Famous Quotes & Sayings

Rene Descartes

The nature of matter, or body considered in general, consists not in its being something which is hard or heavy or coloured, or which affects the senses in any way, but simply in its being something which is extended in length, breadth and depth.

Rene Descartes

And thereby make ourselves, as it were, the lords and masters of nature.

Thucydides

When a man finds a conclusion agreeable, he accepts it without argument, but when he finds it disagreeable, he will bring against it all the forces of logic and reason.

Thomas Paine

Every science has for its basis a system of principles as fixed and unalterable as those by which the universe is regulated and governed. Man cannot make principles; he can only discover them.

Thomas Hunt Morgan

Except for the rare cases of plastid inheritance, the inheritance of all known cooacters can be sufficiently accounted for by the presence of genes in the chromosomes. In a word the cytoplasm may be ignored genetically.

Thomas Huxley

For these two years I have been gravitating towards your doctrines, and since the publication of your primula paper with accelerated velocity. By about this time next year I expect to have shot past you, and to find you pitching into me for being more Darwinian than yourself. However, you have set me going, and must just take the consequences, for I warn you I will stop at no point so long as clear reasoning will take me further.

Thomas Huxley

What men of science want is only a fair day's wages for more than a fair day's work.

Thomas Huxley

Science is nothing, but trained and organized common sense.

Thomas Huxley

It is a popular delusion that the scientific enquirer is under an obligation not to go beyond generalisation of observed facts...but anyone who is practically acquainted with scientific work is aware that those who refuse to go beyond the facts, rarely get as far.

Thomas Huxley

I am too much of a skeptic to deny the possibility of anything...

Thomas Huxley

Science ... warns me to be careful how I adopt a view which jumps with my preconceptions, and to require stronger evidence for such belief than for one to which I was previously hostile. My business is to teach my aspirations to conform themselves to fact, not to try and make facts harmonize with my aspirations.

Thomas Huxley

The birth of science was the death of superstition.

Thomas Huxley

I know of no department of natural science more likely to reward a man who goes into it thoroughly than anthropology. There is an immense deal to be done in the science pure and simple, and it is one of those branches of inquiry which brings one into contact with the great problems of humanity in every direction.

Thomas Huxley

Science has fulfilled her function when she has ascertained and enunciated truth.

Thomas Huxley

Science and literature are not two things, but two sides of one thing.

Thomas Huxley

The improver of natural knowledge absolutely refuses to acknowledge authority, as such. For him, skepticism is the highest of duties; blind faith the one unpardonable sin.

Thomas Huxley

Science is simply common sense at its best, that is, rigidly accurate in observation, and merciless to fallacy in logic.

Thomas Browne

No one should approach the temple of science with the soul of a money changer.

Timothy Leary

Science is all metaphor.

Tom Robbins

Hardly a pure science, history is closer to animal husbandry than it is to mathematics in that it involves selective breeding. The principal difference between the husbandryman and the historian is that the former breeds sheep or cows or such and the latter breeds (assumed) facts. The husbandryman uses his skills to enrich the future, the historian uses his to enrich the past. Both are usually up to their ankles in bullshit.

Tom Robbins

The scientist keeps the romantic honest, and the romantic keeps the scientist human.

Vannevar Bush

The common idea that scientists reject a theory as soon as it leads to a contradiction is just not so. When they get something that works at all they plunge ahead with it and ignore its weak spots... scientists are just as bad as the rest of the public in following fads and being influenced by mass enthusiasm.

Vannevar Bush

Basic scientific research is scientific capital.

Vannevar Bush

Science can give mankind a better standard of living, better health and a better mental life, if mankind in turn gives science the sympathy and support so essential to its progress.

Vanna Bonta

'Impossible' is not a scientific term.

Steven Weinberg

Rational argument can be defeated by refusing to argue rationally.

Ridley Scott

Blade Runner appears regularly, two or three times a year in various shapes and forms of science fiction. It set the pace for what is essentially urban science fiction, urban future and it's why I've never re-visited that area because I feel I've done it.

Ridley Scott

I think if I'm going to do a science fiction, I'm going to go down a new path that I want to do.

If you think there are no new frontiers, watch a boy ring the front doorbell on his first date.

Richard Hamming

It is better to do the right problem the wrong way than the wrong problem the right way.

Richard Hamming

There are wavelengths that people cannot see, there are sounds that people cannot hear, and maybe computers have thoughts that people cannot think.

Richard Hamming

Newton said, "If I have seen further than others, it is because I've stood on the shoulders of giants." These days we stand on each other's feet!

Richard Hamming

A parable: A man was examining the construction of a cathedral. He asked a stone mason what he was doing chipping the stones, and the mason replied, "I am making stones." He asked a stone carver what he was doing. "I am carving a gargoyle." And so it went, each person said in detail what they were doing. Finally he came to an old woman who was sweeping the ground. She said. "I am helping build a cathedral." ...Most of the time each person is immersed in the details of one special part of the whole and does not think of how what they are doing relates to the larger picture.