Science Quotations | Page 12

I'd rather have the influence than the power, and the influence to me is to build institutions of independence and democracy, to regain for Egypt prestige in education and science and technology.

I'm astounded by people who want to 'know' the universe when it's hard enough to find your way around Chinatown.

Carl Sagan spoke fluently between biology and geology and astrophysics and physics. If you move fluently across those boundaries, you realize that science is everywhere; science is not something you can step around or sweep under the rug.

In adapting to life in the melting pot of America, I discovered that the same soft power of science has a huge influence in building bridges between cultures and religions - and has the potential to do so with the Muslim world.

Theory helps us to bear our ignorance of facts.

I can't add. I don't understand basic science. Or anything else. But I can read anything. I've always been able to, and I've always liked to. Even if I didn't understand it, I liked to.

Leaders in China and India realize that science and technology lead to success and wealth. But many countries in the West graduate students into the unemployment line by teaching skills that were necessary to live in 1950.

It hurts the spirit, somehow, to read the word environments, when the plural means that there are so many alternatives there to be sorted through, as in a market, and voted on.

In scientific work, those who refuse to go beyond fact rarely get as far as fact.

If a man walks in the woods for love of them half of each day, he is in danger of being regarded as a loafer. But if he spends his days as a speculator, shearing off those woods and making the earth bald before her time, he is deemed an industrious and enterprising citizen.

Thought once awakened does not again slumber; unfolds itself into a System of Thought; grows, in man after man, generation after generation, - till its full stature is reached, and such System of Thought can grow no farther, but must give place to another.

There's no one 'right' way of making a science fiction movie; there's no one way of making any kind of movie, really!

Touch a scientist and you touch a child.

Death is a release from the impressions of the senses, and from desires that make us their puppets, and from the vagaries of the mind, and from the hard service of the flesh.

When I am in the company of scientists, I feel like a shabby curate who has strayed by mistake into a drawing room full of dukes.

I find the attempt to find things out, which scientists are possessed by, to be as human as breathing, or feeding, or sex. And so the science has to be in the novels as science and not just as metaphors.

Facts matter. Science matters. Reason matters. Mitt Romney has shown an inability to respect any of the three. President Barack Obama not only respects them, he relies on them. He is an overwhelming and unquestioned choice to continue as president.

Everything you see is filtered through your visual system (imperfect) and your brain (also imperfect, despite what your mom told you). Witness testimony is the worst kind of evidence in science.

There is no greater impediment to progress in the sciences than the desire to see it take place too quickly.

I've always been very one-sided about science, and when I was younger, I concentrated almost all my effort on it.

When science has sent forth her fiat - it is only to hear and obey.

The alchemists in their search for gold discovered many other things of greater value.

I had no talent for science. What was infinitely worse: all my fraternity brothers were engineers.

I have done one thing that I think is a contribution: I helped Buddhist science and modern science combine. No other Buddhist has done that. Other lamas, I don't think they ever pay attention to modern science. Since my childhood, I have a keen interest.

I believe there are no questions that science can't answer about a physical universe.

In 'Cosmicomics,' I came close to science fiction - I was inspired by cosmological subjects and the workings of the universe and invented a character who was a sort of witness to everything that was happening inside the solar system.

The crossroads of science and politics is a dodgy place.

It is a mania shared by philosophers of all ages to deny what exists and to explain what does not exist.

Science has fulfilled her function when she has ascertained and enunciated truth.

Science sent the Hubble telescope out into space, so it could capture light and the absence thereof, from the very beginning of time. And the telescope really did that. So now we know that there was once absolutely nothing, such a perfect nothing that there wasn't even nothing or once.

One science only will one genius fit; so vast is art, so narrow human wit.

It is often stated that of all the theories proposed in this century, the silliest is quantum theory. In fact, some say that the only thing that quantum theory has going for it is that it is unquestionably correct.

I love technology, and I love science. It's just always all in the way you use it. So there's no - you can't really blame anything on the technology. It's just the way people use it, and it always has been.

