c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
Everything that comes together falls apart. Everything. The chair I’m sitting on. It was built, and so it will fall apart. I’m gonna fall apart, probably before this chair. And you’re gonna fall apart. The cells and organs and systems that make you you—they came together, grew together, and so must fall apart. The Buddha knew one thing science didn’t prove for millennia after his death: Entropy increases. Things fall apart.
— John Green, Looking for Alaska
To find the universal elements enough
—  to find the air and the water exhilarating
Miracles are not contrary to nature but only contrary to what we know about nature. 
— Augustine of Hippo
Human science fragments everything in order to understand it, kills everything in order to examine it. 
— Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
You can observe a lot just by watching.
— Yogi Berra
In what terms should we think of these beings, nonhuman yet possessing so very many human-like characteristics? How should we treat them? Surely we should treat them with the same consideration and kindness as we show to other humans; and as we recognize human rights, so too should we recognize the rights of the great apes? Yes.
— Jane Goodall
There’s as many atoms in a single molecule of your DNA as there are stars in the typical galaxy. We are, each of us, a little universe.
— Neil deGrasse Tyson, Cosmos
In France, a chemist named Pilatre de Rozier tested the flammability of hydrogen by gulping a mouthful and blowing across an open flame, proving at a stroke that hydrogen is indeed explosively combustible and that eyebrows are not necessarily a permanent feature of one's face.
— Bill Bryson, A Short History of Nearly Everything
Science is the great antidote to the poison of enthusiasm and superstition.
— Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations
How can a three-pound mass of jelly that you can hold in your palm imagine angels, contemplate the meaning of infinity, and even question its own place in the cosmos? Especially awe inspiring is the fact that any single brain, including yours, is made up of atoms that were forged in the hearts of countless, far-flung stars billions of years ago. These particles drifted for eons and light-years until gravity and change brought them together here, now. These atoms now form a conglomerate- your brain- that can not only ponder the very stars that gave it birth but can also think about its own ability to think and wonder about its own ability to wonder. With the arrival of humans, it has been said, the universe has suddenly become conscious of itself. This, truly, it the greatest mystery of all.
— V.S. Ramachandran, The Tell–Tale Brain – A Neuroscientist`s Quest for What Makes Us Human
The human spirit must prevail over technology.
— Albert Einstein
No amount of experimentation can ever prove me right a single experiment can prove me wrong.
— Albert Einstein
A process cannot be understood by stopping it. Understanding must move with the flow of the process, must join it and flow with it.
— Frank Herbert
The aim of science is not to open the door to infinite wisdom, but to set a limit to infinite error.
— Bertolt Brecht, Life of Galileo
Science, you don't know, looks like magic.
— Christopher Moore
rain slowly slides down the glass as if the night is crying.
— Patricia Cornwell, Trace
I would rather have questions that can't be answered than answers that can't be questioned.
— Richard Feynman
In terms of doing things I take a fairly scientific approach to why things happen and how they happen. I don't know if there's a god or not...
— Bill Gates
Do you not think that there are things which you cannot understand, and yet which are; that some people see things that others cannot? But there are things old and new which must not be contemplate by men´s eyes, because they know -or think they know- some things which other men have told them. Ah, it is the fault of our science that it wants to explain all; and if it explain not, then it says there is nothing to explain.
— Bram Stoker, Dracula
Philosophy [nature] is written in that great book which ever is before our eyes -- I mean the universe -- but we cannot understand it if we do not first learn the language and grasp the symbols in which it is written. The book is written in mathematical language, and the symbols are triangles, circles and other geometrical figures, without whose help it is impossible to comprehend a single word of it; without which one wanders in vain through a dark labyrinth.
— Galileo Galilei
I am convinced that the act of thinking logically cannot possibly be natural to the human mind. If it were, then mathematics would be everybody's easiest course at school and our species would not have taken several millennia to figure out the scientific method.
— Neil deGrasse Tyson, The Sky Is Not the Limit: Adventures of an Urban Astrophysicist
Wonder is the seed of knowledge
— Francis Bacon
The feeling of awed wonder that science can give us is one of the highest experiences of which the human psyche is capable. It is a deep aesthetic passion to rank with the finest that music and poetry can deliver. It is truly one of the things that make life worth living and it does so, if anything, more effectively if it convinces us that the time we have for living is quite finite.
— Richard Dawkins, Unweaving the Rainbow: Science, Delusion and the Appetite for Wonder
It is often stated that of all the theories proposed in this century, the silliest is quantum theory. In fact, some say that the only thing that quantum theory has going for it is that it is unquestionably correct.
