Famous Quotes & Sayings

John Charles Polanyi

Discoveries that are anticipated are seldom the most valuable. ... It's the scientist free to pilot his vessel across hidden shoals into open seas who gives the best value.

John Charles Polanyi

Some dreamers demand that scientists only discover things that can be used for good.

John Charles Polanyi

Science is an enterprise that can only flourish if it puts the truth ahead of nationality, ethnicity, class and color.

John Arbuthnot

John looked ruddy and plump, with a pair of cheeks like a trumpeter.

John Archibald Wheeler

In order to more fully understand this reality, we must take into account other dimensions of a broader reality.

John Archibald Wheeler

In any field, find the strangest thing and then explore it.

Michio Kaku

I'm not a science fiction writer, I'm a physicist.

Seth MacFarlane

Science has become politicized, and that's an embarrassment.

Stephen Leacock

The landlady of a boarding-house is a parallelogram - that is, an oblong angular figure, which cannot be described, but which is equal to anything

Stephen Leacock

Electricity is of two kinds, positive and negative. The difference is, I presume, that one comes a little more expensive, but is more durable; the other is a cheaper thing, but the moths get into it.

David Lee

The discovery of superfluidity opened up a new understanding in the science world.

Scott Adams

Stem cells are like toenail clippings with a better career plan.

Scott Adams

Every generation of humans believed it had all the answers it needed, except for a few mysteries they assumed would be solved at any moment. And they all believed their ancestors were simplistic and deluded. What are the odds that you are the first generation of humans who will understand reality ?

Scott Adams

Science is a good thing. News reporters are good things too. But it's never a good idea to put them in the same room.

Scott Adams

For five hundred dollars, I'll name a subatomic particle after you. Some of my satisfied customers include Arthur C. Quark and George Meson.

Scott Adams

Dilbert: It took weeks but I've calculated a new theory about the origin of the universe. According to my calculations it didn't start with a "Big Bang" at all-it was more of "Phhbwt" sound. You may be wondering about the practical applications of the "Little Phhbwt" theory. Dogbert: I was wondering when you'll go away.

Scott Adams

Dilbert: I'm obsessed with inventing a perpetual motion machine. Most scientists think it's impossible, but I have something they don't. Dogbert: A lot of spare time? Dilbert: Exactly.

Scott Adams

Newsreader: A huge asteroid could destroy Earth! And by coincidence, that's the subject of tonight's miniseries. Dogbert: In science, researchers proved that this simple device can keep idiots off your television screen. [TV remote control] Click.

Thomas Jefferson

I do not pretend that language is science. It isan instrument for the attainment of science.

Thomas Jefferson

The plough is to the farmer what the wand is to the sorcerer. Its effect is really like sorcery.

Tacitus

The sciences throw an inexpressible grace over our compositions, even where they are not immediately concerned; as their effects are discernible where we least expect to find them.

Soren Kierkegaard

In a mathematical proposition, for example, the objectivity is given, but therefore its truth is also an indifferent truth.

Stephen Wolfram

The thing that got me started on the science that I've been building now for about 20 years or so was the question of okay, if mathematical equations can't make progress in understanding complex phenomena in the natural world, how might we make progress?

Stephen Wolfram

...All the wonders of our universe can in effect be captured by simple rules, yet ... there can be no way to know all the consequences of these rules, except in effect just to watch and see how they unfold.

Thomas Hobbes

The most noble and profitable invention of all other, was that of SPEECH, consisting of Names or Appellations, and their Connexion; whereby men register their Thoughts; recall them when they are past; and also declare them one to another for mutuall utility and conversation; without which, there had been amongst men, neither Commonwealth, nor Society, nor Contract, nor Peace, no more than amongst Lyons, Bears, and Wolves.

Thomas Hobbes

And therefore in geometry (which is the only science that it hath pleased God hitherto to bestow on mankind), men begin at settling the significations of their words; which settling of significations, they call definitions, and place them in the beginning of their reckoning.

Thomas Hobbes

Whatsoever accidents Or qualities our sense make us think there be in the world, they are not there, but are seemings and apparitions only. The things that really are in the world without us, are those motions by which these seemings are caused. And this is the great deception of sense, which also is by sense to be corrected. For as sense telleth me, when I see directly, that the colour seemeth to be in the object; so also sense telleth me, when I see by reflection, that colour is not in the object.

Thomas Hobbes

To conclude, The Light of humane minds is Perspicuous Words, but by exact definitions first snuffed, and purged from ambiguity; Reason is the pace; Encrease of Science, the way; and the Benefit of man-kind, the end.

Thomas Hobbes

Science is the knowledge of consequences, and dependence of one fact upon another.

Tim Berners-Lee

WorldWideWeb: Proposal for a HyperText Project

Thomas Love Peacock

They have poisoned the Thames and killed the fish in the river. A little further development of the same wisdom and science will complete the poisoning of the air, and kill the dwellers on the banks. I almost think it is the destiny of science to exterminate the human race.

Thomas Kuhn

The historian of science may be tempted to exclaim that when paradigms change, the world itself changes with them.

Thomas Kuhn

As in political revolutions, so in paradigm choice--there is no standard higher than the assent of the relevant community. To discover how scientific revolutions are effected, we shall therefore have to examine not only the impact of nature and of logic, but also the techniques of persuasive argumentation effective within the quite special groups that constitute the community of scientists.