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Quotes by Scientist
"Science is a way to call the bluff of those who only pretend to knowledge. It is a bulwark against mysticism, against superstition, against religion misapplied to where it has no business being."
17
"Inside the human mind, an idea is a mental spark that occurs as a response to the challenge of a train of thought."
17
"When I feel difficulty coming on I switch to another book I'm writing. When I get back to the problem my unconscious has solved it."
17
"Poetry is plucking at the heartstrings, and making music with them."
17
"Evolution is central to the understanding of life, including human life. Like all living things, we are outcomes of natural selection; we got here because we inherited traits that allowed our ancestors to survive, find mates, and reproduce. This momentous fact explains our deepest strivings: why having a thankless child is sharper than a serpent's tooth, why it is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife, why we do not go gentle into that good night but rage, rage against the dying of the light."
17
"One of the tragic ironies of the second half of the 20th century is that when colonies in the developing world freed themselves from European rule, they often slid back into warfare, this time intensified by modern weaponry, organized militias, and the freedom of young men to defy tribal elders.77 As we shall see in the next chapter, this development is a countercurrent to the historical decline of violence, but it is also a demonstration of the role of Leviathans in propelling the decline."
17
"The hole in the ozone layer is a kind of skywriting. At first it seemed to spell out our continuing complacency before a witch's brew of deadly perils. But perhaps it really tells of a newfound talent to work together to protect the global environment."
17
"I am not a speed reader. I am a speed understander."
17
"Some information is classified legitimately; as with military hardware, secrecy sometimes really is in the national interest. Further, military, political, and intelligence communities tend to value secrecy for its own sake. It's a way of silencing critics and evading responsibility - for incompetence or worse. It generates an elite, a band of brothers in whom the national confidence can be reliably vested, unlike the great mass of citizenry on whose behalf the information is presumably made secret in the first place. With a few exceptions, secrecy is deeply incompatible with democracy and with science."
17
"A biochemist colleague has kindly provided me with a bottle of hydrogen peroxide, and enough hydroquinone for 50 bombardier beetles, I am now about to mix the two together. According to the above, they will explode in my face. Here goes...Well... I'm still here! I poured the hydrogen peroxide into the hydroquinone, and absolutely nothing happened. It didn't event get warm!"
17
"If your endeavors result in success of the company in a continuity of atleast a few years, you are a successful manager. If other companies followyour business approach, you are certainly an important manager withleader characteristics."
17
"As many political writers have pointed out, commitment to political equality is not an empirical claim that people are clones."
17
"The very large brain that humans have, plus the things that go along with it - language, art, science - seemed to have evolved only once. The eye, by contrast, independently evolved 40 times. So, if you were to 'replay' evolution, the eye would almost certainly appear again, whereas the big brain probably wouldn't."
17
"A science is any discipline in which the fool of this generation can go beyond the point reached by the genius of the last generation."
17
"Books permit us to voyage through time, to tap the wisdom of our ancestors. The library connects us with the insight and knowledge, painfully extracted from Nature, of the greatest minds that ever were, with the best teachers, drawn from the entire planet and from all our history, to instruct us without tiring, and to inspire us to make our own contribution to the collective knowledge of the human species. I think the health of our civilization, the depth of our awareness about the underpinnings of our culture and our concern for the future can all be tested by how well we support our libraries."
17
"Don't be too enthusiastic when choosing a profession " think of earningfor life too."
17
"Mr Baley", said Quemot, "you can't treat human emotions as though they were built about a positronic brain"."I'm not saying you can. Robotics is a deductive science and sociology an inductive one. But mathematics can be made to apply in either case."
17
"Think of how many religions attempt to validate themselves with prophecy. Think of how many people rely on these prophecies, however vague, however unfulfilled, to support or prop up their beliefs. Yet has there ever been a religion with the prophetic accuracy and reliability of science? ... No other human institution comes close."
17
"The typical imperative from biology is not "Thou shalt... ," but "If ... then ... else."
17
"I see my life in terms of music."
17
"As with any form of mental self-improvement, you must learn to turn your gaze inward, concentrate on processes that usually run automatically, and try to wrest control of them so that you can apply them more mindfully."
17
"Older people sometimes talk about the good old days when life was better. In fact, they talk nostalgically about their own youth that was irretrievably gone. The past century has made enormous progress in all fields. The standard of living, work environment, health care quality and mobility, and the availability of cultural programs, recreational activities and information " all that clearly speaks in favor of nowadays."
17
"Having an open mind is the most important precondition for creatingnew ideas."
17
"Combinatory play seems to be the essential feature in productive thought."
17
"We make our purpose."
17
"Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better."
17
"We all have a thirst for wonder. It's a deeply human quality. Science and religion are both bound up with it. What I'm saying is, you don't have to make stories up, you don't have to exaggerate. There's wonder and awe enough in the real world. Nature's a lot better at inventing wonders than we are."
17
"I fear the day that technology will surpass our human interaction. The world will have a generation of idiots."
17
"Anyone who doesn't take truth seriously in small matters cannot be trusted in large ones either."
17
"All that is valuable in human society depends upon the opportunity for development accorded the individual."
17
"Who is more humble? The scientist who looks at the universe with an open mind and accepts whatever the universe has to teach us, or somebody who says everything in this book must be considered the literal truth and never mind the fallibility of all the human beings involved?"
17
"Nowadays, using a computer has become a way of life."
17
"Knowledge of what is does not open the door directly to what should be."
17
"We can't help it. Life looks for life."
17
"Knowledge is the key driver of the progress of civilization."
17
"A design can excel at one challenge only by compromising at others."
17
"All those who seek to destroy the liberties of a democratic nation ought to know that war is the surest and shortest means to accomplish it."
17
"We live, I think, in the century of science and, perhaps, even in the century of physics."
17
"Weak emperors mean strong viceroys."
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