[I]f the basic claims of religion are true, the scientific worldview is so blinkered and susceptible to supernatural modification as to be rendered nearly ridiculous; if the basic claims of religion are false, most people...

My dad was a hippie. I was really fortunate I went into marine science…. But then, my middle name is Wildflower, so I could have gone into botany.

Dontopedology is the science of opening your mouth and putting your foot in it

Waldemar Haffkine [is] a saviour of humanity.

We are an impossibility in an impossible universe.

It must be admitted that scientists today take little interest in philosophy of science…. It is not an indication that philosophical issues are no longer relevant. Rather, it is a consequence of the increasingly specialized...

Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I’m not sure about the universe.

Science is entirely dependent on constants. Anything that is not constant (natural disasters, poor construction, or other human factors) is nearly impossible to include in equations such as those used in archaeology and for dating...

We live in a world where unfortunately the distinction between true and false appears to become increasingly blurred by manipulation of facts, by exploitation of uncritical minds, and by the pollution of the language.

Let us try to teach generosity and altruism, because we are born selfish. Let us understand what our own selfish genes are up to, because we may then at least have the chance to upset...

I’m comfortable with the unknown — that’s the point of science. There are places out there, billions of places out there, that we know nothing about. And the fact that we know nothing about them...

We think we know that chimpanzees are higher animals and earthworms are lower, we think we’ve always known what that means, and we think evolution makes it even clearer. But it doesn’t. It is by...

How inappropriate to call this planet “Earth,” when it is clearly “Ocean.

My idea of an educated person is one who can converse on one subject for more than two minutes.

…quantum mechanics—the physics of our world—requires that you hold such pedestrian complaints in abeyance.

Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution.

The experience of a miracle means we must recognize that the data offered by our senses recur in regular pattern.

CURIOSITY DEMANDS THAT WE ASK QUESTIONS,THAT WE TRY TO PUT THINGS TOGETHER AND TRY TO UNDERSTAND THIS MULTITUDE OF ASPECTSAS PERHAPS RESULTING FROM THE ACTION OF A RELATIVELY SMALL NUMBER OF ELEMENTALTHINGS AND FORCES ACTING...

Let us begin with the fine-structure constant. … The fine-structure constant is really the ratio of two natural units or atoms of action. … We obtain action when we multiply energy by time. … We...

t is generally recognized that women are better than men at languages, personal relations and multitasking, but less good at map-reading and spatial awareness. It is therefore not unreasonable to suppose that women might be...

DNA is like a computer program but far, far more advanced than any software ever created.

…What I have denied and what my reason compels me to deny, is the existence of a Being throned above us as a god, directing our mundane affairs in detail, regarding us as individuals, punishing...

Do you not think that there are things which you cannot understand, and yet which are; that some people see things that others cannot? But there are things old and new which must not be...

Maybe if I had to boil it down to one easy sentence, it would be this: I believe in evolution, and I believe in God. I just haven’t worked out the details yet.

No one shall expel us from the paradise which Cantor has created for us.{Expressing the importance of Georg Cantor’s set theory in the development of mathematics.}

It’s so hard to believe in anything anymore. I mean, it’s like, religion, you really can’t take it seriously, because it seems so mythological, it seems so arbitrary…but, on the other hand, science is just...

If there was one overriding element to Faraday’s character, it was humility. His ‘conviction of deficiency,’ as he called it, stemmed in part from his deep religiosity and affected practically every facet of his life....

This stuff isn’t rocket science.

In the future I see open fields for more important researches. Psychology will be securely based on the foundation already laid by Mr. Herbert Spencer, that of the necessary acquirement of each mental power and...

It is one of the greatest Curses visited upon Mankind, he told me, that they shall fear where no Fear is: this astrological and superstitious Humour disarms men’s Hearts, it breaks their Courage, it makes...

The inventor…looks upon the world and is not contented with things as they are. He wants to improve whatever he sees, he wants to benefit the world; he is haunted by an idea.

It is difficult to overstate the importance of understanding mirror neurons and their function. They may well be central to social learning, imitation, and the cultural transmission of skills and attitudes—perhaps even of the pressed-together...

A celibate clergy is an especially good idea, because it tends to suppress any hereditary propensity toward fanaticism.

Those who are ignorant of Geology, find no difficulty in believing that the world was made as it is; and the shepherd, untutored in history, sees no reason to regard the green mounds which indicate...

Order is heaven’s first law.

Fascinating … The whole thing [the school dance] seems to work on a similar principle to a supercollider. You know, two streams of opposingly charged particles accelerated till they’re just under the speed of light,...

deluded or not, supporters of superstition and pseudoscience are human beings with real feelings, who, like the skeptics, are trying to figure out how the world works and what our role in it might be....

We hold these truths to be self-evident.{Franklin’s edit to the assertion in Thomas Jefferson’s original wording, ‘We hold these truths to be sacred and undeniable’ in a draft of the Declaration of Independence changes it...

A blade of grass is a commonplace on Earth; it would be a miracle on Mars. Our descendants on Mars will know the value of a patch of green. And if a blade of grass...

If in other sciences we should arrive at certainty without doubt and truth without error, it behooves us to place the foundations of knowledge in mathematics…

Do experimental work but keep in mind that other investigators in the same field will consider your discoveries as less than one fourth as important as they seem to you.

It is very desirable to have a word to express the Availability for work of the heat in a given magazine; a term for that possession, the waste of which is called Dissipation. Unfortunately the...

We can only see a short distance ahead, but we can see plenty there that needs to be done.

This old, folkish layer survives in us all, and to speak as I really think, I do not consider religion the most adequate means of keeping it under lock and key. For that, literature alone...

This seems charmingly paradoxical: scientists seek one truth but often voice many opinions; journalists often speak of many truths while voicing a uniform view.

I’m convinced that before the year 2000 is over, the first child will have been born on the moon.

You mean the day they stop needing the church,” Vittoria challenged, moving toward him. “Doubt is your last shred of control. It is doubt that brings souls to you. Our need to know that life...

Staring at the blue sky causes insomnia to occur in the human.

Nobody knows how the stand of our knowledge about the atom would be without him. Personally, Bohr is one of the amiable colleagues I have met. He utters his opinions like one perpetually groping and...

Billions of years ago God was creating universes and life; thousands of years ago he was creating angry floods, sin-saving human sacrifices and audible burning bushes. Today he occasionally appears on a piece of toast....