Top 100 Science It Quotes
#1. It's amazing to me that we humans have the intellectual capacity to ask deep questions and to devise methods for learning how the universe works and how its contents evolve with time.
Alex Filippenko
#2. Science and fiction both begin with similar questions: What if? Why? How does it all work? But they focus on different areas of life on earth.
Margaret Atwood
#3. The whole of science, and one is tempted to think the whole of the life of any thinking man, is trying to come to terms with the relationship between yourself and the natural world. Why are you here, and how do you fit in, and what's it all about.
David Attenborough
#4. It is not enough to know your craft - you have to have feeling. Science is all very well, but for us imagination is worth far more.
Edouard Manet
#5. It is often stated that of all the theories proposed in this century, the silliest is quantum theory. In fact, some say that the only thing that quantum theory has going for it is that it is unquestionably correct.
Michio Kaku
#6. It was a large room, heavily outfitted with the usual badly ventilated furnaces, rows of bubbling crucibles, and one stuffed alligator. Things floated in jars. The air smelled of a limited life expectancy.
Terry Pratchett
#7. Every advance [in Science] will most likely tell us as much about ourselves as it will about the universe we inhabit. We are all collections of chemicals made in the cataclysmic explosions of stars; we are stardust, or nuclear waste, depending on your perspective.
Michael Brooks
#8. I did a lot of good work for the rest of the forty years ... science is an incremental thing. Everything builds on everything else, it's a pattern, it's a mosaic.
Gustav Nossal
#9. My background is in math and science, and I thrive on complexity, and I think lots of people do. People love puzzles; it's human nature to want to solve puzzles.
Michael Loceff
#10. It was long before I got at the maxim, that in reading an old mathematician you will not read his riddle unless you plough with his heifer; you must see with his light, if you want to know how much he saw.
Augustus De Morgan
#11. Whenever truth stands in the mind unaccompanied by the evidence upon which it depends, it cannot properly be said to be apprehended at all.
William Godwin
#12. In life you must often choose between getting a job done or getting credit for it. In science, the most important thing is not the ideas you have but the decision which ones you choose to pursue. If you have an idea and are not doing anything with it, why spoil someone else's fun by publishing it?
Leo Szilard
#13. Fashion exerts more power in science than it does on the shape of hats.
Simone Weil
#14. What is Gornite? Why can't you heat it? Will it make you laugh? - I hope so
Lucas Riddle
#15. Being a Christian, I'm eager to introduce people to Jesus. I just don't think I should do it in the science classroom.
Kenneth R. Miller
#16. I've never been able to understand 'faith' myself, nor to see how a just God could expect his creatures to pick the one true religion out of an infinitude of false ones - by faith alone. It strikes me as a sloppy way to run an organization, whether universe or a smaller one.
Robert A. Heinlein
#17. Something we all have as kids and is beaten out of us as adults. Parents come up to me, "How do I get my kids interested in science?" They're already interested in science. Just stop beating it out of them.
Neil DeGrasse Tyson
#18. Since Pawlow and his pupils have succeeded in causing the secretion of saliva in the dog by means of optic and acoustic signals, it no longer seems strange to us that what the philosopher terms an 'idea' is a process which can cause chemical changes in the body.
Jacques Loeb
#19. It was just a colour out of space - a frightful messenger from unformed realms of infinity beyond all Nature as we know it; from realms whose mere existence stuns the brain and numbs us with the black extra-cosmic gulfs it throws open before our frenzied eyes.
H.P. Lovecraft
#20. It Begins with skepticism. The history of human folly, and our own susceptibility to illusions and fallacies, tell us that men and women are fallible.
Steven Pinker
#21. There is real confusion about what it means to be right and wrong - the difference between what spiritual beliefs are and what science is.
Lisa Randall
#22. I was never as focused in math, science, computer science, etcetera, as the people who were best at it. I wanted to create amazing screensavers that did beautiful visualizations of music. It's like, "Oh, I have to learn computer science to do that."
Kevin Systrom
#23. I had fallen in love with a young man ... , and we were planning to get married. And then he died of subacute bacterial endocarditis ... Two years later with the advent of penicillin, he would have been saved. It reinforced in my mind the importance of scientific discovery ...