'Cosmos' wouldn't deserve its place in primetime evening network television were it not a landscape on which compelling stories were told. People, when they watch TV in the evening, want to see stories, and science simply tells the best stories.

Bioethics is a very, very important field. As we get more and more in the arena of understanding science and getting better opportunities, the fact that you can do things with biological sciences that have an impact on a human being means you must have ethical standards.

It is difficult to discriminate the voice of truth from amid the clamor raised by heated partisans.

What I perceive in science fiction is that it's more about how everything looks than what's going on, which I think is just difficult if you're an action character. I think they are about character, not about what it looks like.

I think of science fiction as being part of the great river of imaginative fiction that has flowed through English literature, probably for 400 or 500 years, well predating modern science.

The best scientist is open to experience and begins with romance - the idea that anything is possible.

Science has explained nothing; the more we know the more fantastic the world becomes and the profounder the surrounding darkness.

This world, after all our science and sciences, is still a miracle wonderful, inscrutable, magical and more, to whosoever will think of it.

My goal is simple. It is a complete understanding of the universe, why it is as it is and why it exists at all.

Religion, art, and science flourish best in a free society. True, freedom does not afford much opportunity for grand gestures. It has little room for martyrs. But life is not supposed to be about dying well. It is about living well.

Science fiction writers aren't fortune tellers. Fortune tellers are fakes.

You may not see massive UFO exhibits at your local science museum, but there's no dearth of saucer stories infesting my email. Every day, I receive several reports of alien sightings, extraterrestrial plans for Earth, and agitated screeds about the reluctance of scientists to take the whole subject seriously.

Thus the metric system did not really catch on in the States, unless you count the increasing popularity of the nine-millimeter bullet.

You don't need a science degree to understand about science. You just need to think about it.

Almost everything that distinguishes the modern world from earlier centuries is attributable to science, which achieved its most spectacular triumphs in the seventeenth century.

Science is about exploring the unknown and cannot offer guarantees.

People don't learn science in movies. You don't go to the movies thinking, 'I hope I learn some quantum mechanics this afternoon.' But on the other hand, movies are instrumental and influential in getting young people interested in science.

I hope I have helped to raise the profile of science and to show that physics is not a mystery but can be understood by ordinary people.

When I find myself in the company of scientists, I feel like a shabby curate who has strayed by mistake into a room full of dukes.

I think this is the most extraordinary collection of talent, of human knowledge, that has ever been gathered at the White House - with the possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone.

I don't plan to write another science book, but I don't plan not to. I do enjoy writing histories, and taking subjects that are generally dull and trying to make them interesting.

Science in the modern world has many uses; its chief use, however, is to provide long words to cover the errors of the rich.

Knowledge is two-fold, and consists not only in an affirmation of what is true, but in the negation of that which is false.

Even when I wasn't doing much 'science for the public' stuff, I found that four or five hours of intense work in physics was all my brain could take on a given day.

When psychical phenomena have been as much investigated as physical, love will also receive its cumatology - that is, its science of waves. We shall follow the curves of the emotions through the ages, their movement of rise and fall, the oppositions and side-influences by which they have been determined.

Ideas are 10 a penny. It's the execution that's the hard thing to do. House is standing up against a tide of sentiment and emotionalism over reason that threatens to engulf this world. When you think about it, a rationalist, a man of science and reason, is in a pretty lonely position.

It's very important for us to see that science is done by people, not just brains but whole human beings, and sometimes at great cost.

Although science and technology open up boundless opportunities, they also present great perils because Satan employs these marvelous discoveries to his great advantage.

Even before Sputnik, scientists and policy makers worried that not enough Americans were studying science.

Statistics show that of those who contract the habit of eating, very few survive.

We only have to look at ourselves to see how intelligent life might develop into something we wouldn't want to meet.

I think there's always been a traditionally apocalyptic side to British science fiction, from H.G. Wells onwards. I mean, most of Wells' stories are potentially apocalyptic in some sense or another.

It is always good to know which ideas cannot be checked directly, but it is not necessary to remove them all. It is not true that we can pursue science completely by using only those concepts which are directly subject to experiment.

