Scientist Quotes

Human beings are often at their best when responding to immediate crises - car accidents, house fires, hurricanes. We are less effective in the face of enormous but slow-moving crises such as the loss of biodiversity or climate change....

We consider the notion of "system" as an organising concept, before going on to look in detail at various systemic metaphors that may be used as a basis for structuring thinking about organisations and problem situations.

Robert L. Flood

Facts are plentiful enough, but we know not how to class them; many are overlooked because they seem uninteresting: but remember that what led Newton to pursue and discover the law of gravity, and ultimately the laws by which worlds revolve, was - the fall of an apple.

Michael Faraday

Scientists need to exchange ideas in an informal place.

Quantum phenomena do not occur in a Hilbert space. They occur in a laboratory.

Since we find it difficult to make a suitable model of a certain type, Nature must find it difficult too. This argument neglects the possibility that Nature may be cleverer than we are. It even neglects the possibility that we may be cleverer tomorrow than we are today.

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

Martin A. Schwartz

A national programme which would provide television to about 80% of India's population during the next ten years would be of great significance to national integration, for implementing schemes of economic and social development and for the stimulation and promotion of electronic industry. It is of particular significance for population living in isolated rural countries

Vikram Sarabhai

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

Ever since quantum phenomena became definitely recognized many attempts were made to picture their mechanism.

Only a small part of scientific progress has resulted from planned search for specific objectives. A much more important part has been made possible by the freedom of the individual to follow his own curiosity.

Irving Langmuir

If it turns out that the magnet does not work, or the detector does not track, we cannot blame anybody but ourselves. You have to understand every part in your detector. You have to know what makes it run, how it works.

In this respect, the history of science, like the history of all civilization, has gone through cycles.

You are invited to come to see the Earth turn, tomorrow, from three to five, at Meridian Hall of the Paris Observatory.

When we try to understand how contemporary Indian food came into being, it is similar to learning about the evolution of language. We place the data available to us in a multidimensional space and study similarities and dissimilarities with other global cuisines.

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

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 physics of undergraduate text-books is 90% true; the contents of the primary research journals of physics is 90% false.

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

Yet the atom, for all that, is not Nature's unit, but ours.

Frederick Soddy

I'm a biologist who has been interested in the biological roots of cognitive phenomena

Francisco Varela

Great harm is caused by too wide a separation of the disciplines which work toward the perfection of each individual art, and much more by the meticulous distribution of the practices of this art to different workers.

Andreas Vesalius

The universe is popping all over the place.

If many years go by in a field in which no significant new facts come to light, the field sharpens up the opinions and gives the appearance that the problem is solved.

I do not plan to come back. I have no reason to come back.. I plan to do my best to help the Chinese people build up the nation to where they can live with dignity and happiness.