Of all the major religions, or lack thereof, the atheist’s is one of the best pretenders: his foundation for all existences, as well as moral behaviors for the permanent good of mankind, begins at science...

If we long for our planet to be important, there is something we can do about it. We make our world significant by the courage of our questions and by the depth of our answers.

Research on the human brain has shown it is predisposed to think in the terms of a story.36 This predisposition is continuously reinforced and strengthened throughout the life of your brain. Imaging studies have shown...

I’m an unabashed elitist. Everyone needs a good editor, and there is peril in worshiping amateurism and the unedited in science, art, and journalism.

Life is chemistry, not biology.

It’s a lazy Saturday afternoon, there’s a couple lying naked in bed reading Encyclopediea Brittannica to each other, and arguing about whether the Andromeda Galaxy is more ‘numinous’ than the Ressurection. Do they know how...

Every creature is a living instruction that runs the algorithm of nature.

History is the guess of old men, sometimes they get it wrong.

If the weight comes from bacon you can so deduct it off the scale total to get your true weight. #science

If it hurts, do it more frequently, and bring the pain forward.

Night had fallen, and Diane admired the deep sky behind Steve’s calm countenance. They looked into each other’s eyes again and felt the spark and excitement of discovery. As if to celebrate the perfect, life-enabling...

Facts do not fall in the face of discomfort.

I would rather have questions that can’t be answered than answers that can’t be questioned.

We live in Secret. We live in Silence. And we live Forever…

I think it is a duty I owe to my profession and to my sex to show that a woman has a right to the practice of her profession and cannot be condemned to abandon...

The building blocks of Life are made up of shapes and spaces.

Throughout 150 years of the science of bacteriology, there is no evidence that one species of bacteria has changed into another… Since there is no evidence for species changes between the simplest forms of unicellular...

A man who dares to waste one hour of time has not discovered the value of life.

Full spectrum lights should be used in all daytime offices for good health.

Look again at that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The...

Religion makes people kill each other. Science supplies them with weapons.

What caused me to undertake the catalog was the nebula I discovered above the southern horn of Taurus on September 12, 1758, while observing the comet of that year. … This nebula had such a...

There exists indeed an opposition to it [building of UVA, Jefferson’s secular college] by the friends of William and Mary, which is not strong. The most restive is that of the priests of the different...

John Muir, Earth — planet, Universe[Muir’s home address, as inscribed on the inside front cover of his first field journal]

Amazin’.’ he said again. ‘He just looks as though he’s thinking, right?”Er…yes.”But he’s not actually thinking?”Er…no.”So…he just gives the impression of thinking but really it’s just a show?”Er…yes.’Just like everyone else, then really,’ said Ridcully

The algebraic sum of all the transformations occurring in a cyclical process can only be positive, or, as an extreme case, equal to nothing.[Statement of the second law of thermodynamics, 1862]

Religion is the subjective experience. Science is the objective reality. To argue either is a ridiculous waste of time and energy.

There was, I think, a feeling that the best science was that done in the simplest way. In experimental work, as in mathematics, there was ‘style’ and a result obtained with simple equipment was more...

Observe the difference between your attitude to illusions and mine. You have to defend the religious illusion with all your might. If it becomes discredited – and indeed the threat to it is great enough...

Neue Phaenomena zu erklären, dieses macht meine Sorgen aus, und wie froh ist der Forscher, wenn er das so fleissig Gesuche findet, eine Ergötzung wobei das Herz lacht.To explain new phenomena, that is my task;...

Every theoretical explanation is a reduction of intuition.

The chemists who uphold dualism are far from being agreed among themselves; nevertheless, all of them in maintaining their opinion, rely upon the phenomena of chemical reactions. For a long time the uncertainty of this...

Most institutions demand unqualified faith; but the institution of science makes skepticism a virtue.

The whole tendency of modern life is towards scientific planning and organisation, central control, standardisation, and specialisation. If this tendency was left to work itself out to its extreme conclusion, one might expect to see...

There is nothing distinctively scientific about the hypothetico-deductive process. It is not even distinctively intellectual. It is merely a scientific context for a much more general stratagem that underlies almost all regulative processes or processes...

We lay there and looked up at the night sky and she told me about stars called blue squares and red swirls and I told her I’d never heard of them. Of course not, she...

Now and again, one could detect in a childless woman of a certain age the various characteristics of all the children she had never issued. Her body was haunted by the ghost of souls who...

The belief that rational and quantifiable disciplines such as science can be used to perfect human society is no less absurd than a belief in magic, angels, and divine intervention.

I maintain that the human mystery is incredibly demeaned by scientific reductionism, with its claim in promissory materialism to account eventually for all of the spiritual world in terms of patterns of neuronal activity. This...

If anything, we’ve learned that we don’t think this data’s going to be as deterministic as was previously thought, … There is even more need for this legislation until science catches up with our collective...

The fate of the physiology of the brain is independent of the truth and falsity of my assertions relative to the laws of the organization of the nervous system, in general, and of the brain...

Sì perché l’autorità dell’opinione di mille nelle scienze non val per una scintilla di ragione di un solo, sì perché le presenti osservazioni spogliano d’autorità i decreti de’ passati scrittori, i quali se vedute l’avessero,...

In the hands of Science and indomitable energy, results the most gigantic and absorbing may be wrought out by skilful combinations of acknowledged data and the simplest means.

There was yet another disadvantage attaching to the whole of Newton’s physical inquiries, … the want of an appropriate notation for expressing the conditions of a dynamical problem, and the general principles by which its...

It turned out I was pretty good in science. But again, because of the small budget, in science class we couldn’t afford to do experiments in order to prove theories. We just believed everything. Actually,...

[Religious belief is] outmoded and ridiculous. [Belief in gods was a] worn out but once useful crutch in mankind’s journey towards truth. We consider the time has come for that crutch to be abandoned.It is...

All this talk about what a marvelous future science’ll bring us? Art can change things just as much.’ She stubbed out her cigarette. ‘Maybe better.”Why’s that?’ ‘Art doesn’t kill anyone.

People who are dependent are merely using alcohol as a crutch to get through the day. Yet doctors and scientists are still treating “alcoholism” as if it is the problem, when it has nothing to...

Books must follow sciences, and not sciences books.”[Proposition touching Amendment of Laws]

What I should have said is that he thinks that there is a conflict between evolutionary biology and theism. Dennett thinks that evolutionary theory shows that it is irrational to believe that God exists; he...