Quotes on Science

True science is never speculative; it employs hypotheses as suggesting points for inquiry, but it never adopts the hypotheses as though they were demonstrated propositions.

Author: Cleveland Abbe

That which today calls itself science gives us more and more information, and indigestible glut of information, and less and less understanding.

Author: Edward Abbey

War is the science of destruction.

Author: John Abbott

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.

Author: Richard Adams

It is a remarkable honor to receive a Nobel Prize, because it not only recognizes discoveries, but also their usefulness to the advancement of fundamental science.

Author: Peter Agre

The desire to economize time and mental effort in arithmetical computations, and to eliminate human liability to error is probably as old as the science of arithmetic itself.

Author: Howard Aiken

Ah, the creative process is the same secret in science as it is in art. They are all the same absolutely.

Author: Josef Albers

Science fiction is no more written for scientists that ghost stories are written for ghosts.

Author: Brian Aldiss

We should remember that there was once a discipline called natural philosophy. Unfortunately, this discipline seems not to exist today. It has been renamed science, but science of today is in danger of losing much of the natural philosophy aspect.

Author: Hannes Alfven

We have to learn again that science without contact with experiments is an enterprise which is likely to go completely astray into imaginary conjecture.

Author: Hannes Alfven

To try to write a grand cosmical drama leads necessarily to myth. To try to let knowledge substitute ignorance in increasingly larger regions of space and time is science.

Author: Hannes Alfven

In those parts of the world where learning and science has prevailed, miracles have ceased; but in those parts of it as are barbarous and ignorant, miracles are still in vogue.

Author: Ethan Allen

We had an erector set, and I was an avid fan of Popular Mechanics and Popular Science magazines.

Author: James Allen

The best museums and museum exhibits about science or technology give you the feeling that, hey, this is interesting, but maybe I could do something here, too.

Author: Paul Allen

Winning is the science of being totally prepared.

Author: George Allen, Sr.

Any sufficiently badly-written science is indistinguishable from magic.

Author: Aaron Allston

Nevertheless, as is a frequent occurrence in science, a general hypothesis was constructed from a few specific instances of a phenomenon.

Author: Sidney Altman

The national security state has many unfair and cruel weapons in its arsenal, but that of junk science is one which can be fought and perhaps defeated.

Author: Aldrich Ames

Society lives by faith, and develops by science.

Author: Henri Amiel

I'm not being evasive but I am saying I'm not a scientist and I'm not directly involved in the consultation however the science must be sound, it must be agreed and the consultation must be of a high quality or no one will have any confidence in the process.

Author: John Anderson

We sat around on a hotel balcony with a bottle of wine and tried to figure out how you would go about blowing up a planet. That's the kind of conversations science fiction writers have when they get together. We don't talk about football or anything like that.

Author: Kevin Anderson

Dune is the bestselling science fiction book of all time. It's something you really need to read in your lifetime. If you're going to read The Lord of the Rings, which everyone should, then you have to read Dune, too.

Author: Kevin Anderson

Science was something that really caught my attention. It was something I really could sink my teeth into.

Author: Michael Anderson

I have also testified repeatedly and published some articles in favor of Small Science.

Author: Philip Anderson

One of our brainchildren is a still viable Science and Society course.

Author: Philip Anderson

I wrote the first book, Harvest of Stars, and as I was writing it, I saw that certain implications had barely been touched on... It's perfectly obvious that two completely revolutionary things are going on, with cybernetics, and biological science.

Author: Poul Anderson

I meant exactly what I said: that we are saddled with a culture that hasn't advanced as far as science.

Author: Michelangelo Antonioni

Science has not yet mastered prophecy. We predict too much for the next year and yet far too little for the next 10.

Author: Neil Armstrong

There is a single light of science, and to brighten it anywhere is to brighten it everywhere.

Author: Isaac Asimov

Individual science fiction stories may seem as trivial as ever to the blinder critics and philosophers of today - but the core of science fiction, its essence has become crucial to our salvation if we are to be saved at all.

Author: Isaac Asimov

Science fiction writers foresee the inevitable, and although problems and catastrophes may be inevitable, solutions are not.

