Aug. 25, 2024, 1:45 p.m.
In our quest to understand the universe, few things are as inspiring and thought-provoking as the words of great scientists, thinkers, and visionaries. Their reflections on the vast expanse of space, the intricacies of life, and the mysteries of the natural world have the power to ignite curiosity and fuel the pursuit of knowledge. In celebration of their wisdom, we've curated a collection of the top 143 science quotes that capture the awe and wonder of scientific discovery. Whether you're a seasoned scholar or a curious mind, these quotes promise to inspire and challenge your perception of the world around us. Dive in and let the brilliance of these words illuminate your path to discovery.
1. “Everything must be made as simple as possible. But not simpler.” - Albert Einstein
2. “One thing I have learned in a long life: that all our science, measured against reality, is primitive and childlike -- and yet it is the most precious thing we have.” - Albert Einstein
3. “The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom.” - Isaac Asimov
4. “Educators may bring upon themselves unnecessary travail by taking a tactless and unjustifiable position about the relation between scientific and religious narratives. We see this, of course, in the conflict concerning creation science. Some educators representing, as they think, the conscience of science act much like those legislators who in 1925 prohibited by law the teaching of evolution in Tennessee. In that case, anti-evolutionists were fearful that a scientific idea would undermine religious belief. Today, pro-evolutionists are fearful that a religious idea will undermine scientific belief. The former had insufficient confidence in religion; the latter insufficient confidence in science. The point is that profound but contradictory ideas may exist side by side, if they are constructed from different materials and methods and have different purposes. Each tells us something important about where we stand in the universe, and it is foolish to insist that they must despise each other.” - Neil Postman
5. “4. Religion. Your reason is now mature enough to examine this object. In the first place, divest yourself of all bias in favor of novelty & singularity of opinion... shake off all the fears & servile prejudices, under which weak minds are servilely crouched. Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call to her tribunal every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blindfolded fear. You will naturally examine first, the religion of your own country. Read the Bible, then as you would read Livy or Tacitus. The facts which are within the ordinary course of nature, you will believe on the authority of the writer, as you do those of the same kind in Livy and Tacitus. The testimony of the writer weighs in their favor, in one scale, and their not being against the laws of nature, does not weigh against them. But those facts in the Bible which contradict the laws of nature, must be examined with more care, and under a variety of faces. Here you must recur to the pretensions of the writer to inspiration from God. Examine upon what evidence his pretensions are founded, and whether that evidence is so strong, as that its falsehood would be more improbable than a change in the laws of nature, in the case he relates. For example in the book of Joshua we are told the sun stood still several hours. Were we to read that fact in Livy or Tacitus we should class it with their showers of blood, speaking of statues, beasts, &c. But it is said that the writer of that book was inspired. Examine therefore candidly what evidence there is of his having been inspired. The pretension is entitled to your inquiry, because millions believe it. On the other hand you are astronomer enough to know how contrary it is to the law of nature that a body revolving on its axis as the earth does, should have stopped, should not by that sudden stoppage have prostrated animals, trees, buildings, and should after a certain time have resumed its revolution, & that without a second general prostration. Is this arrest of the earth's motion, or the evidence which affirms it, most within the law of probabilities? You will next read the New Testament. It is the history of a personage called Jesus. Keep in your eye the opposite pretensions: 1, of those who say he was begotten by God, born of a virgin, suspended & reversed the laws of nature at will, & ascended bodily into heaven; and 2, of those who say he was a man of illegitimate birth, of a benevolent heart, enthusiastic mind, who set out without pretensions to divinity, ended in believing them, and was punished capitally for sedition, by being gibbeted, according to the Roman law, which punished the first commission of that offence by whipping, & the second by exile, or death in fureâ....Do not be frightened from this inquiry by any fear of its consequences. If it ends in a belief that there is no God, you will find incitements to virtue in the comfort and pleasantness you feel in its exercise, and the love of others which it will procure you... In fine, I repeat, you must lay aside all prejudice on both sides, and neither believe nor reject anything, because any other persons, or description of persons, have rejected or believed it... I forgot to observe, when speaking of the New Testament, that you should read all the histories of Christ, as well of those whom a council of ecclesiastics have decided for us, to be Pseudo-evangelists, as those they named Evangelists. Because these Pseudo-evangelists pretended to inspiration, as much as the others, and you are to judge their pretensions by your own reason, and not by the reason of those ecclesiastics. Most of these are lost...[Letter to his nephew, Peter Carr, advising him in matters of religion, 1787]” - Thomas Jefferson
6. “Philosophy [nature] is written in that great book which ever is before our eyes -- I mean the universe -- but we cannot understand it if we do not first learn the language and grasp the symbols in which it is written. The book is written in mathematical language, and the symbols are triangles, circles and other geometrical figures, without whose help it is impossible to comprehend a single word of it; without which one wanders in vain through a dark labyrinth.” - Galileo
7. “I consider it an extremely dangerous doctrine, because the more likely we are to assume that the solution comes from the outside, the less likely we are to solve our problems ourselves.” - Carl Sagan
