Quotes About Science

It was evident that such facts as these, as well as many others, could only be explained on the supposition that species gradually become modified; and the subject haunted me.

I was much struck how entirely vague and arbitrary is the distinction between species and varieties. ... But to discuss whether they are rightly called species or varieties, before any definition of these terms has been generally accepted, is vainly to beat the air.

Scientists are the destroyers of myths and sometimes the myths they destroy are there own.

Il me serait difficile de rappeler au lecteur qui n'est pas familier avec la géologie les faits au moyen desquels on arrive à se faire une vague et faible idée de l'immensité de la durée des âges écoulés.

In all cases positive palaeontological evidence may be implicitly trusted; negative evidence is worthless, as experience has so often shown.

I have read heaps of agricultural & horticultural books, & have never ceased collecting facts— At last gleams of light have come, & I am almost convinced (quite contrary to opinion I started with) that species are not (it is like confessing a murder) immutable. Lettre To Joseph Dalton Hooker [11 January 1844]

It has been a bitter mortification for me to digest the conclusion that the 'race is for the strong' and that I shall probably do little more but be content to admire the strides others made in science.

FROM THE point of view of modern intellectual life and culture, On the Origin of Species is one of the most important scientific books of all time.

Podemos creer que la selección natural llegue a producir, por una parte, un órgano de insignificante importancia, como la cola de la jirafa, que sirve de espantamoscas, y por otra parte, un órgano tan maravilloso como el ojo?

The laws governing inheritance are for the most part unknown.

I believe in Natural Selection, not because I can prove in any single case that it has changed one species into another, but because it groups and explains well (as it seems to me) a host of facts in classification, embryology, morphology, rudimentary organs, geological succession and distribution.

Alexander von Humboldt was the] greatest scientific traveller who ever lived.

There is nothing like geology; the pleasure of the first day's partridge shooting or first day's hunting cannot be compared to finding a fine group of fossil bones, which tell their story of former times with almost a living tongue. Charles Darwin, letter to his sister Catherine, 1834

But then with me the horrid doubt always arises whether the convictions of man's mind, which has been developed from the mind of the lower animals, are of any value or at all trustworthy. Would any one trust in the convictions of a monkey's mind, if there are any convictions in such a mind?

Whoever is led to believe that species are mutable will do good service by conscientiously expressing his conviction; for only thus can the load of prejudice by which this subject is overwhelmed be removed.

Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know littler, and not those who know much, who so positively assertive that this or that problem will never be solved by science.

On the other hand, I am not very sceptical,—a frame of mind which I believe to be injurious to the progress of science. A good deal of scepticism in a scientific man is advisable to avoid much loss of time, but I have met with not a few men, who, I feel sure, have often thus been deterred from experiment or observations, which would have proved directly or indirectly serviceable.

A great man of science ... knows everything about everything, except why a hen's egg does not turn into a crocodile and two or three other little things. http://diggingupthefuture.wordpress.com/

Can we unlearn the arts that pretend to civilise, and then burn the world? There is a March of Science. But who shall beat the drums, for its retreat?

Once we crack the problem of fusion, we have an assured source of energy for as long as you want to think about it. It will cease to be a reason for war or an influence on foreign affairs.

Scientists would then build a demonstration fusion power plant that would begin operations in 2035 or 2040. After five decades of broken promises, lies, delusions, and self-deception, it will finally be true. Fusion energy will be thirty years away.

if history is any guide, a long, long road lies ahead before physicists will be able to tame fusion reactions

GAS VERSUS PLASMA: In a gas (left), every electron is stuck to an atom. In a plasma (right), the electrons roam free, attracted by nuclei, but not attached to any single nucleus.

It's an open secret. Fusion isn't clean, and it probably never will be.