I don't join the New Atheists. So, for example, I wouldn't have the arrogance to lecture some mother who hopes to see her dying child in Heaven - that's none of my business, ultimately. I won't lecture her on the philosophy of science.

For bedtime reading, I usually curl up with a good monograph on quantum physics or string theory, my specialty. But since I was a child, I have been fascinated by science fiction. My all-time favorite is 'The Foundation Trilogy,' by Isaac Asimov.

Science fiction and comedy are generally a pretty bumpy mix.

Art is the beautiful way of doing things. Science is the effective way of doing things. Business is the economic way of doing things.

Nature and nature's laws lay hid in the night. God said, Let Newton be! and all was light!

To observations which ourselves we make, we grow more partial for th' observer's sake.

Necessity is the mistress and guide of nature. Necessity is the theme and inventress of nature, her curb and her eternal law.

If you've read a lot of vintage science fiction, as I have at one time or another in my life, you can't help but realise how wrong we get it. I have gotten it wrong more times than I've gotten it right. But I knew that when I started; I knew that before I wrote a word of science fiction.

In fact, when you get right down to it, almost every explanation Man came up with for anything until about 1926 was stupid.

The work of science is to substitute facts for appearances, and demonstrations for impressions.

Life would be tragic if it weren't funny.

Genius... means little more than the faculty of perceiving in an unhabitual way.

Scientists generally are really chicken about getting involved in some kind of dispute. As a broadcaster, I find it very difficult to urge them, if it is a controversial subject. They don't want to have science being portrayed badly.

It's actually the minority of religious people who rejects science or feel threatened by it or want to sort of undo or restrict the... where science can go. The rest, you know, are just fine with science. And it has been that way ever since the beginning.

If two scientists are giving their papers at a symposium, and one of them is just naturally better at talking to the public or talking to a group of people, that scientist is liable to get more attention - in fact, I'm told that they do get more attention - than the one who's a little more stiff about it. Well, that's not good for science.

I've always been a fan of science fiction.

I just am a huge cheerleader for getting kids interested in science and technology.

The idea that science is just some luxury that you'll get around to if you can afford it is regressive to any future a country might dream for itself.

Having a super-brain does not suddenly make you a dictator of the world. So we don't have to fear the scenarios of science fiction where the Lex Luthors of the world take over. People with exceptional ability, they don't become politicians; they don't become multi-millionaires; some of them just become professors like me, making a measly income.

I feel like every time a door is opened by science, suddenly there are a hundred doors that need to get opened. That's what makes it an everlasting, interesting experience to go through.

Aristotle could have avoided the mistake of thinking that women have fewer teeth than men, by the simple device of asking Mrs. Aristotle to keep her mouth open while he counted.

Man lives for science as well as bread.

As history has shown, pure science research ultimately ends up applying to something. We just don't know it at the time.

I think computer viruses should count as life. I think it says something about human nature that the only form of life we have created so far is purely destructive. We've created life in our own image.

The ideas associated with the problems of the development of science, as far as I can see by looking around me, are not of the kind that everyone appreciates.

Anything that promotes a kernel of science, even though it's exaggerated and hyped by Hollywood, I think is a step forward. We in the ivory tower ultimately have to realize that in some sense we have to sing for our supper.

Specialized meaninglessness has come to be regarded, in certain circles, as a kind of hallmark of true science.

Everything in Nature contains all the powers of Nature. Everything is made of one hidden stuff.

The most obvious characteristic of science is its application: the fact that, as a consequence of science, one has a power to do things. And the effect this power has had need hardly be mentioned. The whole industrial revolution would almost have been impossible without the development of science.

The ideas of science germinate in a matrix of established knowledge gained by experiment; they are not lonesome thoughts, born in a rarified realm where no researcher has ever gone before.

The California crunch really is the result of not enough power-generating plants and then not enough power to power the power of generating plants.

I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can't capture, and I found it fascinating.

When he to whom one speaks does not understand, and he who speaks himself does not understand, that is metaphysics.

The church saves sinners, but science seeks to stop their manufacture.