c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
Things that look like they were designed, probably were... If intelligence is an operative component of the universe, a science that methodologically excludes its existence will be susceptible to being trapped in an endless chase for materialistic causes that do not exist... Where there are sufficient grounds for inferring intelligent causation, based on evidence of "specified complexity," it should be considered as a component of scientific theories.Inclusion of intelligent causation in the scientific equation is not novel and has not impeded the practice of science in the past, e.g. Newton and Kepler, in an age when science was not constrained by a philosophical materialism, and by many current scientists who have remained open to following the evidence where it leads.
— Donald L. Ewert
I'm convinced that before the year 2000 is over, the first child will have been born on the moon.
— Wernher von Braun
Constrained optimization is the art of compromise between conflicting objectives. This is what design is all about. To find fault with biological design - as Stephen Jay Gould regularly does - because it misses some idealized optimum is therefore gratuitous. Not knowing the objectives of the designer, Gould is in no position to say whether the designer has proposed a faulty compromise among those objectives.
— William A. Dembski, Signs of Intelligence: Understanding Intelligent Design
That natural selection can produce changes within a type is disputed by no one, not even the staunchest creationist. But that it can transform one species into another — that, in fact, has never been observed.
— Robert J. Sawyer, Calculating God
Throughout 150 years of the science of bacteriology, there is no evidence that one species of bacteria has changed into another... Since there is no evidence for species changes between the simplest forms of unicellular life, it is not surprising that there is no evidence for evolution from prokaryotic [i.e., bacterial] to eukaryotic [i.e., plant and animal] cells, let alone throughout the whole array of higher multicellular organisms.
— Alan H. Linton
In science's pecking order, evolutionary biology lurks somewhere near the bottom, far closer to phrenology than to physics. For evolutionary biology is a historical science, laden with history's inevitable imponderables. We evolutionary biologists cannot generate a Cretaceous Park to observe exactly what killed the dinosaurs; and, unlike "harder" scientists, we usually cannot resolve issues with a simple experiment, such as adding tube A to tube B and noting the color of the mixture.
— Jerry A. Coyne
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 another. For the sake of argument, let's grant that certain designed structures are not simply, as Gould put it, "odd" or "funny," but even cruel. What of it? Philosophical theology has abundant resources for dealing with the problem of evil, maintaining a God who is both omnipotent and benevolent in the face of evil.
— William A. Dembski, Signs of Intelligence: Understanding Intelligent Design
I recently asked more than seventy eminent researchers if they would have done I their work differently if they had thought Darwin's theory was wrong. The responses were all the same: no. I also examined the outstanding biodiscoveries of the past century: the discovery of the double helix; the characterization of the ribosome: the mapping of genomes; research on medications and drug reactions: improvements in food production and sanitation; the development of new surgeries; and others. I even queried biologists working in areas where one would expect the Darwinian paradigm to have most benefited research, such as the emergence of resistance to antibiotics and pesticides. Here, as elsewhere, I found that Darwin's theory had provided no discernible guidance, but was brought in, after the breakthroughs, as an interesting narrative gloss.
— Philip S. Skell, Why do we invoke Darwin? Evolutionary theory contributes little to experimental biology
I am absolutely convinced of the lack of true scientific evidence in favour of Darwinian dogma. Nobody in the biological sciences, medicine included, needs Darwinism at all. Darwinism is certainly needed, however, in order to pose as a philosopher, since it is primarily a worldview. And an awful one, as George Bernard Shaw used to say.
— Raul O. Leguizamon
Molecular machines display a key signature or hallmark of design, namely, irreducible complexity. In all irreducibly complex systems in which the cause of the system is known by experience or observation, intelligent design or engineering played a role in the origin of the system... We find such systems within living organisms.
— Scott A. Minnich
All disciplines of science are built on the causality of the relationships governing related events. Yet the theory of evolution is built upon the idea of accidental changes that resulted in complex living systems. I was unable to comprehend how the notion that an infinite number of random accidents systematically happened to produce living species, and kept improving these beings, is justified.
— T.H. Janabi, Clinging to a Myth: The Story Behind Evolution
In other studies you go as far as other have gone before you, and there is nothing more to know; but in a scientific pursuit there is continual food for discovery and wonder.
— Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, Frankenstein
Witchcraft had once been widely used before cursed by the society. I see today the society presumes technology will have a different treatment.
— Toba Beta, Betelgeuse Incident: Insiden Bait Al-Jauza
Evolution is no linear family tree, but change in the single multidimensional being that has grown to cover the entire surface of Earth.
— Lynn Margulis, What Is Life?
The thing that really is trying to tyrannize through government is Science. The thing that really does use the secular arm is Science. And the creed that really is levying tithes and capturing schools, the creed that really is enforced by fine and imprisonment, the creed that really is proclaimed not in sermons but in statues, and spread not by pilgrims but by policemen—that creed is the great but disputed system of thought which began with Evolution and has ended in Eugenics. Materialism is really our established Church; for the government will really help it to persecute its heretics…I am not frightened of the word ‘persecution’…It is a term of legal fact. If it means the imposition by the police of a widely disputed theory, incapable of final proof—then our priests are not now persecuting, but our doctors are.
