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Quotes about science

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Once we overcome our fear of being tiny, we find ourselves on the threshold of a vast and awesome Universe that utterly dwarfs — in time, in space, and in potential — the tidy anthropocentric proscenium of our ancestors.
Carl Sagan1934–1996Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space (1994), p. 53
Sociability is as much a law of nature as mutual struggle.
Peter Kropotkin1842–1921Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution (1902), Chapter I
- Nature
Scientifically speaking, a butterfly is at least as mysterious as a superstring.
Freeman Dyson1923–2020Infinite in All Directions (1988), Ch. 2: Butterflies and Superstrings, p. 14
- Nature
Space can be mapped and crossed and occupied without definable limit; but it can never be conquered.
Arthur C. Clarke1917–2008We’ll Never Conquer Space (1960)
Most of us are still too sane to piss in our own cistern, but we allow others to do so and we reward them for it.
Wendell Berry1934–2026“Compromise, Hell!” Orion magazine (November/December 2004)
- Nature
He clasps the crag with crooked hands;
Close to the sun in lonely lands,
Ring’d with the azure world, he stands
Alfred, Lord Tennyson1809–1892The Eagle (1851)In context
- Animals
- Nature
I believe our future depends powerfully on how well we understand this Cosmos in which we float like a mote of dust in the morning sky.
Carl Sagan1934–1996Cosmos (1980), p. 4
Physics is to be regarded not so much as the study of something a priori given, but rather as the development of methods of ordering and surveying human experience.
Niels Bohr1885–1962“The Unity of Human Knowledge” (October 1960)
- Philosophy
That the vegetable creation should restore the air which is spoiled by the animal part of it, looks like a rational system, and seems to be of a piece with the rest.
Benjamin Franklin1706–1790Letter to Joseph Priestley, printed in Priestley’s “Observations on Different Kinds of Air”, Philosophical Transactions, vol. 62 (1772)
- Nature
Every individual is an expression of the whole realm of nature, a unique action of the total universe. This fact is rarely, if ever, experienced by most individuals.
Alan Watts1915–1973The Book on the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are (1966), Inside Information
- Nature
If we are uncritical we shall always find what we want: we shall look for, and find, confirmations, and we shall look away from, and not see, whatever might be dangerous to our pet theories.
Karl Popper1902–1994The Poverty of Historicism (1957) Ch. 29 The Unity of Method
- Thinking
A man contains all that is needed to make up a tree; likewise, a tree contains all that is needed to make up a man. Thus, finally, all things meet in all things, but we need a Prometheus to distill it.
Cyrano de Bergerac1619–1655The Other World (1657)
- Nature
- Philosophy
There are no passengers on Spaceship Earth. We are all crew.
Marshall McLuhan1911–1980Lecture “Living in an Acoustic World”, University of South Florida (1970)
- Nature
- Responsibility
If I had to choose, I would rather have birds than airplanes.
Charles Lindbergh1902–1974“Is Civilization Progress?” in Reader’s Digest (July 1964)
- Nature
- Technology
I believe the common denominator of the Universe is not harmony, but chaos, hostility and murder.
Werner Herzogborn 1942“Grizzly Man” (2006)
- Nature