— Michio Kaku, Hyperspace
May it [American independence] be to the world, what I believe it will be, (to some parts sooner, to others later, but finally to all,) the signal of arousing men to burst the chains under which monkish ignorance and superstition had persuaded them to bind themselves, and to assume the blessings and security of self-government. That form which we have substituted, restores the free right to the unbounded exercise of reason and freedom of opinion. All eyes are opened, or opening, to the rights of man. The general spread of the light of science has already laid open to every view the palpable truth, that the mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately... These are grounds of hope for others. For ourselves, let the annual return of this day forever refresh our recollections of these rights, and an undiminished devotion to
— Thomas Jefferson, Letters of Thomas Jefferson
We are all star stuff.
— Carl Sagan
Discovery is always rape of the natural world. Always.
— Michael Crichton, Jurassic Park
Invention is the most important product of man's creative brain. The ultimate purpose is the complete mastery of mind over the material world, the harnessing of human nature to human needs.
— Nikola Tesla, My Inventions
Science cannot solve the ultimate mystery of nature. And that is because, in the last analysis, we ourselves are a part of the mystery that we are trying to solve.
— Max Planck, Where is Science Going?
That's the whole problem with science. You've got a bunch of empiricists trying to describe things of unimaginable wonder.
— Bill Watterson
I love science, and it pains me to think that so many are terrified of the subject or feel that choosing science means you cannot also choose compassion, or the arts, or be awed by nature. Science is not meant to cure us of mystery, but to reinvent and reinvigorate it.
— Robert M. Sapolsky
Science is the process that takes us from confusion to understanding...
— Brian Greene
A society's competitive advantage will come not from how well its schools teach the multiplication and periodic tables, but from how well they stimulate imagination and creativity.
— Albert Einstein
It has become almost a cliché to remark that nobody boasts of ignorance of literature, but it is socially acceptable to boast ignorance of science and proudly claim incompetence in mathematics.
— Richard Dawkins
A straight line is not the shortest distance between two points.
— Madeleine L'Engle, A Wrinkle in Time: With Related Readings
When my information changes, I alter my conclusions. What do you do, sir?
— John Maynard Keynes
Even if the open windows of science at first make us shiver after the cozy indoor warmth of traditional humanizing myths, in the end the fresh air brings vigor, and the great spaces have a splendor of their own.
— Bertrand Russell, What I Believe
It's natural to think that living things must be the handiwork of a designer. But it was also natural to think that the sun went around the earth. Overcoming naive impressions to figure out how things really work is one of humanity's highest cal
— Steven Pinker
Equipped with his five senses, man explores the universe around him and calls the adventure Science.
— Edwin Hubble
As to diseases, make a habit of two things — to help, or at least, to do no harm.
— Hippocrates
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
Science is always discovering odd scraps of magical wisdom and making a tremendous fuss about its cleverness.
— Aleister Crowley, The Confessions of Aleister Crowley: An Autohagiography
We are star stuff which has taken its destiny into its own hands.
— Carl Sagan, Cosmos
When asked about which scientist he'd like to meet, Neil deGrasse Tyson said, "Isaac Newton. No question about it. The smartest person ever to walk the face of this earth. The man was connected to the universe in spooky ways. He discovered the laws of motion, the laws of gravity, the laws of optics. Then he turned 26.
— Neil deGrasse Tyson
Ann Druyan suggests an experiment: Look back again at the pale blue dot of the preceding chapter. Take a good long look at it. Stare at the dot for any length of time and then try to convince yourself that God created the whole Universe for one of the 10 million or so species of life that inhabit that speck of dust. Now take it a step further: Imagine that everything was made just for a single shade of that species, or gender, or ethnic or religious subdivision. If this doesn’t strike you as unlikely, pick another dot. Imagine it to be inhabited by a different form of intelligent life. They, too, cherish the notion of a God who has created everything for their benefit. How seriously do you take their claim?
— Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space
The man of science has learned to believe in justification, not by faith, but by verification.
— Thomas Henry Huxley, Collected Essays of Thomas Henry Huxley
Needless to say, jamming deformed, drugged, overstressed birds together in a filthy, waste-coated room is not very healthy. Beyond deformities, eye damage, blindness, bacterial infections of bones, slipped vertebrae, paralysis, internal bleeding, anemia, slipped tendons, twisted lower legs and necks, respiratory diseases, and weakened immune systems are frequent and long-standing problems on factory farms.
— Jonathan Safran Foer, Eating Animals
I really don't know why it is that all of us are so committed to the sea, except I think it's because in addition to the fact that the sea changes, and the light changes, and ships change, it's because we all came from the sea. And it is an interesting biological fact that all of us have in our veins the exact same percentage of salt in our blood that exists in the ocean, and, therefore, we have salt in our blood, in our sweat, in our tears. We are tied to the ocean. And when we go back to the sea - whether it is to sail or to watch it - we are going back from whence we
— John F. Kennedy
Kids are never the problem. They are born scientists. The problem is always the adults. They beat the curiosity out of kids. They outnumber kids. They vote. They wield resources. That's why my public focus is primarily adults.