— G.K. Chesterton, Eugenics and Other Evils: An Argument Against the Scientifically Organized State
Men say they know many things;But lo! they have taken wings, —The arts and sciences,And a thousand appliances;The wind that blowsIs all that any body knows
— Henry David Thoreau, Walden
Many conscientious environmentalists are repelled by the word "abundance," automatically associating it with irresponsible consumerism and plundering of Earth's resources. In the context of grassroots frustration, insensitive enthusing about the potential for energy abundance usually elicits an annoyed retort. "We have to conserve." The authors believe the human family also has to _choose_. The people we speak with at the recycling depot or organic juice bar are for the most part not looking at the _difference_ between harmony-with-nature technologies and exploitative practices such as mountaintop coal mining. "Destructive" was yesterday's technology of choice. As a result, the words "science and technology" are repugnant to many of the people who passionately care about health, peace, justice and the biosphere. Usually these acquaintances haven't heard about the variety of constructive yet powerful clean energy technologies that have the potential to gradually replace oil and nuclear industries if allowed. Wastewater-into-energy technologies could clean up waterways and other variations solve the problem of polluting feedlots and landfills.
— Jeane Manning, Breakthrough Power: How Quantum-Leap New Energy Inventions Can Transform Our World
Mars tugs at the human imagination like no other planet. With a force mightier than gravity, it attracts the eye to the shimmering red presence in the clear night sky...
— John Noble Wilford, Mars Beckons
Intelligent Design is a remarkably uncreative theory that abandons the search for understanding at the very point where it is most needed. If Intelligent Design is really a science, then the burden is on its scientists to discover the mechanisms used by the Intelligent Designer. (80)
— Michael Shermer, Why Darwin Matters: The Case Against Intelligent Design
Science begs literature to develop wings.
— Santosh Kalwar
He (Comings) has in the past performed successful energy-converting experiments, creating a ringing resonance by injecting certain frequencies into piezo-electric crystals. When the crystal was in resonance with the plenum of space, the power output rose significantly higher than the input. He concluded that, if allowed politically, such discoveries could guide humankind in building a completely clean energy infrastructure -- resonant technologies that allow us to live in harmony with the universal energy field and the Earth.
— Jeane Manning, Breakthrough Power: How Quantum-Leap New Energy Inventions Can Transform Our World
Also unfortunately, Congress is far too busy asking if baseball players are really as strong as they seem and trying to choke bankers with wads of cash to grant more funds to such trifling matters as the avoidance of space bullets, so they won't give NASA the money
— Robert Brockway
This is a world where things move at their own pace, including a tiny lift Fortey and I shared with a scholarly looking elderly man with whom Fortey chatted genially and familiarly as we proceeded upwards at about the rate that sediments are laid down.When the man departed, Fortey said to me: "That was a very nice chap named Norman who's spent forty-two years studying one species of plant, St. John's wort. He retired in 1989, but he still comes in every week.""How do you spend forty-two years on one species of plant?" I asked."It's remarkable, isn't it?" Fortey agreed. He thought for a moment. "He's very thorough apparently." The lift door opened to reveal a bricked over opening. Fortey looked confounded. "That's very strange," he said. "That used to be Botany back there." He punched a button for another floor, and we found our way at length to Botany by means of back staircases and discreet trespass through yet more departments where investigators toiled lovingly over once-living objects.
— Bill Bryson, A Short History of Nearly Everything
Dogma gives a charter to mistake, but the very breath of science is a contest with mistake, and must keep the conscience alive.
— George Eliot, Middlemarch
life is either a reproducible, almost commonplace manifestation of matter, given certain conditions, or a miracle. Too many steps are involved to allow for something in between.
— Christian de Duve
Life is directly proportional to happiness and sadness.
— Santosh Kalwar
Some people with Tourette's have flinging tics- sudden, seemingly motiveless urges or compulsions to throw objects..... (I see somewhat similar flinging behaviors- though not tics- in my two year old godson, now in a stage of primal antinomianism and anarchy)
— Oliver Sacks, An Anthropologist on Mars: Seven Paradoxical Tales
This is what is meant by the phenomenology of the science-making process: Self-observation always leads us to an existential point about the metaphysics of experience, and it is almost always a transforming moment. (p. 286)
— Eugene Taylor, Shadow Culture: Psychology and Spirituality in America
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.
— Toba Beta, My Ancestor Was an Ancient Astronaut
Unified thinking without borders in apparent dimensions can only be strengthened when focused collectively 'internally'.
— AainaA-Ridtz
In the mind of an ordinary, 1+1 = 2; but, in the mind of an extraordinary, 1+ 1 = 10.
— Joey Lawsin
In the discovery of secret things, and in the investigation of hidden causes, stronger reasons are obtained from sure experiments and demonstrated arguments than from probable conjectures and the opinions of philosophical speculators.
