Scientists Quotes

“Doctors, professors, and scientists were unknowingly assimilating incorrect or half-true information in order to regurgitate it to the populace. Because the populace held these professions in the highest regard, their disseminated information was believed as if it was coming out of the mouth of gods.”
― Jasun Ether, The Beasts of Success

“A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.”
― Max Planck, Scientific Autobiography and Other Papers

“Life is funny that way. Sometimes the dumbest thing you do turns out to be the smartest.”
― Robyn Mundell, Brainwalker

“It’s pretty confusing.”
“Good. Be confused. Confusion is where inspiration comes from.”
― Robyn Mundell, Brainwalker

“Wish me good luck, please,” I whisper.
“On one condition,” Philemone says. “Remember, what you call luck is the meeting of opportunity and flexibility.”
I smile, weakly.
“Good luck,” she says. “Now go.”
― Robyn Mundell, Brainwalker

“Scientists are a friendly, atheistic, hard-working, beer-drinking lot whose minds are preoccupied with sex, chess and baseball when they are not preoccupied with science.”
― Yann Martel, Life of Pi

“But you can’t be a scientist if you’re uncomfortable with ignorance, because scientists live at the boundary between what is known and unknown in the cosmos. This is very different from the way journalists portray us. So many articles begin, “Scientists now have to go back to the drawing board.” It’s as though we’re sitting in our offices, feet up on our desks—masters of the universe—and suddenly say, “Oops, somebody discovered something!”

No. We’re always at the drawing board. If you’re not at the drawing board, you’re not making discoveries. You’re not a scientist; you’re something else. The public, on the other hand, seems to demand conclusive explanations as they leap without hesitation from statements of abject ignorance to statements of absolute certainty.”
― Neil deGrasse Tyson, Space Chronicles: Facing the Ultimate Frontier

“I believe that a scientist looking at nonscientific problems is just as dumb as the next guy.”
― Richard P. Feynman

“So this is where all the vapid talk about the 'soul' of the universe is actually headed. Once the hard-won principles of reason and science have been discredited, the world will not pass into the hands of credulous herbivores who keep crystals by their sides and swoon over the poems of Khalil Gibran. The 'vacuum' will be invaded instead by determined fundamentalists of every stripe who already know the truth by means of revelation and who actually seek real and serious power in the here and now. One thinks of the painstaking, cloud-dispelling labor of British scientists from Isaac Newton to Joseph Priestley to Charles Darwin to Ernest Rutherford to Alan Turing and Francis Crick, much of it built upon the shoulders of Galileo and Copernicus, only to see it casually slandered by a moral and intellectual weakling from the usurping House of Hanover. An awful embarrassment awaits the British if they do not declare for a republic based on verifiable laws and principles, both political and scientific.”
― Christopher Hitchens

“Science was many things, Nadia thought, including a weapon with which to hit other scientists.”
― Kim Stanley Robinson, Red Mars

“Actually, we’re with the United States Army stationed in Germany. My friend Paul comes here about every two to three weeks to visit his Dutch girlfriend.”
― Karl Braungart, Lost Identity

“  “Bad news. The Egyptians have left Bogotá on one of six American Airlines’ flights. Steve, I lost them.”
― Karl Braungart, Fatal Identity

“It wasn’t until I noticed two of the words on the sheet printed on a folder label. Sure enough, it was Williams’ study titled ‘Nuclear Waste Management.”
― Karl Braungart, Fatal Identity

“  “Yes, well, I thought you should see it. The cover page is in Arabic scribblin’, but the next hundred-plus pages are in five sections, and in English. I can’t for the life of me figure out what to make of it. This appears to be more American, and it seems to be a kind of scientific material. Have a look at it and let me know what to tell the boys in Z-land,”
― Karl Braungart, Fatal Identity

“Scientists want to search for alien signals because that's what gets them publicity. They are like Jesus Christ."

"Jesus Christ?" Nambodri asked, with a faintly derogatory chuckle.

"Yes. They are exactly like Jesus Christ. You know that he turned water into wine."

"I've heard that story."

"From the point of view of pure chemistry, it is more miraculous to make wine into water than water into wine. But he did not do that. Because if he had gone to someone's house and converted their wine into water, they would have crucified him much earlier. He knew, Jana. He knew making water into wine was a more popular thing to do.”
― Manu Joseph, Serious Men

“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 when it is extremely difficult to discover what it is all about ... It is even more important when scientists are called upon to play their part in the world of affairs, as is happening to an increasing extent.”
― Sir William Bragg

“Read Euler, read Euler, he is the master of us all.”
― Pierre-Simon Laplace

“Cavendish is a book in himself. Born into a life of sumptuous privilege- his grandfathers were dukes, respectively, of Devonshire and Kent- he was the most gifted English scientist of his age, but also the strangest. He suffered, in the words of one of his few biographers, from shyness to a "degree bordering on disease." Any human contact was for him a source of the deepest discomfort.