— Neil deGrasse Tyson
To protest about bullfighting in Spain, the eating of dogs in South Korea, or the slaughter of baby seals in Canada while continuing to eat eggs from hens who have spent their lives crammed into cages, or veal from calves who have been deprived of their mothers, their proper diet, and the freedom to lie down with their legs extended, is like denouncing apartheid in South Africa while asking your neighbors not to sell their houses to blacks.
— Peter Singer, Animal Liberation
There is nothing which can better deserve our patronage than the promotion of science and literature. Knowledge is in every country the surest basis of public happiness.
— George Washington
When scientifically investigating the natural world, the only thing worse than a blind believer is a seeing denier.
— Neil deGrasse Tyson, Death by Black Hole - And Other Cosmic Quandaries
It turns out that an eerie type of chaos can lurk just behind a facade of order - and yet, deep inside the chaos lurks an even eerier type of order.
— Douglas R. Hofstadter, Metamagical Themas: Questing for the Essence of Mind and Pattern
Science is like sex: sometimes something useful comes out, but that is not the reason we are doing it. 
— Richard Feynman
Study, along the lines which the theologies have mapped, will never lead us to discovery of the fundamental facts of our existence. That goal must be attained by means of exact science and can only be achieved by such means. The fact that man, for ages, has superstitiously believed in what he calls a God does not prove at all that his theory has been right. There have been many gods – all makeshifts, born of inability to fathom the deep fundamental truth. There must be something at the bottom of existence, and man, in ignorance, being unable to discover what it is through reason, because his reason has been so imperfect, undeveloped, has used, instead, imagination, and created figments, of one kind or another, which, according to the country he was born in, the suggestions of his environment, satisfied him for the time being. Not one of all the gods of all the various theologies has ever really been proved. We accept no ordinary scientific fact without the final proof; why should we, then, be satisfied in this most mighty of all matters, with a mere theory?Destruction of false theories will not decrease the sum of human happiness in future, any more than it has in the past... The days of miracles have passed. I do not believe, of course, that there was ever any day of actual miracles. I cannot understand that there were ever any miracles at all. My guide must be my reason, and at thought of miracles my reason is rebellious. Personally, I do not believe that Christ laid claim to doing miracles, or asserted that he had miraculous power...Our intelligence is the aggregate intelligence of the cells which make us up. There is no soul, distinct from mind, and what we speak of as the mind is just the aggregate intelligence of cells. It is fallacious to declare that we have souls apart from animal intelligence, apart from brains. It is the brain that keeps us going. There is nothing beyond that.Life goes on endlessly, but no more in human beings than in other animals, or, for that matter, than in vegetables. Life, collectively, must be immortal, human beings, individually, cannot be, as I see it, for they are not the individuals – they are mere aggregates of cells.There is no supernatural. We are continually learning new things. There are powers within us which have not yet been developed and they will develop. We shall learn things of ourselves, which will be full of wonders, but none of them will be beyond the na
— Thomas A. Edison
You know what's wrong with scientific power? It's a form of inherited wealth. And you know what assholes congenitally rich people are.
— Michael Crichton, Jurassic Park
A blade of grass is a commonplace on Earth; it would be a miracle on Mars. Our descendants on Mars will know the value of a patch of green. And if a blade of grass is priceless, what is the value of a human being?
— Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space
The Universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose.
— J.B.S. Haldane, Possible Worlds
Never underestimate spite as a motivator for genius.
— Sam Kean, The Disappearing Spoon: And Other True Tales of Madness, Love, and the History of the World from the Periodic Table of the Elements
The Cosmos extends, for all practical purposes, forever. After a brief sedentary hiatus, we are resuming our ancient nomadic way of life. Our remote descendants, safely arrayed on many worlds throughout the Solar System and beyond, will be unified by their common heritage, by their regard for their home planet, and by the knowledge that, whatever other life may be, the only humans in all the Universe come from Earth. They will gaze up and strain to find the blue dot in their skies. They will love it no less for its obscurity and fragility. They will marvel at how vulnerable the repository of all our potential once was, how perilous our infancy, how humble our beginnings, how many rivers we had to cross before we found our way.
— Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space
For every fact there is an infinity of hypotheses. 
— Robert M. Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values
Science may be described as the art of systematic oversimplification.
— Karl R. Popper
What goes up must come down.
— Isaac Newton
Those who are not shocked when they first come across quantum theory cannot possibly have understood it.
— Niels Bohr, Essays 1932-1957 on Atomic Physics and Human Knowledge
Science is what we understand well enough to explain to a computer art is everything else.
— Donald Ervin Knuth, Things a Computer Scientist Rarely Talks About
Progress is born of doubt and inquiry. The Church never doubts, never inquires. To doubt is heresy, to inquire is to admit that you do not know—the Church does neither.
