If we wish to make a new world we have the material ready. The first one, too, was made out of chaos. – Robert Quillen
To know the history of science is to recognize the mortality of any claim to universal truth. – Evelyn Fox Keller, Reflections on Gender and Science, 1995
It is characteristic of science that the full explanations are often seized in their essence by the percipient scientist long in advance of any possible proof. – John Desmond Bernal, The Origin of Life, 1967
Science is the topography of ignorance. – Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., Medical Essays, 1883
The capacity to blunder slightly is the real marvel of DNA. Without this special attribute, we would still be anaerobic bacteria and there would be no music. – Lewis Thomas
Research is the process of going up alleys to see if they are blind. – Marston Bates
The only difference between screwing around and science is writing it down. – Alex Jason [Popularized by Adam Savage in MythBusters. Supposedly, Karl Kruszeln
Facts are not science — as the dictionary is not literature. – Martin H. Fischer (1879–1962)
I am compelled to fear that science will be used to promote the power of dominant groups rather than to make men happy. – Bertrand Russell, Icarus, or the Future of Science, 1925
The mortuarial remains of science are laid out for you in the text-books and the standard and approved journals. If you want live stuff, look in the village papers. – Martin H. Fischer (1879–1962)
In comparing religious belief to science, I try to remember that science is belief also. – Robert Brault, rbrault.blogspot.com
Science, like life, feeds on its own decay. New facts burst old rules; then newly divined conceptions bind old and new together into a reconciling law. – William James, The Will to Believe and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy, 1910
For every fact there is an infinity of hypotheses. – Robert M. Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, 1974
Most institutions demand unqualified faith; but the institution of science makes skepticism a virtue. – Robert K. Merton, Social Theory, 1957
The whole history of physics proves that a new discovery is quite likely lurking at the next decimal place. – F.K. Richtmeyer
Life begins at forty and ends at sixty-five — degrees centigrade. – Martin H. Fischer (1879–1962)
The task of asking nonliving matter to speak and the responsibility for interpreting its reply is that of physics. – J.T. Fraser, Time, the Familiar Stronger, 1987
The quantum is that embarrassing little piece of thread that always hangs from the sweater of space-time. Pull it and the whole thing unravels. – Fred Alan Wolfe, Star Wave: Mind Consciousness of Quantum Physics, 1984
The doubter is a true man of science; he doubts only himself and his interpretations, but he believes in science. – Claude Bernard
