Scientist Quotes

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.

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

The morphological characteristics of plant and animal species form the chief subject of the descriptive natural sciences and are the criteria for their classification. But not until recently has it been recognized that in living organisms, as in the realm of crystals, chemical differences parallel the variation in structure.

Karl Landsteiner

The arrow of time, through the defining role it plays in everyday life and its intimate link with the origin of the universe, lies at a singular threshold between the reality we experience and the more refined reality cutting-edge science seeks to uncover.

Scientific curiosity can be satisfied much more easily by reading the publications of others than by working in the lab. It may take years to prove by experimentation what we can learn in the few minutes needed to read the published end result. So let us not fool ourselves; the driving force is hardly sheer curiosity.

Indeed the intellectual basis of all empirical knowledge may be said to be a matter of probability, expressible only in terms of a bet.

William Cecil Dampier

It is of course the ambition of every experimenter... to make a discovery, to sail safely between the Scylla of intellectual prejudice which makes us reject evidence not really integrated without preconceived notions, and the Charybdis of irrelevance which has swallowed many working days spent in pursuit of instrumental artifice.

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

Oral myths are closer to the genetic conclusions than the often ambiguous scientific evidence of archaeology.

It appears to be a quite general principle that, whenever there is a randomized way of doing something, then there is a nonrandomized way that delivers better performance but requires more thought.

Edwin Thompson Jaynes

Be a physical chemist, an analytical chemist, an organic chemist, if you will; but above all, be a chemist.

MARTIANS BUILD TWO IMMENSE CANALS IN TWO YEARS Vast Engineering Works Accomplished in an Incredibly Short Time by Our Planetary Neighbors.

I am an experimenter, or rather I used to be one. Then I stopped working, and since then people think I am a theoretician.

We are too powerless to make assumptions based only on reasoning. We must beg instruction from Nature herself.

Sin-Itiro Tomonaga

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

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

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

Scientists know that research merely discloses parts of the infinite unknown. Paradoxically, the enticing, helpful "unknown" increases as men continue to subtract from it. Progress in every line of experimental science follows the same law. The apparently narrow path gradually expands into unlimited, unexplored territory.

Willis R. Whitney

The French Academy of Sciences is the receptacle of a crowd of mediocrities and ignoramuses whose places have been made as college professors, herb collectors, village veterinarians and assistant engineers of bridges and roads.

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.

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

To comprehend a man's life, it is necessary to know not merely what he does but also what he purposely leaves undone.

John Hall Gladstone

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

I think that physics is about escaping the prison of the received thoughts and searching for novel ways of thinking the world, about trying to clear a bit the misty lake of insubstantial dreams, which reflect reality like the lake reflects the mountains.

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