Those who are not shocked when they first come across quantum theory cannot possibly have understood it.

Myths, whether in written or visual form, serve a vital role of asking unanswerable questions and providing unquestionable answers. Most of us, most of the time, have a low tolerance for ambiguity and uncertainty. We...

A third reason scientists are reluctant to examine paranormal phenomena is that they appear to contradict known physical laws. What is the point of studying the impossible? Only a fool would waste his time. The...

The scientist is a lover of truth for the very love of truth itself, wherever it may lead.

We are supernaturalists first, not naturalists. The only reason we feel compelled to accommodate science is that science says we ought to. But it is science that should accommodate revelation. Revelation has been around much...

—No me digas «No, Ender». He tardado mucho tiempo en darme cuenta de ello, pero créeme, me odiaba, me odio. Y todo se reduce a esto: en el momento en el que entiendo a mi...

[I]n science we have to be particularly cautious about ‘why’ questions. When we ask, ‘Why?’ we usually mean ‘How?’ If we can answer the latter, that generally suffices for our purposes. For example, we might...

Cognition begins with sensation.

[All phenomena] are equally susceptible of being calculated, and all that is necessary, to reduce the whole of nature to laws similar to those which Newton discovered with the aid of the calculus, is to...

We cannot tell that we are constantly splitting into duplicate selves because our consciousness rides smoothly along only one path in the endlessly forking chains

It Begins with skepticism. The history of human folly, and our own susceptibility to illusions and fallacies, tell us that men and women are fallible.

What a deep [trust] in the rationality of the structure of the world and what a longing to understand even a small glimpse of the reason revealed in the world there must have been in...

Science and religion both make claims about the fundamental workings of the universe. Although these claims are not a priori incompatible (we could imagine being brought to religious belief through scientific investigation), I will argue...

Science is not a substitute for common sense, but an extension of it.

It is worth remembering one of the important lessons of the Buck story: a small number of zealous advocates can have an impact on the law that defies both science and conventional wisdom.

I decided that life rationally considered seemed pointless and futile, but it is still interesting in a variety of ways, including the study of science. So why not carry on, following the path of scientific...

He is a unicorn. I want to gently capture him and bring him back to my lab for research.

If we fail, the planet will grow sterile and your people will die in hunger, thirst and waves of plagues. Our people and the thrm’s will die more slowly because the poisons here will render...

How can cosmic religious feeling be communicated from one person to another, if it can give rise to no definite notion of a God and no theology? In my view, it is the most important...

If you had come to me a hundred years ago, do you think I should have dreamed of the telephone? Why, even now I cannot understand it! I use it every day, I transact half...

An interesting contrast between the geology of the present day and that of half a century ago, is presented by the complete emancipation of the modern geologist from the controlling and perverting influence of theology,...

Religion is a distraction from true education.

I’m sure the universe is full of intelligent life. It’s just been too intelligent to come here.[IRC discussion at Scifi.com, 1 November 1996]

Digital organization is essentially a dynamic, people-centered ecosystem.

It is a capital mistake to theorise before one has data.

In the 1920s, there was a dinner at which the physicist Robert W. Wood was asked to respond to a toast … ‘To physics and metaphysics.’ Now by metaphysics was meant something like philosophy—truths that...

I take it back; this one might actually contain magic

[Doubt] is not a new idea; this is the idea of the age of reason. This is the philosophy that guided the men who made the democracy that we live under. The idea that no...

I have previously reduced the whole science of logic to two facts.The first is that our perceptions being every thing for us, we areperfectly, completely, and necessarily sure of whatever we actually feel.The second is...

The role played by time at the beginning of the universe is, I believe, the final key to removing the need for a Grand Designer, and revealing how the universe created itself. … Time itself...

Today will still yearn to know why we are here and where we came from. Humanity’s deepest desire for knowledge is justification enough for our continuing quest. And our goal is nothing less than a...

Perhaps if zoologists would contemplate the wide variations presented by many plants of indubitably one and the same species, and the still wider diversities of long cultivated races from an original stock, they would find...

Before an experiment can be performed, it must be planned—the question to nature must be formulated before being posed. Before the result of a measurement can be used, it must be interpreted—nature’s answer must be...

…reality is a system, completely ordered and fully intelligible, with which thought in its advance is more and more identifying itself. We may look at the growth of knowledge … as an attempt by our...

That enormously complex biological interactions are so flawlessly coordinated as to result in such obvious manifestations as human thought or the electrical activity that dries the heartbeat is as exciting to me — actually more...

Most people thought he was insane when he looked up into the sky with a simple handmade telescope and cried out that the Earth revolves around the Sun, because this was four years ago.

There is no such source and cause of strife, quarrel, fights, malignant opposition, persecution, and war, and all evil in the state, as religion. Let it once enter into our civil affairs, our government soon...

The zoologist is delighted by the differences between animals, whereas the physiologist would like all animals to work in fundamentally the same way.

Heroes and scholars represent the opposite extremes… The scholar struggles for the benefit of all humanity, sometimes to reduce physical effort, sometimes to reduce pain, and sometimes to postpone death, or at least render it...

In the distant future I see open fields for far more important researches. Psychology will be based on a new foundation, that of the necessary acquirement of each mental power and capacity by gradation. Light...

{Replying to G. H. Hardy’s suggestion that the number of a taxi (1729) was ‘dull’, showing off his spontaneous mathematical genius}No, it is a very interesting number; it is the smallest number expressible as a...

Log Entry: SOL 118My conversation with NASA about the Water Reclaimer was boring and riddled with technical details. So I’ll paraphrase for you:Me: “This is obviously a clog. How about I take it apart and...

Science is the manifestation of a fraction of human potential.

For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.

Agnosticism, in fact, is not a creed, but a method, the essence of which lies in the rigorous application of a single principle. That principle is of great antiquity; it is as old as Socrates;...

Any faith that admires truth, that strives to know God, must be brave enough to accommodate the universe.

War technology is science in the service of obscene anatomical vandalism.

I don’t think science is hard to teach because humans aren’t ready for it, or because it arose only through a fluke, or because, by and large, we don’t have the brainpower to grapple with...

If scientific reasoning were limited to the logical processes of arithmetic, we should not get very far in our understanding of the physical world. One might as well attempt to grasp the game of poker...

During the first half of the present century we had an Alexander von Humboldt, who was able to scan the scientific knowledge of his time in its details, and to bring it within one vast...