Motivational Quotes

Science

When the number of factors coming into play in a phenomenological complex is too large scientific method in most cases fails.

- Einstein, Albert

Best Quotes about Science

The sciences do not try to explain, they hardly even try to interpret, they mainly make models. By a model is meant a mathematical construct which, with the addition of certain verbal interpretations describes observed phenomena. The justification of such a mathematical construct is solely and precisely that it is expected to work.

Neumann, John Von

Science is facts; just as houses are made of stones, so is science made of facts; but a pile of stones is not a house and a collection of facts is not necessarily science.

Henri Poincare

The worst state of affairs is when science begins to concern itself with art.

Klee, Paul

My conscience aches but it's going to lose the fight.

Myles, Allanah

What the hell is nostalgia doing in a science-fiction film? With the whole universe and all the future to play in, Lucas took his marvelous toys and crawled under the fringed cloth on the parlor table, back into a nice safe hide hole, along with Flash Gordon and the Cowardly Lion and Luke Skywalker and the Flying Aces and the Hitler Jugend. If there's a message there, I don't think I want to hear it.

Guin, Ursula K. Le

That is the essence of science: ask an impertinent question, and you are on the way to a pertinent answer.

Bronowski, Jacob

Science, which cuts its way through the muddy pond of daily life without mingling with it, casts its wealth to right and left, but the puny boatmen do not know how to fish for it.

Herzen, Alexander

There is no greater impediment to progress in the sciences than the desire to see it take place too quickly.

Lichtenberg, Georg C.

Reason, observation, and experience; the holy trinity of science.

Ingersoll, Robert Green

10.

The real accomplishment of modern science and technology consists in taking ordinary men, informing them narrowly and deeply and then, through appropriate organization, arranging to have their knowledge combined with that of other specialized but equally ordinary men. This dispenses with the need for genius. The resulting performance, though less inspiring, is far more predictable.

Galbraith, John Kenneth

11.

Science has a simple faith, which transcends utility. Nearly all men of science, all men of learning for that matter, and men of simple ways too, have it in some form and in some degree. It is the faith that it is the privilege of man to learn to understand, and that this is his mission. If we abandon that mission under stress we shall abandon it forever, for stress will not cease. Knowledge for the sake of understanding, not merely to prevail, that is the essence of our being. None can define its limits, or set its ultimate boundaries.

Bush, Vannevar

12.

They tend to be suspicious, bristly, paranoid-type people with huge egos they push around like some elephantiasis victim with his distended testicles in a wheelbarrow terrified no doubt that some skulking ingrate of a clone student will sneak into his very brain and steal his genius work.

Burroughs, William S.

13.

There are no better terms available to describe [The] difference between the approach of the natural and the social sciences than to call the former objective and the latter subjective. ... While for the natural scientist the contrast between objective facts and subjective opinions is a simple one, the distinction cannot as readily be applied to the object of the social sciences. The reason for this is that the object, the facts of the social sciences are also opinions -- not opinions of the student of the social phenomena, of course, but opinions of those whose actions produce the object of the social scientist.

Hayek, Friedrich August Von

14.

A man's conscience, like a warning line on the highway, tells him what he shouldn't do -- but it does not keep him from doing it.

Clark, Frank A.

15.

There are no such things as applied sciences, only applications of science.

Louis Pasteur

16.

There is one thing alone that stands the brunt of life throughout its length: a quiet conscience.

Euripides

17.

In scientific work, those who refuse to go beyond fact rarely get as far as fact.

Huxley, Thomas H.

18.

Let me arrest thy thoughts; wonder with me, why plowing, building, ruling and the rest, or most of those arts, whence our lives are blest, by cursed Cain's race invented be, and blest Seth vexed us with Astronomy.

Donne, John

19.

The one thing that doesn't abide by majority rule is a person's conscience.

Lee, Harper

20.

Dissent is the native activity of the scientist, and it has got him into a good deal of trouble in the last years. But if that is cut off, what is left will not be a scientist. And I doubt whether it will be a man.

Bronowski, Jacob

21.

Philosophers say a great deal about what is absolutely necessary for science, and it is always, so far as one can see, rather naive, and probably wrong.

Richard Feynman

22.

Our conscience is not the vessel of eternal verities. It grows with our social life, and a new social condition means a radical change in conscience.

Lippmann, Walter

23.

If anybody says he can think about quantum physics without getting giddy, that only shows he has not understood the first thing about them.

Bohr, Niels

24.

Science is Christian, not when it condemns itself to the letter of things, but when, in the infinitely little, it discovers as many mysteries and as much depth and power as in the infinitely great.

Quinet, Edgar

25.

When I am in the company of scientists, I feel like a shabby curate who has strayed by mistake into a drawing room full of dukes.

Auden, W. H.

26.

I have been a soreheaded occupant of a file drawer labeled Science Fiction and I would like out, particularly since so many serious critics regularly mistake the drawer for a urinal.

Vonnegut Jr., Kurt

27.

One science only will one genius fit; so vast is art, so narrow human wit.

Pope, Alexander

28.

Conscience has no more to do with gallantry than it has with politics.

Sheridan, Richard Brinsley

29.

Conscience is thoroughly well-bred and soon leaves off talking to those who do not wish to hear it.

Butler, Samuel

30.

For undemocratic reasons and for motives not of State, they arrive at their conclusions -- largely inarticulate. Being void of self-expression they confide their views to none; but sometimes in a smoking room, one learns why things were done.

Kipling, Rudyard

31.

Formal symbolic representation of qualitative entities is doomed to its rightful place of minor significance in a world where flowers and beautiful women abound.

Einstein, Albert

32.

I think remorse ought to stop biting the consciences that feed it.

Nash, Ogden

33.

Science is a game we play with God, to find out what his rules are.

Krasel, Cornelius

34.

True science investigates and brings to human perception such truths and such knowledge as the people of a given time and society consider most important. Art transmits these truths from the region of perception to the region of emotion.

Tolstoy, Count Leo

35.

Science fiction films are not about science. They are about disaster, which is one of the oldest subjects of art.

Sontag, Susan

36.

I feel bad that I don't feel worse.

Frayn, Michael

37.

It is not easy to imagine how little interested a scientist usually is in the work of any other, with the possible exception of the teacher who backs him or the student who honors him.

Rostand, Jean

38.

The Non-Conformist Conscience makes cowards of us all.

Beerbohm, Sir Max

39.

Science is spectral analysis. Art is light synthesis.

Kraus, Karl

40.

Religions are the great fairy tales of conscience.

Santayana, George

41.

Science is but the exchange of ignorance for that which is another kind of ignorance.

Byron, Lord

42.

He had been eight years upon a project for extracting sunbeams out of cucumbers, which were to be put into vials hermetically sealed, and let out to warm the air in raw, inclement summers.

Swift, Jonathan

43.

Science is but an image of the truth.

Bacon, Francis

44.

Science is what you know, philosophy what you don't know.

Russell, Bertrand

45.

The microbe is so very small: You cannot take him out at all.

Belloc, Hilaire

46.

If you look into your own heart, you find nothing wrong there, what is there to fear?

Confucius

47.

Everybody's a mad scientist, and life is their lab. We're all trying to experiment to find a way to live, to solve problems, to fend off madness and chaos.

Cronenberg, David

48.

It is a good morning exercise for a research scientist to discard a pet hypothesis every day before breakfast. It keeps him young.

Konrad Lorenz

49.

Truth in science can best be defined as the working hypothesis best suited to open the way to the next better one.

Lorenz, Konrad

50.

Faith is a fine invention when Gentleman can see -- but microscopes are prudent in an emergency

Dickinson, Emily