science

"And yet we knew, for a certainty, that when first emissaries of Earth went walking among the planets, Earth's other sons would be dreaming not about such expeditions but about a piece of bread."

"The more I read arguments for atheism, the more I am convinced it takes a very strong faith to be an atheist. And atheism seems to me the least reasonable of all faiths."

"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..."

"She had studied the universe all her life, but had overlooked its clearest message: For small creatures such as we the vastness is bearable only through love."

"My dream, is to dream, a dream."

"Maybe there's something you're afraid to say, or someone you're afraid to love, or somewhere you're afraid to go. It's gonna hurt. It's gonna hurt because it matters."

"The split in America, rather than simply economic, is between those who embrace reason, who function in the real world of cause and effect, and those who, numbed by isolation and despair, now seek meaning in a mythical world of intuition, a world that is no longer reality-based, a world of magic."

"Many people find bald, unvarnished truths so disturbing, they prefer to ram their heads in the sand and start dreaming at the first sign of scientific reality."

"Science is not only compatible with spirituality; it is a profound source of spirituality."

"As a child, I was aware that, at night, infrared vision would reveal monsters hiding in the bedroom closet only if they were warm-blooded. But everybody knows that your average bedroom monster is reptilian and cold-blooded."

"Miracles are not contrary to nature but only contrary to what we know about nature."

"Not only is the Universe stranger than we think, it is stranger than we can think."

"If the facts don't fit the theory, change the facts."

"We were born of risen apes, not fallen angels, and the apes were armed killers besides. And so what shall we wonder at? Our murders and massacres and missiles, and our irreconcilable regiments?"

"Science tells me God must exist.My mind tells me I'll never understand God.My heart tells me I'm not meant to. [Vittoria Vetra]"

"We have such a terrible, terrible misconception of science. We think it involves the definite, the precise, the known; it is a horrid series of gates to an unknown as vast of the universe; which means endless."

"Plenty of mathematicians, Hardy knew, could follow a step-by-step discursus unflaggingly—yet counted for nothing beside Ramanujan. Years later, he would contrive an informal scale of natural mathematical ability on which he assigned himself a 25 and Littlewood a 30. To David Hilbert, the most eminent mathematician of the day, he assigned an 80. To Ramanujan he gave 100."

"Scientists do not join hands every Sunday and sing "Yes gravity is real! I know gravity is real! I will have faith! I believe in my heart that what goes up, up, up must come down, down, down. Amen!"If they did, we would think they were pretty insecure about the concept."

"Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed. The imagination must be given not wings but weights."

"Our belief is not a belief. Our principles are not a faith. We do not rely soley upon science and reason, because these are necessary rather than sufficient factors, but we distrust anything that contradicts science or outrages reason. We may differ on many things, but what we respect is free inquiry, openmindedness, and the pursuit of ideas for their own sake."