Science is a first-rate piece of furniture for a man’s upper chamber, if it has common sense on the ground floor.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (1809–94) American Physician, Essayist
I have hardly ever known a mathematician who was capable of reasoning.
—Plato (428 BCE–347 BCE) Ancient Greek Philosopher, Mathematician, Educator
This world, after all our science and sciences, is still a miracle, wonderful, inscrutable, magical and more, to whosoever will think of it.
—Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish Historian, Essayist
Science investigates; religion interprets. Science gives man knowledge which is power; religion gives man wisdom which is control. Science deals mainly with facts; religion deals mainly with values. The two are not rivals. They are complementary.
—Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–68) American Civil Rights Leader, Clergyman
There are two kinds of truth; the truth that lights the way and the truth that warms the heart. The first of these is science, and the second is art. Without art science would be as useless as a pair of high forceps in the hands of a plumber. Without science art would become a crude mess of folklore and emotional quackery.
—Raymond Chandler (1888–1959) American Novelist
Although it is difficult to pinpoint the physical base or location of awareness, it is perhaps the most precious thing concealed within our brains. And it is something that the individual alone can feel and experience. Each of us cherishes it highly, yet it is private
—The 14th Dalai Lama (b.1935) Tibetan Buddhist Religious Leader, Civil Rights Leader, Philosopher, Author
Science without conscience is the soul’s perdition.
—Francois Rabelais (1494–1553) French Humanist, Satirist
Science means simply the aggregate of all the recipes that are always successful. All the rest is literature.
—Paul Valery (1871–1945) French Critic, Poet
I like the scientific spirit—the holding off, the being sure but not too sure, the willingness to surrender ideas when the evidence is against them: this is ultimately fine—it always keeps the way beyond open.
—Walt Whitman (1819–92) American Poet, Essayist, Journalist, American, Poet, Essayist, Journalist
There is no national science just as there is no national multiplication table; what is national is no longer science.
—Anton Chekhov (1860–1904) Russian Short-Story Writer
Science, like life, feeds on its own decay. New facts burst old rules; then newly divined conceptions bind old and new together into a reconciling law.
—William James (1842–1910) American Philosopher, Psychologist, Physician
It is clear to everyone that astronomy at all events compels the soul to look upwards, and draws it from the things of this world to the other.
—Plato (428 BCE–347 BCE) Ancient Greek Philosopher, Mathematician, Educator
In questions of science, the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual.
—Galileo Galilei (1564–1642) Italian Astronomer, Physicist, Mathematician
There is a single light of science, and to brighten it anywhere is to brighten it everywhere.
—Isaac Asimov (1920–92) Russian-born American Writer, Scientist
The work of science has nothing whatever to do with consensus. Consensus is the business of politics.
Science, on the contrary, requires only one investigator who happens to be right, which means that he or she has results that are verifiable by reference to the real world. In science consensus is irrelevant. What is relevant is reproducible results. The greatest scientists in history are great precisely because they broke with the consensus.
There is no such thing as consensus science. If it’s consensus, it isn’t science. If it’s science, it isn’t consensus. Period.
—Michael Crichton (1942–2008) American Novelist, Film Producer, Film Director, Screenwriter
To expect that the intricacies of science will be pierced by a careless glance, or the eminences of fame ascended without labour, is to expect a peculiar privilege, a power denied to the rest of mankind; but to suppose that the maze is inscrutable to diligence, or the heights inaccessible to perseverance, is to submit tamely to the tyranny of fancy, and enchain the mind in voluntary shackles.
—Samuel Johnson (1709–84) British Essayist
Thus will the fondest dream of Phallic science be realized: a pristine new planet populated entirely by little boy clones of great scientific entrepreneurs free to smash atoms, accelerate particles, or, if they are so moved, build pyramids—without any social relevance or human responsibility at all.
—Barbara Ehrenreich (b.1941) American Social Critic, Essayist
Faith is a fine invention when Gentleman can see, but microscopes are prudent in an emergency.
—Emily Dickinson (1830–86) American Poet
There does not exist a category of science to which one can give the name applied science. There are science and the applications of science, bound together as the fruit of the tree which bears it.
—Louis Pasteur (1822–95) French Biologist
Science is the belief in the ignorance of the experts
—Richard Feynman (1918–88) American Physicist
Man has to awaken to wonder—and so perhaps do peoples. Science is a way of sending him to sleep again.
—Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951) Austrian-born British Philosopher
If this is philosophy it is at any rate a philosophy that is not in its right mind.
—Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1742–99) German Philosopher, Physicist
The unleashed power of the atom has changed everything save our modes of thinking and we thus drift toward unparalleled catastrophe.
—Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born Physicist
Let me arrest thy thoughts; wonder with me, why plowing, building, ruling and the rest, or most of those arts, whence our lives are blest, by cursed Cain’s race invented be, and blest Seth vexed us with Astronomy.
—John Donne (1572–1631) English Poet, Cleric
Religions die when they are proved to be true. Science is the record of dead religions.
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish Poet, Playwright
The great tragedy of science—the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact.
—Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95) English Biologist
True science investigates and brings to human perception such truths and such knowledge as the people of a given time and society consider most important. Art transmits these truths from the region of perception to the region of emotion.
—Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910) Russian Novelist
If politicians and scientist were lazier, how much happier we should all be.
—Evelyn Waugh (1903–66) British Novelist, Essayist, Biographer
There is no method but to be very intelligent.
—T. S. Eliot (1888–1965) American-born British Poet, Dramatist, Literary Critic
As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain; and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality.
—Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born Physicist