A mode of thought does not become ‘critical’ simply by attributing that label to itself, but by virtue of its content.

What we call rational grounds for our beliefs are often extremely irrational attempts to justify our instincts.

We’ve arranged a civilization in which most crucial elements profoundly depend on science and technology. We have also arranged things so that almost no one understands science and technology. This is a prescription for disaster.

The science which teacheth arts and handicrafts is merely science for the gaining of a living; but the science which teacheth deliverance from worldly existence, is not that the true science?

We can judge our progress by the courage of our questions and the depth of our answers, our willingness to embrace what is true rather than what feels good.

Darwin, with his Origin of Species, his theories about Natural Selection, the Survival of the Fittest, and the influence of environment, shed a flood of light upon the great problems of plant and animal life.These...

It is certainly true that all beliefs and all myths are worthy of a respectful hearing. It is not true that all folk beliefs are equally valid – if we’re talking not about an internal...

We learned that the two cell lines from which Hwang fabricated photos of the other nine cells for the Science paper do not match the DNA of patients who contributed … cells.

There is only gain when you love Nature so profoundly, the richness is everlasting , however much spent’.

It is impossible to escape the impression that people commonly use false standards of measurement — that they seek power, success and wealth for themselves and admire them in others, and that they underestimate what...

When two men of science disagree, they do not invoke the secular arm; they wait for further evidence to decide the issue, because, as men of science, they know that neither is infallible. But when...

For these two years I have been gravitating towards your doctrines, and since the publication of your primula paper with accelerated velocity. By about this time next year I expect to have shot past you,...

Le equazioni della meccanica quantistica e le loro conseguenze vengono usate quotidianamente da fisici, ingegneri, chimici e biologi, nei campi più svariati. Sono utilissime per tutta la tecnologia contemporanea. Non ci sarebbero i transistor senza...

The existence of consciousness is both one of the most familiar and one of the most astounding things about the world. No conception of the natural order that does not reveal it as something to...

For centuries the church has stood by while science picked away at religion bit by bit. Debunking miracles. Training the mind to overcome the heart. Condemning religion as the opiate of the masses. They denounce...

The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike.

Die Wissenschaft ist ein Land, welches die Eigenschaft hat, um so mehr Menschen beherbergen zu können, je mehr Bewohner sich darin sammeln; sie ist ein Schatz, der um so grösser wird, je mehr man ihn...

The effect of a concept-driven revolution is to explain old things in new ways. The effect of a tool-driven revolution is to discover new things that have to be explained.

I went to school in drag, in art school and my day was completely different because everybody thought I was a chick. You should see me as a chick. So I went as a girl,...

It is the natural tendency of the ignorant to believe what is not true. In order to overcome that tendency it is not sufficient to exhibit the true; it is also necessary to expose and...

Human milk is like ice cream, penicillin, and the drug ecstasy all wrapped up in two pretty packages.

It’s much easier on the emotions when one sees life as an experiment rather than a struggle for popularity.

The mass starts into a million suns;Earths round each sun with quick explosions burst,And second planets issue from the first.[The first concept of a ‘big bang’ theory of the universe.]

The idea that one can go to the fossil record and expect to empirically recover an ancestor-descendant sequence, be it of species, genera, families, or whatever, has been, and continues to be, a pernicious illusion.

Spring procreates, Summer develops, Autumn debilitates & Winter ceases to be. Meeting all forms of life.

The publication of the Darwin and Wallace papers in 1858, and still more that of the ‘Origin’ in 1859, had the effect upon them of the flash of light, which to a man who has...

Thank you father, thank you. I know you watched me from above and protected me. I promise I shall serve the Magnarian Confederation with all my body and soul. I shall dedicate myself fully to...

If you try and take a cat apart to see how it works, the first thing you have on your hands is a non-working cat.

…whatever God found worth creating we can find worth studying.

… the Sufi attitude is: ‘Let the real truth, whatever it may be, be revealed to me’.

The Christians who engaged in infamous persecutions and shameful inquisitions were not evil men but misguided men. The churchmen who felt they had an edict from God to withstand the progress of science, whether in...

Le savant doit ordonner ; on fait la science avec des faits comme une maison avec des pierres ; mais une accumulation de faits n’est pas plus une science qu’un tas de pierres n’est une...

laws” in the sense of empirical rules about the behavior of objects definable in physical terms. All that the theory of the social sciences attempts is to provide a technique of reasoning which assists us...

For those scientists who take it seriously, Darwinian evolution has functioned more as a philosophical belief system than as a testable scientific hypothesis. This quasi-religious function of the theory is, I think, what lies behind...

Every one is fond of comparing himself to something great and grandiose, as Louis XIV likened himself to the sun, and others have had like similes. I am more humble. I am a mere street...

Ending up with that gigantic outsized brain must have taken some sort of runaway evolutionary process, something that would push and push without limits.And today’s scientists had a pretty good guess at what that runaway...

No existing form of anthropoid ape is even remotely related to the stock which has given rise to man.

When we consider the magnitude and extent of his discoveries and their influence on the progress of science and of industry, there is no honour too great to pay to the memory of Faraday, one...

When the time is ripe for certain things, these things appear in different places in the manner of violets coming to light in early spring.

Başkalarının değişebileceğine inanç duymam için benim değişme deneyimini yaşamış olmam gerekir.

There is a fundamental tension between science and freedom – no matter how science is viewed by its practitioners nor how freedom is sensed by those who believe they have it.

Goddard was not personally religious; his most immediate and consistent motivation was a desire for recognition as the founding genius of rocket science.

The wild gas, the fixed air is plainly broke loose: but we ought to suspend our judgments until the first effervescence is a little subsided, till the liquor is cleared, and until we see something...