Best 107 quotes in «scientists quotes» category

Look, I don't know what you are, but you're more than a geologist, if you are one at all. I've met lots of geologists on different projects like this, and they're all tiny sunburned men with fetishes for geodes. They wear floppy hats and carry baggies for soil samples around with them. ... And geologists don't make rocks disappear like you did the other night. They keep them and build little shrines to them.

Maisha ni kitu cha ajabu kuliko vyote ulimwenguni kilichowashangaza hata wanasayansi wa dunia hii. Amka na uujue ukweli.

Magic is magic as long as humans can explain it logically!

Many scientists have tried to make determinism and complementarity the basis of conclusions that seem to me weak and dangerous; for instance, they have used Heisenberg's uncertainty principle to bolster up human free will, though his principle, which applies exclusively to the behavior of electrons and is the direct result of microphysical measurement techniques, has nothing to do with human freedom of choice. It is far safer and wiser that the physicist remain on the solid ground of theoretical physics itself and eschew the shifting sands of philosophic extrapolations.

Mimi na wewe na vitu vyote ulimwenguni ni wazito kwa sababu ya 'Higgs Boson', inayojulikana pia kama 'The God’s Particle'. Wanasayansi wa CERN wamekuwa wakiitafuta 'higgs' (iliyojificha ndani ya 'higgs field') kwa zaidi ya miaka hamsini sasa, kwa bajeti ya pauni za Uingereza bilioni sita. Chembe ya 'higgs' ikipatikana itawajulisha wanasayansi jinsi ulimwengu unavyofanya kazi na jinsi ulivyoumbwa, na jibu la kitendawili cha 'Standard Model' litapatikana.

Never question the conviction of a scientist, based on mere scriptures.

More importantly, it is difficult to study minds because we are mental beings. We have our own minds to maintain and protect, and may not wish to discover facts that force us to change, or make us question our own being in the world, or conflict with our sense of right and wrong. We have not discussed belief systems known as religions to any extent in this book. However, particularly threatening are facts that run counter to our religious beliefs, especially if those beliefs are strongly held. Further, scientists have hopes, standards, and ethical beliefs, and they—like anybody—are not eager to find that their beliefs are invalid.

My dream was to be a scientist, but it turns out to be poetic scientific awakener.

Mzazi hamjui mtoto wake na mtoto hamjui mzazi wake. Kila mtu hapa duniani ni wa kipekee na wanasayansi wanatuambia kuwa tuko peke yetu hapa ulimwenguni. Lazima tujifunze kupendana na kuheshimiana.

On why 300 years separates the first use of glass lenses in spectacles and their use in a telescope: “In many cases there are times when an invention is technologically possible – and in which it may indeed appear necessary, as the telescope may have – but without a market the idea will not sell, and in the absence of the technical and social infrastructure to support it, the invention will not survive.

Of ignorant people I am accustomed to consider the mere scientist the most ignorant!

One of the most curious consequences of quantum physics is that a particle like an electron can seemingly be in more than one place at the same time until it is observed, at which point there seems to be a random choice made about where the particle is really located. Scientists currently believe that this randomness is genuine, not just caused by a lack of information. Repeat the experiment under the same conditions and you may get a different answer each time.

On Titan the molecules that have been raining down like manna from heaven for the last 4 billion years might still be there largely unaltered deep-frozen awaiting the chemists from Earth

Out of a single man, they get a thousand: homo economicus, homo politicus, homo physico-chimicus, homo endocrinus, homo skeletonicus, homo emotions, homo percipiens, homo libidinosus, homo peregrinans, homo ridens, homo ratiocinans, homo artifex, homo aestbeticus, homo religiosus, homo sapiens, homo historicus, homo ethnographicus, and many, many more. But at the very end of the production line in this laboratory of mine sits a Scienter who is quite unique. Three thousand brains in one. His function is to collect all the data and clarifications written up by the specialist Scienters. When he has collated everything, he is convinced that he has clasped the red rabbit or the essential man entire to his understanding. There you are, you can see him from here,' he ended, with a sign to one of his assistants who brought me a pair of binoculars. I put them to my eyes and, indeed, at the far end of the gallery, I saw the Omniscienter. There he was, an enormous cranial dome with a tiny, shapeless, crumpled face, which seemed to me to be hanging by the ears from the two ebony knobs on the back of a raised throne. Swinging to and fro beneath this head was a little cloth puppet which dangled its empty trouser legs over the crimson plush seat. His tiny right arm was kept aloft by means of a wire, and the index finger rested on his temple in the gesture of one who knows. Above the throne ran a banner bearing this inscription: I KNOW EVERYTHING, BUT I DON'T UNDERSTAND ANY OF IT

People with a scientific mindset are analytical, open-minded, flexible and have the capacity to answer questions. They are basically focused on what they do not know, and only exceptionally on what they do know.