— William Gilbert 1864- [From Ol Cassard
A good scientist is a person with original ideas. A good engineer is a person who makes a design that works with as few original ideas as possible.
— Freeman Dyson
We're not responsible, he thought. This planet is a temporary affair. It's whizzing with all kinds of other ones, a whole range of planetary stuff, toward a star in the Milky Way. On that kind of a planet we're not responsible, he thought.
— Bertolt Brecht
For once reality and his brains came into contact and the result was fatal.
— Thomas Henry Huxley
I might face death any minute now! But I should try not to put myself in harms' way as long as I can live. Of course it is not important if I die, because this is going to happen anyway. I know my purpose, my purpose is: How will my life or death impact the lives of others?
— Samad Behrangi, The Little Black Fish
Science, its imperfections notwithstanding, is the sword in the stone that humanity finally pulled. The question it poses, of universal and orderly materialism, is the most important that can be asked in philosophy and religion.
— Edward O. Wilson, Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge
No men who really think deeply about women retain a high opinion of them
— Otto Weininger, Sex and Character: An Investigation of Fundamental Principles
If in other sciences we should arrive at certainty without doubt and truth without error, it behooves us to place the foundations of knowledge in mathematics...
— Roger Bacon, The Opus Majus of Roger Bacon
The task of evolutionary psychology is not to weigh in on human nature, a task better left to others. It is to add the satisfying kind of insight that only science can provide: to connect what we know about human nature with the rest of our knowledge of how the world works, and to explain the largest number of facts with the smallest number of assumptions.
— Steven Pinker, How the Mind Works
Insofar as he makes use of his healthy senses, man himself is the best and most exact scientific instrument possible. The greatest misfortune of modern physics is that its experiments have been set apart from man, as it were, physics refuses to recognize nature in anything not shown by artificial instruments, and even uses this as a measure of its accomplishments.
— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
The crime which is done now is that war has made a tool and slave of science, and man's knowledge, painfully and laboriously compiled, is made the instrument of man's destruction.
— Leonard Wibberley, The Mouse That Roared
A scientist shouldn't be asked to judge the economic and moral value of his work. All we should ask the scientist to do is find the truth and then not keep it from anyone.
— Harmony Korine
a room without boooks like a body without soul
— Roger of Taizé
Thirty-five craters on the moon are named for Jesuit scientists and mathematicians. 
— Thomas E. Woods Jr.
The father of Egyptology was Father Athanasius Kircher.
— Thomas E. Woods Jr.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a completely ad hoc plot device.
— David Langford
They often say, “What’s the point in astrology if you can’t change yourdestiny?”. Well, it’s true that you can’t change your destiny, but still it helpsknowing about gravity.
— Kedar Joshi
He [William Jennings Bryan] recognized that what Darwin proposed on the biological level, when applied on the societal level, might legitimize an ideology that supports the survival of the fittest, with all of its dire complications. Byran was able to envision the kind of society that Social Darwinism would create- the kind of exploitation that comes from unbridled capitalism, for instance- and chose to war against it.
— Tony Campolo, Red Letter Christians: A Christian's Guide to Faith and Politics, a Citizen's Guide to Faith and Politics
Sometimes, in a daze, they completely dismantled the cadaver, then found themselves hard put to it to fit the pieces together again.
— Gustave Flaubert, Bouvard and Pecuchet
In four months we could actually have an administration that believes in science.
— Mark Warner
Jesuits so dominated the study of earthquakes that seismology became known as 'the Jesuit Science.
— Thomas E. Woods Jr.
Science is a tool of Common Sense. When we insist that all valid information come from science or doctors, Common Sense becomes uncommon or lost forever.
— Richard Diaz
Do you remember his science project, Harry Sue, on the trajectory of spitballs? I tell you, that modest little display taught our students more about physics than I could accomplish in a weeklong unit at the middle school
— Sue Stauffacher, Harry Sue
Further, in the modern story, reality is that which is observable, measurable, and repeatable - the kinds of phenomena available, accessible, and verifiable to the five senses. Thus, reality comes to equal the scientific method. It should come as no surprise that in such a world the life of the spirit is ignored or marginalized (as well as a great many other nonmaterial things.) This view of life subsequently birthed in human beings a ravenous materialism as matters of the soul were ignored or reinterpreted within this tightly controlled version of reality. When the life of the spirit is ignored, people will seek to feed the hunger of a neglected soul with the only nourishment available: in our context, the consumptive acquisition of material goods.
— Tim Keel, Intuitive Leadership: Embracing a Paradigm of Narrative, Metaphor, and Chaos
Within this new work of art a creature from beyond the reach of Humanity has insinuated herself and now lurks there at the heart of the mystery, a power unimagined before our time.
— Villiers de L'Isle-Adam, Tomorrow's Eve
Science [is] that wonderfully convenient personification of the opinions, at a certain date, of Professors X, Y, and Z....
