Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood. Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear less. -- Marie Curie


There is no higher or lower knowledge, but one only, flowing out of experimentation. -- Leonardo da Vinci


If it's green, it's biology,
If it stinks, it's chemistry,
If it has numbers it's math,
If it doesn't work, it's technology.


The best scientist is open to experience and begins with romance - the idea that anything is possible. -- Ray Bradbury


Science is like sex: sometimes something useful comes out, but that is not the reason we are doing it.


The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not "Eureka!" but "That's funny ..." -- Isaac Asimov


The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom. -- Isaac Asimov


The difference between art and science is that science is what we understand well enough to explain to a computer. Art is everything else. -- Donald Knuth


Art and science have their meeting point in method. -- Edward Bulwer-Lytton


He who possesses art and science has religion; he who does not possess them, needs religion. -- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe


When I am working on a problem I never think about beauty. I only think about how to solve the problem. But when I have finished, if the solution is not beautiful, I know it is wrong. -- Buckminster Fuller


Nothing has such power to broaden the mind as the ability to investigate systematically and truly all that comes under your observation in life. -- Marcus Aurelius


The biggest difference between time and space is that you can't reuse time. -- Merrick Furst


For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong. -- H. L. Mencken


We live in a society exquisitely dependent on science and technology, in which hardly anyone knows anything about science and technology. -- Carl Sagan


It is the tension between creativity and skepticism that has produced the stunning and unexpected findings of science. -- Carl Sagan


An inventor is a person who makes an ingenious arrangement of wheels, levers and springs, and believes it's civilization. -- Ambrose Bierce


When the weight of the paperwork equals the weight of the plane, the plane will fly. -- Donald Douglas


Science is not a sacred cow. Science is a horse. Don't worship it. Feed it. -- Aubrey Eben


Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind. -- Albert Einstein


Science and religion are in full accord but science and faith are in complete discord.


Scientists were rated as great heretics by the church, but they were truly religious men because of their faith in the orderliness of the universe. -- Albert Einstein


The church saves sinners, but science seeks to stop their manufacture. -- Elbert Hubbard


Religion is something left over from the infancy of our intelligence, it will fade away as we adopt reason and science as our guidelines. -- Bertrand Russell


What men really want is not knowledge but certainty. -- Bertrand Russell


Not to be absolutely certain is, I think, one of the essential things in rationality. -- Bertrand Russell


It has been said that man is a rational animal. All my life I have been searching for evidence which could support this. -- Bertrand Russell


Science is what you know. Philosophy is what you don't know. -- Bertrand Russell


When one admits that nothing is certain one must, I think, also admit that some things are much more nearly certain than others. -- Bertrand Russell


Science... never solves a problem without creating ten more. -- George Bernard Shaw


Technology is the knack of so arranging the world that we do not experience it. -- Max Frish


Every science begins as philosophy and ends as art. -- Will Durant


Science is not about what things are - it's about how things are; not about what a neutrino looks like, but how one affects the world around us. The language of science does not paint pictures - it communicates active processes - the world in motion. -- Richard P. Feynman


The fundamental principle of science, the definition almost, is this: the sole test of the validity of any idea is experiment. -- Richard P. Feynman


If you thought that science was certain - well, that is just an error on your part.. -- Richard P. Feynman


All theoretical chemistry is really physics; and all theoretical chemists know it. -- Richard P. Feynman


Make it right before you make it faster.


"What time is it?" "I don't know, it keeps changing."


A conclusion is simply the place where someone got tired of thinking.


In any formula, constants (especially those obtained from handbooks) are to be treated as variables.


A little inaccuracy sometimes saves a ton of explanation. -- H. Munro


According to the latest official figures, 43% of all statistics are totally worthless.


If enough data is collected, anything may be proven by statistical methods.


The nice thing about standards is that there are so many of them to choose from. -- Andrew S. Tanenbaum


Q: Why did the germ cross the microscope?
A: To get to the other slide.


The important thing in science is not so much to obtain new facts as to discover new ways of thinking about them. -- Sir William Bragg


Nothing shocks me. I'm a scientist. -- Harrison Ford


They are ill discoverers that think there is no land, when they can see nothing but sea. -- Francis Bacon


We cannot command nature except by obeying her. -- Francis Bacon


Measure with a micrometer. Mark with chalk. Cut with an axe.


