Science Quotes - Page 9

There is nothing so absurd that it cannot be believed as truth if repeated often enough.

Among the authorities it is generally agreed that the Earth is at rest in the middle of the universe, and they regard it as inconceivable and even ridiculous to hold the opposite opinion. However, if we consider it more closely the question will be seen to be still unsettled, and so decidedly not to be despised. For every apparent change in respect of position is due to motion of the object observed, or of the observer, or indeed to an unequal change of both.

Scientists tend to resist interdisciplinary inquiries into their own territory. In many instances, such parochialism is founded on the fear that intrusion from other disciplines would compete unfairly for limited financial resources and thus diminish their own opportunity for research.

The Analytical Engine has no pretensions whatever to originate anything. It can do whatever we know how to order it to perform. It can follow analysis; but it has no power of anticipating any analytical relations or truths. Its province is to assist us to making available what we are already acquainted with.

Today, the theory of evolution is an accepted fact for everyone but a fundamentalist minority, whose objections are based not on reasoning but on doctrinaire adherence to religious principles.

Science fiction readers probably have the gene for novelty, and seem to enjoy a cascade of invention as much as a writer enjoys providing one.

But how to raise a sum in the different States has been my greatest difficulty.

In science there is only physics; all the rest is stamp collecting.

I believe in evidence. I believe in observation, measurement, and reasoning, confirmed by independent observers. I'll believe anything, no matter how wild and ridiculous, if there is evidence for it. The wilder and more ridiculous something is, however, the firmer and more solid the evidence will have to be.

I wish, my dear Kepler, that we could have a good laugh together at the extraordinary stupidity of the mob. What do you think of the foremost philosophers of this University? In spite of my oft-repeated efforts and invitations, they have refused, with the obstinacy of a glutted adder, to look at the planets or the Moon or my glass [telescope].

The truth of a theory can never be proven, for one never knows if future experience will contradict its conclusions.

It will free man from the remaining chains, the chains of gravity which still tie him to this planet.

Ask an impertinent question and you are on the way to the pertinent answer.

There must be no barriers for freedom of inquiry... There is no place for dogma in science. The scientist is free, and must be free to ask any question, to doubt any assertion, to seek for any evidence, to correct any errors.

Every good mathematician is at least half a philosopher, and every good philosopher is at least half a mathematician.

A year spent in artificial intelligence is enough to make one believe in God.

Traditional scientific method has always been at the very best, 20 - 20 hindsight. It's good for seeing where you've been. It's good for testing the truth of what you think you know, but it can't tell you where you ought to go.

Some blessings have been ours in the past, and these may be repeated or even multiplied.

In nature we never see anything isolated, but everything in connection with something else which is before it, beside it, under it and over it.

I'm sure the universe is full of intelligent life. It's just been too intelligent to come here.

All other things have a portion of everything, but Mind is infinite and self-ruled, and is mixed with nothing but is all alone by itself.

To divide a cube into two other cubes, a fourth power, or in general any power whatever into two powers of the same denomination above the second is impossible, and I have assuredly found an admirable proof of this, but the margin is too narrow to contain it.

All models are wrong, but some are useful.

I have been trying to point out that in our lives chance may have an astonishing influence and, if I may offer advice to the young laboratory worker, it would be this-never neglect an extraordinary appearance or happening. It may be-usually is, in fact-a false alarm that leads to nothing, but may on the other hand be the clue provided by fate to lead you to some important advance.

Each metal has a certain power, which is different from metal to metal, of setting the electric fluid in motion.