— Aldous Huxley, Brave New World Revisited
It is science alone that can solve the problems of hunger and poverty, of insanitation and illiteracy, of superstition and deadening custom and tradition, of vast resources running to waste, or a rich country inhabited by starving people... Who indeed could afford to ignore science today? At every turn we have to seek its aid... The future belongs to science and those who make friends with science.
— Jawaharlal Nehru
Sometimes scientific discoveries are like that […]. Once people know something is possible, the pace of new findings increases. (Wylan)
— Leigh Bardugo, Crooked Kingdom
I like to define biology as the history of the earth and all its life — past, present, and future. To understand biology is to understand that all life is linked to the earth from which it came; it is to understand that the stream of life, flowing out of the dim past into the uncertain future, is in reality a unified force, though composed of an infinite number and variety of separate lives.
— Rachel Carson
Consciousness is our gateway to experience: It enables us to recognize Van Gogh’s starry skies, be enraptured by Beethoven’s Fifth, and stand in awe of a snowcapped mountain. Yet consciousness is subjective, personal, and famously difficult to examine.
— Daniel Bor, The Ravenous Brain: How the New Science of Consciousness Explains Our Insatiable Search for Meaning
To say that science is logical is like saying that a painting is paint.
— Leon Cooper
Man armed with science is like a baby with a box of matches.
— J.B.S. Haldane, Daedalus
They argued because they liked argument, liked the swift run of the unfettered mind along the paths of possibility, liked to question what was not questioned.
— Ursula K. Le Guin, The Dispossessed
Information, contemplated over time, is knowledge. 
— Robb Johnson
In the ancient and medieval world, the exploration of physical influences among heavenly bodies, and between the heavenly bodies and objects on earth, was generally called ‘astrology.’ But we must not confuse this with the current socially acceptable form of bigotry that seems to entitle the human beings who believe in it to prejudge the character of others based solely on their dates of birth.
— Robert P. Crease, The Great Equations: Breakthroughs in Science from Pythagoras to Heisenberg
Life is not a miracle. It is a natural phenomenon, and can be expected to appear whenever there is a planet whose conditions duplicate those of the 
— Harold Urey
It would seem that the scientific revolution involved not just a progressive transformation of scientific theory, but also a transformation in what were considered to be the observable facts!
— Alan F. Chalmers, What Is This Thing Called Science?
The "paranormal" is what we call a phenomenon when examined through the narrow lens of what we consider "normal." You have to transcend the senses to understand them.
— Alan Joshua, The SHIVA Syndrome
What does this mean? Simply that to make DNA, you have to have DNA in the first place! You have to have the DNA code within the cell before you can make more DNA code. Without the complete code in the first place, there is no way to make the code necessary for every living cell!
— Lawrence O. Richards
Gandhi, the greatest political genius of our time, has pointed the way. He was shown of what sacrifices people are capable once they have found the right way. His work for the liberation of India is a living testimony to the fact that a will governed by firm conviction is stronger than a seemingly invincible material power.
— Albert Einstein, Ideas and Opinions
We must understand the Cosmos as it is and not confuse how it is with how we wish it to be.
— Carl Sagan, Cosmos
Look, I don't know what you are, but you're more than a geologist, if you are one at all. I've met lots of geologists on different projects like this, and they're all tiny sunburned men with fetishes for geodes. They wear floppy hats and carry baggies for soil samples around with them. ... And geologists don't make rocks disappear like you did the other night. They keep them and build little shrines to them.
— Kevin Hearne, Tricked
If we could stop thinking of 'meaning' and 'purpose' as artifacts of some divine creative act and see them instead as the yield of our own creative future, they become goals, intentions and processes very much in reach rather than the shadows of childlike, superstitious mythology.
— Douglas Rushkoff
The greatest single achievement of nature to date was surely the invention of the molecule DNA.
— Lewis Thomas
Later times have laid all the blame upon the Goths and Vandals, but, however unwilling the partizans of the Christian system may be to believe or to acknowledge it, it is nevertheless true, that the age of ignorance commenced with the Christian system.There was more knowledge in the world before that period, than for many centuries afterwards; and as to religious knowledge, the Christian system, as already said, was only another species of mythology; and the mythology to which it succeeded, was a corruption of an ancient system of t
— Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason
I ended your experiment. Because you're not a scientist. You're a monster. I'm not leaving any of them at your mercy.
— Rachel Caine, Fall of Night
Whether we like it or not, one day science will take God from us! This will be especially a great destruction for the weak minds!
— Mehmet Murat ildan
The heart of animals is the foundation of their life, the sovereign of everything within them, the sun of their microcosm, that upon which all growth depends, from which all power proceeds.
— William Harvey, An Anatomical Disquisition on the Motion of the Heart and Blood in Animals
Constipation ran Presley's life. Even his famous motto TCB— 'Taking Care of Business'— sounds like a reference to bathroom matters.
— Mary Roach, Gulp: Adventures on the Alimentary Canal
Man! What are you? Who are you? Just a shadow in this universe! You always forget this and the truth will always remind you what you really are! Do you want to be a real thing, not just a shadow? Improve your science ten thousand times; improve your science hundred thousand times! If you can’t improve your science, you will remain as a miserable shadow!
