American Scientist Quotes

All this stuff about traveling around the universe... belongs back where it came from, on the cereal box.

Edward Mills Purcell

Slowly the molecules enmeshed in ordered asymmetry. A billion years passed, aeons of trial and error. The life message took form, a spiral, a helix, repeating itself endlessly, Swathed in protein, nurtured by enzymes, sheltered in membranes, laved by salt water, armored with lime.

Thomas H. Jukes

Our beliefs about ourselves in relation to the world around us are the roots of our values, and our values determine not only our immediate actions, but also, over the course of time, the form of our society. Our beliefs are increasingly determined by science. Hence it is at least conceivable that what science has been telling us for three hundred years about man and his place in nature could be playing by now an important role in our lives.

The whole history of physics proves that a new discovery is quite likely lurking in the next decimal place.

Floyd K. Richtmyer

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

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

Most scientists have little enthusiasm for history. The job of the scientist is to make discoveries and develop new ideas. When new ideas prove effective they tend to make old ones obsolete: thus it is not altogether unfair to say that the typical scientist is in the business of creating the future and destroying the past.

Edwin C. Kemble

The numerical description of a vector requires three numbers, but nothing prevents us from using a single number for its symbolical designation. An algebra or analytical method in which a single letter or other expression is used to specify a vector may be called a vector algebra or vector analysis.

Josiah Willard Gibbs

At any one time there is a natural tendency among physicists to believe that we already know the essential ingredients of a comprehensive theory. But each time a new frontier of observation is broached we inevitably discover new phenomena which force us to modify substantially our previous conceptions. I believe this process to be unending, that the delights and challenges of unexpected discovery will continue always.

Val Logsdon Fitch

Here, then, we have the oldest known rocks. Are they, then, absolutely the oldest — the primitive rocks, as some imagine? By no means. They are stratified rocks, and therefore consolidated sediments, and therefore, also, the debris of still older rocks, of which we know nothing. Thus, we seek in vain for the absolutely oldest, the primitive crust.

The definition of conventional technology is that it worked once.

Wolfgang K. H. Panofsky

So long as you live and in whatever circumstances the kaleidoscope of life may place you, think for yourself and act in accordance with the conclusions of that thinking; avoid so far as possible drifting with the current of the mob or being too easily influenced by the outward manifestation of things. Take your own look beneath the surface and don't trust others to look for you. If you will follow this rule consistently, I am sure you will keep out of much trouble, will make the most out of your life and, what is more, will contribute most of value to the community life.

Frank B. Jewett

Thus, since it is this power in the atmosphere of storing the heat which makes us live, no less than the sun's rays themselves, we see how the temperature of a planet may depend on considerations quite beside its distance from the sun; and when we discuss the possibility of life in other worlds, we shall do well to remember that Saturn may be possibly a warm world, and Mercury conceivably a cold one.

Samuel Pierpont Langley

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

A crystal and a cell, A jelly fish and a saurian And caves where cavemen dwell. Then a sense of law and beauty, And a face turned from the clod. Some call it evolution And others call it God.

Robert Andrews Millikan

Going to the moon is not a matter of physics but of economics.

Mathematics is much more than a language for dealing with the physical world. It is a source of models and abstractions which will enable us to obtain amazing new insights into the way in which nature operates. Indeed, the beauty and elegance of the physical laws themselves are only apparent when expressed in the appropriate mathematical framework.

Melvin Schwartz

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

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.

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

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

To believe something strongly when it is clearly hard to define and prove, and has not been proven, is to be prejudiced.

Nature possesses an order that one may aspire to comprehend.

Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught.

Alvin M. Weinberg