Famous Quotes & Sayings

Charles Henry Parkhurst

Science is busy with the hither-end of things, not the thither-end.

Charles Francis Richter

Refining is inevitable in science when you have made measurements of a phenomenon for a long period of time.

Bill Mauldin

I feel like a fugitive from the law of averages.

Bill Watterson

That's the whole problem with science. You've got a bunch of empiricists trying to describe things of unimaginable wonder.

Benoit Mandelbrot

Being a language, mathematics may be used not only to inform but also, among other things, to seduce.

Benjamin Franklin

And we daily in our experiments electrise bodies plus or minus, as we think proper. [These terms we may use till your Philosophers give us better.] To electrise plus or minus, no more needs to be known than this, that the parts of the Tube or Sphere, that are rubb'd, do, in the Instant of Friction, attract the Electrical Fire, and therefore take it from the Thin rubbing; the same parts immediately, as the Friction upon them ceases, are disposed to give the fire they have received, to any Body that has less.

Benjamin Franklin

I say it is impossible that so sensible a people [citizens of Paris], under such circumstances, should have lived so long by the smoky, unwholesome, and enormously expensive light of candles, if they had really known that they might have had as much pure light of the sun for nothing.

Avicenna

Pure earth does not petrify, because the predominance of dryness over [i.e. in] the earth endows it not with coherence but rather with crumbliness. In general, stone is formed in two ways only (a) through the hardening of clay, and (b) by the congelation [of waters].

Arthur Eddington

[When thinking about the new relativity and quantum theories] I have felt a homesickness for the paths of physical science where there are ore or less discernible handrails to keep us from the worst morasses of foolishness.

Arthur Eddington

The electron, as it leaves the atom, crystallises out of Schrödinger's mist like a genie emerging from his bottle.

Arthur Eddington

But it is necessary to insist more strongly than usual that what I am putting before you is a model-the Bohr model atom-because later I shall take you to a profounder level of representation in which the electron instead of being confined to a particular locality is distributed in a sort of probability haze all over the atom.

Arthur Eddington

There is no space without aether, and no aether which does not occupy space.

Arthur Eddington

Electrical force is defined as something which causes motion of electrical charge; an electrical charge is something which exerts electric force.

Arthur Eddington

In the most modern theories of physics probability seems to have replaced aether as "the nominative of the verb 'to undulate'."

Arthur Eddington

Asked in 1919 whether it was true that only three people in the world understood the theory of general relativity, [Eddington] allegedly replied: "Who's the third?"

Arthur Eddington

Observation and theory get on best when they are mixed together, both helping one another in the pursuit of truth. It is a good rule not to put overmuch confidence in a theory until it has been confirmed by observation. I hope I shall not shock the experimental physicists too much if I add that it is also a good rule not to put overmuch confidence in the observational results that are put forward until they have been confirmed by theory.

Arthur Eddington

If someone points out to you that your pet theory of the universe is in disagreement with Maxwell's equations-then so much the worse for Maxwell's equations. If it is found to be contradicted by observation-well these experimentalists do bungle things sometimes. But if your theory is found to be against the second law of thermodynamics I can give you no hope; there is nothing for it but to collapse in deepest humiliation.

Arthur Conan Doyle

The grand thing is to be able to reason backwards.

Arthur Conan Doyle

I never guess. It is a shocking habit destructive to the logical faculty.

Arthur Conan Doyle

I had ... come to an entirely erroneous conclusion, which shows, my dear Watson, how dangerous it always is to reason from insufficient data.

Arthur Balfour

Though the parallel is not complete, it is safe to say that science will never touch them unaided by its practical applications. Its wonders may be catalogued for purposes of education, they may be illustrated by arresting experiments, by numbers and magnitudes which startle or fatigue the imagination but they will form no familiar portion of the intellectual furniture of ordinary men unless they be connected, however remotely, with the conduct of ordinary life.

Arthur C. Clarke

Our lifetime may be the last that will be lived out in a technological society.

Arthur C. Clarke

Politicians should read science fiction, not westerns and detective stories.

Arthur C. Clarke

Sometimes I think we're alone in the universe, and sometimes I think we're not. In either case the idea is quite staggering.

Arthur C. Clarke

At the present rate of progress, it is almost impossible to imagine any technical feat that cannot be achieved - if it can be achieved at all - within the next few hundred years.

Arthur C. Clarke

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

Using material ferried up by rockets, it would be possible to construct a "space station" in ... orbit. The station could be provided with living quarters, laboratories and everything needed for the comfort of its crew, who would be relieved and provisioned by a regular rocket service. (1945)

Arthur C. Clarke

Only small minds are impressed by large numbers.

Arthur C. Clarke

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

Anton Chekhov

There is no national science, just as there is no national multiplication table; what is national is no longer science.

Asa Gray

This view, as a rounded whole and in all its essential elements, has very recently disappeared from science. It died a royal death with Agassiz.

We're getting into several of the sciences that had not been delved into before.

It is primarily through the growth of science and technology that man has acquired those attributes which distinguish him from the animals, which have indeed made it possible for him to become human.