— Robert G. Ingersoll, Thomas Paine From 'The Gods and Other Lectures'
Just because an apple falls one hundred times out of a hundred does not mean it will fall on the hundred and first.
— Derek Landy, Death Bringer
In 5 billion years, the expansion of the universe will have progressed to the point where all other galaxies will have receded beyond detection. Indeed, they will be receding faster than the speed of light, so detection will be impossible. Future civilizations will discover science and all its laws, and never know about other galaxies or the cosmic background radiation. They will inevitably come to the wrong conclusion about the universe......We live in a special time, the only time, where we can observationally verify that we live in a special time.
— Lawrence M. Krauss, A Universe from Nothing: Why There Is Something Rather Than Nothing
One general law, leading to the advancement of all organic beings, namely, multiply, vary, let the strongest live and the weakest die.
— Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species
Mother Nature doesn't care if you're having fun. 
— Larry Niven
When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.
— Arthur C. Clarke
But in my opinion, all things in nature occur mathematically.
— René Descartes
Energy is liberated matter, matter is energy waiting to happen.
— Bill Bryson, A Short History of Nearly Everything
For someone who'e smarter than a supercomputer, sometimes you're a real idiot.
— Gordon Korman, One False Note
If time travel is possible, where are the tourists from the future?
— Stephen Hawking, A Brief History of Time
For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.
— Richard Feynman
Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing admiration and awe, the more often and steadily we reflect upon them: the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me. I do not seek or conjecture either of them as if they were veiled obscurities or extravagances beyond the horizon of my vision; I see them before me and connect them immediately with the consciousness of my existence.
— Immanuel Kant, Critique of Practical Reason
But what about the End of the Universe? We'll miss the big moment."I've seen it. It's rubbish," said Zaphod,"nothing but a gnab gib."A what?"Opposite of a big bang. Come on, let's get zappy.
— Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe
When it came time for me to give my talk on the subject, I started off by drawing an outline of the cat and began to name the various muscles.The other students in the class interrupt me: "We *know* all that!""Oh," I say, "you *do*? Then no *wonder* I can catch up with you so fast after you've had four years of biology." They had wasted all their time memorizing stuff like that, when it could be looked up in fifteen minutes.
— Richard Feynman, Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!: Adventures of a Curious Character
It is very expensive to give bad medical care to poor people in a rich country.
— Paul Farmer
Measure what can be measured, and make measurable what cannot be measured.
— Galileo Galilei
Consciousness cannot be accounted for in physical terms. For consciousness is absolutely fundamental. It cannot be accounted for in terms of anything else.
— Erwin Schrödinger
Science is based on experiment, on a willingness to challenge old dogma, on an openness to see the universe as it really is. Accordingly, science sometimes requires courage - at the very least the courage to question the conventional wisdom.
— Carl Sagan
The following proposition seems to me in a high degree probable—namely, that any animal whatever, endowed with well-marked social instincts, the parental and filial affections being here included, would inevitably acquire a moral sense or conscience, as soon as its intellectual powers had become as well, or nearly as well developed, as in man. For, firstly, the social instincts lead an animal to take pleasure in the society of its fellows, to feel a certain amount of sympathy with them, and to perform various services for them.
— Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man
My dream, is to dream, a dream.
— Santosh Kalwar
Be humble for you are made of earth. Be noble for you are made of stars.
— Serbian Proverb
I'm dark matter. The universe inside of me is full of something, and science can't even shine a light on it. I feel like I'm mostly made of mysteries.
— Maria Dahvana Headley, Magonia
Science teaches to think but love teaches to smile.
— Santosh Kalwar
Men love to wonder, and that is the seed of science.
— Ralph Waldo Emerson
Om (AUM) the Divine song is at the same time Symmetry, Supersymmetry, broken Symmetry, and the unbroken Symmetry of Nature.
— Amit Ray, Om Chanting & Meditation
I want to put on the table, not why 85% of the members of the National Academy of Sciences reject God, I want to know why 15% of the National Academy don’t.
— Neil deGrasse Tyson
Science is a bit like the joke about the drunk who is looking under a lamppost for a key that he has lost on the other side of the street, because that's where the light is. It has no other choice.
— Noam Chomsky
Colour is a power which directly influences the soul.
— Wassily Kandinsky, Concerning the Spiritual in Art
One of the strongest motives that lead men to art and science is escape from everyday life with its painful crudity and hopeless dreariness, from the fetters of one's own ever-shifting desires. A finely tempered nature longs to escape from the personal life into the world of objective perception and thought.
— Albert Einstein
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
We knew the world would not be the same. A few people laughed, a few people cried. Most people were silent. I remembered the line from the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad-Gita; Vishnu is trying to persuade the Prince that he should do his duty, and to impress him, takes on his multi-armed form and says, 'Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.' I suppose we all thought that, one way or another.
— J. Robert Oppenheimer
It's much easier on the emotions when one sees life as an experiment rather than a struggle for popularity.