Perhaps a physicist would know at once why this whole idea was absurd. But then, perhaps a physicist would be so locked into the consensus of his scientific community that it would be harder for him to accept an idea that transformed the meaning of everything he knew. Even if it were true.

Sayari yetu hujulikana kama Dunia na jua letu hujulikana kama Sol. Dunia imo ndani ya mfumo wa jua wa Sol. Mfumo wa jua wa Sol umo ndani ya mfumo wa jua wa Sol Sector au Solar Interstellar Neighborhood, kwenye wenzo wa Orion wa falaki ya Njiamaziwa, wenye mifumo ya jua zaidi ya 40 ikiwemo Alpha Centauri, Nemesis, Procyon na Sirius. Solar Interstellar Neighborhood imo ndani ya falaki ya Njiamaziwa yenye nyenzo nne zinazozunguka kwa pamoja na falaki nzima. Falaki ya Njiamaziwa imo ndani ya kishada (‘cluster’) chenye zaidi ya falaki 55 ikiwemo Andromeda, Leo A, M32 na Triangulum, kinachojulikanacho kama ‘the Local Galactic Group’. ‘The Local Galactic Group’ imo ndani ya mfumo wa kishada kikubwa zaidi kiitwacho Virgo Supercluster, chenye makundi zaidi ya 100 ya falaki. Virgo Supercluster imo ndani ya mfumo mwingine mkubwa zaidi wa vishada uitwao Laniakea (Local Supercluster) wenye vishada zaidi ya 500 vya falaki. Hapo ndipo mwisho wa ulimwengu wetu unaoweza kuonwa na wanasayansi wetu. Kutoka duniani mpaka Laniakea ni umbali wa kilometa bilioni trilioni 250, miaka bilioni 13.8 iliyopita.

Science is theology for an atheist

Science is the most influential tool of progress in the world, not one among many, but most, yet no scientist had tried to use it as a primary tool for harmony. And I desired to accomplish precisely that. I didn’t want to popularize science, for there were and are already tons of scientists doing it. I wanted to use science in a way that would have direct humanitarian consequences in interhuman relationships.

Science is a satisfactory curiosity.

Science is the human endeavor to elevate the self and the society from the darkness of ignorance into the light of wisdom.

Science works through replication, rectification and modification.

Scientists are the true driving force of civilization.

Scientists don't make decisions based on potential profit. What a scientist must consider foremost is which of the many available paths will lead to the greatest benefit for humanity. Even if said path, doesn't result in any personal gain, it's still the one to pick. Of course, ideally, we hope that the most beneficial path also results in personal gain.

Scientists still do not appear to understand sufficiently that all earth sciences must contribute evidence toward unveiling the state of our planet in earlier times, and that the truth of the matter can only be reached by combing all this evidence. ... It is only by combing the information furnished by all the earth sciences that we can hope to determine 'truth' here, that is to say, to find the picture that sets out all the known facts in the best arrangement and that therefore has the highest degree of probability. Further, we have to be prepared always for the possibility that each new discovery, no matter what science furnishes it, may modify the conclusions we draw.

Scientists want to search for alien signals because that's what gets them publicity. They are like Jesus Christ." "Jesus Christ?" Nambodri asked, with a faintly derogatory chuckle. "Yes. They are exactly like Jesus Christ. You know that he turned water into wine." "I've heard that story." "From the point of view of pure chemistry, it is more miraculous to make wine into water than water into wine. But he did not do that. Because if he had gone to someone's house and converted their wine into water, they would have crucified him much earlier. He knew, Jana. He knew making water into wine was a more popular thing to do.

Methodological naturalism is a “ground rule” of science today which requires scientists to seek explanations in the world around us based upon what we can observe, test, replicate, and verify

Scientists are sometimes wrong and fisherman are sometimes wrong.

Scientific facts alone are futile without a conscientious soul to work on them.

