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There is a point at which methods devour themselves.
-Frantz Fanon
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We have a habit in writing articles published in scientific journals to make the work as finished as possible, to cover up all the tracks, to not worry about the blind alleys or describe how you had the wrong idea first, and so on. So there isn't any place to publish, in a dignified manner, what you actually did in order to get to do the work.
-Richard Feynman, Nobel Lecture, 1966
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Is no one inspired by our present picture of the universe? Our poets do not write about it; our artists do not try to portray this remarkable thing. The value of science remains unsung by singers: you are reduced to hearing not a song or poem, but an evening lecture about it. This is not yet a scientific age.
-Richard Feynman
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If they don't depend on true evidence, scientists are no better than gossips.
-Penelope Fitzgerald
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Neurophysiologists will not likely find what they are looking for, for that which they are looking for is that which is looking.
-Keith Floyd
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Furnished as all Europe now is with Academies of Science, with nice instruments and the spirit of experiment, the progress of human knowledge will be rapid and discoveries made of which we have at present no conception. I begin to be almost sorry I was born so soon, since I cannot have the happiness of knowing what will be known a hundred years hence.
-Benjamin Franklin
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The pace of science forces the pace of technique. Theoretical physics forces atomic energy on us; the successful production of the fission bomb forces upon us the manufacture of the hydrogen bomb. We do not choose our problems, we do not choose our products; we are pushed, we are forced -- by what? By a system which has no purpose and goal transcending it, and which makes man its appendix.
-Erich Fromm
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Science rests on reason and experiment, and can meet an opponent with calmness; but a belief is always sensitive.
-James A. Froude
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There is an insistent tendency among serious social scientists to think of any institution which features rhymed and singing commercials, intense and lachrymose voices urging highly improbable enjoyment, caricatures of the human esophagus in normal and impaired operation, and which hints implausibly at opportunities for antiseptic seduction as inherently trivial. This is a great mistake. The industrial system is profoundly dependent on commercial television and could not exist in its present form without it.
-John Kenneth Galbraith
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The real accomplishment of modern science and technology consists in taking ordinary men, informing them narrowly and deeply and then, through appropriate organization, arranging to have their knowledge combined with that of other specialized but equally ordinary men. This dispenses with the need for genius. The resulting performance, though less inspiring, is far more predictable.
-John Kenneth Galbraith
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Science is analytical, descriptive, informative. Man does not live by bread alone, but by science he attempts to do so. Hence the deadliness of all that is purely scientific.
-Eric Gill
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Whether a person shows themselves to be a genius in science or in writing a song, the only point is, whether the thought, the discovery, or the deed, is living and can live on.
-Johann von Goethe
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The credit of advancing science has always been due to individuals and never to the age.
-Johann von Goethe
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Science has been seriously retarded by the study of what is not worth knowing and of what is not knowable.
-Johann von Goethe
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Science is an integral part of culture. It's not this foreign thing, done by an arcane priesthood. It's one of the glories of the human intellectual tradition.
-Stephen Jay Gould
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Science is the only truth and it is the great lie. It knows nothing, and people think it knows everything. It is misrepresented. People think that science is electricity, automobilism, and dirigible balloons. It is something very different. It is life devouring itself. It is the sensibility transformed into intelligence. It is the need to know stifling the need to live. It is the genius of knowledge vivisecting the vital genius.
-Remy De Gourmont
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Since we are assured that the all-wise Creator has observed the most exact proportions of number, weight and measure in the make of all things, the most likely way therefore to get any insight into the nature of those parts of the Creation which come within our observation must in all reason be to number, weigh and measure.
-Stephen Hales
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Well: what we gain by science is, after all, sadness, as the Preacher saith. The more we know of the laws and nature of the Universe the more ghastly a business we perceive it all to be -- and the non-necessity of it.
-Thomas Hardy
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There could be whole antiworlds and antipeople made out of antiparticles. However, if you ever meet your antiself, don't shake hands! You would both vanish in a great flash of light.
-Stephen Hawking
A Brief History Of Time, Elementary Particles And The Forces Of Nature, 1996
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There are no better terms available to describe The difference between the approach of the natural and the social sciences than to call the former objective and the latter subjective. ... While for the natural scientist the contrast between objective facts and subjective opinions is a simple one, the distinction cannot as readily be applied to the object of the social sciences. The reason for this is that the object, the facts of the social sciences are also opinions -- not opinions of the student of the social phenomena, of course, but opinions of those whose actions produce the object of the social scientist.
-Friedrich A. Hayek
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I feel like a white granular mass of amorphous crystals -- my formula appears to be isomeric with Spasmotoxin. My aurochloride precipitates into beautiful prismatic needles. My Platinochloride develops octahedron crystals, -- with a fine blue florescence. My physiological action is not indifferent. One millionth of a grain injected under the skin of a frog produced instantaneous death accompanied by an orange blossom odor.
-Lafcadio Hearn
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A tree growing out of the ground is as wonderful today as it ever was. It does not need to adopt new and startling methods.
-Robert Henri
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Everywhere you look in science, the harder it becomes to understand the universe without God.
-Robert Herrman
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Science, which cuts its way through the muddy pond of daily life without mingling with it, casts its wealth to right and left, but the puny boatmen do not know how to fish for it.
-Alexander Herzen
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Science is the knowledge of consequences, and dependence of one fact upon another.
-Thomas Hobbes
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Books about Science
