Science Quotations

The real problem is not whether machines think but whether men do.

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.

All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered; the point is to discover them.

The experimenter who does not know what he is looking for will not understand what he finds.

In any field, find the strangest thing and then explore it.

Genius is rarely able to give any account of its own processes.

The universe is made of stories, not of atoms.

The fewer the facts, the stronger the opinion.

Everything is theoretically impossible, until it is done.

Joy in the universe, and keen curiosity about it all - that has been my religion.

An idea isn't responsible for the people who believe in it.

To invent, you need a good imagination and a pile of junk.

The first principle is that you must not fool yourself and you are the easiest person to fool.

In science, 'fact' can only mean 'confirmed to such a degree that it would be perverse to withhold provisional assent.' I suppose that apples might start to rise tomorrow, but the possibility does not merit equal time in physics classrooms.

All matter originates and exists only by virtue of a force... We must assume behind this force the existence of a conscious and intelligent Mind. This Mind is the matrix of all matter.

It has become almost a cliche to remark that nobody boasts of ignorance of literature, but it is socially acceptable to boast ignorance of science and proudly claim incompetence in mathematics.

Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freeness of speech.

We live in a society exquisitely dependent on science and technology, in which hardly anyone knows anything about science and technology.

One of the most interesting things about science fiction and fantasy is the way that the genres can offer different perspectives on matters to do with the body, the mind, medical technology, and the way we live our lives.

If I'm desperate, I'll read anything. But even when I can be choosy, I still have no hard-and-fast rules. I have rules about what I won't read, rather than what I will. No science fiction, no romance, no chick lit. Although even these rules can be broken.

Science fiction is about worlds you don't know and worlds you can create, like in 'Avatar'.

The art and science of asking questions is the source of all knowledge.

I wrote somewhere during the Cold War that I sometimes wish the Iron Curtain were much taller than it is, so that you could see whether the development of science with no communication was parallel on the two sides. In this case it certainly wasn't.

Every student of science, even if he cannot start his journey where his predecessors left off, can at least travel their beaten track more quickly than they could while they were clearing the way: and so before his race is run, he comes to virgin forest and becomes himself a pioneer.

People who dismiss science in favor of religion sometimes confuse the challenge of rigorously understanding the world with a deliberate intellectual exclusion that leads them to mistrust scientists and, to their detriment, what they discover.

There are times when we are just not very kind to ourselves. The problem with our negative thoughts is that the latest science has revealed that thoughts are very powerful, even impacting us physically.

I'm a pessimist because of intelligence, but an optimist because of will.

The life of man is of no greater importance to the universe than that of an oyster.

I'm not opposed to doing science fiction or comedy, but there has to be respect. I refuse to be the joke, the fat woman joke, in any movie. I've turned down roles.

As adults feign disinterest in science - children can grab hold of it to distinguish themselves.

I was a good student with mathematical ability and interests. As such, I took the usual college preparatory program in high school for one looking to become an engineer: all the available courses in mathematics and science.

Google the name Prometheus, and see how often it has been given to innovations in many different fields, notably science, medicine and space exploration. The fire he stole can be seen, too, as the spark generating all artistic creativity.

In the big picture, architecture is the art and science of making sure that our cities and buildings fit with the way we want to live our lives.

Science can promote an understanding between people at a really fundamental level.

I like certain subgenres within science fiction and fantasy, and one of those is urban fantasy, and another is steampunk.

The image of the scientist who puts the pursuit of truth before anything else has been shattered and replaced by a man on the make or a quasi-religious enthusiast who wants to prove his case at any cost. Science is becoming the tool of campaigning warfare, in which truth is the first casualty.

I would not hesitate to say I was addicted to the Internet in the first two years. It can be addictive, and things not taken in moderation have negative effects. But the alarmism around 'Facebook is changing our brains' strikes me as a kind of historical trick. Because we now know from brain science that everything changes our brains.

Learn computer science. It's extraordinarily helpful. I like recommending learning economics as well so they think in terms of business, they have rational frameworks for looking at the world, but yeah, computer science is an amazing way to get into, even if you want to be CEO, having a tech background is helpful.

Because some of my at-home life was rough and lonely, I often looked to escape into my imagination. Science fiction provided a deep well to pull from and was something easily accessible to me.

A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it

I write science fiction for people who don't read a great deal of science fiction.

Indeed, every true science has for its object the determination of certain phenomena by means of others, in accordance with the relations which exist between them.

I fought for seven years to have creche facilities at the Okinawa Institute of Science of Technology - and was ultimately successful. Less successful have been efforts to get a creche at the new Crick Institute in London, but this is something I will continue to push for.

And the more profoundly the science of biology reveals the laws of the life and development of living bodies, the more effective is the science of agronomy.

Science is the great antidote to the poison of enthusiasm and superstition.

Research is to see what everybody else has seen, and to think what nobody else has thought.

It is only when they go wrong that machines remind you how powerful they are.

If a psychiatric and scientific inquiry were to be made upon our rulers, mankind would be appalled at the disclosures.

Science is always discovering odd scraps of magical wisdom and making a tremendous fuss about its cleverness.

Science is like a flashlight in the hands of people living in a huge balloon. They can illuminate anything in the balloon, but cannot shine it outside the balloon to see where it is floating - or if it is floating at all.

Science is about knowing; engineering is about doing.

In those parts of the world where learning and science has prevailed, miracles have ceased; but in those parts of it as are barbarous and ignorant, miracles are still in vogue

Nothing you'll read as breaking news will ever hold a candle to the sheer beauty of settled science. Textbook science has carefully phrased explanations for new students, math derived step by step, plenty of experiments as illustration, and test problems.