That day, the great mind in neuroscience Michael A. Persinger, who is now a good friend of mine, made me realize that it was no other field of Science but Neuroscience that held the key to solving the quintessential problems of consciousness. He coaxed me into the science of the neurons and the rest as you know is history. Without Persinger, Naskar and Neuroscience would never have been linked together. Imbued with new knowledge, confidence and excessive curiosity, I officially turned my attention to one of the loftiest goals of modern science - understanding the biological nature of the human mind. That day on, I officially got into the world of Neuroscience.

Sophistication is not science people, simplicity is.

So this is where all the vapid talk about the 'soul' of the universe is actually headed. Once the hard-won principles of reason and science have been discredited, the world will not pass into the hands of credulous herbivores who keep crystals by their sides and swoon over the poems of Khalil Gibran. The 'vacuum' will be invaded instead by determined fundamentalists of every stripe who already know the truth by means of revelation and who actually seek real and serious power in the here and now. One thinks of the painstaking, cloud-dispelling labor of British scientists from Isaac Newton to Joseph Priestley to Charles Darwin to Ernest Rutherford to Alan Turing and Francis Crick, much of it built upon the shoulders of Galileo and Copernicus, only to see it casually slandered by a moral and intellectual weakling from the usurping House of Hanover. An awful embarrassment awaits the British if they do not declare for a republic based on verifiable laws and principles, both political and scientific.

That is why they have poets—to classify all the degrees of love. It is for scientists to classify the maladies arising from the want of it.

The best scientists can do is fail to disprove things while pointing to how hard they tried

The human brain is composed of two hemispheres, connected to each other through a thick neural cable. Each hemisphere controls the opposite side of the body. The right hemisphere controls the left side of the body, receives data from the left-hand field of vision and is responsible for moving the left arm and leg, and vice versa. This is why people who have had a stroke in their right hemisphere sometimes ignore the left side of their body (combing only the right side of their hair, or eating only the food placed on the right side of their plate).10 There are also emotional and cognitive differences between the two hemispheres, though the division is far from clear-cut. Most cognitive activities involve both hemispheres, but not to the same degree. For example, in most cases the left hemisphere plays a more important role in speech and in logical reasoning, whereas the right hemisphere is more dominant in processing spatial information.

The Creator has – I say it in all reverence - drawn a myriad red herrings across the track, but the true scientist refuses to be baffled by superficial appearances in detecting the secrets of Nature. The vulgar herd catches at the gross apparent fact, but the man of insight knows what lies on the surfaces does lie.

The great masters of modern analysis are Lagrange, Laplace, and Gauss, who were contemporaries. It is interesting to note the marked contrast in their styles. Lagrange is perfect both in form and matter, he is careful to explain his procedure, and though his arguments are general they are easy to follow. Laplace on the other hand explains nothing, is indifferent to style, and, if satisfied that his results are correct, is content to leave them either with no proof or with a faulty one. Gauss is as exact and elegant as Lagrange, but even more difficult to follow than Laplace, for he removes every trace of the analysis by which he reached his results, and studies to give a proof which while rigorous shall be as concise and synthetical as possible.

The lives of scientists, considered as Lives, almost always make dull reading. For one thing, the careers of the famous and the merely ordinary fall into much the same pattern, give or take an honorary degree or two, or (in European countries) an honorific order. It could be hardly otherwise. Academics can only seldom lead lives that are spacious or exciting in a worldly sense. They need laboratories or libraries and the company of other academics. Their work is in no way made deeper or more cogent by privation, distress or worldly buffetings. Their private lives may be unhappy, strangely mixed up or comic, but not in ways that tell us anything special about the nature or direction of their work. Academics lie outside the devastation area of the literary convention according to which the lives of artists and men of letters are intrinsically interesting, a source of cultural insight in themselves. If a scientist were to cut his ear off, no one would take it as evidence of a heightened sensibility; if a historian were to fail (as Ruskin did) to consummate his marriage, we should not suppose that our understanding of historical scholarship had somehow been enriched.

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.

The moment a gentleman perfects an invention and petitions the government for aid, he ceases to be an innocent citizen and becomes a culprit, a man to be shirked, browbeaten, and sneered at. I have never heard of any mechanician, inventor, or natural scientist who failed to find the government all but inaccessible, and whom the government did not discourage and treat badly.

