Science Quotes

[Piero]

In science the important thing is to modify and change one's ideas as science advances.

 

-Herbert Spencer

 

True science teaches, above all, to doubt and be ignorant.

 

-Miguel de Unamuno

 

Every individual alive today, the highest as well as the lowest, is derived in an unbroken line from the first and lowest forms.

 

-August Frederick Leopold Weismann

 

One hundred trout are needed to support one man for a year. The trout, in turn, must consume 90,000 frogs, that must consume 27 million grasshoppers that live off of 1,000 tons of grass.

 

-G. Tyler Miller, Jr.

 

On the Smithsonian Institution:

 

I am tired of all this thing called science here....We have spent millions in that sort of thing for the last few years, and it is time it should be stopped.

 

- Senator Simon Cameron, 1901

 

We prefer economic growth to clean air.

 

- Charles Barden

 

One humiliating thing about science is that it is gradually filling our homes with appliances smarter than we are.

 

- Anonymous

 

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, 1874

 

I object to dividing the study of living processes into botany, zoology, and microbiology because by any such arrangement, the interrelations within the biological community get lost. Corals cannot be studied without reference to the algae that live with them; flowering plants without the insects that pollinate them; grasslands without the grazing animals.

 

-Marston Bates

 

Destroying species is like tearing pages out of an unread book, written in a language humans hardly know how to read, about the place where they live.

 

-Robert Holmes III

 

Science when well digested is nothing but good sense and reason.

 

-Stanislaw Leszczynski

 

Equipped with his five senses, man explores the universe around him and calls the adventure Science.

 

-Edwin Powel Hubble

 

You can observe a lot just by watching.

 

-Yogi Berra

 

Chance favors the trained mind.

 

-Louis Pasteur

 

It is not so much that the cells make the plant; it is rather that the plant makes the cells.

 

-Heinrich Anton de Bary

 

The structure of tissues and their functions, are two aspects of the same thing.

 

-Alexis Carroll

 

Anatomy is to physiology as geography to history; it describes the theatre of events.

 

-Jean Fernel

 

No amount of experimentation can ever prove me right; a single experiment can prove me wrong.

 

-Albert Ei

 

Facts are not science-as the dictionary is not literature.

 

-Martin H. Fischer

 

Earth, the only truly closed ecosystem any of us knows, is an organism.

 

-Lewis Thomas

 

Freedom to breed will bring ruin to all.

 

-Garett Hardin

 

Few scientists are willing to jeopardize their research funds by publicly criticizing EPA's interpretation of the scientific record.

 

-Roy Gould

 

The significant chemicals of living tissue are rickety and unstable, which is exactly what is needed for life.

 

-Isaac Asimov

 

The outcome of any serious research can only be to make two questions grow where only one grew before.

 

-Thorstein Veblen

 

How can I know what I think till I see what I say?

 

-Graham Wallas

 

The aims of scientific thought are to see the general in the particular and the eternal in the transitory.

 

-Alfred North Whitehead

 

It is vain to do with more what can be done with less. [Occam's Razor]

 

-William of Occam, 1300-1349

 

We don't know one millionth of one percent of anything.

 

-Albert Einstein

 

The main conclusion arrived at in this work, namely, that man is descended from some lowly organized form, will, I regret to think, be highly distasteful to many. But there can hardly be a doubt that we are descended from barbarians.

 

-Charles Darwin

 

I have long felt that biology ought to seem as exciting as a mystery story, for a mystery story is exactly what biology is.

 

-Richard Dawkins, "The Selfish Gene"

 

Every scientific fulfillment raises new questions; it asks to be surpassed and outdated.

 

-Max Weber

 

Most institutions demand unqualified faith; but the institution of science makes skepticism a virtue.

 

-Robert K. Merton

 

All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream.

 

-Edgar Allan Poe

 

Mathematics is the door and the key to the sciences.

 

-Roger Bacon, 1220-1292 AD.

 

A hen is only an egg's way of making another egg.