As we gain more knowledge about materials and processes in the universe, that could open up benefits that we can't even imagine. But you have to be willing to fund science without knowledge of the benefits.

Read the sacred writings of all the peoples on Earth. Through all of them runs, like a red thread, the hidden Science of attaining and maintaining wakefulness.

Everybody's a mad scientist, and life is their lab. We're all trying to experiment to find a way to live, to solve problems, to fend off madness and chaos.

If you look in 'The Science of Getting Rich,' you see no reference whatsoever to the 'law of attraction.'

Science means constantly walking a tightrope between blind faith and curiosity; between expertise and creativity; between bias and openness; between experience and epiphany; between ambition and passion; and between arrogance and conviction - in short, between an old today and a new tomorrow.

Biochemistry is the science of life. All our life processes - walking, talking, moving, feeding - are essentially chemical reactions. So biochemistry is actually the chemistry of life, and it's supremely interesting.

Whenever anyone says, 'theoretically,' they really mean, 'not really.'

I'm always involved with the Aerospace Program and NASA and Goddard Space Flight Center. And if kids feel so inclined, they can log onto NASA and the Optimus Prime Spinoff Award, which we present every year to some of the brilliant young minds that are taking up into the academics of space, science, technology, math.

'Doctor Who' is where my love of science fiction and fantasy started. I was introduced to it when I was 8, and I'm still an avid viewer.

Imagination is the Discovering Faculty, pre-eminently. It is that which penetrates into the unseen worlds around us, the worlds of Science.

Science is wonderfully equipped to answer the question 'How?' but it gets terribly confused when you ask the question 'Why?'

In order to more fully understand this reality, we must take into account other dimensions of a broader reality.

The more we learn of science, the more we see that its wonderful mysteries are all explained by a few simple laws so connected together and so dependent upon each other, that we see the same mind animating them all.

The Nobel award occasions a unique celebration of the vision of science by the public at large. The prestige the prize confers today is largely due to the extraordinary diligence of the Nobel committees.

There are two ways of lying. One, not telling the truth and the other, making up statistics.

There are two possible outcomes: if the result confirms the hypothesis, then you've made a measurement. If the result is contrary to the hypothesis, then you've made a discovery.

The Geometer has the special privilege to carry out, by abstraction, all constructions by means of the intellect.

Why has not anyone seen that fossils alone gave birth to a theory about the formation of the earth, that without them, no one would have ever dreamed that there were successive epochs in the formation of the globe.

I was at my best at a little past forty, when I was a professor at Oxford.

We propose in the following Treatise to give an outline of the Science which treats of the Nature, the Production, and the Distribution of Wealth. To that Science we give the name of Political Economy.

I wrote the very first stories in science fiction which dealt with homosexuality, The World Well Lost and Affair With a Green Monkey.

Nothing is too wonderful to be true, if it be consistent with the laws of nature.

There can be no truce between science and religion.

Science cannot resolve moral conflicts, but it can help to more accurately frame the debates about those conflicts.

To be a Naturalist is better than to be a King.

There exist limitless opportunities in every industry. Where there is an open mind, there will always be a frontier.

There's been an incredible censorship in America and throughout the world, but particularly in America where students aren't even allowed to critically think about evolution, the issue of origins; they are not allowed to hear other points of view; they are taught incorrectly about science and taught that evolution is fact.

Only a minority of science fiction dystopias attempt to plumb the real existential roots of oppression, the flaws in humanity's nature that undermine our best attempts at organizing ourselves into social units.

Before the Internet, before BBSes and Fidonet and Usenet and LiveJournal and blogs and Facebook and Twitter, before the World Wide Web and hot-and-cold-online-everything, science fiction fandom had a long-lived, robust, well-debugged technology of social networking and virtual community.

Any econometrician who wants to see practical application of his science will be highly concerned with applications to economic planning at the national level.

We know that to compete for the jobs of the 21st century and thrive in a global economy, we need a growing, skilled and educated workforce, particularly in the areas of science, technology, engineering and math. Americans with bachelor's degrees have half the unemployment rate of those with a high school degree.

Half of the modern drugs could well be thrown out of the window, except that the birds might eat them.

The ultimate aim of all science to penetrate the unknown. Do you realize we know less about the earth we live on than about the stars and the galaxies of outer space? The greatest mystery is right here, right under our feet.

That the way to achieve higher standards of living for all is through science and technology, taking advantage of better tools, methods and organization.

My father was a professor of political science and also a young politician fighting for democracy in Kenya, and when things got ugly, he went into political exile in Mexico.

In the history of science, we often find that the study of some natural phenomenon has been the starting point in the development of a new branch of knowledge.

I have issues with anyone who tries to claim that science is unworkable - creationists who deny evidence for past history, yet are happy to benefit from the products of the methodology that they otherwise deny.

I didn't have a manifesto. I had some discontent. It seemed to me that midcentury mainstream American science fiction had often been triumphalist and militaristic, a sort of folk propaganda for American exceptionalism.

Let it be understood, in the first place, that a science fiction story must be an exposition of a scientific theme and it must be also a story.

No great advance has been made in science, politics, or religion without controversy.

For science, the end of the evolution struggle is simply represented by 'survival.' As for the means to that end, apparently anything goes. Darwinism leaves humanity without a moral compass.

I always knew I wanted to be a technologist, so I went to Duke and got a degree in computer science and electrical engineering. Really, I thought my goal in life was to be an inventor, a problem solver, so I thought I needed a Ph.D. to be good at inventions, but it turns out that you don't.

Research is four things: brains with which to think, eyes with which to see, machines with which to measure and, fourth, money.

Biologically speaking, if something bites you it's more likely to be female.

You can have data without information, but you cannot have information without data.

It is entirely possible to present science accurately and have a hit show.