Famous Quotes & Sayings

Karl Popper

But some of these theories are so bold that they can clash with reality: they are the testable theories of science. And when they clash, then we know that there is a reality; something that can inform us that our ideas are mistaken.

Karl Popper

It is not intuitive ease I am after, but rather a point of view which is sufficiently definite to clear up some difficulties, and to be criticized in rational terms. (Bohr's complementarity cannot be so criticized, I fear; it can only be accepted or denounced - perhaps as being ad hoc, or as being irrational, or as being hopelessly vague.)

Karl Popper

The history of science is everywhere speculative. It is a marvelous hiatory. It makes you proud to be a human being.

Karl Popper

All we can do is search for the falsity content in our best theory.

Karl Popper

Thus science must begin with myths, and with the criticism of myths; neither with the collection of observations, nor with the invention of experiments, but with the critical discussion of myths, and of magical techniques and practices.

Karl Popper

The difference between the amoeba and Einstein is that, although both make use of the method of trial and error elimination, the amoeba dislikes erring while Einstein is intrigued by it.

Karl Popper

Science does not rest upon solid bedrock. The bold structure of its theories rises, as it were, above a swamp. It is like a building erected on piles. The piles are driven down from above into the swamp, but not down to any natural or 'given' base; and when we cease our attempts to drive our piles into a deeper layer, it is not because we have reached firm ground. We simply stop when we are satisfied that they are firm enough to carry the structure, at least for the time being.

Karl Popper

Science is perhaps the only human activity in which errors are systematically criticized and, in time, corrected.

John Dryden

Who thinks all Science, as all Virtue, vain; Who counts Geometry and numbers Toys...

John Maynard Smith

Scientific theories tell us what is possible; myths tell us what is desirable. Both are needed to guide proper action.

John Lahr

Accustomed to the veneer of noise, to the shibboleths of promotion, public relations, and market research, society is suspicious of those who value silence.

John Banville

No two things the same, the equals sign a scandal.

George Johnson

Trying to capture the physicists' precise mathematical description of the quantum world with our crude words and mental images is like playing Chopin with a boxing glove on one hand and a catcher's mitt on the other.

Joseph Lister

The frequency of disastrous consequences in compound fracture, contrasted with the complete immunity from danger to life or limb in simple fracture, is one of the most striking as well as melancholy facts in surgical practice.

Joseph Lister

If we had nothing but pecuniary rewards and worldly honours to look to, our profession would not be one to be desired. But in its practice you will find it to be attended with peculiar privileges, second to none in intense interest and pure pleasures. It is our proud office to tend the fleshly tabernacle of the immortal spirit, and our path, rightly followed, will be guided by unfettered truth and love unfeigned. In the pursuit of this noble and holy calling I wish you all God-speed.

Joseph Butler

The only distinct meaning of the word "natural" is stated, fixed, or settled; since what is natural as much requires and presupposes an intelligent agent to render it so, i.e. to effect it continually or at stated times, as what is supernatural or miraculous does to effect it for once.

Leland Stanford

Many writers upon the science of political economy have declared that it is the duty of a nation first to encourage the creation of wealth; and second, to direct and control its distribution. All such theories are delusive.

John D. Barrow

What cannot be known is more revealing than what can.

Louise Slaughter

As a microbiologist, I am particularly concerned with Mr. Bush's blatant disregard for science.

Lord Kelvin

I can never satisfy myself until I can make a mechanical model of a thing. If I can make a mechanical model, I can understand it. As long as I cannot make a mechanical model all the way through I cannot understand.

Lord Kelvin

There is nothing in science which teaches the origin of anything at all.

Lord Kelvin

If you cannot measure it, then it is not science.

Lord Kelvin

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

Lord Kelvin

Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible.

Loren Eiseley

Certainly science has moved forward. But when science progresses, it often opens vaster mysteries to our gaze. Moreover, science frequently discovers that it must abandon or modify what it once believed. Sometimes it ends by accepting what it has previously scorned.

Malcolm Forbes

Scientists ofttimes have the greatest faith in a higher power. The more they dig into, establish facts and figures, the more they marvel about the mystery of it all.

Mahatma Gandhi

There are innumerable definitions of God because his manifestations are innumerable.

Mahatma Gandhi

We have no evidence whatsoever that the soul perishes with the body.

Joseph Needham

But Chinese civilization has the overpowering beauty of the wholly other, and only the wholly other can inspire the deepest love and the profoundest desire to learn.

Joseph Parker

When science advances religion goes along with it; science builds the altar at which religion prays.

Joseph Priestley

But it is not given to every electrician to die in so glorious a manner as the justly envied Richmann.

Josh Billings

[Science is] the literature of truth.

Otto von Bismarck

Politics is no exact science.