ab Americo Inventore …quasi Americi terram sive AmericamFrom Amerigo the discoverer …as if it were the land of Americus, thus America.

In a sense, evolution adheres to the classic twelve-step program: it takes things one day at a time. It does not strive for perfection; it does not strive at all. There is no progress, no...

Scientific truth is universal, because it is only discovered by the human brain and not made by it, as art is.

Distraction leaches the authenticity out of our communications. When we are not emotionally present, we are gliding over the surface of our interactions and we never tangle in the depths where the nuances of our...

That one must do some work seriously and must be independent and not merely amuse oneself in life—this our mother has told us always, but never that science was the only career worth following.

My son, all my life I have loved this science so deeply that I can now hear my heart beat for joy.{Commenting about Louis Pasteur’s accomplishment of separating two asymmetric forms of tartaric acid crystals.}

Scientific principles and laws do not lie on the surface of nature. They are hidden, and must be wrested from nature by an active and elaborate technique of inquiry.

It is essential for genetic material to be able to make exact copies of itself; otherwise growth would produce disorder, life could not originate, and favourable forms would not be perpetuated by natural selection.

In this field, almost everything is already discovered, and all that remains is to fill a few unimportant holes.{Advising his student, Max Planck, whom he advised in 1878, not to go into physics, at at...

A budding fashionista even at four, I would capture the little lizards and latch them, still living, onto my earlobes as earrings. Most girls wouldn’t touch them, I thought they completed the outfit.

Our duty is to believe that for which we have sufficient evidence, and to suspend our judgment when we have not.

Mine is a gruesome job, but for a scientist with a love for the mechanics of the human body, a great one.

We must have sinned greatly, at some juncture long buried in our protozoic past, to deserve such a universe

Truth is not a right to be claimed, but a gift for those who are able to conquer it. ☥

I am constantly amazed by how much stranger science is than science fiction

The only thing that interests the physicist is finding out on what assumptions a framework of things can be constructed which will enable us to know how to use them mechanically. Physics, as I have...

In the new century science will defeat famine, boredom, and the plague, but . . . vital knowledge will become so elevated that nobody will know how anything works. . . . the good news...

Given the power and influence that science increasingly has in our daily lives, it is important that we as citizens of an open and democratic society learn to separate good science from bunk. This is...

The integrity of one’s own mind is of infinitely more value than adherence to any creed or system. We must choose between a dead faith belonging to the past and a living, growing ever-advancing science...

The frontispiece of Mr. Lyell’s book is enough to throw a Wernerian into fits.

The so-called paradox of freedom is the argument that freedom in the sense of absence of any constraining control must lead to very great restraint, since it makes the bully free to enslave the meek....

There are many people who say there’s a God somewhere up there but, God is nothing more than a formula. Just a part of some law of physics that we have yet to understand.

Men of learning in Milan have not enjoyed proper respect. They hid themselves in their laboratories and thought themselves lucky if . . . priests left them alone. All is changed today. Thought in Italy...

The curious mind embraces science; the gifted and sensitive, the arts; the practical, business; the leftover becomes an economist

All humans are insane, they exists because insanity exists.

Real arms races are run by highly intelligent, bespectacled engineers in glass offices thoughtfully designing shiny weapons on modern computers. But there’s no thinking in the mud and cold of nature’s trenches. At best, weapons...

We have managed to transfer religious belief into gullibility for whatever can masquerade as science.

When enter the whole new world, men will deal with new science.To embrace a new science, men need to get used to new wisdom.

Svante Arrhenius, recipient of the Nobel Prize in chemistry (1903), was a declared atheist and the author of The Evolution of the Worlds and other works on cosmic physics.

Even if the intelligent design of some structure has been established, it still is a separate question whether a wise, powerful, and beneficent God ought to have designed a complex, information-rich structure one way or...

I submit a body of facts which cannot be invalidated. My opinions may be doubted, denied, or approved, according as they conflict or agree with the opinions of each individual who may read them; but...

The theoretical determination of the fine structure constant is certainly the most important of the unsolved problems of modern physics. We believe that any regression to the ideas of classical physics (as, for instance, to...

I believe in intuition and inspiration. Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited, whereas imagination embraces the entire world, stimulating progress, giving birth to evolution. It is, strictly speaking, a real factor...

Theory in any branch of science entails a risk of detachment from reality

It takes a fearless, unflinching love and deep humility to accept the universe as it is. The most effective way he knew to accomplish that, the most powerful tool at his disposal, was the scientific...

Many investigators feel uneasy stating in public that the origin of life is a mystery, even though behind closed doors they admit they are baffled.

Art serves a purpose. It expands our horizons, frees our minds, and opens us up to new experiences. It opens the imagination. All these great discoveries of our time — without the desire to reach...

E intelligent design people! They’re just buck-toothed, Bible-pushing nincompoops with community-college degrees who’re trying to sell a gussied-up creationism to a cretinous public! No need to address their concerns or respond to their arguments. They...

Scientists still do not appear to understand sufficiently that all earth sciences must contribute evidence toward unveiling the state of our planet in earlier times, and that the truth of the matter can only be...

I was a young impressionable 13 year old hearing the pro-left and pro-right argument. So one day I would be convinced that one side was right. the other day I would be convinced the other...

Education levels are highly and negatively correlated to religious belief. In other words, ignorance is bliss.

You can know the name of a bird in all the languages of the world, but when you’re finished, you’ll know absolutely nothing whatever about the bird… So let’s look at the bird and see...

I am older than you. Believe me, there is no other way to live on earth. Men are not open to truth or reason. They cannot be reached by a rational argument. The mind is...

What prompts alarm in me is how you and your government want to ruin not only the potential of this of this country, but also the path of those who are going to transition into...

I know LSD; I don’t need to take it anymore. Maybe when I die, like Aldous Huxley.

We are here because one odd group of fishes had a peculiar fin anatomy that could transform into legs for terrestrial creatures; because the earth never froze entirely during an ice age; because a small...

Progress has not brought about universal happiness…

The literature [Nobel] laureate of this year has said that an author can do anything as long as his readers believe him.A scientist cannot do anything that is not checked and rechecked by scientists of...

Let’s train ourselves to not hate each other. We all come from the same consciousness in the mind.

The type of journalism that relies on the reporter’s notion of what does or doesn’t “seem” correct or controversial is self-indulgent and irresponsible. It gives credence to the belief that we can intuit our way...