Quotes by Scientists

We wrap up our violent and mysterious world in a pretense of understanding. We paper over the voids of our comprehension with science and religion, and make believe that order has been imposed. And, for the most of it, the fiction works. We skim across the surfaces, heedless of the depths below. Dragonflies flitting over a lake, miles deep, pursuing erratic paths to pointless ends. Until that moment when something from the cold unknown reaches up to take us.The biggest lies we save for ourselves. We play a game in which we are gods, in which we make choices, and the current follows in our wake. We pretend a separation from the wild. Pretend that a man’s control runs deep, that civilization is more than a veneer, that reason will be our companion in dark places.
Mark Lawrence
It is a sad fate for a man to die too well known to everybody else, and still unknown to himself.
Francis Bacon
Philosophy in its old form could exist only in the absence of engineering, but with engineering in existence and daily more active and far reaching, the old verbalistic philosophy and metaphysics have lost their reason to exist. They were no more able to understand the "production" of the universe and life than they are now able to understand or grapple with "production" as a means to provide a happier existence for humanity. They failed because their venerated method of "speculation" can not produce, and its place must be taken by mathematical thinking. Mathematical reasoning is displacing metaphysical reasoning. Engineering is driving verbalistic philosophy out of existence and humanity gains decidedly thereby. Only a few parasites and "speculators" will mourn the disappearance of their old companion "speculation." The world of producers -the predominating majority of human beings- will welcome a philosophy of ordered thought and production.
Alfred Korzybski
Freedom is that which comes from knowledge, the freedom that comes from curiosity, the freedom that comes from the times when the first man did not refuse to look into a telescope and discovered other planets, the freedom that comes from those who tried relentlessly when all others said it was impossible. It is in this freedom that deviance has its roots.
Massimo Marino
We need to consume less. A lot less. Less food, less energy, less stuff. Fewer cars, electric cars, cotton T-shirts, laptops, mobile phone upgrades. Far fewer.Yet, every decade, global consumption continues to increase relentlessly.
Stephen Emmott
If any man wish to write in a clear style, let him be first clear in his thoughts.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
You worry that we're becoming monsters. Merlin, we already were monsters. You didn't make us any worse.
Alastair Reynolds
For a moment I think we were turned into information, and that in that instant we were linked to every other piece of information ever known; every thought ever thought, or at least ever captured by the light.
Alastair Reynolds
Processed data is information.Processed information is knowledgeProcessed knowledge is Wisdom.
Ankala V Subbarao
The virtue of adversity is fortitude which in mortals is the heroical virtue.
Francis Bacon
This world's a bubble.
Sir Francis Bacon
They are happy men whose natures sort with their vocations.
Francis Bacon
The road to wisdom? Well it's plain And simple to express: Err And err And err again But less And less And less.
Piet Hein
Wives are young men's mistresses companions for middle age and old men's nurses.
Sir Francis Bacon
Virtue is like a rich stone best plain set.
Sir Francis Bacon
The sun though it passes through dirty places yet remains as pure as before.
Francis Bacon
Truth emerges more readily from error than from confusion.
Francis Bacon
I think therefore I am.
René Descartes
I demolish my bridges behind me ... then there is no choice but forward.
Firdtjof Nansen
Hardly anyone knows how much is gained by ignoring the future.
Bernard de Fontenelle
The general root of superstition is that men observe when things hit and not when they miss and commit to memory the one and forget and pass over the other.
Sir Francis Bacon
A wise man will make more opportunities than he finds.
Francis Bacon
Histories make men wise poets witty the mathematics subtile natural philosophy deep morals grave logic and rhetoric able to contend.
Sir Francis Bacon
If no thought your mind does visit make your speech not too explicit.
Piet Hein
The whole is simpler than the sum of its parts.
Willard Gibbs
Sex ought to be a wholly satisfying link between two affectionate people from which they emerge unanxious rewarded and ready for more.
Alex Comfort
Things alter for the worse spontaneously if they be not altered for the better designedly.
Francis Bacon
God creates the animals man creates himself.
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
A great obstacle to happiness is to expect too much happiness.
Bernard de Fontenelle
Be yourself. Who else is better qualified?
Frank J. Giblin
The telephone is the most important single technological resource of later life.
Alex Comfort
I would live to study not study to live.
Francis Bacon
In taking revenge a man is but equal to his enemy but in passing it over he is his superior.
Sir Francis Bacon
Two weeks is about the ideal length of time to retire.
Alex Comfort
There was never law or sect or opinion did so much magnify goodness as the Christian religion doth.
Sir Francis Bacon
Atheism is rather in the lip than in the heart of Man.
Francis Bacon
Fortune is like the market where many times if you can stay a little the price will fall.
Francis Bacon
When one door closes another opens. But we often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door that we fail to see the one that has opened for us.
Alexander Graham Bell
Expect nothing and life will be velvet.
Lisa Gardiner
Reading maketh a full man.
Sir Francis Bacon
He that will not apply new remedies must expect new evils for time is the greatest innovator.
Francis Bacon
We one and all of us have an instinct to pray and this fact constitutes an invitation from God to pray.
Charles Sanders Peirce
Many a man's strength is in opposition and when he faileth he groweth out of use.
Francis Bacon
Illusory joy is often worth more than genuine sorrow.
René Descartes
A little philosophy inclineth man's mind to atheism but depth in philosophy bringeth men's minds about to religion.
Sir Francis Bacon
If a man looks sharply and attentively he shall see fortune for though she be blind yet she is not invisible.
Francis Bacon
Time is the greatest innovator.
Francis Bacon
Time is the author of authors.
Francis Bacon
It is too bad if you have to do everything upon reflection and can't do anything from early habit.
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
The things we see are the mind's best bet as to what is out front.
Adelbert Ames
I hold every man a debtor to his profession from the which as men of course do seek to receive countenance and profit so ought they of duty to endeavor themselves by way of amends to be a help and ornament thereunto.
Sir Francis Bacon
God Almighty first planted a garden. And indeed it is the purest of human pleasures.
Francis Bacon
We cannot command Nature except by obeying her.
Francis Bacon
Generally music feedeth that disposition of the spirits which it findeth.
Francis Bacon
In taking revenge a man is but equal to his enemy but in passing it over he is his superior.
Sir Francis Bacon
Two weeks is about the ideal length of time to retire.
Alex Comfort
There was never law or sect or opinion did so much magnify goodness as the Christian religion doth.
Sir Francis Bacon
Atheism is rather in the lip than in the heart of Man.
Francis Bacon
Fortune is like the market where many times if you can stay a little the price will fall.
Francis Bacon
When one door closes another opens. But we often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door that we fail to see the one that has opened for us.
Alexander Graham Bell