 

-Samuel Butler

 

That which is not good for the beehive, cannot be good for the bees.

 

-Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, 121-180 AD

[dsoz]

My wife walked by while I was reading this and saw what it was. Her response was...

 

There are other science geeks out there that are also into fish tanks...

 

My response was

Yes, there are others out there that are like me as well.

 

Someday I would like to meet you Piero. You seem like a descent type of guy (?)

 

I can't think of any quotes right now. But I know I am going to lift some of yours to hang in my classroom. There are some that I have not heard before.

 

(peace)

[tidalsculpin]

Good ones. Many made me smile.

[Piero]

hehe, funny Dsoz, ditto.

yeah a lot of them were really great. sorry for the crappy formatting but I only deserve credit for the copy/paste.

 

I can be a quote wh*re at times, mainly because I find such inspiration in them. I should seek treatment. A lifelong affliction.

 

But speaking of science geekdome, the 13th was Darwin day! (laugh)

[andy]

Here are some of my favorites, most unrelated (directly) to science:

 

"People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men

stand ready to do violence on their behalf."

 

-- George Orwell

 

A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher

a hog, con a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build

a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate,

act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a

computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is

for insects.

--Robert Heinlein

 

"I contend we are both atheists, I just believe in one fewer god than you

do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you

will understand why I dismiss yours."

--Stephen F. Roberts

 

After a time, you may find that having is not so pleasing a thing, after all,

as wanting. It is not logical, but it is often true.

--Spock, Star Trek (Amok Time)

 

"If there are no stupid questions, then what kind of questions do stupid

people ask? Do they get smart just in time to ask questions?"

--Scott Adams (1957 - )

 

A man said to the universe:

"Sir I exist!"

"However," replied the universe,

"The fact has not created in me

A sense of obligation."

-- Stephen Crane

 

"The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism

by those who have not got it"

-- George Bernard Shaw.

 

"To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the

lamentation of the women!"

-- Conan

 

"Be careful what you pretend to be because you are what you pretend

to be."

-- Kurt Vonnegut

 

"Ordinarily he was insane, but he had lucid moments when he was merely

stupid"

-- Heinrich Heine

 

"I made these vegetables and I can command them"

-- The Brain

 

"Look for the ridiculous in everything and you will find it"

-- Jules Renard

 

"There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and

that is not being talked about."

-- Oscar Wilde

 

"If we outlawed guns, only the children of outlaws would be killed by

accident"

 

"Whomever goes to fight monsters should take care not to become a

monster himself. And when you stare too long into the abyss, the abyss

stares back into you."

-- Friedrich Nietzsche

 

Windows 95: N

32-bit extension and a graphical shell for a 16-bit patch to an 8-bit

operating system originally coded for a 4-bit microprocessor, written

by a 2-bit company that can't stand for 1-bit of competition

 

"World War III will be a guerilla information war, with no division between

military and civilian participation"

-- Marshall McLuhan

 

Experience is what you get when you don't get what you really wanted

 

"Man is a marvelous curiosity. When he is at his very very best he is a

sort of low grade nickel-plated angel; at is worst he is unspeakable,

unimaginable; and first and last and all the time he is a sarcasm. Yet he

blandly and in all sincerity calls himself the noblest work of God."

-- Mark Twain, "Letters from the Earth"

 

"As I had occasion to pass daily to and from the building-yard while my boat

was in progress, I have often loitered, unknown, near the idle groups of

strangers gathering in little circles, and heard various inquiries as to the

object of this new vehicle. The language was uniformly that of scorn, sneer,

or ridicule. The loud laugh rose at my expense; the dry jest, the wise

calculation of losses and expenditure; the dull but endless repetition of

"the Fulton folly ." Never did a single encouraging remark, a bright hope,

or a warm wish, cross my path."

-- Robert Fulton

 

"We must respect the other fellow's religion, but only in the sense and to

the extent that we respect his theory that his wife is beautiful and his children

smart,"

-- H. L. Mencken.