I often say that when you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it; but when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meagre and unsatisfactory kind ... -- Lord William Kelvin


Thus, the task is, not so much to see what no one has yet seen; but to think what nobody has yet thought, about that which everybody sees. -- Erwin Schrodinger


It's fairly embarassing to admit that we can't find 90% of the universe. -- Bruce Margon


To know that we know what we know, and to know that we do not know what we do not know, that is true knowledge. -- Nicolaus Copernicus


Irrationally held truths may be more harmful than reasoned errors. -- Thomas Henry Huxley


In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. But, in practice, there is. -- Jan vd Snepscheut


Science makes godlike -- it is all over with priests and gods when man becomes scientific. Moral: science is the forbidden as such -- it alone is forbidden. Science is the first sin, the original sin. This alone is morality. "Thou shalt not know" -- the rest follows. -- Friedrich Nietzsche


Physics, too, is only an interpretation of the universe, an arrangement of it (to suit us, if I may be so bold), rather than a clarification. -- Friedrich Nietzsche


We have developed from the geocentric cosmologies of Ptolemy and his forebears, through the heliocentric cosmology of Copernicus and Galileo, to the modern picture in which the earth is a medium-sized planet orbiting around an average star in the outer suburbs or an ordinary spiral galaxy, which is itself only one of about a million million galaxies in the observable universe. -- Stephen Hawking


What should you do when you find you have made a mistake ... Some people never admit that they are wrong and continue to find new, and often mutually inconsistent, arguments to support their case-as Eddington did in opposing black hole theory. Others claim to have never really supported the incorrect view in the first place or, if they had, it was only to show that it was inconsistent. It seems to me much better and less confusing if you admit in print that you were wrong. A good example of this was Einstein, who called the cosmological constant, which he introduced when he was trying to make a static model of the universe, the biggest mistake of his life. -- Stephen Hawking


The creator of the universe works in mysterious ways. But he uses a base ten counting system and likes round numbers. -- Scott Adams


Science knows no country, because knowledge belongs to humanity, and is the torch which illuminates the world. -- Louis Pasteur


There are no such things as applied sciences, only applications of science. -- Louis Pasteur


Science is nothing but perception. -- Plato


Science cannot be divided into what is up to date and what is merely of antiquarian interest; it is to be regarded as the product of a growth of thought. -- Sir Peter Medawar


Whoever, in the pursuit of science, seeks after immediate practical utility, may generally rest assured that he will seek in vain. -- H. L. F. von Helmholtz


Science is organized knowledge. Wisdom is organized life. -- Immanuel Kant


Science is the great antidote to the poison of enthusiasm and superstition. -- Adam Smith


In science the credit goes to the man who convinces the world, not to the man to whom the idea first occurs. -- Sir William Osler


Science may be described as the art of systematic oversimplification. -- Karl Popper


Science is a wonderful thing if one does not have to earn one's living at it. -- Albert Einstein


The whole of science is nothing more than a refinement of everyday thinking. -- Albert Einstein


The grand aim of all science is to cover the greatest number of empirical facts by logical deduction from the smallest number of hypotheses or axioms. -- Albert Einstein


Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former. -- Albert Einstein


It is the theory which decides what can be observed. -- Albert Einstein


If the facts don't fit the theory, change the facts. -- Albert Einstein


The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed. -- Albert Einstein


Nothing will benefit human health and increase the chances for survival of life on Earth as much as the evolution to a vegetarian diet. -- Albert Einstein


Ethical axioms are found and tested not very differently from the axioms of science. Truth is what stands the test of experience. -- Albert Einstein


Relativity applies to physics, not ethics. -- Albert Einstein


When you are courting a nice girl an hour seems like a second.
When you sit on a red-hot cinder a second seems like an hour.
That's relativity. --
Albert Einstein


I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones. -- Albert Einstein


I believe Gandhi's views were the most enlightened of all the political men of our time. We should strive to do things in his spirit: not to use violence for fighting for our cause, but by non-participation of anything you believe is evil. -- Albert Einstein


Politics is for the moment. An equation is for eternity. -- Albert Einstein


There is not the slightest indication that nuclear energy will ever be obtainable. It would mean that the atom would have to be shattered at will. -- Albert Einstein


Yes, we have to divide up our time like that, between our politics and our equations. But to me our equations are far more important, for politics are only a matter of present concern. A mathematical equation stands forever. -- Albert Einstein


Not everything that can be counted counts; and not everything that counts can be counted. -- Albert Einstein


God doesn't play dice. -- Albert Einstein


Most mistakes in philosophy and logic occur because the human mind is apt to take the symbol for the reality. -- Albert Einstein


Quantum mechanics is very impressive. But an inner voice tells me that it is not yet the real thing. The theory yields a lot, but it hardly brings us any closer to the secret of the Old One. In any case I am convinced that He doesn't play dice. -- Albert Einstein


