You know what the best part about science is? No, not the scientists who seem like walking enigmas to us, regular people. Nope, not even the fact that science betters our lives each and every day. And not even the fact that without it, we’d still probably be living in some version of the Stone Age! Okay, well, these points do sound very solid, but we think it’s the joy of discovery and that Eureka! moment one must feel when discovering something that has never been seen, heard, or used before. What an incredible moment of utter joy it must be! And although most of us aren’t scientists, we can also feel the power of those unbelievable moments by reading these wonderful science quotes that we’ve gathered on this list.
Of course, these quotes about science aren’t only talking about the instances of discovery – they also talk about the importance of science in our lives and the responsibilities that it comes with. You know, one might get a feeling that science is almost like some sort of white magic – a means to make the world better if used properly and honestly. There’s also its counterpart, dark science, and that’s where controversies come. Those, too, are discussed in some of these scientific quotes, which makes for an even more interesting read!
So, the powerful quotes await you just below this text – be sure to check them out thoroughly, as a real scientist would! Once you are done with that, give the most interesting quotes your vote and share these wise words with your friends.
#1
“The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom.” – Isaac Asimov
#2
“The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not ‘Eureka!’ but ‘That’s funny…'” – Isaac Asimov
#3
“No amount of experimentation can ever prove me right; a single experiment can prove me wrong.” – Albert Einstein
#4
“I am among those who think that science has great beauty.” – Marie Curie
#5
“Research is what I’m doing when I don’t know what I’m doing.” – Wernher von Braun
#6
“We live in a society exquisitely dependent on science and technology, in which hardly anyone knows anything about science and technology.” – Carl Sagan
#7
“Science does not know its debt to imagination.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson
#8
“Science is fun. Science is curiosity. We all have natural curiosity. Science is a process of investigating. It’s posing questions and coming up with a method. It’s delving in.” – Sally Ride
#9
“It is inexcusable for scientists to torture animals; let them make their experiments on journalists and politicians.” – Henrik Ibsen
#10
“Science is a way of thinking much more than it is a body of knowledge.” – Carl Sagan
#11
“I think what a life in science really teaches you is the vastness of our ignorance.” – David Eagleman
#12
“We can lick gravity, but sometimes the paperwork is overwhelming.” – Wernher von Braun
#13
“Science is a wonderful thing if one does not have to earn one’s living at it.” – Albert Einstein
#14
“If you believe in science, like I do, you believe that there are certain laws that are always obeyed.” – Stephen Hawking
#15
“Art is I; science is we.” – Claude Bernard
#16
“The science of today is the technology of tomorrow.” – Edward Teller
#17
“Science is organized knowledge. Wisdom is organized life.” – Immanuel Kant
#18
“Science is the great antidote to the poison of enthusiasm and superstition.” – Adam Smith
#19
“Science is simply common sense at its best, that is, rigidly accurate in observation, and merciless to fallacy in logic.” – Thomas Huxley
#20
“To raise new questions, new possibilities, to regard old problems from a new angle, requires creative imagination and marks real advance in science.” – Albert Einstein
#21
“Computer science inverts the normal. In normal science, you’re given a world, and your job is to find out the rules. In computer science, you give the computer the rules, and it creates the world.” – Alan Kay
#22
“The most important thing we can do is inspire young minds and to advance the kind of science, math and technology education that will help youngsters take us to the next phase of space travel.” – John Glenn
#23
“Science has explained nothing; the more we know the more fantastic the world becomes and the profounder the surrounding darkness.” – Aldous Huxley
#24
“Science knows no country, because knowledge belongs to humanity, and is the torch which illuminates the world. Science is the highest personification of the nation because that nation will remain the first which carries the furthest the works of thought and intelligence.” – Louis Pasteur
#25
“Science is a way of life. Science is a perspective. Science is the process that takes us from confusion to understanding in a manner that’s precise, predictive and reliable – a transformation, for those lucky enough to experience it, that is empowering and emotional.” – Brian Greene
#26
“Equipped with his five senses, man explores the universe around him and calls the adventure Science.” – Edwin Powell Hubble
#27
“There is no complete theory of anything.” – Robert Anton Wilson
#28
“Science never solves a problem without creating ten more.” – George Bernard Shaw
#29
“Facts are the air of scientists. Without them you can never fly.” – Linus Pauling
#30
“There was no ‘before’ the beginning of our universe, because once upon a time there was no time.” – John D. Barrow
