Quotes about science

"Science is intimately integrated with the whole social structure and cultural tradition. They mutually support one other -- only in certain types of society can science flourish, and conversely without a continuous and healthy development and application of science such a society cannot function properly."

Parsons, Talcott on science   

"Vanity of science. Knowledge of physical science will not console me for ignorance of morality in time of affliction, but knowledge of morality will always console me for ignorance of physical science."

Pascal, Blaise on science   

"There does not exist a category of science to which one can give the name applied science. There are science and the applications of science, bound together as the fruit of the tree which bears it."

Pasteur, Louis on science   

"There are no such things as applied sciences, only applications of science."

Pasteur, Louis on science   

"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."

Pirsig, Robert M. on science   

"If the study of all these sciences which we have enumerated, should ever bring us to their mutual association and relationship, and teach us the nature of the ties which bind them together, I believe that the diligent treatment of them will forward the objects which we have in view, and that the labor, which otherwise would be fruitless, will be well bestowed."

Plato on science   

"I have hardly ever known a mathematician who was capable of reasoning."

Plato on science   

"Science is nothing but perception."

Plato on science
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"Nevertheless, in order to imbue civilization with sound principles and enliven it with the spirit of the gospel, it is not enough to be illumined with the gift of faith and enkindled with the desire of forwarding a good cause. For this end it is necessary to take an active part in the various organizations and influence them from within. And since our present age is one of outstanding scientific and technical progress and excellence, one will not be able to enter these organizations and work effectively from within unless he is scientifically competent, technically capable and skilled in the practice of his own profession."

Pope John XXIII on science   

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

Pope, Alexander on science   

"Science may be described as the art of systematic over-simplification."

Popper, Karl on science   

"Science is not about control. It is about cultivating a perpetual sense of wonder in the face of something that forever grows one step richer and subtle than our latest theory about it. It is about reverence, not mastery."

Powers, Richard on science   

"Science is Christian, not when it condemns itself to the letter of things, but when, in the infinitely little, it discovers as many mysteries and as much depth and power as in the infinitely great."

Quinet, Edgar on science   

"It is not easy to imagine how little interested a scientist usually is in the work of any other, with the possible exception of the teacher who backs him or the student who honors him."

Rostand, Jean on science   

"It is sometimes important for science to know how to forget the things she is surest of."

Rostand, Jean on science   

"A body of work such as Pasteur's is inconceivable in our time: no man would be given a chance to create a whole science. Nowadays a path is scarcely opened up when the crowd begins to pour in."

Rostand, Jean on science   

"Nothing leads the scientist so astray as a premature truth."

Rostand, Jean on science   

"When a scientist is ahead of his times, it is often through misunderstanding of current, rather than intuition of future truth. In science there is never any error so gross that it won't one day, from some perspective, appear prophetic."

Rostand, Jean on science   

"Science is for those who learn, poetry is for those who know."

Roux, Joseph on science
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"The work of science is to substitute facts for appearances, and demonstrations for impressions."

Ruskin, John on science   

"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."

Russell, Bertrand on science   

"Science is what you know, philosophy what you don't know."

Russell, Bertrand on science   

"In science men have discovered an activity of the very highest value in which they are no longer, as in art, dependent for progress upon the appearance of continually greater genius, for in science the successors stand upon the shoulders of their predecessors; where one man of supreme genius has invented a method, a thousand lesser men can apply it."

Russell, Bertrand on science   

"Can a society in which thought and technique are scientific persist for a long period, as, for example, ancient Egypt persisted, or does it necessarily contain within itself forces which must bring either decay or explosion?"

Russell, Bertrand on science   

"Science is nothing but developed perception, interpreted intent, common sense rounded out and minutely articulated."

Santayana, George on science   

"Science becomes dangerous only when it imagines that it has reached its goal."

Shaw, George Bernard on science   

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"Science is always wrong, it never solves a problem without creating ten more."

Shaw, George Bernard on science   

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

Smith, Adam on science   

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"Science is organized knowledge."

Spencer, Herbert on science
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"He had been eight years upon a project for extracting sunbeams out of cucumbers, which were to be put into vials hermetically sealed, and let out to warm the air in raw, inclement summers."

Swift, Jonathan on science   

"The science of today is the technology of tomorrow."

Teller, Edward on science
4 fans of this quote   

"If we knew all the laws of Nature, we should need only one fact, or the description of one actual phenomenon, to infer all the particular results at that point. Now we know only a few laws, and our result is vitiated, not, of course, by any confusion or irregularity in Nature, but by our ignorance of essential elements in the calculation. Our notions of law and harmony are commonly confined to those instances which we detect; but the harmony which results from a far greater number of seemingly conflicting, but really concurring, laws, which we have not detected, is still more wonderful. The particular laws are as our points of view, as, to the traveler, a mountain outline varies with every step, and it has an infinite number of profiles, though absolutely but one form. Even when cleft or bored through it is not comprehended in its entireness."

Thoreau, Henry David on science   

"True science investigates and brings to human perception such truths and such knowledge as the people of a given time and society consider most important. Art transmits these truths from the region of perception to the region of emotion."

Tolstoy, Count Leo on science   

"Scientists have odious manners, except when you prop up their theory; then you can borrow money of them."

Twain, Mark on science   

"Science is a cemetery of dead ideas."

Unamuno, Miguel De on science   

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"Isn't it marvelous how those scientists know the names of all those stars?"

Unknown, Source on science   

"Science means simply the aggregate of all the recipes that are always successful. All the rest is literature."

Valery, Paul on science   

"Science is feasible when the variables are few and can be enumerated; when their combinations are distinct and clear. We are tending toward the condition of science and aspiring to do it. The artist works out his own formulas; the interest of science lies in the art of making science."

Valery, Paul on science   

"If politicians and scientists were lazier, how much happier we should all be."

Waugh, Evelyn on science   

"To us, men of the West, a very strange thing happened at the turn of the century; without noticing it, we lost science, or at least the thing that had been called by that name for the last four centuries. What we now have in place of it is something different, radically different, and we don't know what it is. Nobody knows what it is."

Weil, Simone on science