The Project Elects assured us that dropping the monkey into the volcano was important. They scribbled impatiently on the blackboard in the demonstration room. They drew a picture of the monkey peeking out of the capsule’s small window and smiling. They drew themselves standing on the tarmac and smiling. They drew a picture of us having wild sex with each other in the locker room and smiling. Look, they said, everybody’s happy. And if our own happiness wasn’t enough to make us put the monkey in the capsule, they reminded us that we were replaceable, that we were, in fact, desirable only in the sense that we were so totally capable of being replaced, that we were all a bunch of yo-yos, that we were lucky to know there even was a monkey.

There were dozens of theories about what it was, that dome. Every scientist in the world, it seemed, had made a pilgrimage to the site. Tests had been conducted, measurements taken. They had tried drilling through it. Under it. Had flown over it. Had dug beneath it. Had approached it by submarine. Nothing worked. Every species of doomsayer from Luddite to End Times nut had had his say. It was a judgment. On America’s technological obsession, on America’s moral failure. This. That. Something else. Then the twins had popped out. Just like that. First Emma. Then, a few minutes later, Anna. Alive and well at the exact moment of their fifteenth birthday. They told tales of life inside the bowl. What they called the FAYZ. Connie Temple’s heart had swelled with pride for what she had learned of her son, Sam. And crashed into despair with tales of her other son, her unacknowledged child, Caine. Then, nothing. No other kids arrived for a while. Black despair settled over the families as they realized that it would be only these two. Months passed. Many lost faith. How could kids survive alone? But then, the Prophetess had reached into their dreams. One night Connie Temple had a lurid, incredible dream. She’d never had such a detailed dream. It was terrifying. The power of it took her breath away. There was a girl in that dream. This girl spoke to her in the dream. It’s a dream, the girl said. Yes, just a dream, Connie had answered. Not just a dream. Never say “just” a dream, the girl had corrected. A dream is a window to another reality. Who are you? Connie had asked. My name is Orsay. I know your son. Connie had been about to say, Which one? But some instinct stopped her. The girl did not look dangerous. She looked hungry. Do you have a message for Sam? the girl asked. Yes, Connie said. Tell him to let them go. Let them go. Let them go off into the red sunset.

There were several key American scientists that favorably reported on Nazi eugenics after visiting Hitler's Germany in order to provide it cover.

The void is 'not-being,' and no part of 'what is' is a 'not-being,'; for what 'is' in the strict sense of the term is an absolute plenum. This plenum, however, is not 'one': on the contrary, it is a 'many' infinite in number and invisible owing to the minuteness of their bulk.

Things remain paranormal, as long as we scientists don't reveal the underlying physical processes.

Think of facts and figures as bricks and cement, and science or scientific understanding as a building. Without the vision of the architect, it's impossible to construct the building no matter how much bricks and cement you have.

Those whom nature destined to make her disciples have no need of teachers. Bacon, Descartes, Newton — these tutors of the human race had no need of tutors themselves, and what guides could have led them to those places where their vast genius carried them? Ordinary teachers could only have limited their understanding by confining it to their own narrow capabilities. With the first obstacles, they learned to exert themselves and made the effort to traverse the immense space they moved through. If it is necessary to permit some men to devote themselves to the study of the sciences and the arts, that should be only for those who feel in themselves the power to walk alone in those men's footsteps and to move beyond them. It is the task of this small number of people to raise monuments to the glory of the human mind.

Throughout history, only a small number of people have done the serious thinking for everybody.

To prove to an indignant questioner on the spur of the moment that the work I do was useful seemed a thankless task and I gave it up. I turned to him with a smile and finished, 'To tell you the truth we don't do it because it is useful but because it's amusing.' The answer was thought of and given in a moment: it came from deep down in my mind, and the results were as admirable from my point of view as unexpected. My audience was clearly on my side. Prolonged and hearty applause greeted my confession. My questioner retired shaking his head over my wickedness and the newspapers next day, with obvious approval, came out with headlines 'Scientist Does It Because It's Amusing!' And if that is not the best reason why a scientist should do his work, I want to know what is. Would it be any good to ask a mother what practical use her baby is? That, as I say, was the first evening I ever spent in the United States and from that moment I felt at home. I realised that all talk about science purely for its practical and wealth-producing results is as idle in this country as in England. Practical results will follow right enough. No real knowledge is sterile. The most useless investigation may prove to have the most startling practical importance: Wireless telegraphy might not yet have come if Clerk Maxwell had been drawn away from his obviously 'useless' equations to do something of more practical importance. Large branches of chemistry would have remained obscure had Willard Gibbs not spent his time at mathematical calculations which only about two men of his generation could understand. With this trust in the ultimate usefulness of all real knowledge a man may proceed to devote himself to a study of first causes without apology, and without hope of immediate return.