— Mehmet Murat ildan
There are two kinds of science: The black science and the white science. The science of weapon production is the black one. Working in this category of science is a great betrayal to humanity!
— Mehmet Murat ildan
Amicus scientia est amicus Deus: Friend of science is the friend of God!
— Mehmet Murat ildan
He who has spent billions on churches, on mosques and on every kind of sanctuaries is guilty of not giving that money to the science! The path of sanctuary does not lead to God; the path of the faith does not lead to God; only the path of science leads to God! The bridge between man and the unknown God is not worshipping but it is science, only the science!
— Mehmet Murat ildan
It's called the FATLOSE trail. FATLOSE stands for 'Fecal Administration To LOSE weight,' an example of PLEASE— Pretty Lame Excuse for an Acronym, Scientists and Experimenters.
— Mary Roach, Gulp: Adventures on the Alimentary Canal
The sun rises from the two places: From the East and also from where the Science rises!
— Mehmet Murat ildan
There is adventure in finding compelling stories and exploring complex issues in challenging environments, but there is also a responsibility to tell those stories accurately and objectively.
— K. Lee Lerner, Human Geography: People and the Environment
Science is the process of obscuring the marvelous with explanations.
— James Rozoff
So the story of man runs in a dreary circle, because he is not yet master of the earth that holds him.
— Will Durant
There is a looming chasm between what your brain knows and what your mind is capable of accessing.
— David Eagleman, Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain
For God to prove himself on demand, physically, would be a grave disappointment, and the strongest Christians should be considerably grateful that he chooses not to do so. The skeptic endlessly demands proof, yet God refuses to insult the true intelligence of man, the '6th sense', the chief quality, the acumen which distinguishes man from the rest of creation, faith.
— Criss Jami, Killosophy
Science explained people, but could not understand them.
— E.M. Forster, Howards End
Now, almost one hundred years later, it is difficult to fully appreciate how much our picture of the universe has changed in the span of a single human lifetime. As far as the scientific community in 1917 was concerned, the universe was static and eternal, and consisted of a one single galaxy, our Milky Way, surrounded by vast, infinite, dark, and empty space. This is, after all, what you would guess by looking up at the night sky with your eyes, or with a small telescope, and at the time there was little reason to suspect otherwise.
— Lawrence M. Krauss, A Universe from Nothing: Why There Is Something Rather Than Nothing
But I quite like the way you can talk about science without necessarily using mathematics, but using metaphors instead.
— Scarlett Thomas, The End of Mr. Y
When you are loved, you can do anything in creation.
— Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist
If you act for self-gain then no good can come of it. If you act selflessly, then you act well for all and you must not be afraid.
— Rand Miller, The Book of Atrus
At best he read popular science magazines like the Scientific American he had now, to keep himself up-to-date, in layman's terms, with physics generally. But even then his concentration was marred, for a lifetime's habit made him inconveniently watchful for his own name. He saw it as if in bold. It could leap out at him from an unread double page of small print, and sometimes he could sense it coming before the page turn.
— Ian McEwan, Solar
The definitive study of the herd instincts of astronomers has yet to be written, Fernie said, but there are times when we resemble nothing so much as a herd of antelope, heads down in tight formation, thundering with firm determination in a particular direction across the plain. At a given signal from the leader we whirl about, and, with equally firm determination, thunder off in quite a different direction, still in tight parallel formation.(quoting an observation made by astronomer J. Donal Fernie)
— Michael Brooks, 13 Things That Don't Make Sense: The Most Baffling Scientific Mysteries of Our Time
The energy and daring is to resist the noes, until the final yes has been achieved.
— Jeffrey D. Sachs
Just as war is too important to leave it to the generals, science and technology are too important to leave in the hands of the experts.
— Sheldon Rampton, Trust Us, We're Experts!: How Industry Manipulates Science and Gambles with Your Future
I'll bite: Hard science TA's and RA's often repair equipment; it's part of our science. If you want a silver spoon, don't go to grad school. Science is all about dangerous chemicals, semi-safe experimental equipment, and 4am drives down gravel roads in old vans with a nice steep drop on one side. Guardrail? Ho ho ho. Fixing the computers is just the tip of the iceberg. Plus, where else could you get on-the-job experience with a PDP-8?
— Greg Lindahl
Mysticism is colourful and alluring, but if you are after the truth, science is the best path!
— Mehmet Murat ildan
The third oddity was the surface on which Lawrence was doing his own succussion. It was a huge, black leather-bound King James Bible. Having done three raps on the Bible, his fist clenched around a vial containing a homeopathic remedy made from amethyst, Lawrence looked up. His face said, "I wish you hadn't seen that"."You don't have to use a Bible," he assured me.
— Michael Brooks, 13 Things That Don't Make Sense: The Most Baffling Scientific Mysteries of Our Time
The Lesson is Life and Life is the Lesson, and the Lesson does not contain a single Atom.