Author: Isaac Asimov

My fiction is reviewed by the mainstream press, by science fiction periodicals, romance magazines, small press publications and various other journals, including some usually devoted to archaeological and other science material.

Author: Jean Auel

Of the two, I would think of my work as closer to Science Fiction than Fantasy.

Author: Jean Auel

Science Fiction is not just about the future of space ships travelling to other planets, it is fiction based on science and I am using science as my basis for my fiction, but it's the science of prehistory - palaeontology and archaeology - rather than astronomy or physics.

Author: Jean Auel

I could write historical fiction, or science fiction, or a mystery but since I find it fascinating to research the clues of some little know period and develop a story based on that, I will probably continue to do it.

Author: Jean Auel

I have heard Science Fiction and Fantasy referred to as the fiction of ideas, and I like that definition, but it's the mainstream public that chooses my books for the most part.

Author: Jean Auel

I have been a reader of Science Fiction and Fantasy for a long time, since I was 11 or 12 I think, so I understand it and I'm not at all surprised that readers of the genre might enjoy my books.

Author: Jean Auel

Unfortunately, Climate Science has become Political Science. It is tragic that some perhaps well-meaning but politically motivated scientists who should know better have whipped up a global frenzy about a phenomena which is statistically questionable at best.

Author: Robert Austin

That science has long been neglected and declining in England, is not an opinion originating with me, but is shared by many, and has been expressed by higher authority than mine.

Author: Charles Babbage

The accumulation of skill and science which has been directed to diminish the difficulty of producing manufactured goods, has not been beneficial to that country alone in which it is concentrated; distant kingdoms have participated in its advantages.

Author: Charles Babbage

A powerful attraction exists, therefore, to the promotion of a study and of duties of all others engrossing the time most completely, and which is less benefited than most others by any acquaintance with science.

Author: Charles Babbage

Perhaps it would be better for science, that all criticism should be avowed.

Author: Charles Babbage

The humanities need to be defended today against the encroachments of physical science, as they once needed to be against the encroachment of theology.

Author: Irving Babbitt

Science is but an image of the truth.

Author: Francis Bacon

The strongest arguments prove nothing so long as the conclusions are not verified by experience. Experimental science is the queen of sciences and the goal of all speculation.

Author: Roger Bacon

All science requires mathematics. The knowledge of mathematical things is almost innate in us. This is the easiest of sciences, a fact which is obvious in that no one's brain rejects it; for laymen and people who are utterly illiterate know how to count and reckon.

Author: Roger Bacon

Thence results, for science as well as for industry, the necessity of the division and association of labor. I receive and I give - such is human life. Each directs and is directed in his turn.

Author: Mikhail Bakunin

A third ideal that has made its way in the modern world is reliance on reason, especially reason disciplined and enriched by modern science. An eternal basis of human intercommunication is reason.

Author: Emily Balch

Like all science, psychology is knowledge; and like science again, it is knowledge of a definite thing, the mind.

Author: James Baldwin

Psychology more than any other science has had its pseudo-scientific no less than its scientific period.

Author: James Baldwin

I find it greatly disturbing that the Bush administration has used political and religious ideologies to influence national policy on science and medicine.

Author: Tammy Baldwin

Everything is becoming science fiction. From the margins of an almost invisible literature has sprung the intact reality of the 20th century.

Author: J. Ballard

Science and technology multiply around us. To an increasing extent they dictate the languages in which we speak and think. Either we use those languages, or we remain mute.

Author: J. Ballard

I'm a geophysicist and all my earth science books when I was a student, I had to give the wrong answer to get an A. We used to ridicule continental drift. It was something we laughed at. We learned of Marshall Kay's geosynclinal cycle, which is a bunch of crap.

Author: Robert Ballard

Anthropology is the science which tells us that people are the same the whole world over except when they are different.

Author: Nancy Banks-Smith

Mothers, unless they were very poor, didn't work. Both of my parents had to leave education. My mother had to work in a cotton mill until 18 or 19, when she took some training in domestic science.

Author: Roger Bannister

Science is a field which grows continuously with ever expanding frontiers.

