What is especially striking and remarkable is that in fundamental physics a beautiful or elegant theory is more likely to be right than a theory that is inelegant.

Evolution endowed us with intuition only for those aspects of physics that had survival value for our distant ancestors, such as the parabolic orbits of flying rocks (explaining our penchant for baseball). A cavewoman thinking...

In science common sense is nonsense and nonsense is sense.

Not that there’s anything wrong with just lying around on your back. In it’s way, rotting is interesting too, as we will see. It’s just that there are other ways to spend your time as...

lower animals” (so-called,) and contrasting them with the traits and dispositions of man. I find the result profoundly humiliating to me. For it obliges me to renounce my allegiance to the Darwinian theory of the...

Using the scientific knowledge that we currently possess, we can take simple logical steps, backed by the strongest evidence that we have, to come to the best and most reasonable conclusion that God is the...

Humans spend more time finding ways to fight and criticize who they consider a threat than actually learning how to overcome that threat.

Kids are never the problem. They are born scientists. The problem is always the adults. They beat the curiosity out of kids. They outnumber kids. They vote. They wield resources. That’s why my public focus...

The chemists are a strange class of mortals, impelled by an almost insane impulse to seek their pleasures amid smoke and vapour, soot and flame, poisons and poverty; yet among all these evils I seem...

Evolution provides a scientific foundation for the core values shared by most Christians and conservatives, and by accepting–and embracing–the theory of evolution, Christians and conservatives strengthen their religion, their politics, and science itself. The conflict...

Science is as corruptible a human activity as any other.

Science, unlike theology, never leads to insanity.

Human tool-makers always make tools that will help us get what we want, and what we want hasn’t changed for thousands of years because as far as we can tell the human template hasn’t changed...

Japanese universities have a chair system that is a fixed hierarchy. This has its merits when trying to work as a laboratory on one theme. But if you want to do original work you must...

I cannot give any scientist of any age better advice than this: the intensity of the conviction that a hypothesis is true has no bearing on whether it is true or not.

The part of the brain most affected by early stress is the prefrontal cortex, which is critical in self-regulatory activities of all kinds, both emotional and cognitive. As a result, children who grow up in...

From one sublime genius—NEWTON—more light has proceeded than the labour of a thousand years preceding had been able to produce.

What do you think science is? There’s nothing magical about science. It is simply a systematic way for carefully and thoroughly observing nature and using consistent logic to evaluate results. Which part of that exactly...

[I]f the basic claims of religion are true, the scientific worldview is so blinkered and susceptible to supernatural modification as to be rendered nearly ridiculous; if the basic claims of religion are false, most people...

My dad was a hippie. I was really fortunate I went into marine science…. But then, my middle name is Wildflower, so I could have gone into botany.

Dontopedology is the science of opening your mouth and putting your foot in it

Waldemar Haffkine [is] a saviour of humanity.

We are an impossibility in an impossible universe.

It must be admitted that scientists today take little interest in philosophy of science…. It is not an indication that philosophical issues are no longer relevant. Rather, it is a consequence of the increasingly specialized...

Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I’m not sure about the universe.

Science is entirely dependent on constants. Anything that is not constant (natural disasters, poor construction, or other human factors) is nearly impossible to include in equations such as those used in archaeology and for dating...

We live in a world where unfortunately the distinction between true and false appears to become increasingly blurred by manipulation of facts, by exploitation of uncritical minds, and by the pollution of the language.

Let us try to teach generosity and altruism, because we are born selfish. Let us understand what our own selfish genes are up to, because we may then at least have the chance to upset...

I’m comfortable with the unknown — that’s the point of science. There are places out there, billions of places out there, that we know nothing about. And the fact that we know nothing about them...

We think we know that chimpanzees are higher animals and earthworms are lower, we think we’ve always known what that means, and we think evolution makes it even clearer. But it doesn’t. It is by...

How inappropriate to call this planet “Earth,” when it is clearly “Ocean.

My idea of an educated person is one who can converse on one subject for more than two minutes.

…quantum mechanics—the physics of our world—requires that you hold such pedestrian complaints in abeyance.

Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution.

The experience of a miracle means we must recognize that the data offered by our senses recur in regular pattern.

CURIOSITY DEMANDS THAT WE ASK QUESTIONS,THAT WE TRY TO PUT THINGS TOGETHER AND TRY TO UNDERSTAND THIS MULTITUDE OF ASPECTSAS PERHAPS RESULTING FROM THE ACTION OF A RELATIVELY SMALL NUMBER OF ELEMENTALTHINGS AND FORCES ACTING...

Let us begin with the fine-structure constant. … The fine-structure constant is really the ratio of two natural units or atoms of action. … We obtain action when we multiply energy by time. … We...

t 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...

DNA is like a computer program but far, far more advanced than any software ever created.

…What I have denied and what my reason compels me to deny, is the existence of a Being throned above us as a god, directing our mundane affairs in detail, regarding us as individuals, punishing...

Do you not think that there are things which you cannot understand, and yet which are; that some people see things that others cannot? But there are things old and new which must not be...

Maybe if I had to boil it down to one easy sentence, it would be this: I believe in evolution, and I believe in God. I just haven’t worked out the details yet.

No one shall expel us from the paradise which Cantor has created for us.{Expressing the importance of Georg Cantor’s set theory in the development of mathematics.}

It’s so hard to believe in anything anymore. I mean, it’s like, religion, you really can’t take it seriously, because it seems so mythological, it seems so arbitrary…but, on the other hand, science is just...

If there was one overriding element to Faraday’s character, it was humility. His ‘conviction of deficiency,’ as he called it, stemmed in part from his deep religiosity and affected practically every facet of his life....

This stuff isn’t rocket science.

In the future I see open fields for more important researches. Psychology will be securely based on the foundation already laid by Mr. Herbert Spencer, that of the necessary acquirement of each mental power and...

It is one of the greatest Curses visited upon Mankind, he told me, that they shall fear where no Fear is: this astrological and superstitious Humour disarms men’s Hearts, it breaks their Courage, it makes...

The inventor…looks upon the world and is not contented with things as they are. He wants to improve whatever he sees, he wants to benefit the world; he is haunted by an idea.

It is difficult to overstate the importance of understanding mirror neurons and their function. They may well be central to social learning, imitation, and the cultural transmission of skills and attitudes—perhaps even of the pressed-together...