If quantum mechanics hasn't profoundly shocked you, you haven't understood it yet. -- Niels Bohr


The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. But the opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth. -- Niels Bohr


Your theory is crazy, but it's not crazy enough to be true. -- Niels Bohr


Prediction is very difficult, especially about the future. -- Niels Bohr


Science cannot solve the ultimate mystery of Nature. And it is because in the last analysis we ourselves are part of the mystery we are trying to solve. -- Max Planck


Truth is ever to be found in the simplicity, and not in the multiplicity and confusion of things. -- Isaac Newton


I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me. -- Isaac Newton


If I have not seen as far as others, it is because giants were standing on my shoulders. -- Hal Abelson


Truth in science can be defined as the working hypothesis best suited to open the way to the next better one. -- Konrad Lorenz


The great tragedy of science : the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact. -- Thomas Huxley


The story of a theory's failure often strikes readers as sad and unsatisfying. Since science thrives on self-correction, we who practice this most challenging of human arts do not share such a feeling. We may be unhappy if a favored hypothesis loses or chagrined if theories that we proposed prove inadequate. But refutation almost always contains positive lessons that overwhelm disappointment, even when [...] no new and comprehensive theory has yet filled the void. -- Stephen Jay Gould


The true beauty of nature is her amplitude; she exists neither for nor because of us, and possesses a staying power that all our nuclear arsenals cannot threaten (much as we can easily destroy our puny selves). -- Stephen Jay Gould


Results rarely specify their causes unambiguously. If we have no direct evidence of fossils or human chronicles, if we are forced to infer a process only from its modern results, then we are usually stymied or reduced to speculation about probabilities. For many roads lead to almost any Rome. -- Stephen Jay Gould


In the space of one hundred and seventy-six years the Mississippi has shortened itself two hundred and forty-two miles. Therefore ... in the Old Silurian Period the Mississippi River was upward of one million three hundred thousand miles long ... seven hundred and forty-two years from now the Mississippi will be only a mile and three-quarters long. ... There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesome returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact. -- Mark Twain


We have a word game in English called "Twenty questions." To play Twenty Questions, one player imagines some object, and the other players must guess what it is by asking questions that can be answered with a "yes" or a "no." I imagine every language has a similar game, and, for those of us who speak the language of science, the game is called The Scientific Method. -- Barry K. Sharpless


Not all chemicals are bad. For instance, without hydrogen and oxygen we cannot make water, an essential ingredient in beer


Hey, I'm a Chemist, remember? -- Bill Austin


They say we're 98% water. We're that close to drowning ... (picks up his glass of water from the stool) ... I like to live on the edge ... -- Stephen Wright


(Referring to a glass of water) I mixed this myself. Two parts H, one part O. I don't trust anybody! -- Stephen Wright


I bought some powdered water, but I don't know what to add to it. -- Stephen Wright


The two most abundant things in the universe are hydrogen and stupidity. -- Harlan Ellison


Bunsen Burner: A device invented by Robert Bunsen (1811-1899) for brewing coffee in the laboratory, thereby enabling the chemist to be poisoned without having to go all the way to the company cafeteria.


Chemical: A substance that
1) an organic chemist turns into a foul odor
2) an analytical chemist turns into a procedure
3) a physical chemist turns into a straight line
4) a biochemist turns into a helix
5) a chemical engineer turns into a profit.


When we decode a cookbook, every one of us is a practicing chemist. Cooking is really the oldest, most basic application of physical and chemical forces to natural materials. -- Arthur E. Grosser


...when I started doing chemistry, I did it the way I fished – for the excitement, the discovery, the adventure, for going after the most elusive catch imaginable in uncharted seas. -- Barry K. Sharpless


Love hides in molecular structures. -- Jim Morrison, in "Love Hides" (The Doors; 1970)


Why, for example, should a group of simple, stable compounds of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen struggle for billions of years to organize themselves into a professor of chemistry? What's the motive? -- Robert M. Pirsig


Better death through chemistry, that's what I always say. -- Murdoc (TV series: "MacGyver")


Chemistry...is one of the broadest branches of science, if for no other reason that, when we think about it, everything is chemistry. -- Luciano Caglioti


Chemistry, in its application to animals and vegetables. Endeavours jointly with physiology to enlighten us respecting the mysterious processes and sources of organic life. -- Freiherr Justus von Liebig