— Criss Jami, Killosophy
Any man could, if he were so inclined, be the sculptor of his own brain.
— Santiago Ramón y Cajal, Advice for a Young Investigator
The universe is so unhuman, that is, it goes its way with so little thought of man. He is but an incident, not an end. We must adjust our notions to the discovery that things are not shaped to him, but that he is shaped to them. The air was not made for his lungs, but he has lungs because there is air; the light was not created for his eye, but he has eyes because there is light. All the forces of nature are going their own way; man avails himself of them, or catches a ride as best he can. If he keeps his seat, he prospers; if he misses his hold and falls, he is crushed.
— John Burroughs, The Light of Day (Volume 11); Religious Discussions and Criticisms from the Naturalist's Point of View
Nature composes some of her loveliest poems for the microscope and the telescope.
— Theodore Roszak, Where the Wasteland Ends
Sadly, my socks are like snowflakes, no two are exactly alike.
— Graham Parke
We can allow satellites, planets, suns, universe, nay whole systems of universe, to be governed by laws, but the smallest insect, we wish to be created at once by special act.
— Charles Darwin, Notebooks
And what greater might do we possess as human beings than our capacity to question and to learn?
— Ann Druyan
The way to find out about our place in the universe is by examining the universe and by examining ourselves - without preconceptions, with as unbiased a mind as we can muster.
— Carl Sagan
The problem is, or rather one of the problems, for there are many, a sizeable proportion of which are continually clogging up the civil, commercial, and criminal courts in all areas of the Galaxy, and especially, where possible, the more corrupt ones, this.The previous sentence makes sense. That is not the problem.This is:Change.Read it through again and you'll get it.
— Douglas Adams, So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish
...The Presidential election has given me less anxiety than I myself could have imagined. The next administration will be a troublesome one, to whomsoever it falls, and our John has been too much worn to contend much longer with conflicting factions. I call him our John, because, when you were at the Cul de sac at Paris, he appeared to me to be almost as much your boy as
— John  Adams, Adams-Jefferson Letters
It is a capital mistake to theorise before one has data.
— Arthur Conan Doyle, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
A hundred years from now, people will look back on us and laugh. They'll say, 'You know what people used to believe? They believed in photons and electrons. Can you imagine anything so silly?' They'll have a good laugh, because by then there will be newer better fantasies... And meanwhile, you feel the way the boat moves? That's the sea. That's real. You smell the salt in the air? You feel the sunlight on your skin? That's all real. Life is wonderful. It's a gift to be alive, to see the sun and breathe the air. And there isn't really anything else.
— Michael Crichton, The Lost World
DNA neither cares nor knows. DNA just is. And we dance to its music.
— Richard Dawkins, River Out of Eden: A Darwinian View of Life
WATNEY: Look! A pair of boobs! -> (.Y.).
— Andy Weir, The Martian
Science is what you know, philosophy is what you don't know
— Bertrand Russell
But today our very survival depends on our ability to stay awake, to adjust to new ideas, to remain vigilant and to face the challenge of change. The large house in which we live demands that we transform this world-wide neighborhood into a world – wide brotherhood. Together we must learn to live as brothers or together we will be forced to perish as fools.We must work passionately and indefatigably to bridge the gulf between our scientific progress and our moral progress. One of the great problems of mankind is that we suffer from a poverty of the spirit which stands in glaring contrast to our scientific and technological abundance. The richer we have become materially, the poorer we have become morally and spiritually.
— Martin Luther King Jr.
The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion that stands at the cradle of true art and true science. Whoever does not know it and can no longer wonder, is as good as dead, and his eyes are dimmed (Albert Einstein)
— Deborah Harkness, A Discovery of Witches
The more clearly we can focus our attention on the wonders and realities of the universe about us the less taste we shall have for the destruction of our race. Wonder and humility are wholesome emotions, and they do not exist side by side with a lust for destru
— Rachel Carson
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, The Roving Mind
Something deeply hidden had to be behind things.
— Albert Einstein, Autobiographical Notes
The easiest way to do anything is properly.
— K.J. Parker
People wrap themselves in their beliefs. And they do it in such a way that you can't set them free. Not even the truth will set them free.
— Michael Specter
I believe that at the end of the century the use of words and general educated opinion will have altered so much that one will be able to speak of machines thinking without expecting to be contradicted.
— Alan Turing, Computing machinery and intelligence
So my antagonist said, "Is it impossible that there are flying saucers? Can you prove that it's impossible?" "No", I said, "I can't prove it's impossible. It's just very unlikely". At that he said, "You are very unscientific. If you can't prove it impossible then how can you say that it's unlikely?" But that is the way that is scientific. It is scientific only to say what is more likely and what less likely, and not to be proving all the time the possible and impossible.
