#science

"Maybe knowledge is as fundamental, or even more fundamental than [material] reality."

"It is a good principle in science not to believe any 'fact'---however well attested---until it fits into some accepted frame of reference. Occasionally, of course, an observation can shatter the frame and force the construction of a new one, but that is extremely rare. Galileos and Einsteins seldom appear more than once per century, which is just as well for the equanimity of mankind."

"There's nothing like the discovery of an unknown work by a great thinker to set the intellectual community atwitter and cause academics to dart about like those things one sees when looking at a drop of water under a microscope."

"You squeeze the eyedropper, and a drop of pond water drips out onto the microscope stage. You look at the projected image. The drop is full of life - strange beings swimming, crawling, tumbling; high dramas of pursuit and escape, triumph and tragedy. This is a world populated by beings far more exotic than in any science fiction movie..."

"The more you delve into science, the more it appears to rely on faith."

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

"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."

"Most institutions demand unqualified faith; but the institution of science makes skepticism a virtue."

"It is not my intention to be fulsome, but I confess that I covet your skull."

"God is an ever receding pocket of scientific ignorance."

"You cannot separate passion from pathology any more than you can separate a person's spirit from his body."

"Let's say intelligence is your ability to compose poetry, symphonies, do art, math and science. Chimps can't do any of that, yet we share 99 percent DNA. Everything that we are, that distinguishes us from chimps, emerges from that one-percent difference."

"Temporis filia veritas; cui me obstetricari non pudet.Truth is the daughter of time, and I feel no shame in being her midwife."

"Our civil rights have no dependence on our religious opinions any more than our opinions in physics or geometry..."

"It is our task, both in science and in society at large, to prove the conventional wisdom wrong and to make our unpredictable dreams come true"

"Arabic science throughout its golden age was inextricably linked to religion; indeed, it was driven by the need of early scholars to interpret the Qur'an."

"In the conditions of modern life the rule is absolute, the race which does not value trained intelligence is doomed."

"There's a snobbery at work in architecture. The subject is too often treated as a fine art, delicately wrapped in mumbo-jumbo. In reality, it's an all-embracing discipline taking in science, art, maths, engineering, climate, nature, politics, economics."

"I do not like odd things until I can understand them."

"Half of all broccoli grown commercially in America today is a single variety- Marathon- notable for it's high yield. The overwhelming majority of the chickens raised for meat in America are the same hybrid, the Cornish cross; more than 99 percent of turkeys are the Broad-Breasted Whites."