Aug 6, 2011
MIRCE Science related quotes
Category: General
Posted by: daneswood
Archived Quotes
- "Scientists are explorers. Philosophers are tourists."
- “We are stuck with technology when what we really want is just stuff that works.”
- “If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it?”
- “We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light.”
- “Nature is full of infinite causes that have never occurred in experience.”
- "Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.!
- “The scientists of today think deeply instead of clearly. One must be sane to think clearly, but one can think deeply and be quite insane”
- “It is of great advantage to the student of any subject to read the original memoirs on that subject, for science is always most completely assimilated when it is in the nascent state...”
- "The airplane stays up because it doesn't have the time to fall."
- "I can calculate the motion of heavenly bodies, but not the madness of people."
- "A designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away."
- "Statistical laws are not necessarily used as a result of our ignorance. Statistical laws can reflect how things really are. There are matters that can only be treated statistically.”
- “Thoroughly conscious ignorance is the prelude to every real advance in science.”
- “There is something that is much more scarce, something finer far, something rarer than ability. It is the ability to recognise ability.”“A ship in harbour is safe, but that is not what ships are built for."
- "Every now and then a man's mind is stretched by a new idea or sensation, and never shrinks back to its former dimensions." “All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered. The point is to discover them.”
- "There is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things."
- “Physical concepts are free creations of the human mind, and are not, however it may seem, uniquely determined by the external world. “
- "The light in the world comes principally from two sources -- the sun, and the student's lamp. "
- “Creating a new theory is not like destroying an old barn and erecting a skyscraper in its place. It is rather like climbing a mountain, gaining new and wider views, discovering unexpected connections between our starting point and its rich environment. But the point from which we started out still exists and can be seen, although it appears smaller and forms a tiny part of our broad view gained by the mastery of the obstacles on our adventurous way up”
- "I was taught that the way of progress is neither swift nor easy."
- "A man may imagine things that are false, but he can only understand things that are true, for if the things be false, the apprehension of them is not understanding."
- "Modest scientist approach science as craftsman with models they are acquainted with, they do not see objects outside the field they are interested in, they do not look around, very often they do not even recognise obvious close relationships that exist among them, they really do not think as scientists should: for many of them one can say that they do not think at all for themselves, and rely upon other scientists’ thought.
- "Great scientist get inspirations from one or two essential observations that have impressed them very much and that generated an idea in their mind and they had to think about their observations very long and thoroughly, and then they would come up with a solution, at least as hypothetical one … That was the procedure whereby many of the greatest theories were developed. These are the real processes of scientific creation.
- "The processes of creation are inspired by imagination. The imagination is a process that generates a picture, an action, a law,.. Imagination is really essential for real scientists just as it is essential for the best artists".
- "The first principle is that you must not fool yourself and you are the easiest person to fool."
- "Just a s we outgrow a pair of trousers, we outgrow acquaintances, libraries, principles, etc., at times before they're worn out and at times -- and this is the worst of all -- before we have new ones"
- "Every time man makes a new experiment, he always learns more. He cannot learn less".
"...science is the knowledge of consequences, and dependence of one fact upon another... " - "I shall conduct the reader over the road that I have myselfliravelled, rather a rough and winding road, because otherwise I cannot hope that he will take much interest in the result at the end of the journey. The conclusion I shall arrive at is that the field equations of gravitation which I have championed hitherto still need a slight modification.
- "Statistical data cannot be improved by doing better statistics."
- “If your theory is found to be against the second law of thermodynamics, I give you no hope; there is nothing for it but to collapse in deepest humiliation”
- "Nature understands no jesting. She is always true, always serious, always severe. She is always right, and the errors are always those of man.
- "We used to think that if we knew one, we knew two, because one and one are two. We are finding that we must learn a great deal more about 'and'.
- “If you watch a glacier from a distance, and see the big rocks falling into sea, and the way the ice moves, and so forth, it is not really essential to remember that it is made out of little hexagonal ice crystals. Yet if understood well enough, the motion of the glacier is in fact a consequence of the character of the hexagonal ice crystals. But, it takes a quite a while to understand all the behaviour of the glacier (in fact nobody knows enough about ice yet, no matter how much they’ve studied the crystal). However, the hope is that if we do understand the ice crystal we shall ultimately understand the glacier.”
- “One must never lose faith in the belief that science will in the end win out.”
- "It is impossible to begin to learn that which one thinks one already knows"
- "The theory of probability as mathematical discipline can and should be developed from axioms in exactly the same way as Geometry and Algebra”.
- “I believe in intuition and inspiration. Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited, whereas imagination embraces the entire world, stimulating progress, giving birth to evolution. It is, strictly speaking, a real factor in scientific research.”
- However, all scientific statements and laws have one characteristic in common: they are “true or false” (adequate or inadequate). Roughly speaking, our reaction to them is “yes” or “no.” The scientific way of thinking has a further characteristic. The concepts which it uses to build up its coherent systems are not expressing emotions. For the scientist, there is only “being,” but no wishing, no valuing, no good, no evil; no goal. As long as we remain within the realm of science proper, we can never meet with a sentence of the type: “Thou shalt not lie.” There is something like a Puritan's restraint in the scientist who seeks truth: he keeps away from everything voluntaristic or emotional."
- "Education would be so much more effective if its purpose were to ensure that by the time they leave school every boy and girl should know how much they don't know, and be imbued with a lifelong desire to know it."
- “To think is easy. To act is hard. But the hardest thing in the world is to act in accordance with your thinking.”
- “If things are under control you are not fast enough”
- “What we observe is not nature herself, but nature exposed to our method of questioning."
- “Airlines do not spend millions on aircraft to mak e roost for pigeons on vertical fin, fouling the logo”
- “Our greatest weakness lies in giving. The most certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time."
- “When one looks back over the development of physics, one sees that it can be pictured as a rather steady development with many small steps and superposed on that a number of big jumps. These big jumps usually consist in overcoming a prejudice...And then a physicist has to replace this prejudice by something more precise, and leading to some entirely new conception of nature.”
- “No great thing is created suddenly"