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