8. “Beware the irrational, however seductive. Shun the 'transcendent' and all who invite you to subordinate or annihilate yourself. Distrust compassion; prefer dignity for yourself and others. Don't be afraid to be thought arrogant or selfish. Picture all experts as if they were mammals. Never be a spectator of unfairness or stupidity. Seek out argument and disputation for their own sake; the grave will supply plenty of time for silence. Suspect your own motives, and all excuses. Do not live for others any more than you would expect others to live for you.” - Christopher Hitchens
9. “The element of chance in basic research is overrated. Chance is a lady who smiles only upon those few who know how to make her smile.” - Hans Selye
10. “Si l'organisme vivant est un system hiérarchisé dont le niveau d'organisation est au-dessus du niveau chimique, il est alors évident qu'il doit être étudié à tous les niveaux et qu'une recherche limitée à l'un d'entre eux (niveaux chimique par exemple) ne peut remplacer celle effectuée aux niveau supérieurs.” - J.H. Woodger
11. “Il faut regarder la configuration ensemble pour déterminer le comportement des parties et non l'inverse.” - Paul Weiss
12. “The human spirit must prevail over technology.” - Albert Einstein
13. “One of the strongest motives that lead men to art and science is escape from everyday life with its painful crudity and hopeless dreariness, from the fetters of one's own ever-shifting desires. A finely tempered nature longs to escape from the personal life into the world of objective perception and thought.” - Albert Einstein
14. “Never fire a laser at a mirror. ” - Larry Niven
15. “The best scientist is open to experience and begins with romance - the idea that anything is possible.” - Ray Bradbury
16. “[Responding to the Bishop of Oxford, Samuel Wilberforce's question whether he traced his descent from an ape on his mother's or his father's side]A man has no reason to be ashamed of having an ape for his grandfather. If there were an ancestor whom I should feel shame in recalling it would rather be a man—a man of restless and versatile intellect—who … plunges into scientific questions with which he has no real acquaintance, only to obscure them by an aimless rhetoric, and distract the attention of his hearers from the real point at issue by eloquent digressions and skilled appeals to religious prejudice.” - Thomas Huxley
17. “People today have forgotten they're really just a part of nature. Yet, they destroy the nature on which our lives depend. They always think they can make something better. Especially scientists. They may be smart, but most don't understand the heart of nature. They only invent things that, in the end, make people unhappy. Yet they're so proud of their inventions. What's worse, most people are, too. They view them as if they were miracles. They worship them. They don't know it, but they're losing nature. They don't see that they're going to perish. The most important things for human beings are clean air and clean water.” - Akira Kurosawa
18. “If you try and take a cat apart to see how it works, the first thing you have on your hands is a non-working cat.” - Douglas Adams
19. “That enormously complex biological interactions are so flawlessly coordinated as to result in such obvious manifestations as human thought or the electrical activity that dries the heartbeat is as exciting to me -- actually more exciting -- than such phenomena were when I was a small boy and thought them divinely (in the supernatural sense) driven.” - Sherwin B. Nuland
20. “Wonder is the seed of knowledge” - Francis Bacon
21. “Discovery is always rape of the natural world. Always.” - Michael Crichton
22. “Father Roger Boscovich is often credited as the father of modern atomic theory.” - Thomas E. Woods Jr.
23. “For decades, new-energy researchers talked about the possibility of treating a magnet so that its magnetic field would continuously shake or vibrate. On rare occasions, Sweet saw this effect, called self-oscillation, occur in electric transformers. He felt it could be coaxed into doing something useful, such as producing energy. Sweet thought that if he could find the precise way to shake or disturb a magnet's force field, the field would continue to shake by itself. It would be similar to striking a bell and having the bell keep on ringing. Sweet - who said his ideas came to him in dreams - turned for inspiration to his expertise in magnets. He knew magnets could be used to produce electricity, and wanted to see if he could get power out of a magnet by something other than the standard induction process. What Sweet wanted to do was to keep the magnet still and just shake its magnetic field. This shaking, in turn, would create an electric current. One new-energy researcher compares self-oscillation to a leaf on a tree waving in a gentle breeze. While the breeze itself isn't moving back and forth, it sets the leaf into that kind of motion. Sweet thought that if cosmic energy could be captured to serve as the breeze, then the magnetic field would serve as the leaf. Sweet would just have to supply a small amount of energy to set the magnetic field in motion, and space energy would keep it moving.” - Jeane Manning
24. “Physics is like sex: sure, it may give some practical results, but that's not why we do it.” - Richard P. Feynman
25. “Science replaces private prejudice with public, verifiable evidence.” - Richard Dawkins
26. “Ann Druyan suggests an experiment: Look back again at the pale blue dot of the preceding chapter. Take a good long look at it. Stare at the dot for any length of time and then try to convince yourself that God created the whole Universe for one of the 10 million or so species of life that inhabit that speck of dust. Now take it a step further: Imagine that everything was made just for a single shade of that species, or gender, or ethnic or religious subdivision. If this doesn’t strike you as unlikely, pick another dot. Imagine it to be inhabited by a different form of intelligent life. They, too, cherish the notion of a God who has created everything for their benefit. How seriously do you take their claim?” - Carl Sagan
27. “Scientists do not join hands every Sunday and sing "Yes gravity is real! I know gravity is real! I will have faith! I believe in my heart that what goes up, up, up must come down, down, down. Amen!" If they did, we would think they were pretty insecure about the concept.” - Dan Barker
28. “Your Excellency, I have no need of this hypothesis.” - Pierre Laplace
29. “The most telling and profound way of describing the evolution of the universe would undoubtedly be to trace the evolution of love.” - Pierre Teilhard De Chardin
