Science Quotes

The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds the most discoveries, is not ‘Eureka!’, but ‘That’s funny…’ Isaac Asimov

Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind. Albert Einstein

The great tragedy of science, the slaying of a beautiful theory by an ugly fact. T H Huxley

I do not know what I may appear to the world; but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me. Isaac Newton

Most people say that is it is the intellect which makes a great scientist. They are wrong: it is character. Albert Einstein

Science commits suicide when it adopts a creed. T H Huxley

When I find myself in the company of scientists, I feel like a shabby curate who has strayed by mistake into a drawing-room full of dukes. W H Auden

In questions of science, the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual. Galileo Galilei

I am among those who think that science has great beauty. A scientist in his laboratory is not only a technician: he is also a child placed before natural phenomena which impress him like a fairy tale. Marie Curie

Science is an integral part of culture. It’s not this foreign thing, done by an arcane priesthood. It’s one of the glories of the human intellectual tradition. Stephen Jay Gould

It is inexcusable for scientists to torture animals; let them make their experiments on journalists and politicians. Henrik Ibsen

Science is organized knowledge. Wisdom is organized life. Immanuel Kant

Science may have found a cure for most evils; but it has found no remedy for the worst of them all – the apathy of human beings. Helen Keller

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

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. Jacob Bronowski

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

Science has nothing to be ashamed of even in the ruins of Nagasaki. The shame is theirs who appeal to other values than the human imaginative values which science has evolved. Jacob Bronowski

Science knows no country, because knowledge belongs to humanity, and is the torch which illuminates the world. Science is the highest personification of the nation because that nation will remain the first which carries the furthest the works of thought and intelligence. Louis Pasteur

Science is the systematic classification of experience. George Henry Lewes

No science is immune to the infection of politics and the corruption of power. Jacob Bronowski

Science may be described as the art of systematic over-simplification. Karl Popper

In so far as a scientific statement speaks about reality, it must be falsifiable; and in so far as it is not falsifiable, it does not speak about reality. Karl Popper

Science is for those who learn; poetry, for those who know. Joseph Roux

A central lesson of science is that to understand complex issues (or even simple ones), we must try to free our minds of dogma and to guarantee the freedom to publish, to contradict, and to experiment. Arguments from authority are unacceptable. Carl Sagan

I am often amazed at how much more capability and enthusiasm for science there is among elementary school youngsters than among college students. Carl Sagan

Science is a way of thinking much more than it is a body of knowledge. Carl Sagan

We live in a society exquisitely dependent on science and technology, in which hardly anyone knows anything about science and technology. Carl Sagan

In science it often happens that scientists say, ‘You know that’s a really good argument; my position is mistaken,’ and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn’t happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion. Carl Sagan

The science of today is the technology of tomorrow. Edward Teller

Science and technology multiply around us. To an increasing extent they dictate the languages in which we speak and think. Either we use those languages, or we remain mute. J G Ballard

Science is a way of trying not to fool yourself. The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool. Richard Feynman

Science is the belief in the ignorance of the experts. Richard Feynman

Touch a scientist and you touch a child. Ray Bradbury

The best scientist is open to experience and begins with romance – the idea that anything is possible. Ray Bradbury

I believe that a scientist looking at nonscientific problems is just as dumb as the next guy. Richard Feynman

The insidiousness of science lies in its claim to be not a subject, but a method. You could ignore a subject; no subject is all-inclusive. But a method can plausibly be applied to anything within the field of consciousness. Katharine Fullerton Gerould

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. John von Neumann

Science must begin with myths, and with the criticism of myths. Karl Popper