Best 9669 quotes in «science quotes» category

You can't really discover the most interesting conflicts and problems in a subject until you've tried to write about them. At that point, one discovers discontinuities in the data, perhaps, or in one's own thinking; then the act of writing forces you to work harder to resolve these contradictions.

You create time by joining events together. But they don't join together; there's no separativity.

You do not really understand something unless you can explain it to your grandmother.

You don't need a science degree to understand about science. You just need to think about it.

You don't think progress goes in a straight line, do you? Do you recognize that it is an ascending, accelerating, maybe even exponential curve? It takes hell's own time to get started, but when it goes it goes like a bomb.

You don't understand anything until you learn it more than one way.

... You get surreal numbers by playing games. I used to feel guilty in Cambridge that I spent all day playing games, while I was supposed to be doing mathematics. Then, when I discovered surreal numbers, I realized that playing games IS math.

You have heard of the new chemical nomenclature endeavored to be introduced by Lavoisier, Fourcroy, &c. Other chemists of this country, of equal note, reject it, and prove in my opinion that it is premature, insufficient and false. These latter are joined by the British chemists; and upon the whole, I think the new nomenclature will be rejected, after doing more harm than good. There are some good publications in it, which must be translated into the ordinary chemical language before they will be useful.

You have ... been told that science grows like an organism. You have been told that, if we today see further than our predecessors, it is only because we stand on their shoulders. But this [Nobel Prize Presentation] is an occasion on which I should prefer to remember, not the giants upon whose shoulders we stood, but the friends with whom we stood arm in arm ... colleagues in so much of my work.

You have to have a lot of ideas. First, if you want to make discoveries, it's a good thing to have good ideas. And second, you have to have a sort of sixth sense-the result of judgment and experience-which ideas are worth following up. I seem to have the first thing, a lot of ideas, and I also seem to have good judgment as to which are the bad ideas that I should just ignore, and the good ones, that I'd better follow up.

You hear headlines from time to time about the Amazon rainforest disappearing at a greater or lesser rate.... The real story is that over time the rate has stayed just the same. Year after year, decade after decade, we have failed to stop or really even decrease deforestation.

You know, all is development. The principle is perpetually going on. First, there was nothing, then there was something; then-I forget the next-I think there were shells, then fishes; then we came-let me see-did we come next? Never mind that; we came at last. And at the next change there will be something very superior to us-something with wings. Ah! That's it: we were fishes, and I believe we shall be crows.

You know how to split atoms, how to send explorers to the moon, how to splice genes, but you don't know how people ought to live.

You know, I am sorry for the poor fellows that haven't got labs to work in.

You know something I could really do without? The Space Shuttle. ... It's irresponsible. The last thing we should be doing is sending our grotesquely distorted DNA out into space.

"You know that it is quite preposterous of you to chase rainbows," said the sane person to the poet. "Yet it would be rather beautiful if I did one day manage to catch one," mused the poet.

You know, my father died of cancer when I was a teenager. He had it before it became popular.

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.

You know we're constantly taking. We don't make most of the food we eat, we don't grow it, anyway. We wear clothes other people make, we speak a language other people developed, we use a mathematics other people evolved and spent their lives building. I mean we're constantly taking things. It's a wonderful ecstatic feeling to create something and put it into the pool of human experience and knowledge.

You may believe whatever you want; but the most important thing is to update you belief with the truth, with the science! Your dearest belief might be the biggest buncombe ever! Don't be sad! Continue your road with the new truth! Everything changes!

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.

You may tear apart the baby's rattle and see what makes the noise inside, but there is a veil covering the unseen world which not the strongest man, nor even the united strength of all the strongest men that ever lived, could tear apart.

You may translate books of science exactly. ... The beauties of poetry cannot be preserved in any language except that in which it was originally written.

You must all know about Bourgain, so I don't have to write his name on the board-for an obvious reason.

You might say that science operates pragmatically and religion by divine guidance. If valid, they would reach the same conclusions but science would take a lot longer.