Wanasayansi wana uwezo wa kupeleleza hadi kipindi cha karne ya kwanza ambapo Yesu aliishi, alikufa, alifufuka na alipaa kwenda mbinguni, na wana uwezo wa kujua mambo mengi kwa hakika yaliyofanyika katika kipindi hicho na hata katika kipindi cha kabla ya hapo. Kuna miujiza ambayo Yesu aliifanya ambayo haiko ndani ya Biblia. Kwa mfano, Biblia inasema Yesu alizaliwa ndani ya zizi la ng’ombe wakati sayansi inasema alizaliwa nje ya zizi la ng’ombe; na muujiza wa kwanza kuufanya ambao hauko ndani ya Biblia ni kutembea mara tu baada ya kuzaliwa, na watu na ndege wa angani kuganda kabla ya kuzaliwa Masihi na kabla ya wakunga kufika kumsaidia Maria Magdalena kujifungua. Akiwa na umri wa miaka sita, sayansi inasema, Yesu alikuwa akicheza na mtoto mwenzake juu ya paa la nyumba ya jirani na mara Yesu akamsukuma mwenzake kutoka juu hadi chini na mwenzake huyo akafariki papo hapo. Watu walipomsonga sana Yesu kwa kumtuhumu kuwa yeye ndiye aliyesababisha kifo cha mwenzake, na kwamba wangemfungulia mashtaka, Yesu alikataa katakata kuhusika na kifo hicho. Lakini walipozidi kumsonga, aliusogelea mwili wa rafiki yake kisha akamwita na kumwambia asimame. Yule mtoto alisimama! Huo ukawa muujiza mkubwa wa kwanza wa Yesu Kristo, kufufua mtu nje ya maandiko matakatifu. Kuna mifano mingi inayodhihirisha uwepo wa Mungu ambayo wanasayansi hawawezi hata kuipatia majibu. Tukio la Yoshua kusimamisha jua limewashangaza wanasayansi hadi nyakati za leo. Mwanzoni mwa miaka ya 70 wanasayansi walijaribu kurudisha muda nyuma kwa kompyuta kuona kama kweli wangekuta takribani siku moja imepotea kama ilivyorekodiwa katika Biblia. Cha kushangaza, cha kushangaza mno, walikuta saa 23 na dakika 20 zimepotea katika mazingira ambayo hawakuweza na hawataweza kuyaelewa. Walipochunguza vizuri walikuta ni kipindi cha miaka ya 1500 KK (Jumanne tarehe 22 Julai) ambacho ndicho tukio la Yoshua la kusimamisha jua na kusogeza mwezi nyuma digrii 10, ambazo ni sawa na mzunguko wa dakika 40, lilipotokea. Kwa kutumia elimu ya wendo, elimu ya kupanga miaka na matukio ya Kibiblia, dunia iliumbwa Jumapili tarehe 22 Septemba mwaka 4000 KK. Hata hivyo, mahesabu ya kalenda yanaonyesha kuwa Septemba 22 ilikuwa Jumatatu (si Jumapili) na kwamba kosa hilo labda lilisababishwa na siku ya Yoshua iliyopotea. Hayo yote ni kwa mujibu wa Profesa C. A. Totten, wa Chuo Kikuu cha Yale, katika kitabu chake cha ‘Joshua’s Long Day and the Dial of Ahaz: A Scientific Vindication and a Midnight Cry’ kilichochapishwa mwaka 1890. Kama hakuna Mungu iliwezekanaje Yoshua aombe jua lisimame na jua likasimama kweli? Iliwezekanaje Yesu aseme atakufa, atafufuka na atapaa kwenda mbinguni na kweli ikatokea kama alivyosema? Ndani ya Biblia kuna tabiri 333 zilizotabiri maisha yote ya Yesu Kristo hapa duniani na zote zilitimia – bila kupungua hata moja. Utasemaje hapo hakuna Mungu? Mungu yupo, naamini, sijui. Tukio la Yesu kufa, kufufuka na kupaa kwenda mbinguni si la vitabu vitakatifu pekee, hata sayansi inakubaliana na hilo.