Quotes by Scientists - Page 5

Look upon good books; they are true friends, that will neither flatter nor dissemble: be you but true to yourself...and you shall need no other comfort nor counsel.
Francis Bacon
A friend in need becomes always a friend in need if you help him once......
Ankala Subbarao
We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.- Aristotle
Marco G. Casteleijn
To have a man whose name is on the label showing such interest, commitment, and determination for the best is a wonderful thing. This is someone who will throw money at quality, who believes in being the best. Never knock it. Would you prefer to have a bean counter in corporate headquarters, someone who never comes near the brewery, making decisions solely on the basis of the bottom line and profit margins?
Charles W. Bamforth
It was a good answer that was made by one who when they showed him hanging in a temple a picture of those who had paid their vows as having escaped shipwreck, and would have him say whether he did not now acknowledge the power of the gods, — ‘Aye,’ asked he again, ‘but where are they painted that were drowned after their vows?’ And such is the way of all superstition, whether in astrology, dreams, omens, divine judgments, or the like; wherein men, having a delight in such vanities, mark the events where they are fulfilled, but where they fail, though this happens much oftener, neglect and pass them by.
Francis Bacon
Some persons fancy that bias and counter-bias are favorable to the extraction of truth–that hot and partisan debate is the way to investigate. This is the theory of our atrocious legal procedure. But Logic puts its heel upon this suggestion. It irrefragably demonstrates that knowledge can only be furthered by the real desire for it, and that the methods of obstinacy, of authority and every mode of trying to reach a foregone conclusion, are absolutely of no value. These things are proved. The reader is at liberty to think so or not as long as the proof is not set forth, or as long as he refrains from examining it. Just so, he can preserve, if he likes, his freedom of opinion in regard to the propositions of geometry; only, in that case, if he takes a fancy to read Euclid, he will do well to skip whatever he finds with A, B, C, etc., for, if he reads attentively that disagreeable matter, the freedom of his opinion about geometry may unhappily be lost forever.
Charles Sanders Peirce
Earth is the cradle of humanity, but one cannot live in a cradle forever.
Konstantin Tsiolkovsky
Our ancient Indian Rishis realized that SPACE is a distinct entity with its own properties and called it AAKASA...The West realized it only when Einstein published his Theory of Relativity....
Ankala V Subbarao
All that is transitory is but a metaphor.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Better a long ignoble life of shallow pleasures than a short stab at heroism, ending with a short stab. And just because one man plays another doesn’t always mean that it’s not the right direction for both of them.
Mark Lawrence
The highest level than can be reached by a mediocre but experienced mind is a talent for uncovering the weaknesses of those greater than itself.
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
On top of the world, or in the depths of despair.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Our brains contain one hundred billion nerve cells (neurons). Each neuron makes links with ten thousand other neurons to form an incredible three dimensional grid. This grid therefore contains a thousand trillion connections - that's 1,000,000,000,000,000 (a quadrillion). It's hard to imagine this, so let's visualise each connection as a disc that's 1mm thick. Stack up the quadrillion discs on top of each other and they will reach the sun (which is ninety-three million miles from the earth) and back, three times over.
Nessa Carey
A chain is as strong as its weakest link...........and a brain is as strong as its weakest think!
Ankala Subbarao
[Alexander von] Humboldt showers us with true treasures.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
When I say to the Moment flying;'Linger a while -- thou art so fair!'Then bind me in thy bonds undying,And my final ruin I will bear!
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
The cost of living is increasing arithmetically but the cost of "Dying" is increasing exponentially.......
Ankala V Subbarao
Anyone can see that intending and not acting when we can is not really intending, and loving and not doing good when we can is not really loving.
Emanuel Swedenborg
It is a poore Center of a Mans Actions, Himselfe.
Francis Bacon
Still, perhaps that's all lives are, all the world is, a collision of vast conflagrations, each sparked from nothing.
Mark Lawrence
National hatred is something peculiar. You will always find it strongest and most violent where there is the lowest degree of culture.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Booty Butt, Booty Butt, Booty Butt Cheeks
René Descartes
The thoughts written on the walls of madhouses by their inmates might be worth publicizing.
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Hope can kill you but it will not let you die.
Pushkar Ganesh Vaidya
My father, my father, and dost thou not hearThe words that the Erl-King now breathes in mine ear?'Be calm, dearest child, 'tis thy fancy deceives;Tis the sad wind that sighs through the withering leaves.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
On my strand, lovely flowers their blossoms unfold,My mother shall grace thee with garments of gold.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
The village is coming back, like it or not.
David Brin
The world is desperately imperfect. Even if a quarter of the working people were engrossed in new thoughts and inventions and lived off the others, humanity would still gain tremendously thanks to the constant stream of inventions and intellectual work emerging from this horde of people striving upward.