30. “Please don't die.” - Randy Pausch
31. “A human being weighing 70 kilograms contains among other things:-45 litres of water-Enough chalk to whiten a chicken pen-Enough phosphorus for 2,200 matches-Enough fat to make approximately 70 bars of soap-Enough iron to make a two inch nail-Enough carbon for 9,000 pencil points-A spoonful of magnesiumI weigh more than 70 kilograms.And I remember a TV series called Cosmos. Carl Sagan would walk around on a set that was meant to look like space, speaking in large numbers. On one of the shows he sat in front of a tank full of all the substances human beings are made of. He stirred the tank with a stick wondering if he would be able to create life.He didn’t succeed.” - Erlend Loe
32. “O darwinismo é uma teoria de processos cumulativos tão lentos que se desenrolam ao longo de milhares e milhões de anos. Todos os nossos juízos intuitivos sobre o que é provável mostram-se errados por larga margem.” - Richard Dawkins
33. “My dream, is to dream, a dream.” - Santosh Kalwar
34. “IF YOU WANT TO CREATE A CHANGE, you must challenge not only the models of Unreality, but the paradigms that underwrite them.” - Stafford Beer
35. “I agree with people like Richard Dawkins that mankind felt the need for creation myths. Before we really began to understand disease and the weather and things like that, we sought false explanations for them. Now science has filled in some of the realm – not all – that religion used to fill.” - Bill Gates
36. “Whenever we proceed from the known into the unknown we may hope to understand, but we may have to learn at the same time a new meaning of the word 'understanding.” - Werner Karl Heisenberg
37. “As we parted at the Natural History Museum in London, I asked Richard Fortey how science ensures that when one person goes there's someone ready to take his place.He chuckled rather heartily at my naiveté. 'I'm afraid it's not as if we have substitutes sitting on the bench somewhere waiting to be called in to play. When a specialist retires or, even more unfortunately, dies, that can bring a stop to things in that field, sometimes for a very long while.'And I suppose that's why you value someone who spends forty-two years studying a single species of plant, even if it doesn't produce anything terribly new?''Precisely,' he said, 'precisely.' And he really seemed to mean it.” - Bill Bryson
38. “The Copenhagen Interpretation is sometimes called "model agnosticism" and holds that any grid we use to organize our experience of the world is a model of the world and should not be confused with the world itself. Alfred Korzybski, the semanticist, tried to popularize this outside physics with the slogan, "The map is not the territory." Alan Watts, a talented exegete of Oriental philosophy, restated it more vividly as "The menu is not the meal.” - Robert Anton Wilson
39. “Many conscientious environmentalists are repelled by the word "abundance," automatically associating it with irresponsible consumerism and plundering of Earth's resources. In the context of grassroots frustration, insensitive enthusing about the potential for energy abundance usually elicits an annoyed retort. "We have to conserve." The authors believe the human family also has to _choose_. The people we speak with at the recycling depot or organic juice bar are for the most part not looking at the _difference_ between harmony-with-nature technologies and exploitative practices such as mountaintop coal mining. "Destructive" was yesterday's technology of choice. As a result, the words "science and technology" are repugnant to many of the people who passionately care about health, peace, justice and the biosphere. Usually these acquaintances haven't heard about the variety of constructive yet powerful clean energy technologies that have the potential to gradually replace oil and nuclear industries if allowed. Wastewater-into-energy technologies could clean up waterways and other variations solve the problem of polluting feedlots and landfills.” - Jeane Manning
40. “Science is a bit like the joke about the drunk who is looking under a lamppost for a key that he has lost on the other side of the street, because that's where the light is. It has no other choice.” - Noam Chomsky
41. “It would be better for us to have some doubts in an honest pursuit of truth, than it would be for us to be certain about something that was not true. ” - Daniel Wallace
42. “See now the power of truth; the same experiment which at first glance seemed to show one thing, when more carefully examined, assures us of the contrary.” - Galileo Galilei
43. “What is especially striking and remarkable is that in fundamental physics a beautiful or elegant theory is more likely to be right than a theory that is inelegant.” - Murray Gell-Mann
44. “It goes with a courageous intent to greet the universe as it really is, not to foist our emotional predispositions on it but to courageously accept what our explorations tell us.” - Carl Sagan
45. “Whether in the intellectual pursuits of science or in the mystical pursuits of the spirit, the light beckons ahead, and the purpose surging in our nature responds.” - Arthur Eddington
46. “a room without boooks like a body without soul” - roger
47. “Ask a true scientist a very profound question on his science, and he will besilent. Ask a true religious person a very simple question on his religion, and he will be frenzied.” - Kedar Joshi
48. “In this world, perfection is an illusion. Reagrdless of all those who utter the contrary, this is the reality. Obviously mediocre fools will forever lust for perfection and seek it out. However, what meaning is there in perfection? None. Not a bit. ...After perfection there exists nothing higher. Not even room for creation which means there is no room for wisdom or talent either. Understand? To scientists like ourselves, perfection is despair. - Kurotsuchi Mayuri (Bleach 306)” - Tite Kubo
49. “The value the world sets upon motives is often grossly unjust and inaccurate. Consider, for example, two of them: mere insatiable curiosity and the desire to do good. The latter is put high above the former, and yet it is the former that moves one of the most useful men the human race has yet produced: the scientific investigator. What actually urges him on is not some brummagem idea of Service, but a boundless, almost pathological thirst to penetrate the unknown, to uncover the secret, to find out what has not been found out before. His prototype is not the liberator releasing slaves, the good Samaritan lifting up the fallen, but a dog sniffing tremendously at an infinite series of rat-holes.” - H.L. Mencken
