A grain in the balance will determine which individual shall live and which shall die – which variety or species shall increase in number, and which shall decrease, or finally become extinct.

You say that it is time to shake off the Mist, but Mankind walks in a Mist; that Reason which you cry up as the Glory of this Age is a Proteus and Cameleon that...

A Muslim must not hate his wife and if he be displeased with one bad quality in her, then let him be pleased with another that is good.

Interviewer: Didn’t Sagan want to believe?Druyan: he didn’t want to believe. he wanted to know.

Science is not only compatible with spirituality; it is a profound source of spirituality.

All organisms vary. It is in the highest degree improbable that any given variety should have exactly the same relations to surrounding conditions as the parent stock. In that case it is either better fitted...

Some 3.6 million years ago, in what is now northern Tanzania, a volcano erupted, the resulting cloud of ash covering the surrounding savannahs. In 1979, the paleoanthropologist Mary Leakey found in that ash footprints –...

Even in Europe a change has sensibly taken place in the mind of man. Science has liberated the ideas of those who read and reflect, and the American example has kindled feelings of right in...

I find these comparisons particularly poignant: life versus death, hope versus fear. Space exploration and the highly mechanized destruction of people use similar technology and manufacturers, and similar human qualities of organization and daring. Can...

[J]ust as in the sciences we have learned that we are too ignorant to safely pronounce anything impossible, so for the individual, since we cannot know just what are his limitations, we can hardly say...

According to analyses conducted by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, 100 grams of fresh tomato today has 30 percent less vitamin C, 30 percent less thiamin, 19 percent less niacin, and 62 percent less calcium...

Palaeontology is the Aladdin’s lamp of the most deserted and lifeless regions of the earth; it touches the rocks and there spring forth in orderly succession the monarchs of the past and the ancient river...

The destruction of this universe would have no significance on a cosmic scale.

It is not what the man of science believes that distinguishes him, but how and why he believes it. His beliefs are tentative, not dogmatic; they are based on evidence, not on authority or intuition.

It is either coincidence piled on top of coincidence,” said Hollus, “or it is deliberate design.

There are no foolish questions and no man becomes a fool until he has stopped asking questions.

If a good system of agriculture, unrivaled manufacturing skill, a capacity to produce whatever can contribute to either convenience or luxury, schools established in every village for teaching reading, writing, and arithmetic, the general practice...

Science tells me God must exist.My mind tells me I’ll never understand God.My heart tells me I’m not meant to. [Vittoria Vetra]

Triboplasts played a crucial role in evolution, precisely because they did have internal organs, and in particular they could ingest food and excrete it. Their excreta became a major resource for other creatures; to get...

Common sense and a sense of humor are the same thing, moving at different speeds. A sense of humor is just common sense, dancing.

The dogma of the impossibility of determining the atomic constitution of substances, which until recently was advocated with such fervor by the most able chemists, is beginning to be abandoned and forgotten; and one can...

Science explained people, but could not understand them.

Aujourd’hui, on cherche partout à répandre le savoir; qui sait si, dans quelques siècles, il n’y aura pas des universités pour rétablir l’ancienne ignorance?

But when we reduce sex to a function, we also invoke the idea of dysfunction. We are no longer talking about the art of sex; rather, we are talking about the mechanics of sex. Science...

If to have breasts is to be human, then to save them is to save ourselves.

My religious convictions and scientific views cannot at present be more specifically defined than as those of a believer in creative evolution. I desire that no public monument or work of art or inscription or...

Each pregnant Oak ten thousand acorns formsProfusely scatter’d by autumnal storms;Ten thousand seeds each pregnant poppy shedsProfusely scatter’d from its waving heads;The countless Aphides, prolific tribe,With greedy trunks the honey’d sap imbibe;Swarm on each leaf...

You can scoff at opinions. You can reject hypotheses. You can discard theories out of hand. But you cannot reject the facts

… Fourier’s great mathematical poem …{Referring to Joseph Fourier’s mathematical theory of the conduction of heat, one of the precursors to thermodynamics.}

Medals are great encouragement to young men and lead them to feel their work is of value, I remember how keenly I felt this when in the 1890s. I received the Darwin Medal and the...

Riza: Without his Alchemy he’s just…Jean: A little brat who swears a lotMaes: An arrogant pipsqueakRoy: Useless. Just uselessAlphonse: Sorry big brother, I don’t know how to add to that…Ed *starts to cry*: YOU’RE ALL...

Space is big. You just won’t believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it’s a long way down the road to the chemist’s, but that’s just peanuts to space.

Just because an apple falls one hundred times out of a hundred does not mean it will fall on the hundred and first.

The bright sun was extinguish’d, and the starsDid wander darkling in the eternal space.

[There is no shortage of scientific talent.] But [I am] much less optimistic about the managerial vision [of the pharmaceutical industry] to catalyse these talents to deliver the results we all want.

Consider now the Milky Way. Here also we see an innumerable dust, only the grains of this dust are no longer atoms but stars; these grains also move with great velocities, they act at a...

Consciousness is our gateway to experience: It enables us to recognize Van Gogh’s starry skies, be enraptured by Beethoven’s Fifth, and stand in awe of a snowcapped mountain. Yet consciousness is subjective, personal, and famously...

What good is all this free-thinking, modernity, and turncoat flexibility if at some gut level you are still a Christian, a Catholic, and even a priest!

How many times did the sun shine, how many times did the wind howl over the desolate tundras, over the bleak immensity of the Siberian taigas, over the brown deserts where the Earth’s salt shines,...

In the year 1456 … a Comet was seen passing Retrograde between the Earth and the sun… Hence I dare venture to foretell, that it will return again in the year 1758.

I am perhaps more proud of having helped to redeem the character of the cave-man than of any other single achievement of mine in the field of anthropology.

Were these boys in their right minds? Here were two boys with good intellect, one eighteen and one nineteen. They had all the prospects that life could hold out for any of the young; one...

Please give it up. Fear it no less than the sensual passion, because it, too, may take up all your time and deprive you of your health, peace of mind and happiness in life.[Having himself...

İnanç’ın, bir kesinlik ve bir emin olma durumu olduğu kısmen doğrudur. İnanç, olasılığın gerçekçiliği konusunda emin olmaktır ama kesin tahmin anlamında emin olma değildir.

In politics, the tripod is he most unstable of all structures. It’s be bad enough without the complication of a feudal trade culture which turns its back on most science.

Much as I admired the elegance of physical theories, which at that time geology wholly lacked, I preferred a life in the woods to one in the laboratory.

When I read these books, I no longer felt like I was confined to a very tiny world. I no longer felt housebound and bedbound. Really, I told myself, I was just brainbound. And this...

Among leaders who have made the greatest impact through ages, I would consider Muhammad before Jesus Christ.

Anatomy is to physiology as geography is to history; it describes the theatre of events.

Science, the agent that once promised to eradicate the supernatural, had, through the nuclear threat, resurrected it. Magic was not exactly alive, but it was surely undead.