Gertrude B. Elion
#24. I believe that it is the task of social science to produce nuanced and people-centered forms of knowledge, correcting asymmetries of information and helping to promote, to the best of our ability, informed consent, human protection, and safety in medical and research settings.
Adriana Petryna
#25. I'm a humanist. I'm an observer. I have a very scientific mind. I believe metaphysics and science absolutely blended are more the truth for me. It doesn't work just believing in what somebody says.
Meredith Brooks
#26. 'Why do you think it is ... ', I asked Dr. Cook ... 'that brain surgery, above all else-even rocket science-gets singled out as the most challenging of human feats, the one demanding the utmost of human intelligence?' [Dr. Cook answered,] 'No margin for error.'
Michael J. Fox
#27. No matter how many people try, no matter how many fancy songwriters in Los Angeles try to break it down to a formula ... to an extent, there isn't a science to writing great songs, I suppose.
Lauren Mayberry
#28. Scientists seek the lawfulness of events. It is the task of Religion to fit man into this lawfulness.
Frank Herbert
#29. Even in the best times, managing science has been compared to herding cats; it is not done well, but one is surprised to find it done at all.
Gerald Holton
#30. Is it painful?" the groundskeeper asked. "I am asking for science.
John Scalzi
#31. There are almost unlimited possibilities for making discoveries and to uncover the unknown. It is in the nature of the discovery that it can not be planned or programmed. On the contrary it consists of surprises and appears many times in the most unexpected places.
Bengt I. Samuelsson
#32. It is necessary for the very existence of science that minds exist which do not allow that nature must satisfy some preconceived conditions.
Richard P. Feynman
#33. You spend months barely acknowledging someone's existence and then BOOM, you're emotionally addicted to her. Science would probably blame it on chemicals, genetics or something equally logical, but it didn't feel like anything logical
C.K. Kelly Martin
#34. Science-fiction fans are the most loyal fans in the world. It's true. They'll watch things that you actually should give them their money back for
Katee Sackhoff
#35. Philosophers have said before that one of the fundamental requisites of science is that whenever you set up the same conditions, the same thing must happen. This is simply not true, it is not a fundamental condition of science.
Richard Feynman
#37. I'm not really a science-fiction fan, I quite like the idea of getting away from the science-fiction side of it, for two episodes. It was lovely, it was a super story and great fun.
Sarah Sutton
#38. Magic is magic as long as humans can explain it logically!
Asse Sauga
#39. The problem of psychoanalysis is not the body of theory that Freud left behind, but the fact that it never became a medical science. It never tried to test its ideas.
Eric Kandel
#40. I do have a huge fascination for science, and I love to hear what my dad has to say. He used to take me into minor surgeries when I was a kid and let me watch, so I definitely have a passion for it, but it's not as big a passion as I have for acting and creating characters.
Daniela Ruah
#41. It's the first instance where I believe that it might actually be wrong, the first time I feel like a bit of a creep.
Siobhan Davis
#42. It was absolutely marvelous working for Pauli. You could ask him anything. There was no worry that he would think a particular question was stupid, since he thought all questions were stupid.
Victor Frederick Weisskopf
#43. It is a misfortune for a science to be born too late when the means of observation have become too perfect. That is what is happening at this moment with respect to physical chemistry; the founders are hampered in their general grasp by third and fourth decimal places.
Henri Poincare
#44. But the task of science fiction is not to predict the future. Rather, it contemplates possible futures.
Anonymous
#45. Science is a way of thinking much more than it is a body of knowledge.
Carl Sagan
#46. Given the scale of issues like global warming and epidemic disease, we shouldn't underestimate the importance of a can-do attitude to science rather than a can't-afford-it attitude.
Martin Rees
#47. Keep a sharp lookout upon your materials; get rid of every pound of material you can do without; put to yourself the question what business has it to be there?, avoid complexities, and make everything as simple as possible.
Henry Maudslay
#48. It is difficult to believe in the dreadful but quiet war lurking just below the serene facade of nature.
Charles Darwin
#49. Part of the strength of science is that it has tended to attract individuals who love knowledge and the creation of it ... Thus, it is the communication process which is at the core of the vitality and integrity of science.