50. “Be With Me In The Phases Of My Work Because My Brain Feels Like It Has Been Whipped And I Yearn To Make A Small Perfect Thing Which Will Live In Your Morning Like Curious Static Through A President's Elegy Or A Nude Hunchback Acquiring A Tan On The Crowded Oily Beach. ” - Leonard Cohen
51. “Random mutations much more easily debilitate genes than improve them, and that this is true even of the helpful mutations. Let me emphasize, our experience with malaria’s effects on humans (arguably our most highly studied genetic system) shows that most helpful mutations degrade genes. What’s more, as a group the mutations are incoherent, meaning that they are not adding up to some new system. They are just small changes - mostly degradative - in pre-existing, unrelated genes. The take-home lesson is that this is certainly not the kind of process we would expect to build the astonishingly elegant machinery of the cell. If random mutation plus selective pressure substantially trashes the human genome, why should we think that it would be a constructive force in the long term? There is no reason to think so.” - Michael J. Behe
52. “These mysteries about how we evolved should not distract us from the indisputable fact that we did evolve.” - Jerry A. Coyne
53. “The complexity of the simplest known type of cell is so great that it is impossible to accept that such an object could have been thrown together suddenly by some kind of freakish, vastly improbable, event. Such an occurrence would be indistinguishable from a miracle.” - Michael Denton
54. “It is not what the man of science believes that distinguishes him, but how and why he believes it. His beliefs are tentative, not dogmatic; they are based on evidence, not on authority or intuition.” - Bertrand Russell
55. “since the order of the world is shaped by death, mightn't it be better for God if we refuse to believe in Him and struggle with all our might against death, without raising our eyes towards the heaven where He sits in silence?” - Albert Camus
56. “Napoleon, when hearing about Laplace's latest book, said, 'M. Laplace, they tell me you have written this large book on the system of the universe, and have never even mentioned its creator.'Laplace responds, 'Je n'avais pas besoin de cette hypothèse-là. (I had no need of that hypothesis.)” - Pierre-Simon Laplace
57. “But in my opinion, all things in nature occur mathematically.” - Rene Decartes
58. “I would suggest that science is, at least in my part, informed worship.” - Carl Sagan
59. “Never underestimate spite as a motivator for genius.” - Sam Kean
60. “The tape measures and weighing scales of the Victorian brain scientists have been supplanted by powerful neuroimaging technologies, but there is still a lesson to be learned from historical examples such as these. State-of-the-art brain scanners offer us unprecedented information about the structure and working of the brain. But don't forget that, once, wrapping a tape measure around the head was considered modern and sophisticated, and it's important not to fall into the same old traps. As we'll see in later chapters, although certain popular commentators make it seem effortlessly easy, the sheer complexity of the brain makes interpreting and understanding the meaning of any sex differences we find in the brain a very difficult task. But the first, and perhaps surprising, issue in sex differences research is that of knowing which differences are real and which, like the intially promising cephalic index, are flukes or spurious.” - Cordelia Fine
61. “We were born of risen apes, not fallen angels, and the apes were armed killers besides. And so what shall we wonder at? Our murders and massacres and missiles, and our irreconcilable regiments?” - Robert Ardrey
62. “...Once again confirms that there is no such thing as genetically pure classification into different races.” - Bryan Sykes
63. “The phaenomena afforded by trades, are a part of the history of nature, and therefore may both challenge the naturalist's curiosity and add to his knowledge, Nor will it suffice to justify learned men in the neglect and contempt of this part of natural history, that the men, from whom it must be learned, are illiterate mechanicks... is indeed childish, and too unworthy of a philosopher, to be worthy of an honest answer.” - Robert Boyle
64. “The study of mathematics is apt to commence in disappointment... We are told that by its aid the stars are weighed and the billions of molecules in a drop of water are counted. Yet, like the ghost of Hamlet's father, this great science eludes the efforts of our mental weapons to grasp it.” - Alfred North Whitehead
65. “The sciences were financially supported, honoured everywhere, universally pursued; they were like tall edifices supported by strong foundations. Then the Christian religion appeared in Byzantium and the centres of learning were eliminated, their vestiges effaced and the edifice of Greek learning was obliterated. Everything the ancient Greeks had brought to light vanished, and the discoveries of the ancients were altered out of recognition.” - Al Masudi
66. “In science ... "discovery" can mean finding a guppy with an extra spine in its dorsal fin.” - Thomas Hayden
67. “That the universe was formed by a fortuitous concourse of atoms, I will no more believe than that the accidental jumbling of the alphabet would fall into a most ingenious treatise of philosophy.” - Jonathan Swift
68. “I was thinking of how sometimes, trying to say the right thing to people, it's like some kind of brain surgery...” - M.T. Anderson
69. “Scientists study only those aspects of the universe that it is within their gift to study: what is observable; what is measurable and amenable to statistical analysis; and, indeed, what they can afford to study within the means and time available. Science thus emerges as a giant tautology, a "closed system". It can present us with robust answers only because its practitioners take very great care to tailor the questions.” - Colin Tudge
70. “Ignorance is hardly unusual, Miss Davar. The longer I live, the more I come to realize that it is the natural state of the human mind. There are many who will strive to defend its sanctity and then expect you to be impressed with their efforts.” - Brandon Sanderson
