Famous Quotes & Sayings

John Ruskin

Science lives only in quiet places, and with odd people, mostly poor.

Peter Drucker

There are no creeds in mathematics.

Penelope Lively

I'm not an historian but I can get interested-obsessively interested-with any aspect of the past, whether it's palaeontology or archaeology or the very recent past.

Mark Akenside

SCIENCE! thou fair effusive ray From the great source of mental Day, Free, generous, and refin'd! Descend with all thy treasures fraught, Illumine each bewilder'd thought, And bless my labour'g mind.

Max Planck

The spectral density of black body radiation ... represents something absolute, and since the search for the absolutes has always appeared to me to be the highest form of research, I applied myself vigorously to its solution.

Max Planck

If E is considered to be a continuously divisible quantity, this distribution is possible in infinitely many ways. We consider, however-this is the most essential point of the whole calculation-E to be composed of a well-defined number of equal parts and use thereto the constant of nature h = 6.55 ×10-27 erg sec. This constant multiplied by the common frequency ? of the resonators gives us the energy element E in erg, and dividing E by E we get the number P of energy elements which must be divided over the N resonators.

Max Planck

Experimenters are the shock troops of science.

Max Planck

I had always looked upon the search for the absolute as the noblest and most worth while task of science.

Max Planck

Science advances one funeral at a time.

Max Planck

The man who cannot occasionally imagine events and conditions of existence that are contrary to the causal principle as he knows it will never enrich his science by the addition of a new idea.

Max Planck

The scientist needs an artistically creative imagination.

Science itself is a humanist in the sense that it doesn't discriminate between human beings, but it is also morally neutral. It is no better or worse than the ethos with and for which it is used.

John Polkinghorne

The test of a theory is its ability to cope with all the relevant phenomena, not its a priori 'reasonableness'. The latter would have proved a poor guide in the development of science, which often makes progress by its encounter with the totally unexpected and initially extremely puzzling.

John Quincy Adams

The attainment of knowledge is the high and exclusive attribute of man, among the numberless myriads of animated beings, inhabitants of the terrestrial globe. On him alone is bestowed, by the bounty of the Creator of the universe, the power and the capacity of acquiring knowledge. Knowledge is the attribute of his nature which at once enables him to improve his condition upon earth, and to prepare him for the enjoyment of a happier existence hereafter.

John Milton

Th'invention all admir'd, and each, how he to be th'inventor miss'd; so easy it seem'd once found, which yet unfound most would have thought impossible.

John Milton

By night the Glass Of Galileo ... observes Imagin'd Land and Regions in the Moon.

Norbert Wiener

I have said that science is impossible without faith. ... Inductive logic, the logic of Bacon, is rather something on which we can act than something which we can prove, and to act on it is a supreme assertion of faith ... Science is a way of life which can only fluorish when men are free to have faith.

John Henry Newman

To discover and to teach are distinct functions; they are also distinct gifts, and are not commonly found united in the same person.

John Henry Newman

Literature stands related to Man as Science stands to Nature; it is his history.

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.