#science

"Reality is, you know, the tip of an iceberg of irrationality that we've managed to drag ourselves up onto for a few panting moments before we slip back into the sea of the unreal."

"Try and penetrate with our limited means the secrets of nature and you will find that, behind all the descernible laws and connections, there remains something subtle, intangible and inexplicable. Veneration for this force beyond anything that we can comprehend is my religion. To that extent I am, in fact, religious."

"Aujourd'hui, on cherche partout à répandre le savoir; qui sait si, dans quelques siècles, il n'y aura pas des universités pour rétablir l'ancienne ignorance?"

"What is it with science these days? Everyone is so quick to believe in it, in all these new scientific discoveries, new pills for this, new pills for that. Get thinner, grow hair, yada, yada, yada, but when it requires a little faith in something you all go crazy.' He shook his head, 'If miracles had chemical equations then everyone would believe."

"Science is as corruptible a human activity as any other."

"In what terms should we think of these beings, nonhuman yet possessing so very many human-like characteristics? How should we treat them? Surely we should treat them with the same consideration and kindness as we show to other humans; and as we recognize human rights, so too should we recognize the rights of the great apes? Yes."

"I used to measure the skies, now I measure the shadows of Earth.Although my mind was sky-bound, the shadow of my body lies here.[Epitaph he composed for himself a few months before he died]"

"We live in a world where unfortunately the distinction between true and false appears to become increasingly blurred by manipulation of facts, by exploitation of uncritical minds, and by the pollution of the language."

"They (religions) dread the advance of science as witches do the approach of daylight and scowl on the fatal harbinger announcing the subversions of the duperies on which they live."

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

"The downside of my celebrity is that I cannot go anywhere in the world without being recognized. It is not enough for me to wear dark sunglasses and a wig. The wheelchair gives me away."

"You may not think you eat a lot of corn and soybeans, but you do: 75 percent of the vegetable oils in your diet come from soy (representing 20 percent of your daily calories) and more than half of the sweeteners you consume come from corn (representing around 10 perecent of daily calories)."

"There is no such thing as objectivity. We are all just interpreting signals from the universe and trying to make sense of them. Dim, shaky, weak, static-y little signals that only hint at the complexity of a universe we cannot begin to understand."

"This seems charmingly paradoxical: scientists seek one truth but often voice many opinions; journalists often speak of many truths while voicing a uniform view."

"knowledge, absolutely sure of its infallibility, is faith"

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

"If there is any religion that could respond to the needs of modern science, it would be Buddhism."

"One moment several things are possible, the next moment only one happens, and the rest don't exist. Except that other worlds have sprung into being, on which the did happen."

"In questions of science, the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual."

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