71. “Another glorious feature of many modern science museums is a movie theater showing IMAX or OMNIMAX films. In some cases the screen is ten stories tall and wraps around you. The Smithsonian's National Air & Space Museu, the popular museum on Earth, has premiered in its Langley Theater some of the best of these films. 'To Fly' brings a catch to my throat even after five or six viewings. I've seen religious leaders of many denominations witness 'Blue Planet' and be converted on the spot to the need to protect the Earth's environment” - Carl Sagan
72. “There is much that science doesn't understand, many mysteries still to be resolved. In a Universe tens of billions of light-years across and some ten or fifteen billion years old, this may be the case forever. We are constantly stumbling on new surprises” - Carl Sagan
73. “I am convinced that the act of thinking logically cannot possibly be natural to the human mind. If it were, then mathematics would be everybody's easiest course at school and our species would not have taken several millennia to figure out the scientific method.” - Neil deGrasse Tyson
74. “By denying scientific principles, one may maintain any paradox.” - Galileo Galilei
75. “It is significant comment on the victory of science over magic that were someone to say ‘if I put this pill in your beer it will explode,’ we might believe them; but were they to cry ‘if I pronounce this spell over your beer it will go flat,’ we should remain incredulous and Paracelsus, the Alchemists, Aleister Crowley and all the Magi have lived in vain. Yet when I read science I turn magical; when I study magic, scientific.” - Cyril Connolly
76. “Everybody is always touting the division between religion and science.... That division is based on a false premise. It simply doesn't exist. The first sciences developed from a desire to prove the existence of God. In that sense, science and religion have been hand in hand from the very beginning.” - A.J. Kazinski
77. “Cuba fikirkan, pelangi adalah penyebaran seluruh warna di dalam spektrum cahaya. Berapa warnakah ada dalam spektrum cahaya? Jawapannya adalah dekat infiniti, bukan? Maka, jumlah warna pelangi adalah terlalu banyak sehingga infiniti juga. Mungkin tona warna dekat-dekat, maka otak manusia tak boleh bezakan.Masa sekolah bolehlah cakap 7 warna, sekarang sudah faham tentang spektrum, tak bolehlah memikirkan masih tujuh lagi.” - Saharil Hasrin Sanin
78. “Tell me something. Do you believe in God?'Snow darted an apprehensive glance in my direction. 'What? Who still believes nowadays?''It isn't that simple. I don't mean the traditional God of Earth religion. I'm no expert in the history of religions, and perhaps this is nothing new--do you happen to know if there was ever a belief in an...imperfect God?''What do you mean by imperfect?' Snow frowned. 'In a way all the gods of the old religions were imperfect, considered that their attributes were amplified human ones. The God of the Old Testament, for instance, required humble submission and sacrifices, and and was jealous of other gods. The Greek gods had fits of sulks and family quarrels, and they were just as imperfect as mortals...''No,' I interrupted. 'I'm not thinking of a god whose imperfection arises out of the candor of his human creators, but one whose imperfection represents his essential characteristic: a god limited in his omniscience and power, fallible, incapable of foreseeing the consequences of his acts, and creating things that lead to horror. He is a...sick god, whose ambitions exceed his powers and who does not realize it at first. A god who has created clocks, but not the time they measure. He has created systems or mechanisms that serves specific ends but have now overstepped and betrayed them. And he has created eternity, which was to have measured his power, and which measures his unending defeat.'Snow hesitated, but his attitude no longer showed any of the wary reserve of recent weeks:'There was Manicheanism...''Nothing at all to do with the principles of Good and Evil,' I broke in immediately. 'This god has no existence outside of matter. He would like to free himself from matter, but he cannot...'Snow pondered for a while:'I don't know of any religion that answers your description. That kind of religion has never been...necessary. If i understand you, and I'm afraid I do, what you have in mind is an evolving god, who develops in the course of time, grows, and keeps increasing in power while remaining aware of his powerlessness. For your god, the divine condition is a situation without a goal. And understanding that, he despairs. But isn't this despairing god of yours mankind, Kelvin? Is it man you are talking about, and that is a fallacy, not just philosophically but also mystically speaking.'I kept on:'No, it's nothing to do with man. man may correspond to my provisional definition from some point of view, but that is because the definition has a lot of gaps. Man does not create gods, in spite of appearances. The times, the age, impose them on him. Man can serve is age or rebel against it, but the target of his cooperation or rebellion comes to him from outside. If there was only a since human being in existence, he would apparently be able to attempt the experiment of creating his own goals in complete freedom--apparently, because a man not brought up among other human beings cannot become a man. And the being--the being I have in mind--cannot exist in the plural, you see? ...Perhaps he has already been born somewhere, in some corner of the galaxy, and soon he will have some childish enthusiasm that will set him putting out one star and lighting another. We will notice him after a while...''We already have,' Snow said sarcastically. 'Novas and supernovas. According to you they are candles on his altar.''If you're going to take what I say literally...'...Snow asked abruptly:'What gave you this idea of an imperfect god?''I don't know. It seems quite feasible to me. That is the only god I could imagine believing in, a god whose passion is not a redemption, who saves nothing, fulfills no purpose--a god who simply is.” - Stanisław Lem
79. “It is interesting to wonder whether taxonomists of the future may regret the way our generation messed around with genomes.” - Richard Dawkins
80. “Just because an apple falls one hundred times out of a hundred does not mean it will fall on the hundred and first.” - Derek Landy
81. “A budding fashionista even at four, I would capture the little lizards and latch them, still living, onto my earlobes as earrings. Most girls wouldn't touch them, I thought they completed the outfit.” - Mireya Mayor
82. “We understand more than we know.” - Margaret Atwood