Once he opened his door to find an Austrian admirer, freshly arrived from Vienna, on the front step. Excitedly the Austrian began to babble out praise. For a few moments Cavendish received the compliments as if they were blows from a blunt object and then, unable to take any more, fled down the path and out the gate, leaving the front door wide open. It was some hours before he could be coaxed back to the property. Even his housekeeper communicated with him by letter.

Although he did sometimes venture into society- he was particularly devoted to the weekly scientific soirees of the great naturalist Sir Joseph Banks- it was always made clear to the other guests that Cavendish was on no account to be approached or even looked at. Those who sought his views were advised to wander into his vicinity as if by accident and to "talk as it were into vacancy." If their remarks were scientifically worthy they might receive a mumbled reply, but more often than not they would hear a peeved squeak (his voice appears to have been high pitched) and turn to find an actual vacancy and the sight of Cavendish fleeing for a more peaceful corner.”
― Bill Bryson, A Short History of Nearly Everything

“The spirit is one of the most neglected parts of man by doctors and scientists around the world. Yet, it is as vital to our health as the heart and mind. It's time for science to examine the many facets of the soul. The condition of our soul is usually the source of many sicknesses.”
― Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem

“Things were different in the past. People idolized thinkers, philosophers, artists and scientists. Today the world admires CEOs, businessmen and managers. Basically, the people who are rich and successful in terms of wealth. This is why the world today is messed up.”
― Abhaidev, The Influencer: Speed Must Have a Limit

“For scientists, reality is not optional.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, Flight Behavior

“{Comment to Delambre on chemist Antoine Lavoisier's execution during the French Revolution}

Only a moment to cut off that head and a hundred years may not give us another like it.”
― Joseph-Louis Lagrange

“...where were answers to the truly deep questions? Religion promised those, though always in vague terms, while retreating from one line in the sand to the next. Don't look past this boundary, they told Galileo, then Hutton, Darwin, Von Neumann, and Crick, always retreating with great dignity before the latest scientific advance, then drawing the next holy perimeter at the shadowy rim of knowledge.”
― David Brin, Kiln People

“Those whom nature destined to make her disciples have no need of teachers. Bacon, Descartes, Newton — these tutors of the human race had no need of tutors themselves, and what guides could have led them to those places where their vast genius carried them? Ordinary teachers could only have limited their understanding by confining it to their own narrow capabilities. With the first obstacles, they learned to exert themselves and made the effort to traverse the immense space they moved through. If it is necessary to permit some men to devote themselves to the study of the sciences and the arts, that should be only for those who feel in themselves the power to walk alone in those men's footsteps and to move beyond them. It is the task of this small number of people to raise monuments to the glory of the human mind.”
― Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Discourse on the Sciences and Arts and Polemics

“Many scientists have tried to make determinism and complementarity the basis of conclusions that seem to me weak and dangerous; for instance, they have used Heisenberg's uncertainty principle to bolster up human free will, though his principle, which applies exclusively to the behavior of electrons and is the direct result of microphysical measurement techniques, has nothing to do with human freedom of choice. It is far safer and wiser that the physicist remain on the solid ground of theoretical physics itself and eschew the shifting sands of philosophic extrapolations.”
― Louis de Broglie, Nouvelles perspectives en microphysique

“The Creator has – I say it in all reverence - drawn a myriad red herrings across the track, but the true scientist refuses to be baffled by superficial appearances in detecting the secrets of Nature. The vulgar herd catches at the gross apparent fact, but the man of insight knows what lies on the surfaces does lie.”
― Israel Zangwill, The Big Bow Mystery

“Ask a true scientist a very profound question on his science, and he will be
silent. Ask a true religious person a very simple question on his religion, and he will be frenzied.”
― Kedar Joshi

“And at that age, the only boys I didn’t think were gross were dead scientists – and it’s not like I wanted to kiss those guys. (No offense, Niels Bohr.) ”
― Sarah Cross, Dull Boy

“I can't imagine the scientists wanting me to walk into the lab and start fiddling around with some big bowl of electrons they had out.”
― Jim Benton, Okay, So Maybe I Do Have Superpowers

“You know Morse Code?” Avian asked as we walked up.
“My grandpa thought it was a fun game when I was little,” West said as he rubbed his eyes again. ”That’s a scientist’s version of fun for you.”
― Keary Taylor, Eden