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Quotes about science

558 quotes from 241 people

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People from a planet without flowers would think we must be mad with joy the whole time to have such things about us.
IMIris Murdoch1919–1999A Fairly Honourable Defeat (1970); 2001, p. 170.
- Happiness
- Nature
The stars hide away their shining form around the lovely moon when in all her fullness she shines (over all) the earth.
Sappho650–550 BCFr. 34 Voigt (tr. David A. Campbell, 1982)
- Nature
Nature is, and must be the fountain which alone is inexhaustible; and from which all excellencies must originally flow.
Joshua Reynolds1723–1792Discourse no. 6; vol. 1, p. 162.
- Nature
The laws of nature are sublime, but there is a moral sublimity before which the highest intelligences must kneel and adore.
Horace Mann1796–1859A Few Thoughts for a Young Man (1850), pp. 37–38
- Morality
- Nature
Go ahead and believe in God, if you like, but don’t imagine that you have been given any grounds for such a belief by science.
Daniel Dennett1942–2024New York Times, letter to the editor (26 August 2009)
- God
The measure of greatness in a scientific idea is the extent to which it stimulates thought and opens up new lines of research.
Paul Dirac1902–1984The scientific work of Georges Lemaître (1968), P.A.M
- Ideas
We do not belong to this material world that science constructs for us. We are not in it; we are outside. We are only spectators.
Erwin Schrödinger1887–1961Nature and the Greeks (1954)
- Philosophy
If you could see the earth illuminated when you were in a place as dark as night, it would look to you more splendid than the moon.
Galileo Galilei1564–1642Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems (1632), Salviati
- Beauty
The truth is, that those who have never entered upon scientific pursuits know not a tithe of the poetry by which they are surrounded.
Herbert Spencer1820–1903“What Knowledge Is of Most Worth?” (1859), in Education (1861), Ch. 1
- Poetry
Believe me, you will find more lessons in the woods than in books. Trees and stones will teach you what you cannot learn from masters.
Bernard of Clairvaux1090–1153Epistola CVI, sect. 2; translation from Edward Churton The Early English Church ([1840] 1841) p. 324
- Education
- Nature
No matter how sophisticated you may be, a large granite mountain cannot be denied — it speaks in silence to the very core of your being.
Ansel Adams1902–1984Ansel Adams: An Autobiography (1985)
- Nature
It were Happy if we studied Nature more in natural Things; and acted according to Nature; whose rules are few, plain and most reasonable.
William Penn1644–1718Some Fruits of Solitude (1693), no. 9
- Nature
We come and go, but the land is always here. And the people who love it and understand it are the people who own it — for a little while.
Willa Cather1873–1947O Pioneers! (1913), Part V, Ch. 3
- Nature
We are all agreed that your theory is crazy. The question that divides us is whether it is crazy enough to have a chance of being correct.
Niels Bohr1885–1962Said to Wolfgang Pauli at Columbia University (1958), as reported by Freeman Dyson, ‘Innovation in Physics’, Scientific American (September 1958)
- Ideas
May your trails be crooked, winding, lonesome, dangerous, leading to the most amazing view. May your mountains rise into and above the clouds.
Edward Abbey1927–1989Preface (dated June 1987) for 1988 reprint of Desert Solitaire
- Nature