— Richard Feynman
Science is the ultimate pornography, analytic activity whose main aim is to isolate objects or events from their contexts in time and space. This obsession with the specific activity of quantified functions is what science shares with pornography.
— J.G. Ballard, The Atrocity Exhibition
The glory of science is, that it is freeing the soul -- breaking the mental manacles -- getting the brain out of bondage -- giving courage to thought -- filling the world with mercy, justice, and joy.
— Robert G. Ingersoll, Humboldt From 'The Gods and Other Lectures'
We are built to be effective animals, not happy ones.
— Robert Wright, The Moral Animal: Why We Are the Way We Are: The New Science of Evolutionary Psychology
I am not afraid of a person who knows 10000 kicks. But I am afraid of a person who knows one kick but practices it for 10000 times.
— Bruce Lee, Bruce Lee — Wisdom for the Way
Reality is, you know, the tip of an iceberg of irrationality that we've managed to drag ourselves up onto for a few panting moments before we slip back into the sea of the unreal.
— Terence McKenna
Extinction is the rule. Survival is the exception.
— Carl Sagan, The Varieties of Scientific Experience: A Personal View of the Search for God
Once there was a boy,” said Jace.Clary interrupted immediately. “A Shadowhunter boy?”“Of course.” For a moment a bleak amusement colored his voice. Then it was gone. “When the boy was six years old, his father gave him a falcon to train. Falcons are raptors – killing birds, his father told him, the Shadowhunters of the sky.“The falcon didn’t like the boy, and the boy didn’t like it, either. Its sharp beak made him nervous, and its bright eyes always seemed to be watching him. It would slash at him with beak and talons when he came near: For weeks his wrists and hands were always bleeding. He didn’t know it, but his father had selected a falcon that had lived in the wild for over a year, and thus was nearly impossible to tame. But the boy tried, because his father told him to make the falcon obedient, and he wanted to please his father.“He stayed with the falcon constantly, keeping it awake by talking to it and even playing music to it, because a tired bird was meant to be easier to tame. He learned the equipment: the jesses, the hood, the brail, the leash that bound the bird to his wrist. He was meant to keep the falcon blind, but he couldn’t bring himself to do it – instead he tried to sit where the bird could see him as he touched and stroked its wings, willing it to trust him. Hee fed it from his hand, and at first it would not eat. Later it ate so savagely that its beak cut the skin of his palm. But the boy was glad, because it was progress, and because he wanted the bird to know him, even if the bird had to consume his blood to make that happen.“He began to see that the falcon was beautiful, that its slim wings were built for the speed of flight, that it was strong and swift, fierce and gentle. When it dived to the ground, it moved like likght. When it learned to circle and come to his wrist, he neary shouted with delight Sometimes the bird would hope to his shoulder and put its beak in his hair. He knew his falcon loved him, and when he was certain it was not just tamed but perfectly tamed, he went to his father and showed him what he had done, expecting him to be proud.“Instead his father took the bird, now tame and trusting, in his hands and broke its neck. ‘I told you to make it obedient,’ his father said, and dropped the falcon’s lifeless body to the ground. ‘Instead, you taught it to love you. Falcons are not meant to be loving pets: They are fierce and wild, savage and cruel. This bird was not tamed; it was broken.’“Later, when his father left him, the boy cried over his pet, until eventually his father sent a servant to take the body of the bird away and bury it. The boy never cried again, and he never forgot what he’d learned: that to love is to destroy, and that to be loved is to be the one destroyed.
— Cassandra Clare, City of Bones
As cities grow and technology takes over the world belief and imagination fade away and so do we.
— Julie Kagawa, The Iron King
Every great advance in science has issued from a new audacity of imagination. 
— John Dewey, The Quest for Certainty: A Study of the Relation of Knowledge and Action
It is not my intention to be fulsome, but I confess that I covet your skull.
— Arthur Conan Doyle, The Hound of the Baskervilles
They keep saying that sea levels are rising an' all this. It's nowt to do with the icebergs melting, it's because there's too many fish in it. Get rid of some of the fish and the water will drop. Simple. Basic science.
— Karl Pilkington, The Ricky Gervais Show - First, Second and Third Seasons
Most institutions demand unqualified faith but the institution of science makes skepticism a virtue.
— Robert K. Merton, Social Theory and Social Structure
Science, like life, feeds on its own decay. New facts burst old rules; then newly divined conceptions bind old and new together into a reconciling law.
— William James, The Will to Believe and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy
National boundaries are not evident when we view the Earth from space. Fanatical ethnic or religious or national chauvinisms are a little difficult to maintain when we see our planet as a fragile blue crescent fading to become an inconspicuous point of light against the bastion and citadel of the stars.
— Carl Sagan, Cosmos
He who hears the rippling of rivers in these degenerate days will not utterly despair.
— Henry David Thoreau
You are a placebo responder. Your body plays tricks on your mind. You cannot be trusted.
