20th-century Scientist Quotes

To build and strengthen new connections, the brain needs the challenge of fresh and unusual stimuli..... There's a lot of evidence to suggest that repetition is bad for brain health, and novelty is good.

The peculiar fascination of the brain lies in the fact that there is probably no other object of scientific enquiry about which we know at once so much and yet understand so little.

Gerd Sommerhoff

History, human or geological, represents our hypothesis, couched in terms of past events, devised to explain our present-day observations.

M. King Hubbert

A group that was somewhat connected with general systems theory is usually associated with the term, the systems approach. They were located originally at the University of Pennsylvania. They later went to Case Western Reserve University and then back to the University of Pennsylvania. Their founding philosopher was E. A. Singer, Jr. One of Singer's students was C. West Churchman, and Churchman's first student was Russell Ackoff.

Stuart A. Umpleby

Most people have no idea how good their body is designed to feel.

There are many reasons, some of them so deep-seated emotionally as to be very difficult of expression. Possibly the simplest explanation is that we started along this road … and I cannot stop until I have won.

Jeannette Piccard

Many problems that challenge us today can be traced back to a profound tension between what is good and desirable for society as a whole and what is good and desirable for an individual. That conflict can be found in global problems such as climate change, pollution, resource depletion, poverty, hunger, and overpopulation.

Whether we like it or not, the ultimate goal of every science is to become trivial, to become a well-controlled apparatus for the solution of schoolbook exercises or for practical application in the construction of engines.

The sustainability revolution will be organic. It will arise from the visions, insights, experiments and actions of billions of people. The burden of making it happen is not on the shoulders of any one person or group. No one will get the credit, but everyone can contribute.

Donella Meadows

Any universe that could have preceded consciousness only existed in a probability state.

Virtually all native cultures that have survived without fouling their nests have acknowledged that nature knows best, and have had the humility to ask the bears and wolves and ravens and redwoods for guidance.

Technology can relieve the symptoms of a problem without affecting the underlying causes. Faith in technology as the ultimate solution to all problems can thus divert our attention from the most fundamental problem — the problem of growth in a finite system — and prevent us from taking effective action to solve it.

Extending out from the chaotic terrain... are some extraordinary channels, which are also found in a number of other localities on the planet. It is hard to look at these channels without considering the possibility that they were cut by flowing water.

Bruce C. Murray

Sir, please believe me, it's the first time this has ever happened. Have another try, don't get upset. You know our Theorems are GUARANTEED.

Jean-Pierre Petit

Nature is a deep reality and whether we understand it or not it is true and elemental.

Louise de Kiriline Lawrence

Everything in the universe ages, including the universe.

Leonard Hayflick

I do not know if God is a mathematician, but mathematics is the loom upon which God weaves the fabric of the universe.

Clifford A. Pickover

The boundaries between chemistry, biology, physics and medicine are rapidly disappearing. Only a comprehensive understanding of the chemical and physical processes in our cells and organ systems will yield the insights needed to develop rational approaches to the prevention and treatment of disease.

Art and science can best grow and develop in a society which cherishes freedom and which shows respect for the needs, the happiness and the dignity of human beings.

Carl Ferdinand Cori

It is the gifted, unorthodox individual, in the laboratory, or the study, or the walk by the river at twilight, who has always brought to us, and must continue to bring to us, all the basic resources by which we live.

Caryl Parker Haskins

As in any scientific research, a problem clearly seen is already half solved.

Physicists might eventually be able to come up with a grand unification theory that encompasses not just subatomic particles and the basic elements, but the code of life as well. Who knows? Life elsewhere in the universe may even be five feet tall and standing on two legs.

Cyril Ponnamperuma

The awkward richness of possibilities seems to shatter any possible coherent theory of simplicity...

Lawrence B. Slobodkin

Science is a game: it can be exhilarating, it can be useful, it can be frightfully dangerous. It is a play prompted by man's irrepressible curiosity to discover the universe and himself, and to increase his awareness of the world in which he lives and operates.

Adriano Buzzati-Traverso

You might understand how a few gas molecules interact with one another, but you wouldn't imagine that putting millions of them together would get you weather.