#science

"There were long stretches of DNA in between genes that didn't seem to be doing very much; some even referred to these as "junk DNA,"though a certain amount of hubris was required for anyone to call any part of the genome "junk,"given our level of ignorance."

"When I was a kid, I loved 'The Curse of Frankenstein,' 'The Creeping Unknown,' 'X: The Unknown.' I love 'Forbidden Planet,' 'The Thing from Another World.' They were science fiction/horror movies, generally."

"All the tales of miracles, with which the Old and New Testament are filled, are fit only for impostors to preach and fools to believe."

"Extinguished theologians lie about the cradle of every science as the strangled snakes beside that of Hercules; and history records that whenever science and orthodoxy have been fairly opposed, the latter has been forced to retire from the lists, bleeding and crushed if not annihilated; scotched, if not slain."

"Beyond all sciences, philosophies, theologies, and histories, a child's relentless inquiry is truly all it takes to remind us that we don't know as much as we think we know."

"Science teaches to think but love teaches to smile."

"The paper does not provide the exact number of penises eaten by ducks, but the author says there have been enough over the years to prompt the coining of a popular saying: 'I better get home or the ducks will have something to eat."

"You must not lie about trilobites, nor yet about time."

"Sufficiently simple natural structures are predictable but uncontrollable, whereas sufficiently complex symbolic descriptions are controllable but unpredictable."

"Skepticism is the agent of reason against organized irrationalism--and is therefore one of the keys to human social and civic decency."

"Human beings are ultimately nothing but carriers-passageways- for genes. They ride us into the ground like racehorses from generation to generation. Genes don't think about what constitutes good or evil. They don't care whether we are happy or unhappy. We're just means to an end for them. The only thing they think about is what is most efficient for them."

"There is no problem more difficult to solve than that created by ourselves."

"There is a philosophy that says that if something is unobservable -- unobservable in principle -- it is not part of science. If there is no way to falsify or confirm a hypothesis, it belongs to the realm of metaphysical speculation, together with astrology and spiritualism. By that standard, most of the universe has no scientific reality -- it's just a figment of our imaginations."

"When man becomes greater than nature, nature, which gave us birth, will respond."

"The planet's hope and salvation lies in the adoption of revolutionary new knowledge being revealed at the frontiers of science."

"I was like I was in science class: I was curious."

"When my information changes, I alter my conclusions. What do you do, sir?"

"Life is not an exact science, it is an art."

"Nothing good was learnt too swiftly. Knowledge should be a purposeful accumulance of observed experience, applied and tested to the full."

"WATNEY: Look! A pair of boobs! -> (.Y.)."