— RSD
No matter what measures are taken, doctors will sometimes falter, and it isn't reasonable to ask that we achieve perfection. What is reasonable is to ask that we never cease to aim for it.
— Atul Gawande, Complications: A Surgeon's Notes on an Imperfect Science
A Who's Who of pesticides is therefore of concern to us all. If we are going to live so intimately with these chemicals eating and drinking them, taking them into the very marrow of our bones - we had better know something about their nature and their power.
— Rachel Carson, Silent Spring
We shall take a star out of the skies and shall set thousands of worlds on fire...
— Cordwainer Smith, The Rediscovery of Man
Everything we care about lies somewhere in the middle, where pattern and randomness interlace.
— James Gleick, The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood
The stars, they are as the sun. Each star. Every star. And those spheres- they are worlds, realms, each one different yet the same.
— Steven Erikson, House of Chains
In the deeps are the violence and terror of which psychology has warned us. But if you ride these monsters deeper down, if you drop with them farther over the world's rim, you find what our sciences cannot locate or name, the substrate, the ocean or matrix or ether which buoys the rest, which gives goodness its power for good, and evil its power for evil, the unified field: our complex and inexplicable caring for each other, and for our life together here. This is given. It is not learned.
— Annie Dillard, Teaching a Stone to Talk: Expeditions and Encounters
(T)he increase of known truths stimulates the investigation, establishment, and growth of the arts.
— Galileo Galilei
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 our confederation, the family that you so loved. And I love it too. I shall protect, love and respect it always. This is my promise and commitment. Thank you
— Chayada Welljaipet, War Between Two Powerful Nations
It is better to go near the truth and be imprisoned than to stay with the wrong and roam about freely, master Galilei. In fact, getting attached to falsity is terrible slavery, and real freedom is only next to the right.
— Mehmet Murat ildan, Galileo Galilei
In fact, for a period stretching over seven hundred years, the international language of science was Arabic. For this was the language of the Qur'an, the holy book of Islam, and thus the official language of the vast Islamic Empire that, by the early eighth century CE, stretched from India to Spain.
— Jim Al-Khalili
The view is often defended that sciences should be built up on clear and sharply defined basal concepts. In actual fact no science, not even the most exact, begins with such definitions. The true beginning of scientific activity consists rather in describing phenomena and then in proceeding to group, classify and correlate them.
— Sigmund Freud, General Psychological Theory
The ‘stream’ we call science always flows forward; sometimes reactionary beavers block its flow, but the stream is never defeated by this; it accumulates, gathers strength; its waters get over the barrage and continue on their course. The advancement of science is the advancement of God, for science is nothing but human intelligence, and human intelligence is the most valuable treasure God has bequeathed us.
— Mehmet Murat ildan, Galileo Galilei
History of science is a relay race, my painter friend. Copernicus took over his flag from Aristarchus, from Cicero, from Plutarch; and Galileo took that flag over from Copernicus.
— Mehmet Murat ildan, Galileo Galilei
What have you done for science today? Stop doing things for God! He doesn't need anything. Do something for science, for God's sake!
— Mehmet Murat ildan
For a child, parents’ warning is like a rose blooming in the brain; it opens with difficulty and fades quickly.
— Mehmet Murat ildan, Galileo Galilei
It’s very dangerous to invent something in our times; ostentatious men of the other world, who are hostile to innovations, roam about angrily. To live in peace, one has to stay away from innovations and new ideas. Innovations, like trees, attract the most destructive lightnings to themselves.
— Mehmet Murat ildan, Galileo Galilei
If to have breasts is to be human, then to save them is to save ourselves.
— Florence   Williams
All man must live in Machu Picchu for some time! Over there, you will be closer to the universe and you will realise how trivial you are in this chaotic cosmos. Science is the only power which will make you bigger and significant in this universe!
— Mehmet Murat ildan
Two is not greater than three, even for extremely large values of two.
— jeffrey lemkin
Measuring programming progress by lines of code is like measuring aircraft building progress by weight.
— Bill Gates
Houston, Tranquillity Base here. The Eagle has landed.
— Neil Armstrong
I guess I should say a little bit about my method - I really am a fence sitter. I *loathe* Science and am always keen to attack it in most situations, though not here, because I love Reason and I'm perfectly aware of the difference. I also know what a concept means like Rules of Evidence. I'm not sure that's a concept as widely circulated in these circles as it needs to be - in other words, how *do* you tell shit from shinola? That's very critical. I think reason can only take us a certain distance, and then we have to go with the divine imagination, but with all safety systems fully in operation, or the divine imagination will lead us into complete paranoia.
— Terence McKenna
If physics leads us today to a world view which is essentially mystical, it returns, in a way, to its beginning, 2,500 years ago. ... This time, however, it is not only based on intuition, but also on experiments of great precision and sophistication, and on a rigorous and consistent mathematical formalism.
— Fritjof Capra
When you get down to the bottom of it, only about half of what we remember really happened. We tend to modify things to make ourselves look better in our own eyes and in the eyes of others. Then, if what we did wasn't really very admirable, we tend to forget that it ever happened. A normal human being's grasp on reality is very tenuous at best. Our imaginary lives are usually much nicer.
