Quotes About Science

gorgonopsian sabertooth Rubidgea

I am now convinced that theoretical physics is actual philosophy.

I believe that ideas such as absolute certitude, absolute exactness, final truth, etc. are figments of the imagination which should not be admissible in any field of science... This loosening of thinking seems to me to be the greatest blessing which modern science has given to us. For the belief in a single truth and in being the possessor thereof is the root cause of all evil in the world.

We, the atom and I, have been on friendly terms, until recently. I saw in it the key to the deepest secrets of Nature, and it revealed to me the greatness of creation and the Creator.

But in practical affairs, particularly in politics, men are needed who combine human experience and interest in human relations with a knowledge of science and technology.

I believe there is no philosophical high-road in science, with epistemological signposts. No, we are in a jungle and find our way by trial and error, building our road behind us as we proceed. We do not find signposts at crossroads, but our own scouts erect them, to help the rest.

Einstein would be one of the greatest theoretical physicists of all time even if he had not written a single line on relativity.

But I believe that there is no philosophical highroad in science, with epistemological signposts. No, we are in a jungle and find our way by trial and error, building our road behind us as we proceed. We do not find signposts at crossroads, but our own scouts erect them, to help the rest.

My advice to those who wish to learn the art of scientific prophecy is not to rely on abstract reason, but to decipher the secret language of Nature from Nature's documents, the facts of experience.

do not want to believe in God. Therefore, I choose to believe in that which I know is scientifically impossible, spontaneous generation arising to evolution. —George Wald, Chemist and Nobel Prize winner for medicine

In science, truth always wins

Religion belongs to the realm that is inviolable before the law of causation and therefore closed to science.

Science is part of culture. Culture isn't only art and music and literature, it's also understanding what the world is made of and how it functions. People should know something about stars, matter and chemistry. People often say that they don't like chemistry but we deal with chemistry all the time. People don't know what heat is, they hardly know what water is. I'm always surprised how little people know about anything. I'm puzzled by it.

Scientific discovery and scientific knowledge have been achieved only by those who have gone in pursuit of it without any practical purpose whatsoever in view.

A scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.

A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them to see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.

A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.

Science cannot solve the ultimate mystery of nature. And that is because, in the last analysis, we ourselves are a part of the mystery that we are trying to solve.

An experiment is a question which science poses to Nature and a measurement is the recording of Nature's answer.

New scientific ideas never spring from a communal body, however organized, but rather from the head of an individually inspired researcher who struggles with his problems in lonely thought and unites all his thought on one single point which is his whole world for the moment.

Experiment is the only means of knowledge at our disposal. Everything else is poetry, imagination.

The assumption of an absolute determinism is the essential foundation of every scientific enquiry.

Science enhances the moral value of life, because it furthers a love of truth and reverence—love of truth displaying itself in the constant endeavor to arrive at a more exact knowledge of the world of mind and matter around us, and reverence, because every advance in knowledge brings us face to face with the mystery of our own being.

We cannot rest and sit down lest we rust and decay. Health is maintained only through work. And as it is with all life so it is with science. We are always struggling from the relative to the absolute.