Quotes About Science

We shall abolish the orgasm. Our neurologists are at work upon it now.

Society was ruled by narrow-minded, profoundly incurious people, predatory business men, dull squires, bishops, politicians who could quote Horace but had never heard of algebra. Science was faintly disreputable and religious belief obligatory. Traditionalism, stupidity, snobbishness, patriotism, superstition and love of war seemed to be all on the same side; there was need of someone who could state the opposite point of view.

There will be no loyalty, except loyalty towards the Party. There will be no love, except the love of Big Brother. There will be no laughter, except the laugh of triumph over a defeated enemy. There will be no art, no literature, no science. When we are omnipotent we shall have no more need of science. There will be no distinction between beauty and ugliness. There will be no curiosity, no enjoyment of the process of life. All competing pleasures will be destroyed.

And in all of us there is at least a tinge of that habit of mind. In every country in the world the large army of scientists and technicians, with the rest of us panting at their heels, is marching along the road of 'progress' with the blind persistence of a column of ants.

Physical facts could not be ignored. In philosophy, or religion, or ethics, or politics, two and two might make five, but when one was designing a gun or an aeroplane they had to make four.

At one time it had been a sign of madness to believe that the earth goes round the sun; today to believe that the past is unalterable.

Science and technology were developing at a prodigious speed, and it seemed natural to assume that they would go on developing. This failed to happen, partly because of the impoverishment caused by a long series of wars and revolutions, partly because scientific and technical progress depended on the empirical habit of thought, which could not survive in a strictly regimented society.

Ancient Mystical Order Rosae Crucis (AMORC), whose Egyptian museum in San Jose took up an entire city block. It stressed the virtues of reason and science while also suggesting that ancient Egyptian wisdom would allow its followers to re-lease the hidden powers inherent in man.

Like his illustrious predecessor, Parsons did not see the two disciplines of science and magic as contradictory.

Jack Parsons was just such a figure, living on the cusp between an old world in which the very idea of space travel was a scientific absurdity and a new world in which it would become scientific fact.

L'art de voyager, c'est presque la science de la vie.

To feel beauty is a better thing than to understand how we come to feel it. To have imagination and taste, to love the best, to be carried by the contemplation of nature to a vivid faith in the ideal, all this is more, a great deal more, than any science can hope to be.

Scientific method seeks to understand things as they are, while alchemy seeks to bring about a desired state of affairs. To put it another way, the primary objective of science is truth, - that of alchemy, operational success.

Confucian rigour swept away the 'magical nonsense 'and Taoist liturgies of alchemical arts. None the less ,' if we now have powder metallurgy , beryllium alloys and liquid oxygen steel', this is owning to the Wizards ,not to the censorious apostles of common sense.

And fragile is thy tenure of this world Still haunted by the monstrous ghost of God. (To Science)

Creationists make it sound like a 'theory' is something you dreamt up after being drunk all night. Isaac Asimov, Russian-born American author

The Church says that the earth is flat, but I know that it is round, for I have seen the shadow on the moon, and I have more faith in a shadow than in the Church. Ferdinand Magellan, Portuguese and Spanish explorer

you will agree with me in opinion that there is nothing which can better deserve your patronage than the promotion of science and literature. Knowledge is in every country the surest basis of public happiness.

No soy un hombre de ciencia en el sentido de que hablo de experiencia interior, no de objetos; pero, en el momento en que hablo de objetos, lo hago como los hombres de ciencia, con el rigor que es inevitable.

Religion is a means of exploitation employed by the strong against the weak; religion is a cloak of ambition, injustice and vice . . . . Truth breaks free, science is popularized, and religion totters; soon it will fall, in the course of centuries--that is, tomorrow. . . . In good time we shall only have to deal with reason. [ From Bizet, by William Dean. Colier Books, 1962 ]

La santé c'est l'innocence organique. Elle doit être perdue, comme toute innocence, pour qu'une connaissance soit possible. Il en est de la physiologie comme de toute science, selon Aristote, elle procède de l'étonnement. Mais l'étonnement proprement vital c'est l'angoisse suscitée par la maladie.

Chercher la maladie au niveau de la cellule c'est confondre le plan de la vie concrète où la polarité biologique fait la différence de la santé et de la maladie et le plan de la science abstraite où le problème reçoit une solution. Nous ne voulons pas dire qu'une cellule ne peut pas être malade, si par cellule on entend un tout vivant, mais nous voulons dire que la maladie d'un vivant ne loge pas dans des parties de l'organisme.

Maigret worked like any other policeman. Like everyone else, he used the amazing tools that men like Bertillon, Reiss and Locard have given the police – anthropometry, the principle of the trace, and so forth – and that have turned detection into forensic science. But what he sought, what he waited and watched out for, was the crack in the wall. In other words, the instant when the human being comes out from behind the opponent.

When finally substantiated by scientific means, such a view will allow an individual to see his place in the world with greater clarity-- how he came from the world and how he may contribute to his fellows while he enjoys for a brief time the privilege of consciousness and communication.