#31
“Science is built up of facts, as a house is with stones. But a collection of facts is no more a science than a heap of stones is a house.” – Henri Poincare
#32
“Medicine is a science of uncertainty and an art of probability.” – William Osler
#33
“What is research but a blind date with knowledge?” – Will Harvey
#34
“Aerodynamically, the bumble bee shouldn’t be able to fly, but the bumble bee doesn’t know it so it goes on flying anyway.” – Mary Kay Ash
#35
“The characteristic of scientific progress is our knowing that we did not know.” – Gaston Bachelard
#36
“The scientist is motivated primarily by curiosity and a desire for truth.” – Irving Langmuir
#37
“Nothing is less predictable than the development of an active scientific field.” – Charles Francis Richter
#38
“We don’t regard any scientific theory as the absolute truth.” – Kenneth R. Miller
#39
“And, that’s what I truly believe that we’re doing when we’re advancing scientific knowledge is we’re someday making the world better. Not only for our children, but for all people after that.” – Duane G. Carey
#40
“Modern science says: ‘The sun is the past, the earth is the present, the moon is the future.’ From an incandescent mass we have originated, and into a frozen mass we shall turn. Merciless is the law of nature, and rapidly and irresistibly we are drawn to our doom.” – Nikola Tesla
#41
“Science is magic that works.” – Kurt Vonnegut
#42
“Formerly, when religion was strong and science weak, men mistook magic for medicine; now, when science is strong and religion weak, men mistake medicine for magic.” – Thomas Szasz
#43
“We especially need imagination in science. It is not all mathematics, nor all logic, but it is somewhat beauty and poetry.” – Maria Mitchell
#44
“In science, the credit goes to the man who convinces the world, not to whom the idea first occurs.” – Francis Darwin
#45
“Nothing matters but the facts. Without them, the science of criminal investigation is nothing more than a guessing game.” – Blake Edwards
#46
“In the spirit of science, there really is no such thing as a ‘failed experiment.’ Any test that yields valid data is a valid test.” – Adam Savage
#47
“Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I’m not sure about the former.” – Albert Einstein
#48
“Science is the systematic classification of experience.” – George Henry Lewes
#49
“Scientific knowledge is a kind of discourse.” – Jean-Francois Lyotard
#50
“Science, like art, religion, commerce, warfare, and even sleep, is based on presuppositions.” – Gregory Bateson
#51
“Whenever anyone says, ‘theoretically,’ they really mean, ‘not really.'” – Dave Parnas
#52
“A fool’s brain digests philosophy into folly, science into superstition, and art into pedantry. Hence University education.” – George Bernard Shaw
#53
“Science is but an image of the truth.” – Francis Bacon
#54
“Science is what you know, philosophy is what you don’t know.” – Bertrand Russell
#55
“There are in fact two things, science and opinion; the former begets knowledge, the latter ignorance.” – Hippocrates
#56
“Life is not an exact science, it is an art.” – Samuel Butler
#57
“Anthropology is the science which tells us that people are the same the whole world over – except when they are different.” – Nancy Banks Smith
#58
“No one has a monopoly on truth, and science continues to advance. Yesterday’s heresies may be tomorrow’s conventional wisdom.” – Dean Ornish
#59
“We are born at a given moment, in a given place and, like vintage years of wine, we have the qualities of the year and of the season of which we are born. Astrology does not lay claim to anything more.” – Carl Jung
#60
“Rockets are cool. There’s no getting around that.” – Elon Musk
#61
“If an elderly but distinguished scientist says that something is possible, he is almost certainly right; but if he says that it is impossible, he is very probably wrong.” – Arthur C. Clarke
#62
“To me there has never been a higher source of earthly honor or distinction than that connected with advances in science.” – Isaac Newton
#63
“A 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
#64
“Let both sides seek to invoke the wonders of science instead of its terrors. Together let us explore the stars, conquer the deserts, eradicate disease, tap the ocean depths, and encourage the arts and commerce.” – John F. Kennedy
#65
“In science, ‘fact’ can only mean ‘confirmed to such a degree that it would be perverse to withhold provisional assent.’ I suppose that apples might start to rise tomorrow, but the possibility does not merit equal time in physics classrooms.” – Stephen Jay Gould
#66
“Nobody climbs mountains for scientific reasons. Science is used to raise money for the expeditions, but you really climb for the hell of it.” – Edmund Hillary
#67
“I believe there are no questions that science can’t answer about a physical universe.” – Stephen Hawking
#68
“By denying scientific principles, one may maintain any paradox.” – Galileo Galilei
#69
“Most people don’t realize it, because they’re invisible, but microbes make up about a half of the Earth’s biomass, whereas all animals only make up about one one-thousandth of all the biomass.” – Craig Venter
#70
“Democracy is the art and science of running the circus from the monkey cage.” – H. L. Mencken
#71