Chemists are a strange class of mortals, impelled by an almost maniacal impulse to seek their pleasures amongst smoke and vapour, soot and flames, poisons and poverty, yet amongst all these evils I seem to live so sweetly that I would rather die than change places with the King of Persia. -- Johann Joachim Becher


Chemists are, on the whole, like physicists, only 'less so'.They don't make quite the same wonderful mistakes, and much what they do is an art, related to cooking, instead of a true science. They have their moments, and their sources of legitimate pride. They don't split atoms, as the physicists do. They join them together, and a very praiseworthy activity that is. -- Anthony Standen


Organic chemistry is the chemistry of carbon compounds. Biochemistry is the study of carbon compounds that crawl. -- Mike Adams


If silicon had been a gas, I should have been a major general. -- James McNeill


A day without fusion is like a day without sunshine.


The best way to get a good idea is to get a lot of ideas. -- Linus Pauling


I recognize that many physicists are smarter than I am - most of them theoretical physicists. A lot of smart people have gone into theoretical physics, therefore the field is extremely competitive. I console myself with the thought that although they may be smarter and may be deeper thinkers than I am, I have broader interests than they have. -- Linus Pauling


We may, I believe, anticipate that the chemist of the future who is interested in the structure of proteins, nucleic acids, polysaccharides, and other complex substances with high molecular weight will come to rely upon a new structural chemistry, involving precise geometrical relationships among the atoms in the molecules and the rigorous application of the new structural principles, and that great progress will be made, through this technique, in the attack, by chemical methods, on the problems of biology and medicine. -- Linus Pauling


It is disconcerting to reflect on the number of students we have flunked in chemistry for not knowing what we later found to be untrue. -- Weber, "Science With a Smile" (1992)


Chemists usually write about their chemical careers in terms of the different areas and the discrete projects in those areas on which they have worked. Essentially all my chemical investigations, however, are in only one area, and I tend to view my research not with respect to projects, but with respect to where I’ve been driven by two passions which I acquired in graduate school: I am passionate about the Periodic Table (and selenium, titanium and osmium are absolutely thrilling), and I am passionate about catalysis. What the ocean was to the child, the Periodic Table is to the chemist; new catalytic reactivity is, of course, my personal coelacanth. -- Barry K. Sharpless


For me chemistry represented an indefinite cloud of future potentialities which enveloped my life to come in black volutes torn by fiery flashes, like those which had hidden Mount Sinai. Like Moses, from that cloud I expected my law, the principle of order in me, around me, and in the world. I would watch the buds swell in spring, the mica glint in the granite, my own hands, and I would say to myself: 'I will understand this, too, I will understand everything.' -- Primo Levi


In physics, you don't have to go around making trouble for yourself - nature does it for you. -- Frank Wilczek


The study of non-linear physics is like the study of non-elephant biology.


All science is either physics or stamp collecting. -- Ernest Rutherford


We haven't the money, so we've got to think. -- Ernest Rutherford


We live in a Newtonian world of Einsteinian physics ruled by Frankenstein logic. -- David Russell


Photons have mass ?!? I didn't even know they were Catholic ...


There are children playing in the street who could solve some of my top problems in physics, because they have modes of sensory perception that I lost long ago. -- Julius Robert Oppenheimer


I don't mind your thinking slowly: I mind your publishing faster than you think. -- Wolfgang Pauli


Atoms are not things. -- Werner Heisenberg


What we observe is not nature itself, but nature exposed to our method of questioning. -- Werner Heisenberg


Since the measuring device has been constructed by the observer ... we have to remember that what we observe is not nature itself but nature exposed to our method of questioning. -- Werner Heisenberg


A policeman pulls Werner Heisenberg over on the autobahn for speeding.
Policeman: Sir, do you know how fast you were going ?
Heisenberg: No, but I know exactly where I am.


A physicist is an atom's way of knowing about atoms. -- George Wald


The Second Law of Thermodynamics: If you think things are in a mess now, just wait! -- Jim Warner


In this house, we OBEY the laws of thermodynamics! -- Homer Simpson


Physics is becoming so unbelievably complex that it is taking longer and longer to train a physicist. It is taking so long, in fact, to train a physicist to the place where he understands the nature of physical problems that he is already too old to solve them. -- Eugene Paul Wigner


A machine that was powerful enough to accelerate particles to the grand unification energy would have to be as big as the Solar System-and would be unlikely to be funded in the present economic climate. -- Stephen Hawking


There was a young lady named Bright,
Whose speed was far faster than light;
She set out one day
In a relative way,
And returned home the previous night.
-- Arthur Buller


The dinosaurs became extinct because they didn't have a space program. -- Larry Niven