#science

"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."

"I am quite sure that our views on evolution would be very different had biologists studied genetics and natural selection before and not after most of them were convinced that evolution had occurred."

"We can't help it. Life looks for life."

"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."

"The element of chance in basic research is overrated. Chance is a lady who smiles only upon those few who know how to make her smile."

"Dream is not that which you see while sleeping it is something that does not let you sleep."

"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."

"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."

"Laws of nature have no physical properties of mass /energy. They are platonic truths in transcendent realm that create & govern the Universe."

"All killer whales are named Kevin. You knew that, right?"

"The science, the art, the jurisprudence, the chief political and social theories, of the modern world have grown out of Greece and Rome—not by favour of, but in the teeth of, the fundamental teachings of early Christianity, to which science, art, and any serious occupation with the things of this world were alike despicable."

"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."

"Jokes of the proper kind, properly told, can do more to enlighten questions of politics, philosophy, and literature than any number of dull arguments."

"So this is it,"said Arthur, "We are going to die.""Yes,"said Ford, "except... no! Wait a minute!"He suddenly lunged across the chamber at something behind Arthur's line of vision. "What's this switch?"he cried."What? Where?"cried Arthur, twisting round."No, I was only fooling,"said Ford, "we are going to die after all."

"Art is the tree of life. Science is the tree of death."

"The history of science is the saga of nature defying common sense."

"I agree with people like Richard Dawkins that mankind felt the need for creation myths. Before we really began to understand disease and the weather and things like that, we sought false explanations for them. Now science has filled in some of the realm – not all – that religion used to fill."

"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."

"A real scientist solves problems, not wails that they are unsolvable."

"Science, my lad, is made up of mistakes, but they are mistakes which it is useful to make, because they lead little by little to the truth."