If superstition could contradict science, the world may as well be on the back of a turtle. But giving into turtle worship was a bridge too far.

Physicists often quote from T. H. White’s epic novel The Once and Future King, where a society of ants declares, ‘Everything not forbidden is compulsory.’ In other words, if there isn’t a basic principle of...

Night clubs are where Americans learn the laws of motion.

Geometry has two great treasures; one is the Theorem of Pythagoras; the other, the division of a line into extreme and mean ratio. The first we may compare to a measure of gold; the second...

Try and penetrate with our limited means the secrets of nature and you will find that, behind all the descernible laws and connections, there remains something subtle, intangible and inexplicable. Veneration for this force beyond...

We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born. The potential people who could have been here...

The scientific creation story has majesty, power and beauty. and is infused with a powerful message capable of lifting our spirits in a way that its multitudinous supernatural counterparts are incapable of matching. It teaches...

Even if not a single fossil has ever been found, the evidence from surviving animals would still overwhelmingly force the conclusion that Darwin was right.

Magic’s just science that we don’t understand yet.

Living organisms were not independently created, but have descended and diversified over time from common ancestors. And thus, no other biological theory so elegantly explains this. Evolutionary theory has withstood the test of time—by way...

Free will is the sensation of making a choice. The sensation is real, but the choice seems illusory. Laws of physics determine the future.

Within this new work of art a creature from beyond the reach of Humanity has insinuated herself and now lurks there at the heart of the mystery, a power unimagined before our time.

Discovery consists of seeing what everybody has seen and thinking what nobody else has thought.

A very great deal more truth can become known than can be proven.

We have learnt that the exploration of the external world by the methods of physical science leads not to a concrete reality but to a shadow world of symbols, beneath which those methods are unadapted...

It 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...

In terms of doing things I take a fairly scientific approach to why things happen and how they happen. I don’t know if there’s a god or not…

Study, along the lines which the theologies have mapped, will never lead us to discovery of the fundamental facts of our existence. That goal must be attained by means of exact science and can only...

You are clever man, friend John; you reason well, and your wit is bold; but you are too prejudiced. You do not let your eyes see nor your ears hear, and that which is outside...

The atheist, agnostic, or secularist … should guard against the encroachment of religion in areas where it has no place, and in particular the control of education by religious authority. The attempts to ban the...

Based on the science, there’s every reason to believe that a single dose, multiple doses, whatever, can lead to an adverse event,

That was a stupid idea I made up while drunk. Why did someone build that?

There have been only three epoch-making mathematicians, Archimedes, Newton, and Eisenstein.

The exaltation of human reason and its capabilities, a commitment to rigorous and rational debate, a promotion of intellectual inquiry and scholarly exchange–all sponsored by the Church–provided the framework for the Scientific Revolution.

War created the conditions for great advances in technology…without war men would not traverse oceans in hours, travel in space, or microwave popcorn.

My dream, is to dream, a dream.

I had made up my mind to find that for which I was searching even if it required the remainder of my life. After innumerable failures I finally uncovered the principle for which I was...

The future belongs to Science. More and more she will control the destinies of the nations. Already she has them in her crucible and on her balances.

The man of science has learned to believe in justification, not by faith, but by verification.

Every aspect of Nature reveals a deep mystery and touches our sense of wonder and awe. Those afraid of the universe as it really is, those who pretend to nonexistent knowledge and envision a Cosmos...

If a problem is clearly stated, it has no further interest to the physicist.

The astonishing fact is that similar mathematics applies so well to planets and to clocks. It needn’t have been this way. We didn’t impose it on the Universe. That’s the way the Universe is. If...

Scientist’s intellect is their ship as they navigate through the treacherous waters of detail where, hopefully, their good sense and rationale leads them to truth. Religious leaders already have the truth and those tenants that...

Think of how many religions attempt to validate themselves with prophecy. Think of how many people rely on these prophecies, however vague, however unfulfilled, to support or prop up their beliefs. Yet has there ever...

So one must be resigned to being a clock that measures the passage of time, now out of order, now repaired, and whose mechanism generates despair and love as soon as its maker sets it...

You couldn’t beat the crap out of a dirty diaper!”He embraced his only daughter as if she was deploying to Iraq.She was hotter than a Class 4 solar flare! If sex was a weapon, then...

Your printers have made but one blunder,Correct it instanter, and then for the thunder!We’ll see in a jiffy if this Mr S[pencer]Has the ghost of a claim to be thought a good fencer.To my vision...

What Galileo and Newton were to the seventeenth century, Darwin was to the nineteenth.

Do not imagine that mathematics is hard and crabbed, and repulsive to common sense. It is merely the etherealization of common sense.

science devises ever bloodier means of war until humanity’s powers of destruction overcome our powers of creation and our civilisation drives itself to extinction.

The only things known to go faster than ordinary light is monarchy, according to the philosopher Ly Tin Weedle. He reasoned like this: you can’t have more than one king, and tradition demands that there...

…Our sunsets have been reduced to wavelengths and frequencies. The complexities of the universe have been shredded into mathematical equations. Even our self-worth as human beings has been destroyed.

Harmonics are the cancer of the electrical system.

I remember discussions with Bohr which went through many hours till very late at night and ended almost in despair; and when at the end of the discussion I went alone for a walk in...

You may only get this one life – but lived free of submissive reverence – that is still a thing of rampant beauty.

Gagarin flew into space, but didn’t see any god there.

It cannot be denied that he has had many exceptional ideas, and that he is a highly intelligent man. For my part, however, I have always been taught to take a broad overview of things,...

Es gibt keinen Gott und Dirac ist sein Prophet. (There is no God and Dirac is his Prophet.){A remark made during the Fifth Solvay International Conference (October 1927), after a discussion of the religious views...

See now the power of truth; the same experiment which at first glance seemed to show one thing, when more carefully examined, assures us of the contrary.

For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.