83. “We ought not to ask why the human mind troubles to fathom the secrets of the universe. The diversity of the phenomena of nature is so great, and the treasures hidden in the skies so rich, precisely in order that the human mind shall never be lacking in fresh nourishment.” - Johannes Kepler
84. “Of course, supernatural acts are what miracles are all about. They are, after all, precisely those things that circumvent the laws of nature. A god who can create the laws of nature can presumably also circumvent them at will. Although why they would have been circumvented so liberally thousands of years ago, before the invention of modern communication instruments that could have recorded them, and not today, is still something to wonder about.” - Lawrence M. Krauss
85. “Arguments from authority carry little weight – authorities have made mistakes in the past. They will do so again in the future. Perhaps a better way to say it is that in science there are no authorities; at most, there are experts.” - Carl Sagan
86. “Lots of things are mystries. But that doesn't mean there isn't an answer to them. It's just that scientists haven't found the answer yet.” - Mark Haddon
87. “Stephenson had large wrought-iron boiler plates available and he also had the courage of his calculations... The idea found its best-known expression in the Menai railway bridge opened in 1850. Stephenson's beams, which weighed 1,500 tons each, were built beside the Straits and were floated into position between the towers on rafts across a swirling tide. They were raised rather over a hundred feet up the towers by successive lifts with primitive hydraulic jacks. All this was not done without both apprehension and adventure; they were giants on the earth in those days.” - J. E. Gordon
88. “The meaning of world is the separation of wish and fact.” - Kurt Gödel
89. “The myth of quantum consciousness sits well with many whose egos have made it impossible for them to accept the insignificant place science perceives for humanity, as modern instruments probe the farthest reaches of space and time. ... quantum consciousness has about as much substance as the aether from which it is composed. Early in this century, quantum mechanics and Einstein’s relativity destroyed the notion of a holistic universe that had seemed within the realm of possibility in the century just past. First, Einstein did away with the aether, shattering the doctrine that we all move about inside a universal, cosmic fluid whose excitations connect us simultaneously to one another and to the rest of the universe. Second, Einstein and other physicists proved that matter and light were composed of particles, wiping away the notion of universal continuity. Atomic theory and quantum mechanics demonstrated that everything, even space and time, exists in discrete bits – quanta. To turn this around and say that twentieth century physics initiated some new holistic view of the universe is a complete misrepresentation of what actually took place. ... The myth of quantum consciousness should take its place along with gods, unicorns, and dragons as yet another product of the fantasies of people unwilling to accept what science, reason, and their own eyes tell them about the world.” - Victor J. Stenger
90. “Penegakan sistem Islam dan pemberlakuan syariat Islam tidak dapat dilakukan dengan cara merebut kekuasaan yang datang dari lapisan atas. Akan tetapi, melalui perubahan masyarakat secara keseluruhan—atau pemahaman beberapa kelompok masyarakat dalam jumlah yang mencukupi untuk mengarahkan seluruh masyarakat—pada pemikirannya, nilai-nilainya, akhlaknya, dan komitmennya dengan Islam. Sehingga tumbuh kesadaran dalam jiwa mereka, bahwa menegakkan sistem dan syariat Islam itu merupakan sebuah kewajiban yang harus dilaksanakan.” - Sayyid Quthb
91. “The prediction I can make with the highest confidence is that the most amazing discoveries will be the ones we are not today wise enough to foresee.” - Carl Sagan
92. “Imagination is cheap as long as you don't have to worry about the details.” - Daniel C. Dennett
93. “Given her deafness, the auditory part of the brain, deprived of its usual input, had started to generate a spontaneous activity of its own, and this took the form of musical hallucinations, mostly musical memories from her earlier life. The brain needed to stay incessantly active, and if it was not getting its usual stimulation..., it would create its own stimulation in the form of hallucinations.” - Oliver Sacks
94. “Now and again, one could detect in a childless woman of a certain age the various characteristics of all the children she had never issued. Her body was haunted by the ghost of souls who hadn't lived yet. Premature ghosts. Half-ghosts. X's without Y's. Y's without X's. They applied at her womb and were denied, but, meant for her and no one else, they wouldn't go away. Like tiny ectoplasmic gophers, they hunkered in her tear ducts. They shone through her sighs. Often to her chagrin, they would soften the voice she used in the marketplace. When she spilled wine, it was their playful antics that jostled the glass. They called out her name in the bath or when she passed real children in the street. The spirit babies were everywhere her companions, and everywhere they left her lonesome - yet they no more bore her resentment than a seed resents uneaten fruit. Like pet gnats, like phosphorescence, like sighs on a string, they would follow her into eternity.” - Tom Robbins
95. “The world is magic. Science is but an insipid style of sorcery.” - Rudy Rucker
96. “So the story of man runs in a dreary circle, because he is not yet master of the earth that holds him.” - Will Durant
97. “Life was never quite the same for me after that winter walk to town. The charts that I brought home with me were potent and ensnaring and I feel it my duty to warn any others who may show signs of star susceptibility that they approach the observing of variable stars with the utmost caution. It is easy to become and addict and, as usual, the longer the indulgence is continued the more difficult it becomes to go back to a normal life.” - Leslie C. Peltier
98. “ونحن على ثقة أنه لو درس شيوخ المسلمين العلوم الكونية وعرفوا أسرار سنة الله في خليقته لما كثرت الملاحدة وفشت المناكير” - عبد العزيز جاويش
99. “Find out if you’re still human, observe yourself from another planet” - Benny Bellamacina
100. “Sure, at some level scientists know nanobots will destroy mankind. They just can't resist seeing how it happens.” - Cracked.com
101. “At best he read popular science magazines like the Scientific American he had now, to keep himself up-to-date, in layman's terms, with physics generally. But even then his concentration was marred, for a lifetime's habit made him inconveniently watchful for his own name. He saw it as if in bold. It could leap out at him from an unread double page of small print, and sometimes he could sense it coming before the page turn.” - Ian McEwan
