Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
The sciences are found, like Hercules's oxen, by tracing them backward; and old sciences are unravelled like old stockings, by beginning at the foot.
Books are the carriers of civilization. Without books, history is silent, literature dumb, science crippled, thought and speculation at a standstill.
You may reasonably expect a man to walk a tightrope safely for ten minutes; it would be unreasonable to do so without accident for two hundred years.
It is much better to learn the elements of geology, of botany, or ornithology and astronomy by word of mouth from a companion than dully from a book.
Make-believe colors the past with innocent distortion, and it swirls ahead of us in a thousand ways in science, in politics, in every bold intention.
The frying pan you should give to your enemy. Food should not be prepared in fat. Our bodies are adapted to a stone age diet of roots and vegetables.
I sometimes think about the tower at Pisa as the first particle accelerator, a (nearly) vertical linear accelerator that Galileo used in his studies.
Outside the practice of science itself, scientists have sometimes been the greatest offenders in adhering to dogmatic ideas against all the evidence.
The human race likes to give itself airs. One good volcano can produce more greenhouse gases in a year than the human race has in its entire history.
You can send a message around the world in one-fifth of a second, yet it may take years for it to get from the outside of a man's head to the inside.
There's nothing I believe in more strongly than getting young people interested in science and engineering, for a better tomorrow, for all humankind.
The result of the mathematician's creative work is demonstrative reasoning, a proof; but the proof is discovered by plausible reasoning, by guessing.
The organism cannot be regarded as simply the passive object of autonomous internal and external forces; it is also the subject of its own evolution.
When I told my mother that I have to give a talk, and was debating what could I possibly say to non-mathematicians, she said: "You got what to wear?".
I have little patience with scientists who take a board of wood, look for its thinnest part, and drill a great number of holes where drilling is easy.
C'este donc par l'étude des mathématiques, et seulement par elle, que l'on peut se faire une idée juste et approfondie de ce que c'est qu'une science.
The grand aim of all science is to cover the greatest number of empirical facts by logical deduction from the smallest number of hypotheses or axioms.
In formal logic, a contradiction is the signal of defeat, but in the evolution of real knowledge it marks the first step in progress toward a victory.
I think that support of this [stem cell] research is a pro-life pro-family position. This research holds out hope for more than 100 million Americans.
The most important discoveries will provide answers to questions that we do not yet know how to ask and will concern objects we have not yet imagined.
Why is geometry often described as cold and dry? One reason lies in its inability to describe the shape of a cloud, a mountain, a coastline or a tree.
Gamma rays are the sort of radiation you should avoid. Want proof? Just remember how the comic strip character "The Hulk" became big, green, and ugly.
It is remarkable that the elements diffused through the host of stars are some of those most closely connected with the living organisms of our globe.
BODY-SNATCHER, n. A robber of grave-worms. One who supplies the young physicians with that with which the old physicians have supplied the undertaker.
The science of the modern school ... is in effect ... the acquisition of imperfectly analyzed misstatements about entrails, elements, and electricity.
Hip-hop is my vehicle for scientific enlightenment. It wasn't until my music career matured where I was exposed to science as an intellectual pursuit.
A mathematician ... has no material to work with but ideas, and so his patterns are likely to last longer, since ideas wear less with time than words.
You know, there's such a very thin dividing line between inspiration and obsession that sometimes it's very hard to decide which side we're really on.
Just like a single cell, the character of our lives is determined not by our genes but by our responses to the environmental signals that propel life.
Information can tell us everything. It has all the answers. But they are answers to questions we have not asked, and which doubtless don't even arise.
No disorders have employed so many quacks, as those that have no cure; and no sciences have exercised so many quills, as those that have no certainty.
We do not know how to formulate string theory nor do we know its underlying principles. Surprisingly, this fact does not stop us from making progress.
The human race, whose intelligence dates back only a single tick of the astronomical clock, could hardly hope to understand so soon what it all means.
The theist is persuaded that while nothing that contradicts science is likely to be true, still nothing that stops with science can be the whole truth.
Any one whose disposition leads him to attach more weight to unexplained difficulties than to the explanation of facts will certainly reject my theory.
If a thing which is believed by billions is against the reason and not supported by the science, it is a great honour not to be amongst those billions!
Isolating mechanisms are biological properties of individuals that prevent the interbreeding of populations that are actually or potentially sympatric.
It is not his possession of knowledge, of irrefutable truth, that makes the man of science, but his persistent and recklessly critical quest for truth.
There has no doubt to be fundamental research in science, but applied research is equally important for new improvements and changes in our techniques.
Physics investigates the essential nature of the world, and biology describes a local bump. Psychology, human psychology, describes a bump on the bump.
There's an old saying among scientific guys: "You can't make an omelet without breaking eggs, ideally by dropping a cement truck on them from a crane."
The parts of the universe ... all are connected with each other in such a way that I think it to be impossible to understand any one without the whole.
Physicians, of all men, are most happy; whatever good success soever they have, the world proclaimeth; and what faults they commit, the earth covereth.
I don't like science because I don't think it makes sense to put a definition on everything. It's a lot more exciting to think of things as mysterious.
For scholars and laymen alike it is not philosophy but active experience in mathematics itself that can alone answer the question: What is mathematics?
[...] any fool can make a discovery. Every baby has to discover more in the first years of its life than Roger Bacon ever discovered in his laboratory.
I like working closely with artists. I think that's very important in fantasy and science fiction - the visual aspect of the worlds and the characters.
The essence of science is independent thinking, hard work, and not equipment. When I got my Nobel Prize, I had spent hardly 200 rupees on my equipment.
a good part of the trick to being a first-rate scientist is in asking the right questions or asking them in ways that make it possible to find answers.
God pity the man of science who believes in nothing but what he can prove by scientific methods; for if ever a human being needed divine pity, he does.