted by the half-educated, loose and inaccurate ways women had, I used to say, "How much women need exact science" But since I have known some workers in science, I have now said, "How much science needs women"

Paul Tillich

Culture (science) is the form of religion; Religion is the substance of culture (science).

Paul Dirac

In science one tries to tell people, in such a way as to be understood by everyone, something that no one ever knew before. But in poetry, it is the exact opposite.

Paul Dirac

Well, in the first place, it leads to great anxiety as to whether it's going to be correct or not ... I expect that's the dominating feeling. It gets to be rather a fever... At age 60, when asked about his feelings on discovering the Dirac equation.

Paul Dirac

I admired Bohr very much. We had long talks together, long talks in which Bohr did practically all the talking.

Paul Dirac

I consider that I understand an equation when I can predict the properties of its solutions, without actually solving it.

Paul Dirac

When [Erwin Schrödinger] went to the Solvay conferences in Brussels, he would walk from the station to the hotel where the delegates stayed, carrying all his luggage in a rucksack and looking so like a tramp that it needed a great deal of argument at the reception desk before he could claim a room.