Philip Abelson
#50. I hold that popularization of science is successful if, at first, it does no more than spark the sense of wonder.
Carl Sagan
#51. One has to recognize that science is not metaphysics, and certainly not mysticism; it can never bring us the illumination and the satisfaction experienced by one enraptured in ecstasy. Science is sobriety and clarity of conception, not intoxicated vision.
Ludwig Von Mises
#52. It is astonishing to realize that until Galileo performed his experiments on the acceleration of gravity in the early seventeenth century, nobody questioned Aristotle's falling balls. Nobody said, Show Me!
Neil DeGrasse Tyson
#53. When looking for evidence that something exists, it's silly to start by assuming that it is impossible. Taking any assumptions into study is bad science.
Lewis N. Roe
#54. It is reasonable to expect the doctor to recognize that science may not have all the answers to problems of health and healing.
Norman Cousins
#55. If you're an adult and you choose not to believe in science, fine, but please don't prevent your children from learning about it and letting them draw their own conclusions.
Bill Nye
#56. The meeting of science and art is definitely interesting for the 21st century, and I think to use scientific expertise and knowledge to preserve an artistic statement is very interesting. It takes things a step further.
Marc Quinn
#57. Thin Burning Light Gun
If the car found life, it could try to use this gun to learn about it, but the life might not be alive when it was done.
Randall Munroe
#58. Trout might have said, and it can be said of me as well, that he created caricatures rather than characters. His animus against so-called mainstream literature, moreover, wasn't peculiar to him. It was generic among writers of science fiction.
Kurt Vonnegut
#59. A good hypothesis in science must have other properties than those of the phenomenon it is immediately invoked to explain, otherwise it is not prolific enough.
William James
#60. The nature of light is a subject of no material importance to the concerns of life or to the practice of the arts, but it is in many other respects extremely interesting.
Thomas Young
#61. Truth is not a right to be claimed, but a gift for those who are able to conquer it.
Luis Marques
#62. What I have done is to show that it is possible for the way the universe began to be determined by the laws of science. In that case, it would not be necessary to appeal to God to decide how the universe began. This doesn't prove that there is no God, only that God is not necessary.
Stephen Hawking
#63. There is no such thing as reality, only our perception of it.
Becky Mallery
#64. What is the science of Vitraag (the enlightened ones free of attachment)? [It is that where] If one understands a single word of the Vitarag, there will be no pain. But one has not understood a single word of 'Vir', the Vitaraag Lord Mahavir [The 24th Tirthankar]
Dada Bhagwan
#65. To effectively contain a civilization's development and disarm it across such a long span of time, there is only one way: kill its science.
Liu Cixin
#66. [T]he habit of scientific analysis ... exhausts the material offered to it ...
Henri Frederic Amiel
#67. We'll go along with it for now. Valkyrie, keep close watch and be ready to swoop to the rescue."
'Hopefully swooping will not be required, nor rescue. But I am ready to do both.'
He squeezed her hand. "Alex?"
"I'm ready, too.
G.S. Jennsen
#68. Wonder why some people tend to see science as something which takes man away from God. As I look at it, the path of science can always wind through the heart. For me, science has always been the path to spiritual enrichment and self-realisation.
A. P. J. Abdul Kalam
#69. Does it strike you, Mr. Keller, that we live every day in the science fiction of our youth?
Robert Charles Wilson
#70. Science, which is not so attached to 'truth' as it once was, ut more to immediate 'effectiveness', is now drifting towards a decline, it's civic fall from grace.
Paul Virilio
#71. The security provided by a long-held belief system, even when poorly founded, is a strong impediment to progress. General acceptance of a practice becomes the proof of its validity, though it lacks all other merit.
Bernard Lown
#72. I was a bit of an introvert growing up, and I tended to do better in math and science at school, so I went with it.
Keahu Kahuanui
#73. The life of our class, of the wealthy and the learned, was not only repulsive to me but had lost all meaning. The sum of our action and thinking, of our science and art, all of it struck me as the overindulgences of a spoiled child.
Leo Tolstoy
#74. All good criticism should be judged the way art is. You shouldn't read it the way you read history or science.
Leslie Fiedler
#75. Humanity has pondered over the meaning of God since its beginning. It is one of those cognitive features that came along with the advent of modern Human Consciousness.
