Science Quotes - Page 259

I quite enjoy science fiction.

It is not a simple life to be a single cell, although I have no right to say so, having been a single cell so long ago myself that I have no memory at all of that stage of my life.

We have dominated and overruled nature, and from now on the earth is ours, a kitchen garden until we learn to make our own chlorophyll and float it out in the sun inside plastic mebranes. We will build Scarsdale on Mount Everest.

We are at our human finest, dancing with our minds, when there are more choices than two. Sometimes there are ten, even twenty different ways to go, all but one bound to be wrong, and the richness of the selection in such situations can lift us onto totally new ground.

It is not so bad being ignorant if you are totally ignorant; the hard thing is knowing in some detail the reality of ignorance.

Montaigne simply turns his mind loose and writes whatever he feels like writing. Mostly, he wants to say that reason is not a special, unique gift of human beings, marking us off from the rest of nature.

Chemical waste products are the droppings of science.

'What's the use of their having names the Gnat said, 'if they won't answer to them?' 'No use to them,' said Alice; 'but it's useful to the people who name them, I suppose. If not, why do things have names at all?' 'I can't say,' the Gnat replied.

Conscience, like a child, is soon lulled to sleep.

Nearly every understanding is gained by a painful struggle in which belief and unbelief are dramatically interwoven.

Perspective is a most subtle discovery in mathematical studies, for by means of lines it causes to appear distant that which is near, and large that which is small.

I've always tried to vote my conscience.

Theorists tend to peak at an early age; the creative juices tend to gush very early and start drying up past the age of fifteen-or so it seems. They need to know just enough; when they're young they haven't accumulated the intellectual baggage.

The real goal of physics is to come up with an equation that could explain the universe but still be small enough to fit on a T-shirt

I have indeed lived and worked to my taste either in art or science. What more could a man desire? Knowledge has always been my goal. There is much that I shall leave behind undone...but something at least I was privileged to leave for the world to use, if it so intends...As the Latin poet said I will leave the table of the living like a guest who has eaten his fill. Yes, if I had another life to spend, I certainly would not waste it. But that cannot be, so why complain?

Religion reveals the meaning of life, and science only applies this meaning to the course of circumstances.

"Genius is just enduring patience," said Buffon. This is far from complete. Genius is impatience in ideas and patience with the facts: a lively imagination and a calm judgment, rather like a liquid boiling in a cup that remains cold.

What are we doing down here? We prepare the blossoms of tomorrow. We all manure future humanity.

Truth is different from error in two respects: it is a little harder to prove and more difficult to admit.

Dieu, c'est le voile mystérieux sous lequel nous cachons notre ignorance de la cause première. God is the mysterious veil under which we hide our ignorance of the cause.

Science fiction is an extension of science.

You can pay attention to the fact, in which case you'll probably become a mathematician, or you can ignore it, in which case you'll probably become a physicist.

Those who do good science do so because they choose problems that are suited to them.

Of course it was always a friendly debate though sometimes I got too loud.

I feel that one should employ methods that reflect the physics of the problem at hand rather than the methods one happens to know.