“Science, my lad, is made up of mistakes, but they are mistakes which it is useful to make, because they lead little by little to the truth.” – Jules Verne
#72
“The distance between insanity and genius is measured only by success.” – Bruce Feirstein
#73
“Bad times have a scientific value. These are occasions a good learner would not miss.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson
#74
“Every great advance in science has issued from a new audacity of imagination.” – John Dewey
#75
“Your theory is crazy, but it’s not crazy enough to be true.” – Niels Bohr
#76
“It is a good morning exercise for a research scientist to discard a pet hypothesis every day before breakfast. It keeps him young.” – Konrad Lorenz
#77
“There are no shortcuts in evolution.” – Louis D. Brandeis
#78
“The great tragedy of science – the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact.” – Thomas Huxley
#79
“What is a scientist after all? It is a curious man looking through a keyhole, the keyhole of nature, trying to know what’s going on.” – Jacques Yves Cousteau
#80
“A year spent in artificial intelligence is enough to make one believe in God.” – Alan Perlis
#81
“From now on we live in a world where man has walked on the Moon. It’s not a miracle; we just decided to go.” – Jim Lovell
#82
“Scientists have become the bearers of the torch of discovery in our quest for knowledge.” – Stephen Hawking
#83
“Theory helps us to bear our ignorance of facts.” – George Santayana
#84
“Each problem that I solved became a rule, which served afterwards to solve other problems.” – Rene Descartes
#85
“Dream research is a wonderful field. All you do is sleep for a living.” – Stephen LaBerge
#86
“All science requires mathematics. The knowledge of mathematical things is almost innate in us. This is the easiest of sciences, a fact which is obvious in that no one’s brain rejects it; for laymen and people who are utterly illiterate know how to count and reckon.” – Roger Bacon
#87
“Science is like a love affair with nature; an elusive, tantalising mistress. It has all the turbulence, twists and turns of romantic love, but that’s part of the game.” – Vilayanur S. Ramachandran
#88
“Inanimate objects can be classified scientifically into three major categories; those that don’t work, those that break down and those that get lost.” – Russell Baker
#89
“The next major explosion is going to be when genetics and computers come together. I’m talking about an organic computer – about biological substances that can function like a semiconductor.” – Alvin Toffler
#90
“Most people say that it is the intellect which makes a great scientist. They are wrong: it is character.” – Albert Einstein
#91
“We look at science as something very elite, which only a few people can learn. That’s just not true. You just have to start early and give kids a foundation. Kids live up, or down, to expectations.” – Mae Jemison
#92
“When I find myself in the company of scientists, I feel like a shabby curate who has strayed by mistake into a room full of dukes.” – W. H. Auden
#93
“What is required of a working hypothesis is a fine capacity for discrimination.” – Jean-Francois Lyotard
#94
“In all science, error precedes the truth, and it is better it should go first than last.” – Horace Walpole
#95
“The cloning of humans is on most of the lists of things to worry about from Science, along with behaviour control, genetic engineering, transplanted heads, computer poetry and the unrestrained growth of plastic flowers.” – Lewis Thomas
#96
“Science grows like a weed every year.” – Kary Mullis
#97
“Science is organized knowledge.” – Herbert Spencer
#98
“Scientific theory is a contrived foothold in the chaos of living phenomena.” – Wilhelm Reich
#99
“Scientific advancement should aim to affirm and to improve human life.” – Nathan Deal
#100
“There is a single light of science, and to brighten it anywhere is to brighten it everywhere.” – Isaac Asimov
#101
“On the ordinary view of each species having been independently created, we gain no scientific explanation.” – Charles Darwin
#102
“Science is wonderfully equipped to answer the question ‘How?’ but it gets terribly confused when you ask the question ‘Why?'” – Erwin Chargaff
#103
“Traditional science assumes, for the most part, that an objective observer independent reality exists; the universe, stars, galaxies, sun, moon and earth would still be there if no one was looking.” – Deepak Chopra
#104
“The best scientist is open to experience and begins with romance – the idea that anything is possible.” – Ray Bradbury
#105
“Anthropology was the science that gave her the platform from which she surveyed, scolded and beamed at the world.” – Jane Howard
#106
“The credit which the apparent conformity with recognized scientific standards can gain for seemingly simple but false theories may, as the present instance shows, have grave consequences.” – Friedrich August von Hayek
#107
“Take young researchers, put them together in virtual seclusion, give them an unprecedented degree of freedom and turn up the pressure by fostering competitiveness.” – James D. Watson
#108
“Science is a beautiful gift to humanity; we should not distort it.” – A. P. J. Abdul Kalam
#109
“Success is a science; if you have the conditions, you get the result.” – Oscar Wilde
#110
“Science may never come up with a better office communication system than the coffee break.” – Earl Wilson
