My main reason for scepticism about the Huxley/Sagan theory is that the human brain is demonstrably eager to see faces in random patterns, as we know from scientific evidence, on top of the numerous legends...

For me Humanity > Country > Family > Friends > (Religion = Science). Sorry if I disappointed you, but this is what I was and I will follow my whole life.

The essential quality that an entity needs, if it is to become an effective gene vehicle, is this. It must have an impartial exit channel into the future, for all the genes inside it. This...

The study of mathematics is apt to commence in disappointment… We are told that by its aid the stars are weighed and the billions of molecules in a drop of water are counted. Yet, like...

I simply would not accede to being forced into this, and would frequently be kept out of classes because of irreverent comments and mocking this religious stuff. Frankly, it stayed with me to this day....

In terms of adaptability, humans are pretty amazingly useless.

We are built to be effective animals, not happy ones.

One has a greater sense of intellectual degradation after an interview with a doctor than from any human experience.

Science is a lie in day-light, with a lot witnesses. Religion is a truth in darkness, without any need for such witness!

You are a placebo responder. Your body plays tricks on your mind. You cannot be trusted.

Skepticism is the agent of reason against organized irrationalism–and is therefore one of the keys to human social and civic decency.

All what we think and know is an illusion. Nothing exists. Everything is an opinion.

By far the most important consequence of the conceptual revolution brought about in physics by relativity and quantum theory lies not in such details as that meter sticks shorten when they move or that simultaneous...

There is also hope that even in these days of increasing specialization there is a unity in the human experience.

Coelorum perrupit claustra.He broke through the barriers of the skies.[Herschel’s epitaph]

The European talks of progress because by the aid of a few scientific discoveries he has established a society which has mistaken comfort for civilisation.

Life on Earth is not the result of a series of miracles performed by a supernatural god-creator, and it is definitely not a product of matter having a mind of its own, of an equally...

The determination of the average man is not merely a matter of speculative curiosity; it may be of the most important service to the science of man and the social system. It ought necessarily to...

Science seeks the truth. And it does not discriminate. For better or worse it finds things out. Science is humble. It knows what it knows and it knows what it doesn’t know. It bases its...

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...

Just as we have created a society in which it would be unthinkable to light up a cigarette in the Kennedy Center lobby, we can create a society where it is unthinkable that a child...

Your Excellency, I have no need of this hypothesis.

At last everything was satisfactorily arranged, and I could not help admiring the setting: these mingled touches betrayed on a small scale the inspiration of a poet, the research of a scientist, the good taste...

In the beginning there was nothing, which exploded.

The evolution of the human race will not be accomplished in the ten thousand years of tame animals, but in the million years of wild animals, because man is, and always will be, a wild...

Yalan söylemek kolaydır ama devam ettirmek zordur.

What is it with science these days? Everyone is so quick to believe in it, in all these new scientific discoveries, new pills for this, new pills for that. Get thinner, grow hair, yada, yada,...

We can distinguish three groups of scientific men. In the first and very small group we have the men who discover fundamental relations. Among these are van’t Hoff, Arrhenius and Nernst. In the second group...

Nothing exists except atoms and empty space; everything else is opinion.

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.