#science

"I was thinking of how sometimes, trying to say the right thing to people, it's like some kind of brain surgery..."

"Everything existing in the universe is the fruit of chance and necessity."

"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."

"Every intelligent being, whether it breathes or not, coughs nervously at some time in its life."

"Gravity explains the motions of the planets, but it cannot explain who sets the planets in motion."

"We are just an advanced breed of monkeys on a minor planet of a very average star. But we can understand the Universe. That makes us something very special."

"All creation necessarily ends in this: Creators, powerless, fleeing from the things they have wrought."

"[E]xceptional claims demand exceptional evidence."

"There are no forbidden questions in science, no matters too sensitive or delicate to be probed, no sacred truths."

"I like the scientific spirit—the holding off, the being sure but not too sure, the willingness to surrender ideas when the evidence is against them: this is ultimately fine—it always keeps the way beyond open—always gives life, thought, affection, the whole man, a chance to try over again after a mistake—after a wrong guess."

"In the battle that is philosophy all the techniques of war, including looting and camouflage, are permissible."

"Never underestimate spite as a motivator for genius."

"...Man has a tyrant, ignorance. I voted for the demise of that particular tyrant. That particular tyrant has engendered royalty, which is authority based on falsehood, whereas science is authority based on truth. Man should be governed by science alone.""And conscience,"added the bishop."It's the same thing. Conscience is the quota of innate science we each have inside us."

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

"The only thing that interests the physicist is finding out on what assumptions a framework of things can be constructed which will enable us to know how to use them mechanically. Physics, as I have said on another occasion, is the technique of techniques and the ars combinatoria for fabricating machines. It is a knowledge which has scarcely anything to do with comprehension."

"A person who has been punished is not thereby simply less inclined to behave in a given way; at best, he learns how to avoid punishment."

"In a very real sense we have two minds, one that thinks and one that feels"

"A straight line is not the shortest distance between two points."

"Time and time again, throughout the history of medical practice, what was once considered as "scientific"eventually becomes regarded as "bad practice"."

"Tell me, tutor,' I said. 'Is revenge a science, or an art?"