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Quotes by Scientist

"Since I became chairman, I've tried to turn EFF into civil liberties and responsibilities."

"The disease of mutual distrust among nations is the bane of modern civilization."


"We carry within us the wonders we seek without us."

"Alfred Nobel stipulated that no distinction of race or colour will determine who received of his generosity."

"Continuous denial of rational arguments represents a contempt of common sense."

"Mathematicians are like managers - they want improvement without change."

"My religion consists of a humble admiration of the illimitable superior spirit who reveals himself in the slight details we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble mind."


"I think the Caribbean countries face rising oceans and they face increase in the severity of hurricanes. This is something that is very, very scary to all of us. The island states in the world represent - I remember this number - one-half of 1 percent of the carbon emissions in the world. And they will - some of them will disappear."


"Many artists and scholars have pointed out that ultimately art depends on human nature."


"Yet, in spite of this world-wide system of linkages, there is, at this very moment, a general feeling that communication is breaking down everywhere, on an unparalleled scale."

"People who don't expect justice don't have to suffer disappointment."

"I'm a little different from all those conservation types."


"The mind is a neural computer."

"It is the responsibility of scientists never to suppress knowledge, no matter how awkward that knowledge is, no matter how it may bother those in power; we are not smart enough to decide which pieces of knowledge are permissible, and which are not."

"Remember that in every single case in history the process of adaptation has been one of exceeding slowness. Do not look for the impossible, but do not let your path deviate from the quiet and steadfast insistence on full opportunities for your powers."

"For their surface area, insects weigh very little. A beetle, falling from a high altitude, quickly achieves terminal velocity: air resistance prevents it from falling very fast, and, after alighting on the ground, it will walk away, apparently none the worse for the experience. In contrast, human beings are characteristically maimed or killed by any fall of more than a few dozen feet: because of our size, we weigh too much for our surface area."

"You can never solve a problem on the level on which it was created."

"I lost my hair mixing a substance called white gunpowder on the kitchen table."

"The time scale for evolutionary or genetic change is very long. A characteristic period for the emergence of one advanced species from another is perhaps a hundred thousand years; and very often the difference in behavior between closely relatedspecies-say, lions and tigers-do not seem very great... But today we do not have ten million years to wait for the next advance. We live in a time when our world is changing at an unprecedented rate. While the changes are largely of our own making, they cannot be ignored. We must adjust and adapt andcontrol, or we perish."

"In a universe of electrons and selfish genes, blind physical forces and genetic replication, some people are going to get hurt, other people are going to get lucky, and you won't find any rhyme or reason in it, nor any justice. The universe that we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but pitiless indifference."

"To raise new questions, new possibilities, to regard old problems from a new angle, requires creative imagination and marks real advance in science."

"Christianity has not conquered nationalism; the opposite has been the case nationalism has made Christianity its footstool."

"Observe, record, tabulate, communicate. Use your five senses. Learn to see, learn to hear, learn to feel, learn to smell, and know that by practice alone you can become expert."

"The atmosphere of libraries, lecture rooms and laboratories is dangerous to those who shut themselves up in them too long. It separates us from reality like a fog."

"Most of them are doomed to rapid extinction, but a few may make evolutionary inventions, such as physiological, ecological, or behavioral innovations that give these species improved competitive potential."

"The basic parts, the start-up molecules, can be supplied in abundance and don't have to be made by some elaborate process. That immediately makes things simpler."

"There was no race - but to the extent that there was an arms competition, it was almost entirely on the Soviet side, first to catch up and then to surpass the Americans."

"This is a tricky domain because, unlike simple arithmetic, to solve a calculus problem - and in particular to perform integration - you have to be smart about which integration technique should be used: integration by partial fractions, integration by parts, and so on."

"It's not blaming the victim. It's not anybody's fault. They just did something that didn't work, that's all."

"My own work in spin glass and its consequences has formed some of the intellectual basis for these interests."

"The moments of happiness we enjoy take us by surprise. It is not that we seize them, but that they seize us."

"Using these toolkits is like trying to make a bookshelf out of mashed potatoes."

"One works in one's laboratory - one's chaotic laboratory - with students and colleagues, doing what one most wants to do - then all this happens! It is overwhelming."
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