— Ben Goldacre, Bad Science
Be sceptical, ask questions, demand proof. Demand evidence. Don't take anything for granted. But here's the thing: When you get proof, you need to accept the proof. And we're not that good at doing that.
— Michael Specter
If we long to believe that the stars rise and set for us, that we are the reason there is a Universe, does science do us a disservice in deflating our conceits?
— Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark
Einstein said that if quantum mechanics were correct then the world would be crazy. Einstein was right - the world is crazy.
— Daniel M. Greenberger
The labours of men of genius, however erroneously directed, scarcely ever fail in ultimately turning to the solid advantage of mankind.
— Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
We ought not to ask why the human mind troubles to fathom the secrets of the universe. The diversity of the phenomena of nature is so great, and the treasures hidden in the skies so rich, precisely in order that the human mind shall never be lacking in fresh nourishment.
— Johannes Kepler
Pick up a pinecone and count the spiral rows of scales. You may find eight spirals winding up to the left and 13 spirals winding up to the right, or 13 left and 21 right spirals, or other pairs of numbers. The striking fact is that these pairs of numbers are adjacent numbers in the famous Fibonacci series: 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21... Here, each term is the sum of the previous two terms. The phenomenon is well known and called phyllotaxis. Many are the efforts of biologists to understand why pinecones, sunflowers, and many other plants exhibit this remarkable pattern. Organisms do the strangest things, but all these odd things need not reflect selection or historical accident. Some of the best efforts to understand phyllotaxis appeal to a form of self-organization. Paul Green, at Stanford, has argued persuasively that the Fibonacci series is just what one would expects as the simplest self-repeating pattern that can be generated by the particular growth processes in the growing tips of the tissues that form sunflowers, pinecones, and so forth. Like a snowflake and its sixfold symmetry, the pinecone and its phyllotaxis may be part of order for free
— Stuart A. Kauffman, At Home in the Universe: The Search for the Laws of Self-Organization and Complexity
CIRCLES OF LIFEEverythingTurns,Rotates,Spins,Circles,Loops,Pulsates,Resonates,AndRepeats.CirclesOf life,Born fromPulsesOf light,VibrateToBreathe,WhileSpiralingOutwardsForInfinityThroughThe lensOf time,And intoA seaOf starsAndLucidDreams.Poetry by Suzy Kassem
— Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem
[we see that] science is eminently perfectible, and that each theory has constantly to give way to a fresh one.
— Jules Verne, A Journey to the Center of the Earth
It would be better for us to have some doubts in an honest pursuit of truth, than it would be for us to be certain about something that was not true.	
— Daniel Wallace
Before it is science and career, before it is livelihood, before even it is family or love, freedom is sound sleep and safety to notice the play of morning sun.
— Richard Rhodes, The Making of the Atomic Bomb
Monotony collapses time; novelty unfolds it. You can exercise daily and eat healthily and live a long life, while experiencing a short one. If you spend your life sitting in a cubicle and passing papers, one day is bound to blend unmemorably into the next - and disappear. That's why it's so important to change routines regularly, and take vacations to exotic locales, and have as many new experiences as possible that can serve to anchor our memories. Creating new memories stretches out psychological time, and lengthens our perception of our lives.
— Joshua Foer, Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything
The chief deficiency I see in the skeptical movement is its polarization: Us vs. Them — the sense that we have a monopoly on the truth; that those other people who believe in all these stupid doctrines are morons; that if you're sensible, you'll listen to us; and if not, to hell with you. This is nonconstructive. It does not get our message across. It condemns us to permanent minority status.
— Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark
God did not create man in his own image. Evidently, it was quite the other way about, which is the painless explanation for the profusion of gods and religions, and the fratricide both between and among faiths, that we see all about us and that has so retarded the development of civilization.
— Christopher Hitchens, god is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything
Philosophy of science is about as useful to scientists as ornithology is to birds.
— Richard Feynman
We are survival machines – robot vehicles blindly programmed to preserve the selfish molecules known as genes. This is a truth which still fills me with astonishment.
— Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene
There are no forbidden questions in science, no matters too sensitive or delicate to be probed, no sacred truths.
— Carl Sagan
It is not clear that intelligence has any long-term survival value.
— Stephen Hawking
A human being weighing 70 kilograms contains among other things:-45 litres of water-Enough chalk to whiten a chicken pen-Enough phosphorus for 2,200 matches-Enough fat to make approximately 70 bars of soap-Enough iron to make a two inch nail-Enough carbon for 9,000 pencil points-A spoonful of magnesiumI weigh more than 70 kilograms.And I remember a TV series called Cosmos. Carl Sagan would walk around on a set that was meant to look like space, speaking in large numbers. On one of the shows he sat in front of a tank full of all the substances human beings are made of. He stirred the tank with a stick wondering if he would be able to create life.He didn’t succeed.
