American Scientist Quotes

J. Robert Oppenheimer

Richard Feynman

Linus Pauling

Rachel Carson

James Dewey Watson

Albert A. Michelson

Robert Andrews Millikan

Science is a field which grows continuously with ever expanding frontiers. Further, it is truly international in scope. Any particular advance has been preceded by the contributions of those from many lands who have set firm foundations for further developments. The Nobel awards should be regarded as giving recognition to this general scientific progress as well as to the individuals involved.
Further, science is a collaborative effort. The combined results of several people working together is often much more effective than could be that of an individual scientist working alone.

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

Lawrence B. Slobodkin

The only touchstone for empirical truth is experiment and observation.

Boyle entertains the hypothesis of a universal matter, the concept of atoms of different shapes and sizes, and the possibility of existence of substances that might properly be called elements... The atomic theory as originally conceived by Democritus and Epicurus, developed by Lucretius, and resurrected by Gassendi from about 1647 on, was doubtless the source from which Boyle derived his ideas,...as he cites both Epicurus and Gassendi. Boyle, however... avoids any dogmatic assertion of these hypotheses. It is plain, however, that these atoms or "corpuscles" as he calls them are a constant element of his thought.

John Maxson Stillman

... when I started doing chemistry, I did it the way I fished – for the excitement, the discovery, the adventure, for going after the most elusive catch imaginable in uncharted seas.

K. Barry Sharpless

The concept of "free radicals" was not known in 1920 — well perhaps in politics, but not in chemistry.

Herman Francis Mark

The physical "reality" is assumed to be the wave function of the whole universe itself.

Darwinian social theory gives us a glimpse of an underlying symmetry and logic in social relationships which, when more fully comprehended by ourselves, should revitalize our political understanding and provide the intellectual support for a science and medicine of psychology. In the process it should also give us a deeper understanding of the many roots of our suffering.

Some sort of false logic has crept into our schools, for the people whom I have seen doing housework or cooking know nothing of botany or chemistry, and the people who know botany and chemistry do not cook or sweep. The conclusion seems to be, if one knows chemistry she must not cook or do housework.

Ellen Swallow Richards

"All is fair in love and war" and, I might add, in theoretical physics.

The limited imagination of physicists: When we see a new phenomenon we try to fit it into the framework we already have... It's not because Nature is really similar; it's because the physicists have only been able to think of the same damn thing, over and over again.

Richard Feynman

There is plenty of wonder left in the universe even after we have examined all the clues nature has thrown our way. I really believe that our imaginations have not even begun to exhaust the possibilities of existence. To proclaim the slogan "The Truth IS Out There" is perhaps too trite. I prefer "You ain't seen nothin' yet!"

Lawrence M. Krauss

If I had any advice to [give] you it is just this: love science but do not worship it. Put science in its proper place, ranking it along with philosophy and history, music and religion, literature and art. If I had my life to live again (Darwin says), I would make it a rule to read some poetry and listen to some music at least once every week.

Richard M. Eakin

Many thanks for the sending me the book Biology of the Striped Skunk...Frankly, I doubt whether I shall read it or not, unless I happen to have some intimate contact with a skunk which may induce me to learn more about him.

Increased knowledge clearly implies increased responsibility.

Nicolaas Bloembergen

One does not really understand a scientific problem unless one knows at least in rough outline how it came to be formulated.

Theodosius Dobzhansky

Productive stupidity means being ignorant by choice. Focusing on important questions puts us in the awkward position of being ignorant.

Martin A. Schwartz

Education of both men and women is a wonderful contraceptive.

Henry Way Kendall

If you wanted to create an education environment that was directly opposed to what the brain was good at doing, you would probably design something like a classroom.

To do science is to search for repeated patterns, not simply to accumulate facts, and to do the science of geographical ecology is to search for patterns of plants and animal life that can be put on a map.

Robert H. MacArthur

It seemed that fundamental physics was stuck. The particle physicists were smashing particles into each other with ever increasing force, trying to figure out how many quarks could dance on the head of a pin. The cosmologists were working with very few facts... on what seemed to me to be mainly religious grounds. And most of physics was still focused on pushing and pulling, on the material properties... rather than on its informational properties.... those that relate to order and disorder.

J. Doyne Farmer

Observations are useless until they have been interpreted.

Edgar Bright Wilson

Darwin applied a consistent philosophy of materialism to his interpretation of nature. Matter is the ground of all existence; mind, spirit, and God as well, are just words that express the wondrous results of neuronal complexity.

Stephen Jay Gould

The satellite is a natural extension of rockets, which are natural extensions of planes and balloons, which are natural extensions of man's climbing trees and mountains in order to get up higher and thus have a better view.

James Van Allen

The universe did not become sterile with the first production of life. It is continuously creative now as in the past.

Herbert Spencer Jennings