Author: John Bardeen

Further, science is a collaborative effort.

Author: John Bardeen

Human relations are built on feeling, not on reason or knowledge. And feeling is not an exact science; like all spiritual qualities, it has the vagueness of greatness about it.

Author: Amelia Barr

The world is full of strange phenomena that cannot be explained by the laws of logic or science. Dennis Rodman is only one example.

Author: Dave Barry

Theology is a science of mind applied to God.

Author: Henry Beecher

The theory of undirected evolution is already dead, but the work of science continues.

Author: Michael Behe

Science is not a game in which arbitrary rules are used to decide what explanations are to be permitted.

Author: Michael Behe

It was a shock to people of the nineteenth century when they discovered, from observations science had made, that many features of the biological world could be ascribed to the elegant principle of natural selection.

Author: Michael Behe

It is often said that science must avoid any conclusions which smack of the supernatural.

Author: Michael Behe

Science makes no pretension to eternal truth or absolute truth.

Author: E. Bell

The man of science, the artist, the philosopher are attached to their nations as much as the day-laborer and the merchant.

Author: Julien Benda

I was a catastrophe at Science and Games, but the good thing about Quaker schools is that they encourage you in those subjects for which you show an aptitude.

Author: Richard Bennett

Novel technologies and ideas that impinge on human biology and their perceived impact on human values have renewed strains in the relationship between science and society.

Author: Paul Berg

The relevance of Marxism to science is that it removes it from its imagined position of complete detachment and shows it as a part, but a critically important part, of economy and social development.

Author: John Bernal

It is characteristic of science that the full explanations are often seized in their essence by the percipient scientist long in advance of any possible proof.

Author: John Bernal

Observation is a passive science, experimentation an active science.

Author: Claude Bernard

Science does not permit exceptions.

Author: Claude Bernard

In teaching man, experimental science results in lessening his pride more and more by proving to him every day that primary causes, like the objective reality of things, will be hidden from him forever and that he can only know relations.

Author: Claude Bernard

Experimentation is an active science.

Author: Claude Bernard

I warn you against believing that advertising is a science.

Author: William Bernbach

As the Nation's primary supporter of research in the physical sciences, the DOE Office of Science led the way in creating a unique system of large-scale, specialized, often one-of-a-kind facilities for scientific discovery.

Author: Judy Biggert

Since coming to Congress, I have been advocating for increased resources for research in the physical sciences and for the Department of Energy Office of Science in particular.

Author: Judy Biggert

Even in our day, science suspects beyond the Polar seas, at the very circle of the Arctic Pole, the existence of a sea which never freezes and a continent which is ever green.

Author: H. Blavatsky

The object of all the former voyages to the South Seas undertaken by the command of his present majesty, has been the advancement of science and the increase of knowledge.

Author: William Bligh

It seems that this situation is not restricted to science but is more generally human.

Author: Felix Bloch

The historical development of the work of anthropologists seems to single out clearly a domain of knowledge that heretofore has not been treated by any other science.

Author: Franz Boas

The purpose of science is not to analyze or describe but to make useful models of the world. A model is useful if it allows us to get use out of it.

Author: Edward Bono

And the continuity of our science has not been affected by all these turbulent happenings, as the older theories have always been included as limiting cases in the new ones.

Author: Max Born

They've also asked me now to start on another series that we're gonna do after this Frontier Earth. But it's not science fiction, it's more in the Mystery and Crime division and that's another area I'm very interested in.

Author: Bruce Boxleitner

Science fiction encourages us to explore... all the futures, good and bad, that the human mind can envision.

Author: Marion Bradley

It is this conception of the unity of the human career which is perhaps the greatest achievement of historical study, since it gained a place analogous to that of natural science.

Author: James Breasted

Science knows only one commandment - contribute to science.

Author: Bertolt Brecht

In 1995, I founded The Molecular Sciences Institute with a gift from the Philip Morris Company where I hoped that we could create an environment where young people could pursue science in an atmosphere of harmonious purpose and high intellectual challenge.

