Quotes About Science

It is hard to think of practical applications of the black hole. Because practical applications are so remote, many people assume we should not be interested. But this quest to understand the world is what defines us as human beings.

Fundamental physics is like an art more or less. It's completely non-practical, and you can't use it for anything. But it's about the universe and how the world came into being. It's very remote from your daily life and mine, and yet it defines us as human beings.

If there were a clear prospect that such evils were part of a barbarian past, then at least we might find a small crumb of comfort. No such prospect exists: no scientific analysis can even remotely answer or account for past and present horrors of human behaviour.

Natural selection will not remove ignorance from future generations.

When I ask myself what are the great things we got from the Renaissance, it's the great art, the great music, the science insights of Leonardo da Vinci. Two hundred years from now, when you ask what are the great things that came from this era, I think it's going to be an understanding of the universe around us.

Since the Renaissance, a concept called 'progress' has been baked into our society. Progress - founded on an accumulation of knowledge through experience (and in the case of science, through experiment). To build on the past rather than endlessly relive it. That's what separates us from the beasts.

While I'm a big fan of science fiction, especially as rendered in expensive Hollywood blockbusters, it's the real universe that calls to me.

What do cells do when they see a broken piece of DNA? Cells don't like such breaks. They'll do pretty much anything they can to fix things up. If a chromosome is broken, the cells will repair the break using an intact chromosome.

History is the science of things which are not repeated.

Science is the practice of failing repeatedly but learning as you go.

A second reason why science cannot replace judgement is the behavior of financial markets.

Big History's not going to replace existing educational courses. It's not an attack on specialisation. It is simply the argument that specialisation needs to be complemented with an overview, which I think is scientific commonsense.

I eagerly await the day when there is a replacement for the meniscus.

I just had that conversation this morning with my doctor. I just got back from the hospital a half-hour ago, and nothing will make me happier than to replicate the DNA of my amazing husband. I'm optimistic.

We are the recorders and reporters of facts - not the judges of the behaviors we describe.

You may not see massive UFO exhibits at your local science museum, but there's no dearth of saucer stories infesting my email. Every day, I receive several reports of alien sightings, extraterrestrial plans for Earth, and agitated screeds about the reluctance of scientists to take the whole subject seriously.

So I had this fascination with old bones and being able to diagnose disease in old bones. And I was doing that, and started to do bone reports for the Channel 4 series 'Time Team'.

No matter what policy initiatives we take on, we are going to need a permanent repository for nuclear fuel based on the law and sound science.

Whether or not evolution is compatible with faith, science and religion represent two extremely different worldviews, which, if they coexist at all, do so most uncomfortably.

It was very, very important to me to represent a broader swath of humanity that often isn't seen in futuristic sci-fi.

However, I must not indulge in homespun wisdom here before so distinguished an assembly, especially as I am to be followed by a representative of science.

Almost half our representatives in Washington apparently know more about science than our scientists. Or they pretend to, because big corporations give them a lot of money to make sure they can keep doing the destructive things that they do.

We've only explored about five percent of our ocean. There are great discoveries yet to be made down there, fantastic creatures representing millions of years of evolution and possibly bioactive compounds that could benefit us in ways that we can't even yet imagine.

We've only explored about 5% of our ocean. There are great discoveries yet to be made down there - fantastic creatures representing millions of years of evolution and possibly bioactive compounds that could benefit us in ways we can't even imagine.