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Quotes by Scientist
"The distinction between the past, present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion."
20
"To those of you who study history, economics, sociology, literature and language I present the challenge of the utilization of the enormous resources in our grasp to the problem of creating a genuinely good life for yourselves and your children."
20
"One of my favourite kinds of movie is the American picaresque, in which the characters make their way across the country, learning about life against the gorgeous backdrops of that vast land."
20
"Life isn't worth living, unless it is lived for someone else."
20
"It is amazing to me, as a professional geologist, how many otherwise intelligent people have, as some may say, 'drunk the Al Gore Kool-Aid' concerning global climate change."
20
"Possessions, outward success, publicity, luxury - to me these have always been contemptible. I believe that a simple and unassuming manner of life is best for everyone, best for both the body and the mind."
20
"Even those who do not, or cannot, avail themselves of a scientific education, choose to benefit from the technology that is made possible by the scientific education of others."
20
"Do not look for company at all costs, and especially do not allow loneliness to lead you to fickle love or false friendship."
20
"I cannot help fearing that men may reach a point where they look on every new theory as a danger, every innovation as a toilsome trouble, every social advance as a first step toward revolution, and that they may absolutely refuse to move at all."
20
"Heroism on command, senseless violence, and all the loathsome nonsense that goes by the name of patriotism - how passionately I hate them!"
20
"An incompetent person in a responsible position may cause huge damage. Such a person should act less and think more."
20
"I count myself fortunate to be able to participate in the life of science in this era."
20
"I have no desire to be a cat, which walks so lightly that it never creates a disturbance."
20
"Your religion assumes that people are children and need a boogeyman so they'll behave. You want people to believe in God so they'll obey the law. That's the only means that occurs to you: a strict secular police force, and the threat of punishment by an all-seeing God for whatever the police overlook. You sell human beings short."
20
"We are talking about a bet, remember, and Pascal wasn't claiming that his wager enjoyed anything but very long odds. Would you bet on God's valuing dishonestly faked belief (or even honest belief) over honest scepticism?"
20
"There is no greater achievement than being a grandfather who tells fairy tales to grandchildren."
20
"Another glorious feature of many modern science museums is a movie theater showing IMAX or OMNIMAX films. In some cases the screen is ten stories tall and wraps around you. The Smithsonian's National Air & Space Museu, the popular museum on Earth, has premiered in its Langley Theater some of the best of these films. 'To Fly' brings a catch to my throat even after five or six viewings. I've seen religious leaders of many denominations witness 'Blue Planet' and be converted on the spot to the need to protect the Earth's environment."
20
"We wouldn't think of going to our doctor and saying 'Treat me the way doctors treated people in the 19th Century', and yet that's what we're demanding in food production."
20
"Nothing is more destructive of respect for the government and the law of the land than passing laws which cannot be enforced."
20
"Every fool has an idea how to change the world. Wise people think about how to improve the world around them."
20
"Peace cannot be kept by force it can only be achieved by understanding."
20
"Sailors on a becalmed sea, we sense the stirring of a breeze."
20
"God is clever but not dishonest."
20
"Those who have the privilege to know have the duty to act, and in that action are the seeds of new knowledge."
20
"Complex, statistically improbable things are by their nature more difficult to explain than simple, statistically probable things."
20
"What is truly arresting about our kind is better captured in the story of the Tower of Babel, in which humanity, speaking a single language, came so close to reaching heaven that God himself felt threatened."
20
"The only nations which deny the utility of provincial liberties are those which have fewest of them; in other words, those who are unacquainted with the institution are the only persons who passed censure upon it."
20
"For thousands of years humans were oppressed- as some of us still are- by the notion that the universe is a marionette whose strings are pulled by a god or gods, unseen and inscrutable. Then, 2,500 years ago, there was a glorious awakening in Ionia: on Samos and the other nearby Greek colonies that grew up among the islands and inlets of the busy eastern Aegean Sea. Suddenly there were people who believed that everything was made of atoms; that human beings and other animals had sprung from simpler forms; that diseases were not caused by demons or the gods; that the Earth was only a planet going around the Sun. And that the stars were very far away."
20
"I feel more comfortable with gorillas than people. I can anticipate what a gorilla's going to do, and they're purely motivated."
20
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