— David Eddings
We wish to discuss a structure for the salt of deoxyribose nucleic acid. (D.N.A.). This structure has novel features which are of considerable biologic interest.
— Rosalind Franklin
Most Muggles lived in a world defined by the limits of what you could do with cars and telephones. Even though Muggle physics explicitly permitted possibilities like molecular nanotechnology or the Penrose process for extracting energy from black holes, most people filed that away in the same section of their brain that stored fairy tales and history books, well away from their personal realities: Long ago and far away, ever so long ago.
— Eliezer Yudkowsky, Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality
I remembered the old doctor, - "It would be interesting for science to watch the mental changes of individuals, on the spot." I felt I was becoming scientifically interesting.
— Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness
And just how did you arrive at that remarkable conclusion, Mr. Mayor?""In a rather simple way. It merely required the use of that much-neglected commodity -- common sense. You see, there is a branch of human knowledge known as symbolic logic, which can be used to prune away all sorts of clogging deadwood that clutters up human language.""What about it?" said Fulham."I applied it. Among other things, I applied it to this document here. I didn't really need to for myself because I knew what it was all about, but I think I can explain it more easily to five physical scientists by symbols rather than by words."Hardin removed a few sheets of paper from the pad under his arm and spread them out. "I didn't do this myself, by the way," he said. "Muller Holk of the Division of Logic has his name signed to the analyses, as you can see."Pirenne leaned over the table to get a better view and Hardin continued: "The message from Anacreon was a simple problem, naturally, for the men who wrote it were men of action rather than men of words. It boils down easily and straightforwardly to the unqualified statement, when in symbols is what you see, and which in words, roughly translated is, 'You give us what we want in a week, or we take it by force.'"There was silence as the five members of the Board ran down the line of symbols, and then Pirenne sat down and coughed uneasily.Hardin said, "No loophole, is there, Dr. Pirenne?""Doesn't seem to be.
— Isaac Asimov, Foundation
The formal scientific definition of theory is quite different from the everyday meaning of the word. It refers to a comprehensive explanation of some aspect of nature that is supported by a vast body of evidence.
— National Academy of Sciences
Stephenson had large wrought-iron boiler plates available and he also had the courage of his calculations... The idea found its best-known expression in the Menai railway bridge opened in 1850. Stephenson's beams, which weighed 1,500 tons each, were built beside the Straits and were floated into position between the towers on rafts across a swirling tide. They were raised rather over a hundred feet up the towers by successive lifts with primitive hydraulic jacks. All this was not done without both apprehension and adventure; they were giants on the earth in those days.
— J.E. Gordon, The New Science of Strong Materials or Why You Don't Fall Through the Floor
The more science discovers and the more comprehension it gives us of the mechanisms of existence, the more clearly does the mystery of existence itself stand out.
— Aldous Huxley
If you don't synthesize knowledge, scientific journals become spare-parts catalogues for machines that are never built.
— Arthur R. Marshall
The others would then fall silent and she would continue about doped gallium arsenide detectors, or the ethanol content of the galactic cloud W-3. The quantity of 200-proof alcohol in this single interstellar cloud was more than enough to maintain the present population of the Earth, if every adult were a dedicated alcoholic, for the age of the solar system. The tamada had appreciated the remark.
— Carl Sagan, Contact
Computer science education cannot make anybody an expert programmer any more than studying brushes and pigment can make somebody an expert painter.
— Eric  Raymond
A recent survey of 2,000 male graduates of Harvard Business Schoolfound that penis length & IQ were equally good predictors of annualincome. -- from "Eugene
— Greg Egan
One of the great joys of science has to be turning a thought that surfaced one night over a few beers into a full-blown project.
— Joe Roman
Very soon the heavens presented an extraordinary appearance, for all the stars directly behind me were now deep red, while those directly ahead were violet. Rubies lay behind me, amethysts ahead of me.
— Olaf Stapledon, Star Maker
... to undertake a gargantuan task: calculate the value of all the services provided by all the ecosystems, from the forest to the floodplains to the open ocean, across the world... they came up with a number- $33 trillion a year- a headline-grabbing figure that was almost twice the global gross national product.
— Joe Roman, Listed: Dispatches from America's Endangered Species Act
I, on the other hand, am a finished product. I absorb electrical energy directly and utilize it with an almost one hundred percent efficiency. I am composed of strong metal, am continuously conscious, and can stand extremes of environment easily. These are facts which, with the self-evident proposition that no being can create another being superior to itself, smashes your silly hypothesis to nothing.
— Isaac Asimov, I, Robot
However, I don’t understand why people insist on pitting the concepts of evolution and creation against each other. Why can’t they see that spiritualism and science are one? That bodies evolve and souls evolve and the universe is a fluid place that marries them both in a wonderful package called a human being. What’s wrong with that idea?
— Garth Stein, The Art of Racing in the Rain
It Begins with skepticism. The history of human folly, and our own susceptibility to illusions and fallacies, tell us that men and women are fallible.
