Science Quotes
The first principle is that you must not fool yourself - and you are the easiest person to fool.
— Richard Feynman, Caltech commencement address, 1974
HOMEOPATHY: turning water into money since 1810
— Dr Aust
...those who have never entered upon scientific pursuits know not a tithe of the poetry by which they are surrounded.
— Herbert Spencer
An expert is a man who has made all the mistakes that can be made in a very narrow field.
— Niels Bohr
Once you get a B.S., you think you know everything. Once you get an M.S., you realize you know nothing. Once you get a Ph.D., you realize no one knows anything!
— unknown
The fact that some geniuses were laughed at does not imply that all who are laughed at are geniuses. They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown.
— Carl Sagan.
Progress in science comes when experiments contradict theory.
— Richard Feynman
It's so easy to become mesmerized by the immediacy of a result that you don't question its validity.
— Naomi Karten
You can know the name of a bird in all the languages of the world, but when you're finished, you'll know absolutely nothing whatever about the bird... So let's look at the bird and see what it's doing -- that's what counts. I learned very early the difference between knowing the name of something and knowing something.
— Richard Feynman
The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it.
— Flannery O'Connor
When one is postulating correlations or causations extant in reality, one should always remember that the human brain is mainly a pattern recognition engine. And it is such a persistent pattern recognition engine that it often perceives patterns where none exist.
— Jeff Walther
In science we kill our hypothesis instead of each other.
— Jonathan Rauch paraphrasing Karl Popper.
The tree of research must be fed from time to time with the blood of bean-counters, for it is its natural manure.
— Alan Kay
A foolish faith in authority is the greatest enemy of truth.
— Einstein
The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one. The happiness of credulity is a cheap and dangerous quality.
— George Bernard Shaw
To assert that the earth revolves around the sun is as erroneous to claim that Jesus was not born of a virgin”.
— Cardinal Belleramine
Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts.
— Richard Feynman
you should not fool the laymen when you're talking as a scientist. . . . I'm talking about a specific, extra type of integrity that is not lying, but bending over backwards to show how you're maybe wrong, [an integrity] that you ought to have when acting as a scientist. And this is our responsibility as scientists, certainly to other scientists, and I think to laymen.
— Richard Feynman, Caltech commencement address, 1974
Science reserves the highest reward for those of you who disprove our most cherished beliefs. At any moment someone from any walk of life could come forward and be responsible for a complete revision of our view of everything.
— Ann Druyan