Scientific Quotes

“I like the scientific spirit—the holding off, the being sure but not too sure, the willingness to surrender ideas when the evidence is against them: this is ultimately fine—it always keeps the way beyond open—always gives life, thought, affection, the whole man, a chance to try over again after a mistake—after a wrong guess.”
― Walt Whitman, Walt Whitman's Camden Conversations

“My religious convictions and scientific views cannot at present be more specifically defined than as those of a believer in creative evolution. I desire that no public monument or work of art or inscription or sermon or ritual service commemorating me shall suggest that I accepted the tenets peculiar to any established church or denomination nor take the form of a cross or any other instrument of torture or symbol of blood sacrifice.

[From the will of GBS]”
― George Bernard Shaw

“In terms of doing things I take a fairly scientific approach to why things happen and how they happen. I don't know if there's a god or not...”
― Bill Gates

“[Responding to the Bishop of Oxford, Samuel Wilberforce's question whether he traced his descent from an ape on his mother's or his father's side]

A man has no reason to be ashamed of having an ape for his grandfather. If there were an ancestor whom I should feel shame in recalling it would rather be a man—a man of restless and versatile intellect—who … plunges into scientific questions with which he has no real acquaintance, only to obscure them by an aimless rhetoric, and distract the attention of his hearers from the real point at issue by eloquent digressions and skilled appeals to religious prejudice.”
― Thomas Huxley

“New scientific ideas never spring from a communal body, however organized, but rather from the head of an individually inspired researcher who struggles with his problems in lonely thought and unites all his thought on one single point which is his whole world for the moment.”
― Max Planck

“Either god exists or it doesn’t exist. If a god does exist, it either interacts with the universe in some detectable way or it doesn’t. If it doesn’t, that god is indistinguishable from a non-existent god. That only leaves a god who interacts with the universe in some detectable way. But if science, which is the greatest realization of the use of our senses to, you know, detect things, hasn’t found this god, that doesn’t say much for individuals.

In short, the god you’ve created is, in fact, undetectable by science. The limits of science are not the province of religious knowledge. Where science is ignorant, so is religion. The only difference is that religion lacks the integrity of science.”
― Matt Dillahunty

“There is no quarrel between science and spirituality. I often hear people of science trying to use it to prove the nonexistence of the spiritual, but I simply can't see a chasm in between the two. What is spiritual produces what is scientific and when science is used to disprove the spiritual, it's always done with the intent to do so; a personal contempt. As a result, scientists today only prove their inferiority to the great founding fathers of the sciences who were practitioners of alchemy. Today's science is washed-out and scrubbed-down and robbed of everything mystical and spiritual, a knowledge born of contempt and discontent. Or perhaps, there are a few who wish to keep those secrets to themselves and serve everyone else up with a tasteless version of science and the idiots of today blindly follow their equally blind leaders.”
― C. JoyBell C.

“The assumption of an absolute determinism is the essential foundation of every scientific enquiry.”
― Max Planck, Dilemmas of an Upright Man: Max Planck and the Fortunes of German Science

“Someone may have all the technical knowledge, scientific intellect and business know-how but when he/she decides to choose laziness, excuses, procrastination, complaining and other bad attitudes, his/her relevance is meaningless.”
― Israelmore Ayivor, The Great Hand Book of Quotes

“If we wanted to construct a basic philosophical attitude from these scientific utterances of Pauli's, at first we would be inclined to infer from them an extreme rationalism and a fundamentally skeptical point of view. In reality however, behind this outward display of criticism and skepticism lay concealed a deep philosophical interest even in those dark areas of reality of the human mind which elude the grasp of reason. And while the power of fascination emanating from Pauli's analyses of physical problems was admittedly due in some measure to the detailed and penetrating clarity of his formulations, the rest was derived from a constant contact with the field of creative processes, for which no rational formulation as yet exists.”
― Werner Heisenberg, Physics and Philosophy: The Revolution in Modern Science

“The scientific spirit is of more value than its products, and irrationally held truths may be more harmful than reasoned errors.”
― Thomas Henry Huxley, Collected Essays of Thomas Henry Huxley

“Not only are there meaningless questions, but many of the problems with which the human intellect has tortured itself turn out to be only 'pseudo problems,' because they can be formulated only in terms of questions which are meaningless. Many of the traditional problems of philosophy, of religion, or of ethics, are of this character. Consider, for example, the problem of the freedom of the will. You maintain that you are free to take either the right- or the left-hand fork in the road. I defy you to set up a single objective criterion by which you can prove after you have made the turn that you might have made the other. The problem has no meaning in the sphere of objective activity; it only relates to my personal subjective feelings while making the decision.”
― Percy Williams Bridgman, The Nature of Physical Theory

“When we consider the magnitude and extent of his discoveries and their influence on the progress of science and of industry, there is no honour too great to pay to the memory of Faraday, one of the greatest scientific discoverers of all time.”
― Ernest Rutherford

“Observable Fact: I don’t believe in magic.
Observable Fact: We are magic.”
― Nicola Yoon, The Sun Is Also a Star

“It is now generally admitted, at any rate by philosophers, that the existence of a being having the attributes which define the god of any non-animistic religion cannot be demonstratively proved... [A]ll utterances about the nature of God are nonsensical.”
― Alfred Jules Ayer, Language, Truth and Logic

“But at the same time, there must never be the least hesitation in giving up a position the moment it is shown to be untenable. It is not going too far to say that the greatness of a scientific investigator does not rest on the fact of his having never made a mistake, but rather on his readiness to admit that he has done so, whenever the contrary evidence is cogent enough.”
― William Bayliss, Principles Of General Physiology

“[There is no shortage of scientific talent.] But [I am] much less optimistic about the managerial vision [of the pharmaceutical industry] to catalyse these talents to deliver the results we all want.”
― James Whyte Black

“Yay, science.”
― Nicola Yoon, The Sun Is Also a Star

“Spiritual understanding is as necessary as scientific knowledge.”
― Lailah Gifty Akita

“seismic concrete ice”
― I forgot the name

“Science without warmth is intellectual con.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Aşk Mafia: Armor of The World

“The food was so bad at the La Palma astronomical observatory that I stopped eating there.”
― Steven Magee

“We mustn't go back to living in caves by compromising all rationality, but at the same time, we mustn't practice rationality to such an extreme that we kill the very warmth of the human spirit.”
― Abhijit Naskar, I Vicdansaadet Speaking: No Rest Till The World is Lifted

“Curiosity is the lifeblood of science, not constant boasting of lifeless facts.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Visvavatan: 100 Demilitarization Sonnets

“High altitude astronomy is a dinosaur that needs to go extinct.”
― Steven Magee

“If something can be done, it will be done-no matter how dangerous.”
― Douglas Preston, Extinction

“Superstition is not divinity,
Phrenology is not brain science.
Astrology is not astrophysics,
Conspiracy is not enlightenment.”
― Abhijit Naskar, World War Human: 100 New Earthling Sonnets

“If human mind perseveres long enough, every mystery soon reveals its truth.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Brit Actually: Nursery Rhymes of Reparations

“Truth is not an apple, that you can devour in a few bites - truth is an onion, peel off one layer, plenty more to peel alright.”
― Abhijit Naskar, The Humanitarian Dictator

“Science is a way of sight, and nobody walks it better than the undoctrinated.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Azad Earth Army: When The World Cries Blood