SCIENCE QUOTES IV

quotations about science

When man seized the loadstone of science, the loadstar of superstition vanished in the clouds.

W. R. ALGER

attributed, Forty Thousand Quotations, Prose and Poetical


Science mines nature for truth of a different order -- it is our mightiest means of communing with reality, probing its mysteries, and gleaning from them some sense of belonging, of locating ourselves in the universe, understanding our place in it, and liberating ourselves from delusion.

MARIA POPOVA

"Poetry as Protest and Sanctuary", brainpickings, April 18, 2017


I'm scared to death about the denial of science. Science is real. Science is the most real thing in our world, other than nature. I'm hoping we'll all get back to a place where we can really understand that science is tested knowledge.

HARRISON FORD

"Harrison Ford on conservation: 'Nature is my god'", Washington Post, September 29, 2017


In popularizing a scientific development it was always crucial to sail the narrow strait between the Scylla of professional contempt and the Charybdis of public befuddlement.

GREGORY BENFORD

Artifact

Tags: Gregory Benford


The wallpaper with which the men of science have covered the world of reality is falling to tatters. The grand whorehouse which they have made of life requires no decoration; it is essential only that the drains function adequately.

HENRY MILLER

Tropic of Cancer

Tags: Henry Miller


In science one achieves the greatest impact (and often the greatest headlines) not by going along with the herd, but by bucking against it.

LAWRENCE M. KRAUSS

A Universe from Nothing


One of the chief interests in Science is its bearing on [the] great questions: the light it throws on our own nature and the nature of the Universe; and the humility it teaches by everywhere leaving us in presence of the inscrutable. The dull world outside thinks of Science as nothing but a matter of chemical analyses, calculations of distance and times, labeling of species, physiological experiments, and the like; but among the initiated, those of higher type, while seeking scientific knowledge for its proximate value, have an ever-increasing consciousness of its ultimate value as a transfiguration of things, which, marvellous enough within the limits of the knowable, suggests a profounder marvel that cannot be known.

HERBERT SPENCER

An Autobiography


Science is a good piece of furniture for a man to have in an upper chamber, provided he has common sense on the ground floor.

OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES

attributed, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers

Tags: Oliver Wendell Holmes


True science, so far from being an enemy to religious truth, will always stand as the mediator in the ever-pending conflict between religious faith and human reason.

C. S. WEST

"The Moral Element in Education", Southern Student's Hand-book of Selections for Reading and Oratory


Shun no toil to make yourself remarkable by some talent or other; yet do not devote yourself to one branch exclusively; strive to get clear notions about all; give up no science entirely, for science is but one.

SENECA

attributed, Day's Collacon

Tags: Seneca


The whole history of science has been the gradual realization that events do not happen in an arbitrary manner, but that they reflect a certain underlying order, which may or may not be divinely inspired.

STEPHEN HAWKING

A Brief History of Time

Tags: Stephen Hawking


Science has grown frightfully audacious in these days -- swift-footed, ponderous, careering over her iron ways with unslacking pace. This rampant dragon, on which I am mounted, see how he bends his once stiff neck to his rider, champing his checked bit and pawing the dust, impatient to leap around the globe. Genius is prescient, foresees its own might. Man is striving through these iron-ribbed, steam-sped hippogriffs, to recover his lost ubiquity and omnipotence, and threatens soon to grasp in his ample palm, and fix with flaming eye-ball, the elemental forces!

AMOS BRONSON ALCOTT

Table Talk

Tags: Amos Bronson Alcott


Science consists exactly of those forms of knowledge that can be verified and duplicated by anybody.

SETH LLOYD

attributed, The Clock and the Arrow


Even if the open windows of science at first make us shiver after the cozy indoor warmth of traditional humanizing myths, in the end the fresh air brings vigor, and the great spaces have a splendor of their own.

BERTRAND RUSSELL

What I Believe

Tags: Bertrand Russell


The success of science, both its intellectual excitement and its practical application, depend upon the self-correcting character of science. There must be a way of testing any valid idea. It must be possible to reproduce any valid experiment. The character or beliefs of the scientists are irrelevant; all that matters is whether the evidence supports his contention.

CARL SAGAN

Broca's Brain: Reflections on the Romance of Science

Tags: Carl Sagan


Some people think that science is just all this technology around, but NO it's something much deeper than that. Science, scientific thinking, scientific method is for me the only philosophical construct that the human race has developed to determine what is reliably true.

SIR HARRY KROTO

"Ask a Nobel Laureate", September 23, 2010


The meaning of science is not fixed, but is dynamic. As science has evolved, so has its meaning.

RUSSELL L. ACKOFF

Scientific Method: Optimizing Applied Research Decisions


Science embraces facts and debates opinion; religion embraces opinion and debates the facts.

TOM HEEHLER

The Well-Spoken Thesaurus


Science is not a body of knowledge. It is a system of thought and of checks and balances. You know what the scientific method is? I'll tell you what it is. I'm going to tell you a way no one has ever told you: The scientific method is do whatever it takes to not fool yourself into thinking something is true that is not or that something is not true that is. That's the scientific method.

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON

"Neil DeGrasse Tyson Says Science Isn't Dead -- And You're The One Who's Saving It", Good Education, September 29, 2017


Science is ever self-corrective.

PIERRE SIMON LAPLACE

attributed, The World's Sages, Thinkers and Reformers