— Erlend Loe, Naïve. Super
It's very, very dangerous to lose contact with living nature.
— Albert Hofmann
We can't help it. Life looks for life.
— Carl Sagan
Civilization exists by geological consent, subject to change without notice. 
— Will Durant
Creative people see Prometheus in a mirror, never Pandora.
— David Brin, Brightness Reef
The Theory of Evolution has more holes in it than a dam made out of Swiss cheese.
— Eoin Colfer, The Time Paradox
Maybe you who condemn me are in greater fear than I who am condemned.
— Giordano Bruno
The best way to avoid abuses is for the populace in general to be scientifically literate, to understand the implications of such investigations. In exchange for freedom of inquiry, scientists are obliged to explain their work. If science is considered a closed priesthood, too difficult and arcane for the average person to understand, the dangers of abuse are greater. But if science is a topic of general interest and concern - if both its delights and its social consequences are discussed regularly and competently in the schools, the press, and at the dinner table - we have greatly improved our prospects for learning how the world really is and for improving both it and us.
— Carl Sagan
The real question is not whether machines think but whether men do. The mystery which surrounds a thinking machine already surrounds a thinking man.
— B.F. Skinner, Contingencies Of Reinforcement: A Theoretical Analysis
Not only have you been lucky enough to be attached since time immemorial to a favored evolutionary line, but you have also been extremely- make that miraculously- fortunate in your personal ancestry. Consider the fact that for 3.8 billion years, a period of time older than the Earth's mountains and rivers and oceans, everyone of your forbears on both sides has been attractive enough to find a mate, healthy enough to reproduce, and sufficiently blessed by fate and circumstances to live long enough to do so. Not one of your pertinent ancestors was squashed, devoured, drowned, starved, stranded, stuck fast, untimely wounded, or otherwise deflected from it's life quest of delivering a tiny charge of genetic material to the right partner at the right moment in order to perpetuate the only possible sequence of hereditary combinations that could result - evetually, astoundingly, and all to briefly- in you.
— Bill Bryson
Never fire a laser at a mirror. 
— Larry Niven
The truth is more magical - in the best and most exciting sense of the word - than any myth or made-up mystery or miracle. Science has its own magic: the magic of reality.
— Richard Dawkins, The Magic of Reality: How We Know What's Really True
The paper does not provide the exact number of penises eaten by ducks, but the author says there have been enough over the years to prompt the coining of a popular saying: 'I better get home or the ducks will have something to eat.
— Mary Roach, Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex
The measure of greatness in a scientific idea is the extent to which it stimulates thought and opens up new lines of research.
— Paul A.M. Dirac
In my experience, the most staunchly held views are based on ignorance or accepted dogma, not carefully considered accumulations of facts. The more you expose the intricacies and realtities of the situation, the less clear-cut things become.
— Mary Roach, Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife
I didn't want a world in which I had to choose between blind human babies and tortured monkey ones. To be frank, that's the sort of choice I expect science to protect me from, not give me.
— Karen Joy Fowler, We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves
The thing is, it's very dangerous to have a fixed idea. A person with a fixed idea will always find some way of convincing himself in the end that he is right
— Atle Selberg
People today have forgotten they're really just a part of nature. Yet, they destroy the nature on which our lives depend. They always think they can make something better. Especially scientists. They may be smart, but most don't understand the heart of nature. They only invent things that, in the end, make people unhappy. Yet they're so proud of their inventions. What's worse, most people are, too. They view them as if they were miracles. They worship them. They don't know it, but they're losing nature. They don't see that they're going to perish. The most important things for human beings are clean air and clean water.
— Akira Kurosawa, Yume
And if humanity is the last war, then I am the battlefield.
— Rick Yancey, The 5th Wave
Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants. We know more about war than we know about peace, more about killing than we know about living. We have grasped the mystery of the atom and rejected the Sermon on the Mount.
— Omar Nelson Bradley
Nothing is too wonderful to be true if it be consistent with the laws of nature.
— Michael Faraday
In this world, perfection is an illusion. Reagrdless of all those who utter the contrary, this is the reality. Obviously mediocre fools will forever lust for perfection and seek it out. However, what meaning is there in perfection? None. Not a bit. ...After perfection there exists nothing higher. Not even room for creation which means there is no room for wisdom or talent either. Understand? To scientists like ourselves, perfection is despair. - Kurotsuchi Mayuri (Bleach 306)
— Tite Kubo
Science is all about proving theories and understanding the universe. Science folds everything into neat logical well-explained packages. The fey are magical capricious illogical and unexplainable. Science cannot prove the existence of faeries so naturally we do not exist. That type of nonbelief is fatal to faries.
— Julie Kagawa, The Iron King
Discovery consists of looking at the same thing as everyone else and thinking something different.
— Albert Szent-Györgyi
1. When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.2. The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.3. Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
— Arthur C. Clarke