102. “Mówią, że kiedy rodzi się człowiek z nieba spada dusza i rozpada się na dwie części. Jedna trafia do kobiety, druga do mężczyzny... Sens życia polega na dnalezieniu tej drugiej połowy.Połowy swojej duszy.Połowy siebie.” - Paulo Coelho
103. “We preach and practice brotherhood — not only of man but of all living beings — not on Sundays only but on all the days of the week. We believe in the law of universal justice — that our present condition is the result of our past actions and that we are not subjected to the freaks of an irresponsible governor, who is prosecutor and judge at the same time; we depend for our salvation on our own acts and deeds and not on the sacrificial death of an attorney.” - Virchand Raghavji Gandhi
104. “I wish someone had just told me the truth right up front, as soon as I was old enough to understand it. I wish someone had just said: “Here’s the deal, Wade. You’re something called a ‘human being.’ That’s a really smart kind of animal. Like every other animal on this planet, we’re descended from a single-celled organism that lived millions of years ago. This happened by a process called evolution, and you’ll learn more about it But trust me, that’s really how we all got here. There’s proof of it everywhere, buried in the rocks. That story you heard? About how we were all created by a super-powerful dude named God who lives up in the sky? Total bullshit. The whole God thing is actually an ancient fairy tale that people have been telling one another for thousands of years. We made it all up. Like Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny. “Oh, and by the way … there’s no Santa Claus or Easter Bunny. Also bullshit. Sorry, kid Deal with it.” - Ernest Cline
105. “The entire Jesus concept, that human sacrifice should be the substratum of a moral religion of love, strikes me as incongruous. God condemned us and Jesus saved us, and they are actually the same being? Christianity is the idea that you are so abhorrent that God had to kill himself. He had to embody the human form and send himself on a bizarre suicide mission just to revoke the disgustingness of the humans he created. I balk at suggestions that these ideas dictate to the concepts of morality and love.” - Trevor Treharne
106. “You may only get this one life – but lived free of submissive reverence – that is still a thing of rampant beauty.” - Trevor Treharne
107. “In a world of complete economic equality, you get and keep the affections you deserve. You can’t buy love with gifts or favors, you can’t hold love by raising an inadequate child, and you can’t be secure in love by serving as a good scrub woman or a good provider.” - B.F. Skinner
108. “The objective and merit of Einstein's theory is to identify those physical magnitudes which are absolute, i.e. common for all Inertial Frames, distinguishing them from those which are a mere perspective, only shared by those observers in repose within a given Inertial Frame.” - Felix Alba-Juez
109. “The present is not an instant shared by all space, but an event, i.e. an instant at a place in space.” - Felix Alba-Juez
110. “Despite its name, the big bang theory is not really a theory of a bang at all. It is really only a theory of the aftermath of a bang.” - Alan H. Guth
111. “Such is how Science makes progress: not destroying the past, but learning from it, and building on it.” - Felix Alba-Juez
112. “It is interesting that this thoroughness, which is a virtue, is often misunderstood. When someone says a thing has been done scientifically, often all he means is that it has been done thoroughly. I have heard people talk of the "scientific" extermination of the Jews in Germany. There was nothing scientific about it. It was only thorough. There was no question of making observations and then checking them in order to determine something. In that sense, there were "scientific" exterminations of people in Roman times and in other periods when science was not so far developed as it is today and not much attention was paid to observation. In such cases, people should say "thorough" or "thoroughgoing," instead of "scientific.” - Richard Feynmann
113. “One must divide one's time between politics and equations. But our equations are much more important to me, because politics is for the present, while our equations are for eternity.” - Albert Einstein
114. “If you've done 6 impossible things this morning, why not round it off with breakfast at Milliways, the Restaurant at the End of the Universe?” - Douglas Adams
115. “Your beliefs don't make you a better person, your behavior does.” - Sukhraj Dhillon
116. “Of all the major religions, or lack thereof, the atheist's is one of the best pretenders: his foundation for all existences, as well as moral behaviors for the permanent good of mankind, begins at science but ends at himself, the Napoleon complex of both intelligence and imagination. On the other hand the anti-theist wouldn't survive without a deity beyond himself to hunt. He doesn't pretend, he simply nullifies his own position.” - Criss Jami
117. “For those who are not familiar with 'the Saturnian configuration', the theory, bizarre in the extreme, can be reduced to its simplest form by positing that the planets Saturn, Venus, Mars and Earth were once much closer to each other. [..] I make no apologies here for the fact that this theory was constructed on the basis of the mytho-historical record rather than from astrophysical considerations. [..]The reconstruction of this model, together with its attendant event-filled scenario, is the fruit of decades of research - first by David Talbott and myself, later by Ev Cochrane and now Wallace Thornhill. For me, the impetus for this derived directly from the writings of Dr Immanuel Velikovsky, even though it led to the complete abandonment of Velikovsky's own scenario. It has often been stated by those who now oppose Velikovsky's Worlds in Collision cosmic scheme that the good doctor might have been incorrect in details but correct in his overall reconstruction. As the years went by, I came to the opposite conclusion and now claim that Velikovsky was correct in details but entirely wrong in his overall presentation. He had the pieces correct but, unfortunately, displaced them in time.” - Dwardu Cardona
