It has become almost a cliché to remark that nobody boasts of ignorance of literature, but it is socially acceptable to boast ignorance of science and proudly claim incompetence in mathematics.

Meteorites don’t fall on the Earth. They fall on the Sun and the Earth gets in the way.” – John W. Campbell

The appearance of Professor Benjamin Peirce, whose long gray hair, straggling grizzled beard and unusually bright eyes sparkling under a soft felt hat, as he walked briskly but rather ungracefully across the college yard, fitted...

… things are the way they are in our universe because if they Weren’t, we would not be here to notice.

The evolution of life, and the evolutionary origin of mankind, are scientifically established as firmly and completely as any historical event not witnessed by human observers. Any concession to anti-evolutionists, suggesting that there are scientific...

If science wants to be truthful,What science is more truthful than the science of things without science?I close my eyes and the hard earth where I’m lyingHas a reality so real even my back feels...

It is human nature to strive.

As UC Berkeley economics professor Brad DeLong put it to me:You get famine if the price of food spikes far beyond that of some people’s means. This can be because food is short, objectively. This...

Sophie Germain proved to the world that even a woman can accomplish something in the most rigorous and abstract of sciences and for that reason would well have deserved an honorary degree.

We have really, that I know of, no philosophical basis for high and low. Moreover, the vegetable kingdom does not culminate, as the animal kingdom does. It is not a kingdom, but a common-wealth; a...

The ultimate singularity is the Big Bang, which physicists believe was responsible for the birth of the universe. We are asked by science to believe that the entire universe sprang from nothingness, at a single...

I do not think that G. H. Hardy was talking nonsense when he insisted that the mathematician was discovering rather than creating… The world for me is a necessary system, and in the degree to...

Light brings us the news of the Universe.

Scientific knowledge scarcely exists amongst the higher classes of society. The discussion in the Houses of Lords or of Commons, which arise on the occurrence of any subjects connected with science, sufficiently prove this fact…

A scientist can pretend that his work isn’t himself, it’s merely the impersonal truth. An artist can’t hide behind the truth. He can’t hide anywhere.

Astronomy is, not without reason, regarded, by mankind, as the sublimest of the natural sciences. Its objects so frequently visible, and therefore familiar, being always remote and inaccessible, do not lose their dignity.

I feel very strongly indeed that a Cambridge education for our scientists should include some contact with the humanistic side. The gift of expression is important to them as scientists; the best research is wasted...

The following proposition seems to me in a high degree probable—namely, that any animal whatever, endowed with well-marked social instincts, the parental and filial affections being here included, would inevitably acquire a moral sense or...

Science ask facts and religion ask faith, humans are confused between life and death.

The thing that makes artifacts important is their spatial relationships to each other. If you don’t record those spatial relationships carefully, then you’re not doing archeology. The minute you remove an artifact from a site...

How can a three-pound mass of jelly that you can hold in your palm imagine angels, contemplate the meaning of infinity, and even question its own place in the cosmos? Especially awe inspiring is the...

Who is more humble? The scientist who looks at the universe with an open mind and accepts whatever the universe has to teach us, or somebody who says everything in this book must be considered...

The practice of that which is ethically best—what we call goodness or virtue—involves a course of conduct which, in all respects, is opposed to that which leads to success in the cosmic struggle for existence....

Present global culture is a kind of arrogant newcomer. It arrives on the planetary stage following four and a half billion years of other acts, and after looking about for a few thousand years declares...

May it [American independence] be to the world, what I believe it will be, (to some parts sooner, to others later, but finally to all,) the signal of arousing men to burst the chains under...

Some information is classified legitimately; as with military hardware, secrecy sometimes really is in the national interest. Further, military, political, and intelligence communities tend to value secrecy for its own sake. It’s a way of...

This climb was motivated by science,

These days there seems to be nowhere left to explore, at least on the land area of the Earth. Victims of their very success, the explorers now pretty much stay home.

A man craves ultimate truths. Every mortal mind, I think, is that way. But what is ultimate truth? It’s the end of the road, where there is no more mystery, no more hope. And no...

I have been accused of a habit of changing my opinions. I am not myself in any degree ashamed of having changed my opinions. What physicist who was already active in 1900 would dream of...

For the admirable gift of himself, and for the magnificent service he renders humanity, what reward does our society offer the scientist? Have these servants of an idea the necessary means of work? Have they...

In my opinion, we don’t devote nearly enough scientific research to finding a cure for jerks.

We ought to regard the present state of the universe as the effect of its antecedent state and as the cause of the state that is to follow. An intelligence knowing all the forces acting...

the Bradman class” denoted the highest kind of excellence: it would include Shakespeare, Tolstoy, Newton, Archimedes, and maybe a dozen others. Well, said Hardy, there had only been two additions in his lifetime. One was...

Is it more probable that nature should go out of her course or that a man should tell a lie? We have never seen, in our time, nature go out of her course. But we...

hoped to prove that science and religion are two totally compatible fields—two different approaches to finding the same truth.

The radiation detoxification process exists in nature. It is called: Hibernation.

Science knows it doesn’t know everything; otherwise, it’d stop. But just because science doesn’t know everything doesn’t mean you can fill in the gaps with whatever fairy tale most appeals to you.

You must unite behind the science. You must take action. You must do the impossible. Because giving up can never ever be an option.

[On famous Nobel Laureate Niels Bohr][Niels] Bohr’s sort of humor, use of parables and stories, tolerance, dependence on family, feelings of indebtedness, obligation, and guilt, and his sense of responsibility for science, community, and, ultimately,...

When things get too complicated, it sometimes makes sense to stop and wonder: Have I asked the right question?

To surrender to ignorance and call it God has always been premature, and it remains premature today.

Imagine for a moment that we are nothing but the product of billions of years of molecules coming together and ratcheting up through natural selection, that we are composed only of highways of fluids and...

As every circumstance relating to so capital a discovery as this (the greatest, perhaps, that has been made in the whole compass of philosophy, since the time of Sir Isaac Newton) cannot but give pleasure...

The whole war between the atheist and the theist comes down to this: the atheist believes a ‘what’ created the universe; the theist believes a ‘who’ created the universe.

A totally blind process can by definition lead to anything; it can even lead to vision itself.

The most convincing proof of the conversion of heat into living force [vis viva] has been derived from my experiments with the electro-magnetic engine, a machine composed of magnets and bars of iron set in...

The apex of mathematical achievement occurs when two or more fields which were thought to be entirely unrelated turn out to be closely intertwined. Mathematicians have never decided whether they should feel excited or upset...

Much of the geographical work of the past hundred years… has either explicitly or implicitly taken its inspiration from biology, and in particular Darwin. Many of the original Darwinians, such as Hooker, Wallace, Huxley, Bates,...

Accordingly, we find Euler and D’Alembert devoting their talent and their patience to the establishment of the laws of rotation of the solid bodies. Lagrange has incorporated his own analysis of the problem with his...