Describing Robert Bunsen:As an investigator he was great, as a teacher he was greater, as a man and friend he was greatest.

Psychologists call these fully absorbing experiences flowstates, which were discovered and named by a world-famous psychologistwith the most unpronounceable surname I have ever encountered –Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi.

Teachers seeking to ‘teach the controversy’ over Darwinian evolution in today’s climate will likely be met with false warnings that it is unconstitutional to say anything negative about Darwinian evolution. Students who attempt to raise...

[I was advised] to read Jordan’s ‘Cours d’analyse’; and I shall never forget the astonishment with which I read that remarkable work, the first inspiration for so many mathematicians of my generation, and learnt for...

Dies iral, dies illaSolvet Saeclum in FavillaTeste David cum SilyllaThat Day of Wrath, that day of burningSeer and Sibly speak concerningAll the world to ashes turning

Now from science we have a new creation story, which is very alluring and very exciting. It’s not about deposing all the other wisdom stories about creation that humanity has gathered, but it certainly supplements...

The four stages of acceptance:1. This is worthless nonsense.2. This is an interesting, but perverse, point of view.3. This is true, but quite unimportant.4. I always said so.”(Review of The Truth About Death, in: Journal...

Is numerical equality (forced by the use of specific physical units) the same as conceptual equality? Of course NOT!

Fact: Cells are constantly dying and new ones are taking their placeFact: After seven years have gone by, every cell in my body has died and a new one has taken its place.Do the math....

But that which fanaticism formerly promised to the elect, science now accomplishes for all men.

Progress is the exploration of our own error. Evolution is a consolidation of what have always begun as errors. And errors are of two kinds: errors that turn out to be true and errors that...

Science too proceeds by lantern-flashes; it explores nature’s inexhaustible mosiac piece by piece. Too often the wick lacks oil; the glass panes of the lantern may not be clean. No matter : his work is...

Some people look like they sound better than they actually sound, because they look confident and have good posture,” once musician, a veteran of many auditions, says. “Other people look awful when they play but...

There is a certain seductiveness about dead things. You can ill treat, alter and recolour what’s dead. It won’t complain.

If only the Geologists would let me alone, I could do very well, but those dreadful Hammers! I hear the clink of them at the end of every cadence of the Bible verses

Science, like nothing else among the institutions of mankind, grows like a weed every year. Art is subject to arbitrary fashion, religion is inwardly focused and driven only to sustain itself, law shuttles between freeing...

If a black black cat crosses your path, it suggests that the animal is going somewhere.

Human beings feel an obligation to have a definate opinion on issues they can never truly know. They need to learn to be satisfied with “I don’t know”.

… the irregularities of the motion of Uranus…in order to find out whether they may be attributed to the action of an undiscovered planet beyond it.[John Couch Adams on how he began to discover Neptune.]

O. Hahn and F. Strassmann have discovered a new type of nuclear reaction, the splitting into two smaller nuclei of the nuclei of uranium and thorium under neutron bombardment. Thus they demonstrated the production of...

It is very easy to grow tired at collecting; the period of a low tide is about all men can endure. At first the rocks are bright and every moving animal makes his mark on...

I am no friend of probability theory, I have hated it from the first moment when our dear friend Max Born gave it birth. For it could be seen how easy and simple it made...

In 1902, Marcellin P. Berthelot, often called the founder of modern organic chemistry, was one of France’s most celebrated scientists—if not the world’s. He was permanent secretary of the French Academy, having succeeded the giant...

Bring forward what is true. Write it so that it is clear. Defend it to your last breath.

With the rise of classical Greece, the soul debate evolved into the more familiar heart-versus-brain, the liver having been demoted to an accessory role. We are fortunate that this is so, for we would otherwise...

The logical feebleness of science is not sufficiently borne in mind. It keeps down the weed of superstition, not by logic but by slowly rendering the mental soil unfit for its cultivation.

This was the scientific age, and people wanted to believe that their traditions were in line with the new era, but this was impossible if you thought that these myths should be understood literally. Hence...

I believe that this Nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to earth.

I want to put on the table, not why 85% of the members of the National Academy of Sciences reject God, I want to know why 15% of the National Academy don’t.

The very nature of the quantum theory … forces us to regard the space-time coordination and the claim of causality, the union of which characterizes the classical theories, as complementary but exclusive features of the...

Finally, from what we now know about the cosmos, to think that all this was created for just one species among the tens of millions of species who live on one planet circling one of...

In reality, time doesn’t pass; we pass. Time itself is invariant. It just is. Therefore, past and future aren’t separate locations, the way New York and Paris are separate locations. And since the past isn’t...

Anna, like most English speakers, thought GASP was a silly name for the project. But the name got the point across. If there were modern wonders of the world, GASP – and Kali – stood...

Educators may bring upon themselves unnecessary travail by taking a tactless and unjustifiable position about the relation between scientific and religious narratives. We see this, of course, in the conflict concerning creation science. Some educators...

I was testing a hypothesis. But it was right, and then I had a unicorn to deal with. You can’t just say, ‘Thank you so much, go away now’ to a unicorn, the way you...

In 5 billion years, the expansion of the universe will have progressed to the point where all other galaxies will have receded beyond detection. Indeed, they will be receding faster than the speed of light,...

Memory is the ‘filling cabinet’ of the brain wherein is stored all thought impulses, all conscious experiences, and all sensations which reach the brain through the five physical senses.

I expect to think that I would rather be author of your book [The Origin of Species] than of any other on Nat. Hist. Science.[Letter to Charles Darwin 12 Dec 1859]

It is a scientifically proven fact that all scientifically proven facts have originated from original and thereby unproven theories.

Thinking only begins at the point where we have come to know that Reason, glorified for centuries, is the most obstinate adversary of thinking.

In the beginning of the year 1665 I found the Method of approximating series & the Rule for reducing any dignity of any Binomial into such a series. The same year in May I found...

One increasingly hears rumors of a reconciliation between science and religion. In major news magazines as well as at academic conferences, the claim is made that that belief in the success of science in describing...

If we had always thought from a so-called practical angle – we would’ve never had anything new in this world. We would’ve hidden under the security of practicality and taken no risk, we would have...

Sleeping beauty awoke at the kiss of a scientist and expired at the fatal puncture of his syringe.

Academic pedigree alone is no guarantor of useful knowledge and wisdom.

Abel has left mathematicians enough to keep them busy for five hundred years.

I don’t think I understand that,” Meg insisted. “How can you lust yourself into oblivion. “”Oh, easily,” Ekaterina answered. “The lust is for things, possessions. The weapon turns on the nature of possessions, the fact...

I maintain that the cosmic religious feeling is the strongest and noblest motive for scientific research.

At Gabriel College there was a very holy object on the high altar of the Oratory, covered with a black velvet cloth… At the height of the invocation the Intercessor lifted the cloth to reveal...

Why do you like show jumping?””… Beauty and excitement. The elements of trust, talent, training, love, and danger make show jumping a thrilling and aesthetic experience. It’s really the ultimate test of two nervous systems–the...