Science Quotes – Insightful Reflections on Research and Knowledge

"To be scientific, that is to know what one knows and what one does not know; unscientific is dogmatic knowledge. To be scientific is to know with reasons; to accept ready-made opinions is unscientific. Scientific is the knowledge with the consciousness of the respectively determined limits of the knowledge; unscientific is all total knowledge, as if one knew in the whole. Scientific is boundless criticism and self-criticism, the advancing questioning; unscientific is the concern that doubt could paralyze. Scientific is the methodical course, which step by step on the ground of experience penetrates to the decision; unscientific is the play of multiple opinions and possibilities and the murmuring."

Karl Jaspers

"In entering upon any scientific pursuit, one of the student’s first endeavours ought to be, to prepare his mind for the reception of truth, by dismissing, or at least loosening his hold on, all such crude and hastily adopted notions respecting the objects and relations he is about to examine as may tend to embarrass or mislead him.; and to strengthen himself, by something of an effort and a resolve, for the unprejudiced admission of any conclusion which shall appear to be supported by careful observation and logical argument, even should it prove of a nature adverse to notions he may have previously formed for himself, or taken up, without examination, on the credit of others."

John Frederick William Herschel

"The greatest progress is in the sciences that study the simplest systems. So take, say, physics - greatest progress there. But one of the reasons is that the physicists have an advantage that no other branch of sciences has. If something gets too complicated, they hand it to someone else."

Noam Chomsky

"…Whoever has the power in society determines what can be studied, determines what can be observed, determines what can be thought. Scientists fall in line with the dominant power structure. They have to, because the power structure pays the bills. You don’t play ball with the power structure, you don’t get money for research, you don’t get an appointment, you don’t get published, in short you don’t count anymore. You’re out. You might as well be dead."

Michael Crichton

"I truly see a massive distortion in our current worldview because natural science and technology, represented these days by virology and computer simulations, have taken the former place of religion. In short, essentially at the end of the day, engaging in unfounded metaphysics – but based on facts. Yes, the natural sciences today belong to the standard realm of ideology, and ideology today means that you can lie with facts…"

Prof. Dr. Markus Gabriel

"But in the end, science does not provide the answers most of us require. Its story of our origins and of our end is, to say the least, unsatisfactory. To the question, "How did it all begin?", science answers, "Probably by an accident." To the question, "How will it all end?", science answers, "Probably by an accident." And to many people, the accidental life is not worth living. Moreover, the science-god has no answer to the question, "Why are we here?" and, to the question, "What moral instructions do you give us?", the science-god maintains silence."

Neil Postman

"How it is we have so much information, but know so little?"

Noam Chomsky

"You cannot study physics at any university anywhere in the world, because everything taught there is half disproven and half irrelevant. The relevant physics only takes place behind the closed doors of the labs in the arms and industrial sectors. The researchers working there use laws of nature that are unknown to university professors."

Robert Betts Laughlin

"Contrary to the scientific ideal of getting progressively closer to the truth, it looks rather like cosmology, to borrow a term from technology studies, has become path-dependent: overdetermined by the implications of its past inventions."

Bjørn Ekeberg

"today's multilayered theoretical edifice of the big bang paradigm would turn out to be a confusing mix of fictional beasts invented to uphold the model, along with empirically valid variables mutually reliant on each other to the point of making it impossible to sort science from fiction."

Bjørn Ekeberg

"Each new discrepancy between observation and theory can, of course, in and of itself be considered an exciting promise of more research, a progressive refinement toward the truth. But when they add up, they could also suggest a more confounding problem that is not resolved by tweaking parameters or adding new variables."

Bjørn Ekeberg

"The making of adaptable, curious, open, questioning people has nothing to do with vocational training and everything to do with humanistic and scientific studies."

Neil Postman

"They're both the same. An astrophysicist looking out there is thinking in terms of science fiction."

William Shatner

"Science that fails to embrace all living beings is far more dangerous than any virus!"

Steve Simmons

"If we fail to find any of this—even at the highest energies we can reach—then we’ll have to do some serious rethinking and essentially start over from scratch. Which, of course, is exciting in its own way. Science is always exciting: if you don’t find anything, you simply have to come up with something new. Imagination is always the foundation of science."

Wolfram Zeuner

"The radical novelty of modern science lies precisely in the rejection of the belief... that the forces which move the stars and atoms are contingent upon the preferences of the human heart."

Walter Lippmann

"Science is always simple and always profound. It is only the half-truths that are dangerous."

George Bernard Shaw

"Whether you want to uncover the secrets of the universe, or you just want to pursue a career in the 21st century, basic computer programming is an essential skill to learn."

Stephen W. Hawking