Abhijit Naskar
#76. Fantasy is the oldest form of literature and science fiction is just a new twist on it.
Katharine Kerr
#77. I did grow up with a really big interest in math and science; I liked it.
Linda M. Godwin
#78. Science is a way of life. Science is a perspective. Science is the process that takes us from confusion to understanding in a manner that's precise, predictive and reliable - a transformation, for those lucky enough to experience it, that is empowering and emotional.
Brian Greene
#79. There is no such thing as doing the nuts and bolts of reading in Kindergarten through 5th grade without coherently developing knowledge in science, and history, and the arts ... it is the deep foundation in rich knowledge and vocabulary depth that allows you to access more complex text.
David Coleman
#81. Entrepreneurship is neither a science nor an art. It is a practice.
Peter F. Drucker
#82. It is therefore not unreasonable to suppose that some portion of the neglect of science in England, may be attributed to the system of education we pursue.
Charles Babbage
#83. Computer science is fascinating. As you study computer science, you will find that you develop your mind. It is literally like doing Buddhist exercises all day long.
Frederick Lenz
#84. It is not clear that intelligence has any long-term survival value.
Stephen Hawking
#85. The Church does not pretend to be scientists. It teaches based upon what science tells it.
Wellington Mara
#86. Water is H2O, hydrogen two parts, oxygen one, but there is also a third thing, that makes it water and nobody knows what that is.
D.H. Lawrence
#87. Metaphysics is universal and is exclusively concerned with primary substance ... And here we will have the science to study that which is, both in its essence and in the properties which it has.
Aristotle.
#88. The approach required more persistence than imagination, but it produced remarkable results.
Siddhartha Mukherjee
#89. But as a matter of strict fact, did Agnes have any "maternal" in her? When she set her mouth that way, it was hard to see it. Oh shucks, all women had maternal instincts; science had proved that. Well, hadn't they?
Robert A. Heinlein
#90. I would not for a moment have you suppose that I am one of those idiots who scorns Science, merely because it is always twisting and turning, and sometimes shedding its skin, like the serpent that is [the doctors'] symbol.
Robertson Davies
#91. It turns out to be the new Planet, which, a decade and a half later, will be known first as the Georgian, and then as Herschel, after its official Discoverer, and more lately as Uranus.
Thomas Pynchon
#92. More important by far is that one be honest with oneself. I have always been, and it has cost me dearly. Nothing matters but the truth. I have dedicated my life to the pursuit of it, no matter where it hides. That is the heart of science, Will Henry, the true monster we pursue.
Rick Yancey
#93. Science chases money
and money chases its tail
and the best minds of my generation can't make bail.
But the bacteria are coming
that's my prediction.
It's the answer to this culture
of the quick-fix prescription.
Ani DiFranco
#94. The role of science is to be systematic, to be accurate, to be orderly, but it certainly is not to imply that the aggregated, successful hypotheses of the past have the kind of truth that goes into a number system.
Edwin Land
#95. I think that the idea of people wanting to steal your genome remains a little bit in the world of science fiction. It's a new technology, and it's new science that people are becoming familiar with. It's critical for us to do everything we can to enable the privacy level that people want.
Anne Wojcicki
#96. Science may carry us to Mars, but it will leave the earth peopled as ever by the inept.
Agnes Repplier
#97. She captured the spot of my world's centre and sent me in elliptic rings about it, causing the ground beneath me to vanish and the breath of my lungs to disperse. I was a rock locked in helpless orbit.
Richard Ronald Allan
#98. Pop science goes flying off in all kinds of fashionable directions, and it often drags a lot of SF writers with it. I've been led astray like that myself at times.
Greg Egan
#99. Consciousness is our gateway to experience: It enables us to recognize Van Gogh's starry skies, be enraptured by Beethoven's Fifth, and stand in awe of a snowcapped mountain. Yet consciousness is subjective, personal, and famously difficult to examine.
Daniel Bor
#100. All sciences are connected; they lend each other material aid as parts of one great whole, each doing its own work, not for itself alone, but for the other parts; as the eye guides the body and the foot sustains it and leads it from place to place.
Roger Bacon
