It’s becoming clear that in a sense the cosmos provides the only laboratory where sufficiently extreme conditions are ever achieved to test new ideas on particle physics. The energies in the Big Bang were far higher than we can ever achieve on Earth. So by looking at evidence for the Big Bang, and by studying things like neutron stars, we are in effect learning something about fundamental physics. Martin Rees, cited Wolpert & Richards 1998 ‘A Passion for Science’
The advance of science spares us from irrational dread. Martin Rees
A new age of science and commerce … Pioneers push into the unknown. Mankind: The Story of All of Us IX: Pioneers, History 2012
In science, all facts, no matter how trivial or banal, enjoy democratic equality. Mary McCarthy
Freedom is absolutely necessary for the progress in science and the liberal arts. Baruch Spinoza
Last week Gallup announced the results of their latest survey on Americans and evolution. The numbers were a stark blow to high-school science teachers everywhere: 46% of adults said they believed that ‘God created humans in their present form within the last 10,000 years’. Only 15% agreed with the statement that humans had evolved without the guidance of a divine power. The New Yorker, article Jonah Lerer 7th June 2012, ‘Why We Don’t Believe in Science’
For a hundred and fifty years a revolutionary idea has been spreading all over the world. It has helped us unravel the mysteries of creation. Transforming our understanding of life on Earth. And our own place in Nature. But this idea has implications that go far beyond science. Its legacy reaches deep into every area of our lives. Andrew Marr, Darwin’s Dangerous Idea, BBC 2009
There are many aspects of the universe that still cannot be explained satisfactorily by science; but ignorance only implies ignorance that may someday be conquered. To surrender to ignorance and call it God has always been premature, and it remains premature today. Isaac Asimov, The Threat of Creationism
I believe in evidence. I believe in observation, measurement, and reasoning, confirmed by independent observers. I’ll believe anything, no matter how wild and ridiculous, if there is evidence for it. The wilder and more ridiculous something is, however, the firmer and more solid the evidence will have to be. Isaac Asimov
Inspect every piece of pseudo-science and you will find a security blanket, a thumb to suck, a skirt to hold. Isaac Asimov
The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom. Isaac Asimov
The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds the most discoveries, is not ‘Eureka!’ (I found it!) but ‘That’s funny ...’ Isaac Asimov
To surrender to ignorance and call it God has always been premature, and it remains premature today. Isaac Asimov
Imagine the people who believe such things and who are not ashamed to ignore, totally, all the patient findings of thinking minds through all the centuries since the Bible was written. And it is these ignorant people, the most uneducated, the most unimaginative, the most unthinking among us, who would make themselves the guides and leaders of us all; who would force their feeble and childish beliefs on us; who would invade our schools and libraries and homes. I personally resent it bitterly. Isaac Asimov
The twenty-first century will be the era of world controllers ... The older dictators fell because they could never supply their subjects with enough bread, enough circuses, enough miracles and mysteries. Under a scientific dictatorship, education will really work, with the result that most men and women will grow up to love their servitude and will never dream of revolution. There seems to be no good reason why a thoroughly scientific dictatorship should ever be overthrown. Aldous Huxley, Brave New World Revisited, 1958
Today all serious scientists agree that evolution has occurred. You should be forgiven that in 1938 this point should not need repeating. Unfortunately certain types of Christian propaganda still maintain that there is serious doubt about it. Let us use our science to finish the speculation. The superstition. The witchcraft. Proof for evolution. Proof for Darwin. This is the goal. It would be the achievement of the age. Julian Huxley, lecture Cambridge, cited Horizon: Wings of Angels, 1999
The great tragedy of Science – the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact. Thomas H Huxley, Collected Essays 1893-4
Science is nothing but trained and organised common sense. ibid.
New truths in science often begin as heresy, advance to orthodoxy and end as superstition. Thomas H Huxley, variations & attributions
The antagonism between science and religion, about which we hear so much, appears to me to be purely factitious – fabricated, on the one hand, by short-sighted religious people who confound a certain branch of science, theology, with religion; and, on the other, by equally short-sighted scientific people who forget that science takes for its province only that which is susceptible of clear intellectual comprehension; and that, outside the boundaries of that province, they must be content with imagination, with hope, and with ignorance. Thomas H Huxley, The Interpreters of Genesis and the Interpreters of Nature, 1885
I thus learnt my first great lesson in the inquiry into these obscure fields of knowledge, never to accept the disbelief of great men or their accusations of imposture or of imbecility, as of any weight when opposed to the repeated observation of facts by other men, admittedly sane and honest. The whole history of science shows us that whenever the educated and scientific men of any age have denied the facts of other investigators on a priori grounds of absurdity or impossibility, the deniers have always been wrong. Alfred Russel Wallace, 1893
There are in fact two things, science and opinion; the former begets knowledge, the latter ignorance. Hippocrates
The commonwealth of learning is not at this time without master-builders, whose mighty designs, in advancing the sciences, will leave lasting monuments to the admiration of posterity … in an age that produces such masters as the great Huygens and the incomparable Mr Newton … ’tis ambition enough to be employed as an under-labourer in clearing ground a little, and removing some of the rubbish that lies in the way of knowledge. John Locke, An Essay concerning Human Understanding, 1690
No man’s knowledge here can go beyond his experience. ibid.
It is one thing to show a man that he is in error, and another to put him in possession of truth. ibid.
Scientists need to be prepared to engage, and the best people to engage with are students, ideally from primary school because there’s no question that their capacity to work out complex things is extremely good. Robert Winston
Books must follow sciences, and not sciences books. Francis Bacon
In the Renaissance world art and science went hand in hand. Alan Yentob, Leonardo: The Man Who Wanted to Know Everything, BBC 2011
Leonardo would never have distinguished between being an artist and a scientist. Tim Marlow Meets Nitin Sawhney, Tim
Life is pretty simple: You do some stuff. Most fails. Some works. You do more of what works. If it works big, others quickly copy it. Then you do something else. The trick is the doing something else. Leonardo da Vinci
All sciences are vain and full of errors that are not born of Experience, the mother of all Knowledge. Leonardo da Vinci, notebooks
Science is the answer here. Every puzzle has a solution. Every disease a cure. Star Trek: Deep Space Nine s7e22: Tacking Into the Wind, Bashir to O’Brien
A good scientist never jumps to conclusions, Lieutenant. Star Trek: Voyager s4e7: Scientific Method, Doctor
In this God-forsaken place I have created a scientific miracle. The Boys from Brazil 1978 starring Laurence Olivier & Gregory Peck & James Mason & Lilli Palmer & Uta Hagen & Steve Guttenberg & Denholm Elliott & Rosemary Harris & John Dehner & John Rubinstein et al, director Franklin J Schaffner
I have turned the whole world into a laboratory. ibid.
Men, I am a scientist. I have done my job. ibid.