— Steven Pinker, The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined
We long for permanence but everything in the known universe is transient. That’s a fact but one we fight.
— Sharon Salzberg, Real Happiness: The Power of Meditation
It was here that the thaum, hitherto believed to be the smallest possible particle of magic, was succesfully demonstrated to be made up of /resons/ (Lit.: 'Thing-ies') or reality fragments. Currently research indicates that each reson is itself made up of a combination of at least five 'flavours', known as 'up', 'down', 'sideways', 'sex appeal' and 'peppermint'.
— Terry Pratchett, Lords and Ladies
It was a large room, heavily outfitted with the usual badly ventilated furnaces, rows of bubbling crucibles, and one stuffed alligator. Things floated in jars. The air smelled of a limited life expectancy.
— Terry Pratchett, Men at Arms
Bipedalism is a demanding and risky strategy. It means refashioning the pelvis into a full load-bearing instrument. To preserve the required strength, the birth canal in the female must be comparatively narrow. This has two very significant immediate consequences and one longer-term one. First, it means a lot of pain for any birthing mother and greatly increased danger of fatality to mother and baby both. Moreover, to get the baby's head through such a tight space it must be born while it's brain is still small - and while the baby, therefore, is still helpless. This means long-term infant care, which in turn implies solid male-female bonding.
— Bill Bryson, A Short History of Nearly Everything
If the brain was simple enough to be understood - we would be too simple to understand it!
— Minsky M.A.
I am sitting under a sycamore by Tinker Creek. I am really here, alive on the intricate earth under trees. But under me, directly under the weight of my body on the grass, are other creatures, just as real, for whom also this moment, this tree, is “it”… in the top inch of soil, biologists found “an average of 1,356 living creatures in each square foot… I might as well include these creatures in this moment, as best as I can. My ignoring them won’t strip them of their reality, and admitting them, one by one, into my consciousness might heighten mine, might add their dim awareness to my human consciousness, such as it is, and set up a buzz, a vibration…Hasidism has a tradition that one of man’s purposes is to assist God in the work of “hallowing” the things of Creation. By a tremendous heave of the spirit, the devout man frees the divine sparks trapped in the mute things of time; he uplifts the forms and moments of creation, bearing them aloft into the rare air and hallowing fire in which all clays must shatter and burst.
— Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
The classification of the constituents of a chaos, nothing less is here essayed.
— Herman Melville, Moby-Dick or, The Whale
Think about it; the quicktank is given a job most of us would laugh out of town. Build a sophisticated camera capable of full 3-D input and peripheral pickup, using only water and jelly.Build an eye.
— Warren Ellis, Transmetropolitan, Vol. 2: Lust for Life
Right now there's a commonly-held view among scientists that we know about only four percent of all the matter in the universe. Four percent!""So what about the other 96 percent?""We astrophysicists call it 'dark matter' and 'dark energy.' Maybe we should just call it ignorance. There's so much that we don't know. It's shocking how little we know. And yet we behave like little gods who think we're in control of everything. Like kids with delusions of grandeur. Isn't that what we've made ourselves into? It's as if we're trying to make ourselves believe that four percent is all there is. That everything else, all that we don't know, doesn't exist. But it does. We know it's there; we just don't understand it.
— A.J. Kazinski, The Last Good Man
We must convince each generation that they are transient passengers on this planet earth. It does not belong to them. They are not free to doom generations yet unborn. They are not at liberty to erase humanity's past nor dim its future.
— Bernard Lown
He pointed to another number, changing as rapidly as the first, but on a lower trajectory; it rose to a high of 8.79 rem per hour. Several lifetimes of dentists’ X-rays, to be sure; but the radiation outside the storm shelter would have been a lethal dose, so they were getting off lightly. Still, the amount flying through the rest of the ship! Billions of particles were penetrating the ship and colliding with the atoms of water and metal they were huddled behind; hundreds of millions were flying between these atoms and then through the atoms of their bodies, touching nothing, as if they were no more than ghosts. Still, thousands were striking atoms of flesh and bone. Most of those collisions were harmless; but in all those thousands, there were in all probability one or two (or three?) in which a chromosome strand was taking a hit, and kinking in the wrong way: and there it was. Tumor initiation, begun with just that typo in the book of the self. And years later, unless the victim's DNA luckily repaired itself, the tumor promotion that was a more or less unavoidable part of living would have its effect, and there would appear a bloom of Something Else inside: cancer. Leukemia, most likely; and, most likely, death.
— Kim Stanley Robinson, Red Mars
It is significant comment on the victory of science over magic that were someone to say ‘if I put this pill in your beer it will explode,’ we might believe them; but were they to cry ‘if I pronounce this spell over your beer it will go flat,’ we should remain incredulous and Paracelsus, the Alchemists, Aleister Crowley and all the Magi have lived in vain. Yet when I read science I turn magical; when I study magic, scientific.
— Cyril Connolly, The Unquiet Grave: A Word Cycle by Palinurus