Vulnerable, like all men, to the temptations of arrogance, of which intellectual pride is the worst, he [the scientist] must nevertheless remain sincere and modest, if only because his studies constantly bring home to him...

The is a secret for greater self-control, the science points to one thing: the power of paying attention.

Writing my own novels in the ’90s…I never imagined that in ten years, science and rationality would require explanation and defense in a world rocked and ruled by religious fervor.

There is much in this vision that will remind you of your mystics; yet between them and us there is far more difference than similarity, in respect both of the matter and the manner of...

The biggest battle is the war against ignorance.

Given her deafness, the auditory part of the brain, deprived of its usual input, had started to generate a spontaneous activity of its own, and this took the form of musical hallucinations, mostly musical memories...

Nature has no originality–I mean, no large ability in the matter of inventing new things, new ideas, new stage effects. She has a superb and amazing and infinitely varied equipment of old ones, but she...

The more important fundamental laws and facts of physical science have all been discovered, and these are now so firmly established that the possibility of their ever being supplanted in consequence of new discoveries is...

In other studies you go as far as other have gone before you, and there is nothing more to know; but in a scientific pursuit there is continual food for discovery and wonder.

There is no greater power than the one others do not believe you possess.

When fully united, without ego or weakness, we become the greatest invisible force this world has ever witnessed.

If the whole world shared such experiences, we would then have common dreams and everybody could begin thinking about tomorrow. And if everybody thinks about tomorrow, then someday we can visit the sky together.

I have always consoled myself that he such as I who is not a genius, can still achieve much that is useful when he does his work right and chooses his work to suit his...

It was my good fortune to be linked with Mme. Curie through twenty years of sublime and unclouded friendship. I came to admire her human grandeur to an ever growing degree. Her strength, her purity...

There had always been a conflict in me between mystery and meaning. I had pursued tha latter, worshipped the latter as a doctor. As a socialist and rationalist. But then I saw that the attempt...

Liebig taught the world two great lessons. The first was that in order to teach chemistry it was necessary that students should be taken into a laboratory. The second lesson was that he who is...

They lived like monkeys still, while their new god powers lay around them in the weeds.

An infinity of these tiny animals defoliate our plants, our trees, our fruits… they attack our houses, our fabrics, our furniture, our clothing, our furs … He who in studying all the different species of...

The rifts in this ancient wall continue to be patched with exhortations to women to avoid challenging the norm even if it means faking orgasm and sacrificing honesty in their intimate relationships with men. In...

The advantage of the emotions is that they lead us astray, and the advantage of science is that it is not emotional.

The probability of an event is the reason we have to believe that it has taken place, or that it will take place.The measure of the probability of an event is the ratio of the...

mindful knowledge acquisition, inductive analysis, critical thinking, imagination, and reflection.

Io, Europa, Ganimedes puer, atque Calistolascivo nimium perplacuere Iovi.(Io, Europa, the boy Ganymede, and Callisto greatly pleased lustful Jupiter.)[Marius naming Jupiter’s moons]

Quantum fluctuations are, at their root, completely a-causal, in the sense that cause and effect and ordering of events in time is not a part of how these fluctuations work. Because of this, there seem...

I am not afraid of the possibility of finding intelligent life in the universe, I am afraid of the possibility of them finding us

The myth of quantum consciousness sits well with many whose egos have made it impossible for them to accept the insignificant place science perceives for humanity, as modern instruments probe the farthest reaches of space...

It’s true; life really is generous to those who pursue their Personal Legend.

It is harder to crack prejudice than an atom.

The greatest blessing granted to mankind come by way of madness, which is a divine gift.

And what greater might do we possess as human beings than our capacity to question and to learn?

The idea of a divine creator belittles the elegant reality of the universe.

There is a reference in Aristotle to a gnat produced by larvae engendered in the slime of vinegar. This must have been Drosophila.

To say that the humanities can be a path to truth itself is to challenge one of our most closely held beliefs. We live not only in a scientific world, but also in a scientistic...

The significant problems we have cannot be solved at the same level of thinking with which we created them.

Jumping from failure to failure with undiminished enthusiasm is the big secret to success.

I learned what research was all about as a research student [with] Stoppani … Max Perutz, and … Fred Sanger… From them, I always received an unspoken message which in my imagination I translated as...

We absolutely must leave room for doubt or there is no progress and there is no learning. There is no learning without having to pose a question. And a question requires doubt. People search for...

When we read, another person thinks for us: we merely repeat his mental process. In learning to write, the pupil goes over with his pen what the teacher has outlined in pencil: so in reading;...

The bold code of the transhumanist will rise. That’s an inevitable, undeniable fact. It’s embedded in the undemocratic nature of technology and our own teleological evolutionary advancment. It is the future. We are the future...

Although five European computer science professors have already confirmed that our documentation meets or exceeds industry standards, we are committed to doing everything in our power to address the Commission’s concerns. These new documentation projects,...

Knowledge and wonder are the dyad of our worthy lives as intellectual beings.

The finest peculiarity of belief is that believers do not recognize themselves as believers.

The traditional boundaries between various fields of science are rapidly disappearing and what is more important science does not know any national borders. The scientists of the world are forming an invisible network with a...

All good intellects have repeated, since Bacon’s time, that there can be no real knowledge but that which is based on observed facts. This is incontestable, in our present advanced stage; but, if we look...

Number three: Stay away from the church. In the battle over science vs. religion, science offers credible evidence for all the serious claims it makes. The church says, ‘Oh, it’s right here in this book,...

Jasnah had once defined a fool as a person who ignored information because it disagreed with desired results.

Another source of fallacy is the vicious circle of illusions which consists on the one hand of believing what we see, and on the other in seeing what we believe.

I do not consider myself a religious person, because I don’t adhere to a particular religion or faith or prescribed beliefs, as did my father, who was a Baptist minister. And I am not an...

Christian missions to India imply that India is a land of heathens, and, therefore, stands on the same level with the Andaman or the Fiji Islands. That a country which has been recognised in all...

[Alexander von Humboldt was the] greatest scientific traveller who ever lived.