American Scientist Quotes

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.

There can be no permanent progress in the battle against hunger until the agencies that fight for increased food production and those that fight for population control unite in a common effort.

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

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

The only touchstone for empirical truth is experiment and observation.

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 Universe is one indivisible, dynamic whole in which energy and matter are so deeply entangled it is impossible to consider them as independent elements.

Every time we get slapped down, we can say, Thank you Mother Nature, because it means we're about to learn something important.

John N. Bahcall

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

What will prove altogether remarkable is that some very simple schemes to produce erratic numbers behave identically to some of the erratic aspects of natural phenomena.

Mitchell Feigenbaum

It is the great glory of the quest for human knowledge that, while making some small contribution to that quest, we can also continue to learn and to take pleasure in learning.

William Alfred Fowler

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

It has been thought since physics began that matter was made up of particles. We had changed that point of view now. We now think that matter is made up of little strings.

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

Theodosius Dobzhansky

As we explore physics at higher and higher energy, revealing its structure at shorter and shorter distances, we discover more and more symmetry.

I believe that the advent of modern science is the most important social event in all history.

Karl Taylor Compton

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.

All the richness of structure observed in the natural world is not a consequence of the complexity of physical law, but instead arises from the many-times repeated application of quite simple laws.

Education of both men and women is a wonderful contraceptive.

Henry Way Kendall

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

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.

Epidemiology is like a bikini: what is revealed is interesting; what is concealed is crucial.

Science, in its pure form, is not concerned with where discoveries may lead; its disciples are interested only in discovering the truth.

Alan Tower Waterman

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

Observations are useless until they have been interpreted.

Edgar Bright Wilson