Quotes About Science

The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one – George Bernard Shaw

A faith which cannot survive collision with the truth is not worth many regrets. – Arthur C. Clarke

Some like to understand what they believe in. Others like to believe in what they understand. – Stanislaw Jerzy Lec

In Nature there are neither rewards nor punishments – there are consequences. – Robert G Ingersoll

For the skeptic there remains only one consolation: if there should be such a thing as superhuman law it is administered with subhuman inefficiency – Eric Ambler

The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom – Isaac Asimov

FAITH, n. Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel. – Ambrose Bierce

We must not forget that when radium was discovered no one knew that it would prove useful in hospitals. The work was one of pure science. And this is a proof that scientific work must not be considered from the point of view of the direct usefulness of it. It must be done for itself, for the beauty of science, and then there is always the chance that a scientific discovery may become like the radium a benefit for humanity. – Marie Curie

There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact. – Mark Twain, Life on the Mississippi

We must, however, acknowledge, as it seems to me, that man with all his noble qualities… still bears in his bodily frame the indelible stamp of his lowly origin. – Charles Darwin

The difference between science and the fuzzy subjects is that science requires reasoning while those other subjects merely require scholarship. – Robert A Heinlein

Most species do their own evolving, making it up as they go along, which is the way Nature intended. And this is all very natural and organic and in tune with mysterious cycles of the cosmos, which believes that there’s nothing like millions of years of really frustrating trial and error to give a species moral fiber and, in some cases, backbone. – Terry Pratchett

The fact that we live at the bottom of a deep gravity well, on the surface of a gas covered planet going around a nuclear fireball 90 million miles away and think this to be normal is obviously some indication of how skewed our perspective tends to be. – Douglas Adams, The Salmon Of Doubt: Hitchhiking The Galaxy One Last Time

Everybody talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it. – Mark Twain

The improver of natural knowledge absolutely refuses to acknowledge authority, as such. For him, skepticism is the highest of duties; blind faith the one unpardonable sin. – Thomas Huxley

The general root of superstition is that men observe when things hit, and not when they miss, and commit to memory the one, and pass over the other.
 – Francis Bacon

The truth may be puzzling. It may take some work to grapple with. It may be counterintuitive. It may contradict deeply held prejudices. It may not be consonant with what we desperately want to be true. But our preferences do not determine what’s true. – Carl Sagan

The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom. – Issac Asimov

The optimist thinks this is the best of all possible worlds, and the pessimist knows it is. – J. Robert Oppenheimer

We live in a society exquisitely dependent  on science and technology, in which hardly anyone knows anything about science and technology. – Carl Sagan

Science has been seriously retarded by the study of what is not worth
knowing and of what is not knowable. – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

I would love to believe that when I die I will live again, that some thinking, feeling, remembering part of me will continue. But much as I want to believe that, and despite the ancient and worldwide cultural traditions that assert an afterlife, I know of nothing to suggest that it is more than wishful thinking. The world is so exquisite with so much love and moral depth, that there is no reason to deceive ourselves with pretty stories for which there’s little good evidence. Far better it seems to me, in our vulnerability, is to look death in the eye and to be grateful every day for the brief but magnificent opportunity that life provides. – Carl Sagan

A man has no reason to be ashamed of having an ape for his grandfather. If there were an ancestor whom I should feel shame in recalling it would rather be a man who plunges into scientific questions with which he has no real acquaintance, only to obscure them by an aimless rhetoric…. – Thomas Henry Huxley

In consequence of Darwin’s reformed Theory of Descent, we are now in a position to establish scientifically the groundwork of a non-miraculous history of the development of the human race… If any person feels the necessity of conceiving the coming into existence of this matter as the work of a supernatural creative power, of the creative force of something outside of matter, we have nothing to say against it. But we must remark, that thereby not even the smallest advantage is gained for a scientific knowledge of nature. Such a conception of an immaterial force, which as the first creates matter, is an article of faith which has nothing whatever to do with human science. Where faith commences, science ends. – Ernst Haeckel

We are trying to prove ourselves wrong as quickly as possible, because only in that way can we find progress. – Richard P. Feynman

Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood. Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear less. – Marie Curie

Skeptical scrutiny is the means, in both science and religion, by which
deep insights can be winnowed from deep nonsense. – Carl Sagan

I think that in the discussion of natural problems we ought to begin not with the Scriptures, but with experiments, and demonstrations. – Galileo Galilei

Our freedom to doubt was born out of a struggle against authority in the early days of science. It was a very deep and strong struggle: permit us to question — to doubt — to not be sure. I think that it is important that we do not forget this struggle and thus perhaps lose what we have gained. – Richard P. Feynman

A fact is a simple statement that everyone believes.  It is innocent, unless found guilty.  A hypothesis is a novel suggestion that no one wants to believe.  It is guilty, until found effective. – Edward Teller

Science has proof without any certainty. Creationists have certainty without any proof. – Ashley Montague

The radical novelty of modern science lies precisely in the rejection of the belief, which is at the heart of all popular religion, that the forces which move the stars and atoms are contingent upon the preferences of the human heart. – Walter Lippmann

It doesn’t stop being magic just because you know how it works. – Terry Pratchett, The Wee Free Men

Scientific principles and laws do not lie on the surface of nature. They are hidden, and must be wrested from nature by an active and elaborate technique of inquiry. – John Dewey

I know not how I may seem to others, but to myself I am but a small child wandering upon the vast shores of knowledge, every now and then finding a small bright pebble to content myself with. – Plato

A credulous mind… finds most delight in believing strange things, and the stranger they are the easier they pass with him; but never regards those that are plain and feasible, for every man can believe such.  – Samuel Butler

We are just an advanced breed of monkeys on a minor planet of a very average star. But we can understand the Universe. That makes us something very special. – Stephen Hawking

Once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been, and there you will always long to return. – Leonardo da Vinci

I mean, you could claim that anything’s real if the only basis for believing in it is that nobody’s proved it doesn’t exist! – J.K. Rowling