Science Quotes - page 98

The remark which I read somewhere, that science is all right as long as it doesn't attack religion, was the clue I needed to understand the problem. As long as it doesn't attack religion it need not be paid attention to and nobody has to learn anything. So it can be cut off from society except for its applications, and thus be isolated. And then we have this terrible struggle to try to explain things to people who have no reason to want to know. But if they want to defend their own point of view, they will have to learn what yours is a little bit. So I suggest, maybe correctly and perhaps wrongly, that we are too polite. (Richard Feynman)
It is not unscientific to make a guess, although many people who are not in science think it is. View quote
Richard Feynman
Incidentally, psychoanalysis is not a science: it is at best a medical process, and perhaps even more like witch-doctoring. It has a theory as to what causes disease-lots of different "spirits,” etc. The witch doctor has a theory that a disease like malaria is caused by a spirit which comes into the air; it is not cured by shaking a snake over it, but quinine does help malaria. So, if you are sick, I would advise that you go to the witch doctor because he is the man in the tribe who knows the most about the disease; on the other hand, his knowledge is not science. Psychoanalysis has not been checked carefully by experiment. View quote
Richard Feynman
There are those who are going to be disappointed when no life is found on other planets. Not I - I want to be reminded and delighted and surprised once again, through interplanetary exploration, with the infinite variety and novelty of phenomena that can be generated from such simple principles. The test of science is its ability to predict. Had you never visited the earth, could you predict the thunderstorms, the volcanoes, the ocean waves, the auroras, and the colorful sunset? A salutary lesson it will be when we learn of all that goes on on each of those dead planets - those eight or ten balls, each agglomerated from the same dust cloud and each obeying exactly the same laws of physics. View quote
Richard Feynman
Poets say science takes away from the beauty of the stars - mere globs of gas atoms. I, too, can see the stars on a desert night, and feel them. But do I see less or more? View quote
Richard Feynman
Our freedom to doubt was born out of a struggle against authority in the early days of science. It was a very deep and strong struggle: permit us to question - to doubt - to not be sure. I think that it is important that we do not forget this struggle and thus perhaps lose what we have gained. View quote
Richard Feynman
Here, then: a revolution [in science and chemistry] has taken place in an important part of human knowledge since your departure from Europe... I will consider this revolution to be well advanced and even completely accomplished if you range yourself with us. ...After having brought you up to date on what is happening in chemistry, it would be well to speak to you about our political revolution. We regard it as done and without any possibility of return to the old order. View quote
Antoine Lavoisier
I think that's what distinguishes Schmidt, really. In the movies now, so much of what is appealing to an audience is the dramatic or has to do with science fiction, and Schmidt is simply human. There's no melodrama; there's no device, It's just about a human being. View quote
Jack Nicholson
Science is still only a candle glimmering in a great pitch-dark cavern. View quote
Mario Vargas Llosa
Revolution will free society of its afflictions, while science will free the individual of his. View quote
Mario Vargas Llosa
We are... bound to attach the greatest importance to the preliminary step taken by Lavoisier, who is even more justly called the father of modern chemistry than Kepler is called the father of modern astronomy. The exact claims of Lavoisier to this important place in the history of chemistry have been variously stated: ...since his time, and greatly through his labours, the quantitative method has been established as the ultimate test of chemical facts; the principle of this method being the rule that in all changes of combination and reaction, the total weight of the various ingredients-be they elementary bodies or compounds-remains unchanged. The science of chemistry was thus established upon an exact, a mathematical basis. By means of this method Lavoisier, utilising and analysing the results gained by himself and others before him, notably those of Priestley, Cavendish, and Black, succeeded in destroying the older theory of combustion, the so-called phlogistic theory. (Antoine Lavoisier)
Science devises ever bloodier means of war until humanity's powers of destruction overcome our powers of creation and our civilisation drives itself to extinction. View quote
David Mitchell (author)
Most of the writers I know in any field, especially science fiction, grew up late. They're so interested in doing what they do and in their science, they don't think about other things. View quote
Ray Bradbury
Anything you dream is fiction, and anything you accomplish is science, the whole history of mankind is nothing but science fiction. View quote
Ray Bradbury
You should read in your own field only when you're young. When I was 8, 10, 12, 16, 25, I read science fiction. But then I went on to Alexander Pope and John Donne and Moliere to mix it up. View quote
Ray Bradbury
What they [critics of Lessing's switch to science fiction] didn't realize was that in science fiction is some of the best social fiction of our time. View quote
Doris Lessing
Natural science, does not simply describe and explain nature; it is part of the interplay between nature and ourselves. View quote
Werner Heisenberg
There is an enormous difference between modern science and Greek philosophy, and that is just the empiristic attitude... Since the time of Galileo and Newton, modern science has been based upon a detailed study of nature and upon the postulate that only such statements should be made, as have been verified or at least can be verified by experiment. The idea that one can single out some events from nature by an experiment... to find out what is the constant law in the continuous change, did not occur to the Greek philosophers. Therefore, modern science has from its beginning stood on a much more modest, but at the same time much firmer, basis than ancient philosophy. Therefore, the statements of modern physics are in some way meant much more seriously than the statements of Greek philosophy. View quote
Werner Heisenberg
Once upon a time, the best minds of the human species believed that the planets were attached to crystal spheres. ...Both in classic and in medieval times, it was prominently speculated that gods or angels propelled them, gave them a twirl every now and then. The Newtonian gravitational superstructure replaced angels with GMm/r... as science advances, there seems to be less and less for God to do. View quote
Carl Sagan
We have also arranged things so that almost no one understands science and technology. This is a prescription for disaster. We might get away with it for a while, but sooner or later this combustible mixture of ignorance and power is going to blow up in our faces. View quote
Carl Sagan
Science is based on experiment, on a willingness to challenge old dogma, on an openness to see the universe as it really is. Accordingly, science sometimes requires courage - at the very least the courage to question the conventional wisdom. (Carl Sagan)
Science is a way of thinking much more than it is a body of knowledge. View quote
Carl Sagan
There are no forbidden questions in science, no matters too sensitive or delicate to be probed, no sacred truths. View quote
Carl Sagan
Science is a way to call the bluff of those who only pretend to knowledge. It is a bulwark against mysticism, against superstition, against religion misapplied to where it has no business being. View quote
Carl Sagan
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. View quote
Carl Sagan