Quotes about science
558 quotes from 241 people
Newton was not the first of the age of reason. He was the last of the magicians.
John Maynard Keynes1883–1946“Newton, the Man”; address to the Royal Society Club (1942), read by Geoffrey Keynes at the Newton Tercentenary Celebrations (1946)
Wendell Berry1934–2026The Long-Legged House (1969), “A Native Hill”
Richard Feynman1918–1988Lecture 1. “Photons: Corpuscles of Light” (1979) Sir Douglas Robb Memorial Lectures, University of Auckland.The real world is muddy and messy and full of things that we do not yet understand.
Freeman Dyson1923–2020“Heretical Thoughts about Science and Society”, in Edge (8 August 2007)
Thomas Edison1847–1931On his research for the electric light bulb, as quoted in “Talks with Edison” by George Parsons Lathrop, Harper’s Magazine, Vol. 80 (February 1890)
Richard Dawkinsborn 1941Reviewing Blueprints: Solving the Mystery of Evolution (1989) by Maitland A. Edey and Donald C. Johanson
Buckminster Fuller1895–1983Presentation to U.S. Congressional Sub-Committee on World Game (1969)
Carl Sagan1934–1996Cosmos (1980), p. 4With four parameters I can fit an elephant, and with five I can make him wiggle his trunk.
John von Neumann1903–1957Attributed to von Neumann by Enrico Fermi, as quoted by Freeman Dyson in “A meeting with Enrico Fermi” in Nature 427 (22 January 2004) p. 297- John von Neumann1903–1957“Various Techniques Used in Connection with Random Digits”, in Monte Carlo Method (1951), ed. A. S. Householder et al.
- Freeman Dyson1923–2020Progress In Religion (2000)
Raymond Chandler1888–1959“Great Thought” (19 February 1938), published in The Notebooks of Raymond Chandler (1976)
Ralph Waldo Emerson1803–1882Nature (1836), Nature
Wernher von Braun1912–1977From a letter to the California State board of Education (14 September 1972)
Jane Goodall1934–2025“An Interview with Jane Goodall”, In Defense of Animals (date unknown)