#111
“He who would do good to another must do it in Minute Particulars: general Good is the plea of the scoundrel, hypocrite, and flatterer, for Art and Science cannot exist but in minutely organized Particulars.” – William Blake
#112
“Science may have found a cure for most evils; but it has found no remedy for the worst of them all – the apathy of human beings.” – Helen Keller
#113
“Science has not yet taught us if madness is or is not the sublimity of the intelligence.” – Edgar Allan Poe
#114
“Computer science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes.” – Edsger Dijkstra
#115
“The selfsame procedure which zoology, a branch of the natural sciences, applies to the study of animals, anthropology must apply to the study of man; and by doing so, it enrolls itself as a science in the field of nature.” – Maria Montessori
#116
“In questions of science, the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual.” – Galileo Galilei
#117
“When I die, I’m leaving my body to science fiction.” – Steven Wright
#118
“Neuroscience is by far the most exciting branch of science, because the brain is the most fascinating object in the universe. Every human brain is different – the brain makes each human unique and defines who he or she is.” – Stanley B. Prusiner
#119
“Science is a differential equation. Religion is a boundary condition.” – Alan Turing
#120
“There is nothing which can better deserve your patronage, than the promotion of science and literature. Knowledge is in every country the surest basis of public happiness.” – George Washington
#121
“Science is the captain, and practice the soldiers.” – Leonardo da Vinci
#122
“In science there is only physics; all the rest is stamp collecting.” – Lord Kelvin
#123
“Science is about knowing; engineering is about doing.” – Henry Petroski
#124
“He who possesses art and science has religion; he who does not possess them, needs religion.” – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
#125
“Statistics is the grammar of science.” – Karl Pearson
#126
“To understand a science, it is necessary to know its history.” – Auguste Comte
#127
“Science and technology are the keys to both our longevity and our demise. Our entire existence on this planet is a double-edged sword.” – Rhys Darby
#128
“The heart of science is measurement.” – Erik Brynjolfsson
#129
“It is the business of the future to be dangerous; and it is among the merits of science that it equips the future for its duties.” – Alfred North Whitehead
#130
“Science is the search for truth, that is the effort to understand the world: it involves the rejection of bias, of dogma, of revelation, but not the rejection of morality.” – Linus Pauling
#131
“Art and science have their meeting point in method.” – Edward G. Bulwer-Lytton
#132
“Everything is theoretically impossible, until it is done.” – Robert A. Heinlein
#133
“Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men.” – Martin Luther King, Jr.
#134
“Nothing has such power to broaden the mind as the ability to investigate systematically and truly all that comes under thy observation in life.” – Marcus Aurelius
#135
“Science and technology revolutionize our lives, but memory, tradition and myth frame our response.” – Arthur M. Schlesinger
#136
“The human brain is an incredible pattern-matching machine.” – Jeff Bezos
#137
“Science is nothing but perception.” – Plato
#138
“Science is not only a disciple of reason but, also, one of romance and passion.” – Stephen Hawking
#139
“Anyone who attempts to generate random numbers by deterministic means is, of course, living in a state of sin.” – John von Neumann
#140
“Reason, observation, and experience; the holy trinity of science.” – Robert Green Ingersoll
#141
“Leave the atom alone.” – E. Y. Harburg
#142
“The folly of mistaking a paradox for a discovery, a metaphor for a proof, a torrent of verbiage for a spring of capital truths, and oneself for an oracle, is inborn in us.” – Paul Valery
#143
“Scientific research is one of the most exciting and rewarding of occupations.” – Frederick Sanger
#144
“Science has made us gods even before we are worthy of being men.” – Jean Rostand
#145
“Nothing in education is so astonishing as the amount of ignorance it accumulates in the form of inert facts.” – Henry Adams
#146
“This means that to entrust to science – or to deliberate control according to scientific principles – more than scientific method can achieve may have deplorable effects.” – Friedrich August von Hayek
#147
“The virtues of science are skepticism and independence of thought.” – Walter Gilbert
#148
“Men love to wonder, and that is the seed of science.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson
#149
“Anybody who has been seriously engaged in scientific work of any kind realizes that over the entrance to the gates of the temple of science are written the words: ‘Ye must have faith.'” – Max Planck
#150
“The difference between science and the fuzzy subjects is that science requires reasoning while those other subjects merely require scholarship.” – Robert A. Heinlein
#151
“Few tragedies can be more extensive than the stunting of life, few injustices deeper than the denial of an opportunity to strive or even to hope, by a limit imposed from without, but falsely identified as lying within.” – Stephen Jay Gould
#152
