Quotes About Progress

No-one really thought of fission before its discovery.

I am busy just now again on Electro-Magnetism and think I have got hold of a good thing but can't say; it may be a weed instead of a fish that after all my labour I may at last pull up.

People must understand that science is inherently neither a potential for good nor for evil. It is a potential to be harnessed by man to do his bidding.

Science fiction does not remain fiction for long. And certainly not on the Internet.

This survival of the fittest implies multiplication of the fittest.

We owe a lot to the Indians, who taught us how to count, without which no worthwhile scientific discovery could have been made.

We would be 1,500 years ahead if it hadn't been for the church dragging science back by its coattails and burning our best minds at the stake.

Once the rockets are up, who cares where they come down ? That's not my department.

The function of ignoring, of inattention, is as vital a factor in mental progress as the function of attention itself.

Reason and justice tell me there's more love for humanity in electricity and steam than in chastity and vegetarianism.

Can it really be said that before the day of our pretentious science, humanity was composed solely of imbeciles and the superstitious?

Man appears to be the missing link between anthropoid apes and human beings.

The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function.

To the engineer falls the job of clothing the bare bones of science with life, comfort, and hope.

You will never stub your toe standing still. The faster you go, the more chance there is of stubbing your toe, but the more chance you have of getting somewhere.

Environmentally friendly cars will soon cease to be an option...they will become a necessity.

It is not good to try to stop knowledge from going forward. Ignorance is never better than knowledge.

A good science fiction story should be able to predict not the automobile but the traffic jam.

History of science is a relay race, my painter friend. Copernicus took over his flag from Aristarchus, from Cicero, from Plutarch; and Galileo took that flag over from Copernicus.

A totally blind process can by definition lead to anything; it can even lead to vision itself.

I do not know if I am mistaken, but it seems that one can obtain more truths, important to Humanity, from Chemistry than from any other Science.

A man can do his best only by confidently seeking (and perpetually missing) an unattainable perfection.

Science, in the very act of solving problems, creates more of them.

Innovation and renewal are required to keep a laboratory on the frontiers of science.