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Quotes by Scientist
"I approached the bulk of my schoolwork as a chore rather than an intellectual adventure."
53
"Some scholars have been arguing that a civilizational clash between organized religions is the next step in human history."
53
"We can lick gravity, but sometimes the paperwork is overwhelming."
53
"I use a really simple calendar program on my computer."
53
"Every stress leaves an indelible scar, and the organism pays for its survival after a stressful situation by becoming a little older."
53
"Successful cult memes induce intense social interaction behaviour between cult members. This trips the attention detectors."
53
"I've encountered a lot of people who sound like critics but very few who have substantive criticisms. There is a lot of skepticism, but it seems to be more a matter of inertia than it is of people having some real reason for thinking something else."
53
"All correct reasoning is a grand system of tautologies, but only God can make direct use of that fact."
53
"It's not an endlessly expanding list of rights - the 'right' to education, the 'right' to health care, the 'right' to food and housing. That's not freedom, that's dependency. Those aren't rights, those are the rations of slavery - hay and a barn for human cattle."
53
"The deepest personal defeat suffered by human beings is constituted by the difference between what one was capable of becoming and what one has in fact become."
53
"We know from biology that new forms of organisms simulate their primitive form as closely as possible at first, even though obliged to exist under changed internal and external conditions."
53
"One pound of uranium is worth about 3 million pounds worth of coal or oil."
53
"I have no fear of losing my life - if I have to save a koala or a crocodile or a kangaroo or a snake, mate, I will save it."
53
"You have to know the past to understand the present."
53
"The late 20th century sea level rise rate lacks any sign of acceleration. Satellite altimetry indicates virtually no changes in the last decade."
Sea,
53
"I spent several years acquiring the obsessive, day-to-day discipline that's needed if you want to write professionally, then several more, highly valuable years studying fiction writing at the University of Iowa."
53
"Sometimes a concept is baffling not because it is profound but because it is wrong."
53
"I don't think things are moving toward an omega point; I think they're moving toward more diversity."
53
"Every period of human development has had its own particular type of human conflict---its own variety of problem that, apparently, could be settled only by force. And each time, frustratingly enough, force never really settled the problem. Instead, it persisted through a series of conflicts, then vanished of itself---what's the expression---ah, yes, 'not with a bang, but a whimper,' as the economic and social environment changed. And then, new problems, and a new series of wars."
53
"Well, in pharmacology, if the effect is local, it's of course absolutely awkward to use it in any other way than as a local treatment."
53
"Old men tend to forget what thought was like in their youth; they forget the quickness of the mental jump, the daring of the youthful intuition, the agility of the fresh insight. They become accustomed to the more plodding varieties of reason, and because this is more than made up by the accumulation of experience, old men think themselves wiser than the young."
53
"I know of no country in which there is so little independence of mind and real freedom of discussion as in America."
53
"We enjoy sailing small boats, two of which I have designed and built myself."
53
"Gout produces calculus in the kidney... the patient has frequently to entertain the painful speculation as to whether gout or stone be the worst disease. Sometimes the stone, on passing, kills the patient, without waiting for the gout."
53
"Faced with this general consideration it will immediately be realized on inquiry into the particular position occupied within this general scheme by the scientific field of catalysis that it is in the first stages of its development."
53
"If you are born to lead, be a leader!"
53
"See, unlike most hackers, I get little joy out of figuring out how to install the latest toy."
Joy,
53
"Isn't it sad that you can tell people that the ozone layer is being depleted, the forests are being cut down, the deserts are advancing steadily, that the greenhouse effect will raise the sea level 200 feet, that overpopulation is choking us, that pollution is killing us, that nuclear war may destroy us - and they yawn and settle back for a comfortable nap. But tell them that the Martians are landing, and they scream and run."
53
"The major religions on the Earth contradict each other left and right. You can't all be correct. And what if all of you are wrong? It's a possibility, you know. You must care about the truth, right? Well, the way to winnow through all the differing contentions is to be skeptical. I'm not any more skeptical about your religious beliefs than I am about every new scientific idea I hear about. But in my line of work, they're called hypotheses, not inspiration and not revelation."
53
"If one introduces the concept of energy of an earthquake then that is a theoretically derived quantity."
53
"Peace cannot be kept by force, it can only be achieved by understanding."
53
"Publishers like a good buzz, and negative responses sell books just as well as positive ones."
53
"Science is nothing, but trained and organized common sense."
53
"We continue to have nuclear weapons relied on as a weapon of choice. If that policy were to continue, we continue to have countries who are in a security bind, if you like, or perceive themselves to be in security bind to look for acquisition of nuclear weapons."
53
"If my theory of relativity is proven successful, Germany will claim me as a German and France will declare me a citizen of the world. Should my theory prove untrue, France will say that I am a German, and Germany will declare that I am a Jew."
53
"At the same time, much of it seems to have to do with recreating things we or others had already done; it seems rather derivative intellectually; is there a dearth of really new ideas?"
53
"Genetic studies in Iceland have found that many of the women who were the founding stock of Iceland came from England and what is now France. Some were probably captured and carried off in Viking raids only 40 generations ago."
53
"Most intellectuals today have a phobia of any explanation of the mind that invokes genetics."
53
"I can't think of anyone who is up on evolutionary psychology and related areas who is deluded enough to be called a utopian."
53
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