“It is right that we be concerned with the scientific probity of metaphysics.” – Gabriel Marcel
#153
“Science is a perception of the world around us. Science is a place where what you find in nature pleases you.” – Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar
#154
“Some dreamers demand that scientists only discover things that can be used for good.” – John Polanyi
#155
“Why do we do basic research? To learn about ourselves.” – Walter Gilbert
#156
“I am not a scientist. I am, rather, an impresario of scientists.” – Jacques Yves Cousteau
#157
“The radical novelty of modern science lies precisely in the rejection of the belief… that the forces which move the stars and atoms are contingent upon the preferences of the human heart.” – Walter Lippmann
#158
“People think of the inventor as a screwball, but no one ever asks the inventor what he thinks of other people.” – Charles Kettering
#159
“Bush reiterated his stand to conservatives opposing his decision on stem cell research. He said today he believes life begins at conception and ends at execution.” – Jay Leno
#160
“I believe in general in a dualism between facts and the ideas of those facts in human heads.” – George Santayana
#161
“We should be increasing research and development into our fossil fuel program.” – Tim Holden
#162
“Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, and not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science.” – Charles Darwin
#163
“We must teach science in the mother tongue. Otherwise, science will become a highbrow activity. It will not be an activity in which all people can participate.” – C. V. Raman
#164
“If civilization is to survive, we must cultivate the science of human relationships – the ability of all peoples, of all kinds, to live together, in the same world at peace.” – Franklin D. Roosevelt
#165
“The art and science of asking questions is the source of all knowledge.” – Thomas Berger
#166
“Medicine is not only a science; it is also an art. It does not consist of compounding pills and plasters; it deals with the very processes of life, which must be understood before they may be guided.” – Paracelsus
#167
“Science is constantly proved all the time. If we take something like any fiction, any holy book, and destroyed it, in a thousand years’ time, that wouldn’t come back just as it was. Whereas if we took every science book and every fact and destroyed them all, in a thousand years they’d all be back because all the same tests would be the same result.” – Ricky Gervais
#168
“Science, already oppressive with its shocking revelations, will perhaps be the ultimate exterminator of our human species – if separate species we be – for its reserve of unguessed horrors could never be borne by mortal brains if loosed upon the world.” – H. P. Lovecraft
#169
“The march of science and technology does not imply growing intellectual complexity in the lives of most people. It often means the opposite.” – Thomas Sowell
#170
“No science is immune to the infection of politics and the corruption of power.” – Jacob Bronowski
#171
“In science one tries to tell people, in such a way as to be understood by everyone, something that no one ever knew before. But in poetry, it’s the exact opposite.” – Paul Dirac
#172
“The function of sociology, as of every science, is to reveal that which is hidden.” – Pierre Bourdieu
#173
“Vanity of science. Knowledge of physical science will not console me for ignorance of morality in time of affliction, but knowledge of morality will always console me for ignorance of physical science.” – Blaise Pascal
#174
“Biology, meaning the science of all life, is a late notion.” – Leon Kass
#175
“Biochemistry is the science of life. All our life processes – walking, talking, moving, feeding – are essentially chemical reactions. So biochemistry is actually the chemistry of life, and it’s supremely interesting.” – Aaron Ciechanover
#176
“Biology is the science. Evolution is the concept that makes biology unique.” – Jared Diamond
#177
“I say you don’t need religion, or political ideology, to understand human nature. Science reveals that human nature is greedy and selfish, altruistic and helpful.” – Michael Shermer
#178
“No great advance has been made in science, politics, or religion without controversy.” – Lyman Beecher
#179
“Anthropology demands the open-mindedness with which one must look and listen, record in astonishment and wonder that which one would not have been able to guess.” – Margaret Mead
#180
“Science is a first-rate piece of furniture for a man’s upper chamber, if he has common sense on the ground-floor. But if a man hasn’t got plenty of good common sense, the more science he has, the worse for his patient.” – Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
#181
“The nineteenth century believed in science but the twentieth century does not.” – Gertrude Stein
#182
“Science investigates; religion interprets. Science gives man knowledge which is power; religion gives man wisdom which is control.” – Martin Luther King, Jr.
#183
“Science can purify religion from error and superstition. Religion can purify science from idolatry and false absolutes.” – Pope John Paul II
#184
“Science and technology are going to be the basis for many of the solutions to social problems.” – Frances Arnold
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