Konstantin Tsiolkovsky
For all knowledge and wonder (which is the seed of knowledge) is an impression of pleasure in itself.
Francis Bacon
Being paid to wonder seems like a heavy responsibility at times.
Hope Jahren
Nothing had ever existed between us except the possibility of something, and now even that was over.
Alastair Reynolds
A PSYCHOLOGICAL TIPWhenever you're called on to make up your mind,and you're hampered by not having any,the best way to solve the dilemma, you'll find,is simply by spinning a penny.No -- not so that chance shall decide the affairwhile you're passively standing there moping;but the moment the penny is up in the air,you suddenly know what you're hoping.
Piet Hein
But there is one more reason to protect other species. One seldom if ever mentioned. Perhaps we are the first to talk and think and build and aspire, but we may not be the last. Others may follow us in this adventure. Some day we may be judged by just how well we served, when alone we were Earth’s caretakers.
David Brin
So blind is the curiosity by which mortals are possessed, that they often conduct their minds along unexplored routes, having no reason to hope for success, but merely being willing to risk the experiment of finding whether the truth they seek lies there.
René Descartes
There you have it! - How they anticipate my wishes, how they grant friendship's little attentions, which are worth a thousand times more than breathtaking presents that merely prove the giver's vanity and humiliate us.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
REVENGE is a kind of wild justice; which the more man’s nature runs to, the more ought law to weed it out.
Francis Bacon
Some men prefer the heady tang of revenge to the comfort of cash.
Michael H. Fox
For the longest time I studied revenge to the exclusion of all else. I built my first torture chamber in the dark vaults of imagination. Lying on bloody sheets in the Healing Hall I discovered doors within my mind that I’d not found before, doors that even a child of nine knows should not be opened. Doors that never close again. I threw them wide.
Mark Lawrence
At the dockside I was pleasantly surprised to find the North wasn't all hairy men in animal skins. There was also hairy women in animal skins.
Mark Lawrence
MankindMen, said the Devil,are good to their brothers:they don’t want to mendtheir own ways, but each other's.
Piet Hein
He'd have improved if you'd not givenHim a mere glimmer of the light in heaven;He calls it Reason, and it has only increasedHis power to be beastlier than a beast.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Humanity stands ... before a great problem of finding new raw materials and new sources of energy that shall never become exhausted. In the meantime we must not waste what we have, but must leave as much as possible for coming generations.
Svante Arrhenius
Squeaking squirrels squandering away their square shares!
Ankala V Subbarao
...we ought also to consider as false all that is doubtful.
René Descartes
Even in dying, a Thennanin ship was reputed to be not worth putting out of its misery. In battle they were slow, unmaneuverable—and as hard to disable permanently as a cockroach.
David Brin
I've often heard it said, a preacherMight learn, with a comedian for a teacher.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Everybody has multiple personalities—at least three. We’re one person at work, another person in private, and a third person when we appear in polite society.
Johan Fundin
ON PROBLEMSOur choicest planshave fallen through,our airiest castlestumbled over,because of lineswe neatly drewand later neatlystumbled over.
Piet Hein
Problems worthy of attack prove their worth by fighting back.
Piet Hein
It's in the anomalies that nature reveals its secrets.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
I revered our theology, and aspired as much as any one to reach heaven: but being given assuredly to understand that the way is not less open to the most ignorant than to the most learned, and that the revealed truths which lead to heaven are above our comprehension, I did not presume to subject them to the impotency of my reason; and I thought that in order competently to undertake their examination, there was need of some special help from heaven, and of being more than man.
René Descartes
Sometimes, when you want to help a broken person, your attempts only remind them of their missing pieces.
Gaia B. Amman
At one time, the treatment for a certain kind of psychosis had been to push an ice pick up through the orbit of the eye, into the frontal lobe; the ice pick was then stirred around until it reduced the problematic brain tissue to non-functioning porridge.
Alastair Reynolds
Divide and rule, the politician cries;Unite and lead, is watchword of the wise.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
All the best secrets are told at night.
Mark Lawrence
In all things it is better to hope than to despair.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
See the flower, how generously it distributes perfume and honey. When it's work is done, it falls away quietly. Try to be like the flower, unassuming despite all it's qualities.
A.P.J. Abdul Kalam
I'm fairly fond of boys, but my preference is for girls; When I have enough of a girl, she serves me still as a boy.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Assassination is murder with a touch more precision. Brother Sim is precise.
Mark Lawrence
I've been known to be contrary. When something pushes me, I shove back. Even if the one doing the pushing is me. It would have been easy to gut him then and there. Satisfying. But the need was too urgent. I felt pushed.
Mark Lawrence