'You might think of combinatorics as a machine too', the major says. 'A different sort of machine, though. Have you heard of Babbage's analytic engine? He never built it. ... I have an analytic machine of my own-right here.' He taps his own skull.

You must never believe all these things which the scientists say because they always want more than they can get-they are never satisfied.

You must not blame us scientists for the use which war technicians have put our discoveries.

You must not say that this cannot be, or that that is contrary to nature. You do not know what Nature is, or what she can do; and nobody knows; not even Sir Roderick Murchison, or Professor Huxley, or Mr. Darwin, or Professor Faraday, or Mr. Grove, or any other of the great men whom good boys are taught to respect. They are very wise men; and you must listen respectfully to all they say: but even if they should say, which I am sure they never would, 'That cannot exist. That is contrary to nature,' you must wait a little, and see; for perhaps even they may be wrong.

Young children were sooner allured by love, than driven by beating, to attain good learning.

Young man, if I could remember the names of these particles, I would have been a botanist.

Young man, in mathematics you don't understand things. You just get used to them.

[Young] was afterwards accustomed to say, that at no period of his life was he particularly fond of repeating experiments, or even of very frequently attempting to originate new ones; considering that, however necessary to the advancement of science, they demanded a great sacrifice of time, and that when the fact was once established, that time was better employed in considering the purposes to which it might be applied, or the principles which it might tend to elucidate.

You on the cutting edge of technology have already made yesterday's impossibilities the commonplace realities of today.

Your center of mass is a place you cannot visit but you always carry with you. Like memories, it is part of life's baggage.

Your creatures can come into being only, like shoot from stem, as part of an endlessly renewed process of evolution.

You're basically killing each other to see who's got the better imaginary friend.

Your manuscript is both good and original; but the part that is good is not original, and the part that is original is not good.

Your only real problem is mortality! No religion can solve this problem, but science can do!

Your remarks upon chemical notation with the variety of systems which have arisen, &c., &c., had almost stirred me up to regret publicly that such hindrances to the progress of science should exist. I cannot help thinking it a most unfortunate thing that men who as experimentalists & philosophers are the most fitted to advance the general cause of science & knowledge should by promulgation of their own theoretical views under the form of nomenclature, notation, or scale, actually retard its progress.

Your words have come true with a vengeance that I shd [should] be forestalled ... I never saw a more striking coincidence. If Wallace had my M.S. sketch written out in 1842 he could not have made a better short abstract! Even his terms now stand as Heads of my Chapters.

You seek for knowledge and wisdom as I once did; and I ardently hope that the gratification of your wishes may not be a serpent to sting you, as mine has been.

You should never bet against anything in science at odds of more than about 10-12 to 1.

You sometimes speak of gravity as essential and inherent to matter. Pray do not ascribe that notion to me, for the cause of gravity is what I do not pretend to know, and therefore would take more time to consider of it.

You too can win Nobel Prizes. Study diligently. Respect DNA. Don't smoke. Don't drink. Avoid women and politics. That's my formula.

You've got to be fairly solemn [about the environment]. I mean the mere notion that there are three times as many people on Earth as there were when I started making television. How can the Earth accommodate them? When people, including politicians, set their faces against looking at the consequences-it's just unbelievable that anyone could ignore it.

You will be able to appreciate the influence of such an Engine on the future progress of science. I live in a country which is incapable of estimating it.

You will be astonished when I tell you what this curious play of carbon amounts to. A candle will burn some four, five, six, or seven hours. What, then, must be the daily amount of carbon going up into the air in the way of carbonic acid! ... Then what becomes of it? Wonderful is it to find that the change produced by respiration ... is the very life and support of plants and vegetables that grow upon the surface of the earth.

You will never stub your toe standing still. The faster you go, the more chance there is of stubbing your toe, but the more chance you have of getting somewhere.

ZOOLOGY, n. The science and history of the animal kingdom, including its king, the House Fly ("Musca maledicta"). The father of Zoology was Aristotle, as is universally conceded, but the name of its mother has not come down to us.