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.

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

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

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...

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.

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...

We are the intelligent elite among animal life on earth and whatever our mistakes, [Earth] needs us. This may seem an odd statement after all that I have said about the way 20th century humans...

… on these expanded membranes [butterfly wings] Nature writes, as on a tablet, the story of the modifications of species, so truly do all changes of the organisation register themselves thereon. Moreover, the same colour-patterns...

Gay-Lussac was quick, lively, ingenious and profound, with great activity of mind and great facility of manipulation. I should place him at the head of all the living chemists in France.

…a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention…

It is a matter for considerable regret that Fermat, who cultivated the theory of numbers with so much success, did not leave us with the proofs of the theorems he discovered. In truth, Messrs Euler...

… respecto al origen del mundo, si es que lo tuvo, no nos queda más remedio que aceptar que nunca sabremos cómo ocurrió y que Dios es una explicación necia que no explica nada pues...

The theist and the scientist are rival interpreters of nature, the one retreats as the other advances.

These mysteries about how we evolved should not distract us from the indisputable fact that we did evolve.

The classification of facts, the recognition of their sequence and relative significance is the function of science, and the habit of forming a judgment upon these facts unbiased by personal feeling is characteristic of what...

It seemed to a number of philosophers of language, myself included, that we should attempt to achieve a unification of Chomsky’s syntax, with the results of the researches that were going on in semantics and...

A billion neutrinos go swimming in heavy water: one gets wet.

Puesto que el que contempla con sus ojos la belleza, no es ya tributario de la muerte, como dice Platen, sino de la Naturaleza, cuya belleza ha comprendido. Y si sus ojos sirven realmente para...

I don’t mind nothing happening in a book, but nothing happening in a phony way–characters saying things people never say, doing jobs that don’t fit, the whole works–is simply asking too much of a reader....

Science says: “We must live,” and seeks the means of prolonging, increasing, facilitating and amplifying life, of making it tolerable and acceptable, wisdom says: “We must die,” and seeks how to make us die well.

In describing a protein it is now common to distinguish the primary, secondary and tertiary structures. The primary structure is simply the order, or sequence, of the amino-acid residues along the polypeptide chains. This was...

Dr. Turing of Cambridge says that the soul is an illusion and that all that defines us as human beings can be reduced to a series of mechanical operations.

Muhammad introduced the concept of such Glorious and Omnipotent God in Whose eyes all worldly systems are pieces of straw. Islamic equality of mankind is no fiction as it is in Christianity. No human mind...

So far as we know, the tiny fragments of the universe embodied in man are the only centers of thought and responsibility in the visible world. If that be so, the appearance of the human...

There is no need to suffer silently and there is no shame in seeking help.

Tell me, tutor,’ I said. ‘Is revenge a science, or an art?

Television hols up a mirror to the true nature of family life today. For the first time people see themselves reflected and refracted within its curved glass screen: helping them to define who the are...

One of the most important things I have found is that no oneschool of thought has all of the answers. Sometimes history plugs agap that science can’t fill. Often philosophy has answers thatscience relies on...