Author: Sydney Brenner

Many have gone on to do important scientific work but all remember those wonderful times when we and our science were young and our excitement in meeting new challenges knew no bounds.

Author: Sydney Brenner

Predicting has a spotty record in science fiction. I've had some failures. On the other hand, I also predicted the fall of the Berlin Wall and the rise of fundamentalist Islam... and I'm not happy to be right in all of those cases.

Author: David Brin

There's no doubt that scientific training helps many authors to write better science fiction. And yet, several of the very best were English majors who could not parse a differential equation to save their lives.

Author: David Brin

But honestly, if you do a rigorous survey of my work, I'll bet you'll find that biology is a theme far more often than physical science.

Author: David Brin

Science has nothing to be ashamed of even in the ruins of Nagasaki. The shame is theirs who appeal to other values than the human imaginative values which science has evolved.

Author: Jacob Bronowski

The most wonderful discovery made by scientists is science itself.

Author: Jacob Bronowski

He gave us the lakes for our Northern boundary, and the rivers stretching to the seas upon whose waters floats our commerce to the nations of the world; while man has done all that can be done by science to bind us together.

Author: John Brough

Enough people have now mentioned Bill Nye the Science Guy to me that I now desperately avoid it all costs.

Author: Alton Brown

The views of the Earth are really beautiful. If you've ever seen a space IMAX movie, that's really what it looks like. I wish I'd had more time just to sit and look out the window with a map, but our science program kept us very busy in the lab most of the time.

Author: David Brown

The more we learn of science, the more we see that its wonderful mysteries are all explained by a few simple laws so connected together and so dependent upon each other, that we see the same mind animating them all.

Author: Olympia Brown

Also by my earliest days, I was fascinated by a utopian vision of what the world could be like. I've thought that science could be the basis for a better world, and that's what I've been trying to do all these years.

Author: George Brown, Jr.

I was interested in science before I even knew what science was.

Author: George Brown, Jr.

From my earliest days, I was fascinated by science.

Author: George Brown, Jr.

Evolution seems to close the heart to some of the plainest spiritual truths while it opens the mind to the wildest guesses advanced in the name of science.

Author: William Bryan

I don't plan to write another science book, but I don't plan not to. I do enjoy writing histories, and taking subjects that are generally dull and trying to make them interesting.

Author: Bill Bryson

At the moment I'm enjoying a new challenge at the Royal Opera House, but I'm also keen to pursue my interest in television and particularly in science.

Author: Deborah Bull

In science, read, by preference, the newest works; in literature, the oldest. The classic literature is always modern.

Author: Edward Bulwer-Lytton

If we take science as our sole guide, if we accept and hold fast that alone which is verifiable, the old theology must go.

Author: John Burroughs

Science has done more for the development of western civilization in one hundred years than Christianity did in eighteen hundred years.

Author: John Burroughs

I would like to do a science fiction film some day. Star Wars seems really to have destroyed the genre, which at one time offered great musical opportunities.

Author: Carter Burwell

To pursue science is not to disparage the things of the spirit. In fact, to pursue science rightly is to furnish the framework on which the spirit may rise.

Author: Vannevar Bush

Science fiction let me do both. It let me look into science and stick my nose in everywhere.

Author: Octavia Butler

So fantasy was fine early on, and when I discovered science fiction, I was very happy with it, because my first interest in science fiction came with an interest in astronomy.

Author: Octavia Butler

The thing about science fiction is that it's totally wide open. But it's wide open in a conditional way.

Author: Octavia Butler

What I'm working on now - I'm back to fantasy, although considering that it's me, I'm turning it into a kind of science fantasy. It's a vampire story - but my vampires are biological vampires. They didn't become vampires because someone bit them; they were born that way.

Author: Octavia Butler

No one was going to stop me from writing and no one had to really guide me towards science fiction. It was natural, really, that I would take that interest.

Author: Octavia Butler

And by the way, I wanted to point out that Kindred is not science fiction. You'll note there's no science in it. It's a kind of grim fantasy.

Author: Octavia Butler

I was attracted to science fiction because it was so wide open. I was able to do anything and there were no walls to hem you in and there was no human condition that you were stopped from examining.