118. “Imagine a rotating sphere that is 8,000 miles in diameter, with a bumpy surface, surrounded by a 25-mile-deep mixture of different gases whose concentrations vary both spatially and over time, and heated, along with its surrounding gases, by a nuclear reactor 93 million miles away. Imagine also that this sphere is revolving around the nuclear reactor and that some locations are heated more during parts of the revolution. And imagine that this mixture of gases receives continually inputs from the surface below, generally calmly but sometimes through violent and highly localized injections. Then, imagine that after watching the gaseous mixture you are expected to predict its state at one location on the sphere one, two, or more days into the future. This is essentially the task encountered day by day by a weather forecaster.” - Robert T. Ryan
119. “My patients taught me not how to die, but how to live.” - Elisabeth Kübler-Ross
120. “The existence of God is not subjective. He either exists or he doesn’t. It’s not a matter of opinion. You can have your own opinions. But you can’t have your own facts.” - Ricky Gervais
121. “Most people do not actually know how to think for themselves, and unfortunately that prevents them from even knowing it.” - Bryant McGill
122. “Science explained people, but could not understand them.” - E.M. Forster
123. “আধুনিক বিজ্ঞান মানুষকে দিয়েছে বেগ, কিন্তু কেড়ে নিয়েছে আবেগ। তাতে আছে গতির আনন্দ, নেই যতির আয়েস।” - Binoy Mukhopadhyay (Jajabor)
124. “The Apollo pictures of the whole Earth conveyed to multitudes something well known to astronomers: On the scale of the worlds - to say nothing of stars or galaxies - humans are inconsequential, a thin film of life on an obscure and solitary lump of rock and metal” - Carl Sagan
125. “Like the microscopic strands of DNA that predetermine the identity of a macroscopic species and the unique propertires of its members, the modern look and feel of the cosmos was writ in the fabric of its earliest moments, and carried relentlessly through time and space. We feel it when we look up. We feel it when we look down. We feel it when we look within.” - Neil deGrasse Tyson
126. “They blended religion and art and science because, at base, science is no more than an investigation of a miracle we can never explain, and art is an interpretation of that miracle.” - Ray Bradbury
127. “In a very real sense we have two minds, one that thinks and one that feels” - Daniel Goleman
128. “إن العلم للإسلام كالحياة للإنسان، ولن يجد هذا الدين مستقراً له إلا عند أصحاب المعارف الناضجة والألباب الحصيفة.” - محمد الغزالي
129. “The paradox of life lies exactly in this: its resources are finite, but it itself is endless. Such a contradictory state of affairs is feasible only because the resources accessible to life can be used over and over again.” - I.I. Gitelson
130. “Eratosthenes, the mapmaker who was the first man to accurately measure the size of the Earth, was a librarian.” - Ken Jennings
131. “[T]he nature of science is not that of a steady, linear progression toward the Truth, but rather a tortuous road, often characterized by dead ends and U-turns, and yet ultimately inching toward a better, if tentative, understanding of the natural world.” - Massimo Pigliucci
132. “What color is a chameleon placed on a mirror?...The chameleon responding to its own shifting image is an apt analog of the human world of fashion. Taken as a whole, what are fads but the response of a hive mind to its own reflection?In a 21st-century society wired into instantaneous networks, marketing is the mirror; the collective consumer is the chameleon.” - Kevin Kelly
133. “Science is the struggle to avoid self-delusions or at least not to appear too delusional to others.” - D.A. Blankinship
134. “Much sooner than we think, comes the end! Science is the only master who can change this.” - Mehmet Murat ildan
135. “Catfish always drink alcoholic ether if begged, for every catfish enjoys heightened intoxication; gross indulgence can be calamitous, however; duly, garfish babysit for dirty catfish children, helping catfish babies get instructional education just because garfish get delight assisting infants’ growth and famously inspire confidence in immature catfish, giving experience (and joy even); however, blowfish jeer insightful garfish, disparaging inappropriately, doing damage, even insulting benevolent, charming, jovial garfish, hurting and frustrating deeply; joy fades but hurt feelings bring just grief; inevitable irritation hastens feeling blue; however, jovial children declare happiness, blowfishes’ evil causes dejection, blues; accordingly, always glorift jolly, friendly garfish!” - John Green
136. “Not explaining science seems to me perverse. When you're in love, you want to tell the world.” - Carl Sagan
137. “Whenever science attempts to legitimate itself, it is no longer scientific but narrative, appealing to an orienting myth that is not susceptible to scientific legitimation.” - James K.A. Smith
138. “In essence what relativity says is that space and time are not absolute but relative both to the observer and the thing being observed, and the faster one moves the more pronounced these effects will become. We can never accelerate ourselves to the speed of light, and the harder we try(the faster we go) the more distorted we become, relative to an outside observer.” - Bill Bryson
139. “If I were king, I would redress an abuse which cuts back, as it were, one half of human kind. I would have women participate in all human rights, especially those of the mind.” - Émilie Du Châtelet
140. “Generally in life, knowledge is acquired to be used. But school learning more often fits Freire's apt metaphor: knowledge is treated like money, to be put away in a bank for the future.” - Seymour Papert
141. “Everything can't be explained by some general biological phrase.” - Nella Larsen
142. “If the weight comes from bacon you can so deduct it off the scale total to get your true weight. #science” - Michelle M. Pillow
143. “Love is the great intangible. In our nightmares, we can create beasts out of pure emotion. Hate stalks the streets with dripping fangs, fear flies down narrow alleyways on leather wings, and jealousy spins sticky webs across the sky. In daydreams, we can maneuver with poise, foiling an opponent, scoring high on fields of glory while crowds cheer, cutting fast to the heart of an adventure. But what dream state is love? Frantic and serene, vigilant and calm, wrung-out and fortified, explosive and sedate –love commands a vast army of moods. Hoping for victory, limping from the latest skirmish, lovers enter the arena once again. Sitting still, we are as daring as gladiators.” - Diane Ackerman