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Quotes about science

558 quotes from 241 people

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We live in a society absolutely dependent on science and technology and yet have cleverly arranged things so that almost no one understands science and technology. That’s a clear prescription for disaster.
Carl Sagan1934–1996Bringing Science Down to Earth (1994), co-authored with Anne Kalosh, in Hemispheres (October 1994), p. 99
- Technology
Science could predict that the universe must have had a beginning.
Stephen Hawking1942–2018Black Holes and Baby Universes and Other Essays (1993)
So Einstein was wrong when he said, “God does not play dice.” Consideration of black holes suggests, not only that God does play dice, but that he sometimes confuses us by throwing them where they can’t be seen.
Stephen Hawking1942–2018During the same 1994 exchange with Penrose as the previous quote, transcribed in The Nature of Space and Time (1996) by Stephen Hawking and Roger Penrose, p. 26 and also in “The Nature of Space and Time” (online text)
- God
Einstein was confused, not the quantum theory.
Stephen Hawking1942–2018Lecture at the Amsterdam Symposium on Gravity, Black Holes, and String Theory (21 June 1997)
I think I can safely say that nobody understands quantum mechanics.
Richard Feynman1918–1988The Character of Physical Law (1965), chapter 6, “Probability and Uncertainty — the Quantum Mechanical View of Nature,” p. 129
Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts.
Richard Feynman1918–1988address “What is Science?”, presented at the fifteenth annual meeting of the National Science Teachers Association, in New York City (1966), published in The Physics Teacher, volume 7, issue 6 (1969), p. 313-320
The “paradox” is only a conflict between reality and your feeling of what reality “ought to be.”
Richard Feynman1918–1988The Feynman Lectures on Physics (1964), volume III; lecture 18, “Angular Momentum”; section 18-3, “The annihilation of positronium”; p. 18-9
Tell your son to stop trying to fill your head with science — for to fill your heart with love is enough!
Richard Feynman1918–1988Note to the mother of Marcus Chown, who had admired the profile of Feynman presented in the BBC TV Horizon program “The Pleasure of Finding Things Out” (1981)
- Love
The boundaries of the species, whereby men sort them, are made by men.
John Locke1632–1704An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1689), Book III, Ch. 6, sec. 37
The union of the mathematician with the poet, fervor with measure, passion with correctness, this surely is the ideal.
William James1842–1910Collected Essays and Reviews (1920), Ch. 11—Clifford’s Lectures and Essays (1879)
- Poetry
It is mere rubbish thinking, at present, of origin of life; one might as well think of origin of matter.
Charles Darwin1809–1882Letter to J.D. Hooker, 29 March 1863
Everything is theoretically impossible, until it’s done. One could write a history of science in reverse by assembling the solemn pronouncements of highest authority about what could not be done and could never happen.
Robert A. Heinlein1907–1988Between Planets (1951), Chapter 2, “Mene, Mene, Tekel, Upharsin” (p. 23)
Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell.
Edward Abbey1927–1989“The Second Rape of the West”, p. 183
- Economics
- Nature
It seems that scientists are often attracted to beautiful theories in the way that insects are attracted to flowers — not by logical deduction, but by something like a sense of smell.
Steven Weinberg1933–2021Physics Today (November 2005) page 35
In our own lifetime we are witnessing a startling alteration of climate.
Rachel Carson1907–1964The Sea Around Us (1951)
- Nature