Author: Octavia Butler

Fantasy is totally wide open; all you really have to do is follow the rules you've set. But if you're writing about science, you have to first learn what you're writing about.

Author: Octavia Butler

I began reading science fiction before I was 12 and started writing science fiction around the same time.

Author: Octavia Butler

The Athanasian Creed is to me light and intelligible reading in comparison with much that now passes for science.

Author: Samuel Butler

I dig science fiction, though it was never really my thing.

Author: Yancy Butler

Knowledge of the sciences is so much smoke apart from the heavenly science of Christ.

Author: John Calvin

If I may take the liberty to speak for science at least, today his name and his prizes are without a peer in the world. He not only elevates science but he influences it as well.

Author: Melvin Calvin

I had read tons of science fiction. I was fascinated by other worlds, other environments. For me, it was fantasy, but it was not fantasy in the sense of pure escapism.

Author: James Cameron

I am tired of all this sort of 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.

Author: Simon Cameron

Hitting is an art, but not an exact science.

Author: Rod Carew

Science must have originated in the feeling that something was wrong.

Author: Thomas Carlyle

This world, after all our science and sciences, is still a miracle wonderful, inscrutable, magical and more, to whosoever will think of it.

Author: Thomas Carlyle

Rocket science has been mythologized all out of proportion to its true difficulty.

Author: John Carmack

In science there are no 'depths'; there is surface everywhere.

Author: Rudolf Carnap

Science has to be understood in its broadest sense, as a method for comprehending all observable reality, and not merely as an instrument for acquiring specialized knowledge.

Author: Alexis Carrel

In Poland, my audience is all women between 18 and 30. At U.S. conventions, you have the fantasy and science fiction crowd. At Harvard you have an entirely different audience. It's so schizophrenic.

Author: Jonathan Carroll

I was interested in nuclei originally with my deuteron photo work because that was one of the fundamental forces, and the measurement was basic to new science.

Author: John Carver

My latter schooldays and my university days were during the war, when science - physics, in particular - was a very important and glamorous subject. A lot of us felt that if we couldn't get into science, we might try engineering or medicine.

Author: John Carver

Even when I was studying mathematics, physics, and computer science, it always seemed that the problem of consciousness was about the most interesting problem out there for science to come to grips with.

Author: David Chalmers

I think that consciousness has always been the most important topic in the philosophy of mind, and one of the most important topics in cognitive science as a whole, but it had been surprisingly neglected in recent years.

Author: David Chalmers

The whole structure of science gradually grows, but only as it is built upon a firm foundation of past research.

Author: Owen Chamberlain

The development of physics, like the development of any science, is a continuous one.

Author: Owen Chamberlain

I am aware of the usefulness of science to society and of the benefits society derives from it.

Author: Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar

Indeed, I would feel that an appreciation of the arts in a conscious, disciplined way might help one to do science better.

Author: Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar

Fashion is the science of appearances, and it inspires one with the desire to seem rather than to be.

Author: Edwin Chapin

Science is wonderfully equipped to answer the question "How?" but it gets terribly confused when you ask the question "Why?"

Author: Erwin Chargaff

The true science and study of man is man.

Author: Pierre Charron

When you're thirsty and it seems that you could drink the entire ocean that's faith; when you start to drink and finish only a glass or two that's science.

Author: Anton Chekhov

Science in the modern world has many uses; its chief use, however, is to provide long words to cover the errors of the rich.

Author: Gilbert Chesterton

I would say keep supporting space flight, keep telling the public and the politicians why it's important to advance science and explore the galaxy. I encourage the Japanese to keep doing what they're doing.

Author: Leroy Chiao

As soon as questions of will or decision or reason or choice of action arise, human science is at a loss.

Author: Noam Chomsky

I sort of was good at writing essays. I was never very good at mathematics, and I was never very good at algebra. I loved science, but I wasn't sure of it.

Author: Diane Cilento

Science, for hundreds of years, has spanned the differences between cultures and between countries.

Author: Laurel Clark

Politicians should read science fiction, not westerns and detective stories.

Author: Arthur Clarke