Famous Quotes & Sayings

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.

Matthew Arnold

The highest reach of science is, one may say, an inventive power, a faculty of divination, akin to the highest power exercised in poetry; therefore, a nation whose spirit is characterised by energy may well be eminent in science; and we have Newton. Shakspeare [sic] and Newton: in the intellectual sphere there can be no higher names. And what that energy, which is the life of genius, above everything demands and insists upon, is freedom; entire independence of all authority, prescription and routine, the fullest room to expand as it will.

Max Weber

Every scientific fulfillment raises new questions; it asks to be surpassed and outdated.

Plato

Astronomy compels the soul to look upwards and leads us from this world to another.

Mary E. Pearson

Faith and science, I have learned, are two sides of the same coin, separated by an expanse so small, but wide enough that one side can't see the other. They don't know they are connected.

Martin Rees

Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

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.

Mason Cooley

Rule of science: only exclude purpose, and Nature will reveal her causes.

Marvin Minsky

It would be as useless to perceive how things 'actually look' as it would be to watch the random dots on untuned television screens.

Michio Kaku

It is often stated that of all the theories proposed in this century, the silliest is quantum theory. In fact, some say that the only thing that quantum theory has going for it is that it is unquestionably correct.

Michael J. Fox

'Why do you think it is...', I asked Dr. Cook ... 'that brain surgery, above all else-even rocket science-gets singled out as the most challenging of human feats, the one demanding the utmost of human intelligence?' [Dr. Cook answered,] 'No margin for error.'

Marie Curie

It was like a new world opened to me, the world of science, which I was at last permitted to know in all liberty.

Marie Curie

In science we must be interested in things, not in persons.

Marie Curie

After all, science is essentially international, and it is only through lack of the historical sense that national qualities have been attributed to it.

Marie Curie

We must not forget that when radium was discovered no one knew that it would prove useful in hospitals. The work was one of pure science. And this is a proof that scientific work must not be considered from the point of view of the direct usefulness of it. It must be done for itself, for the beauty of science, and then there is always the chance that a scientific discovery may become like the radium a benefit for mankind.

Marie Curie

I am one of those who think like Nobel, that humanity will draw more good than evil from new discoveries.

Marie Curie

Nothing in this world is to be feared... only understood.

Theodore Sturgeon

In science fiction, you can also test out your own realities.

Theodore Sturgeon

I wrote the very first stories in science fiction which dealt with homosexuality, The World Well Lost and Affair With a Green Monkey.

Theodore Parker

Science, also, is most largely indebted to these beauty-loving Greeks, for truth is one form of loveliness.

Theodore Roosevelt

Nowadays the field naturalist-who is usually at all points superior to the mere closet naturalist-follows a profession as full of hazard and interest as that of the explorer or of the big-game hunter in the remote wilderness.

Theodore Kaczynski

My occupation is an open question. I was once an assistant professor of mathematics. Since then, I have spent time living in the woods of Montana.

Thales

I will be sufficiently rewarded if when telling it to others you will not claim the discovery as your own, but will say it was mine.