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Science

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• “O fathering friend and scientist of good, Who in solitude, one bygone summer’s day, And in the throes of bodily anguish, passed away From dream and conflict and research-lit lands Of ethnological learning, — even as you stood Selfless and ardent, resolute and gay, So in this hour, in strange survival stands Your ghost, whom I am powerless to repay.”

  Siegfried Sassoon (1886–1967) said by 1967 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “A scientist studies what is, whereas an engineer creates what never was.”

  Theodore von Kármán (1881–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Theoretical foundations for decision making in engineering design https://www.nap.edu/read/10566/chapter/2 (National Academy Press, 2001)

• “On Global Warming, in response to Massachusetts Assistant Attorney General James Milkey's correction of Scalia's reference to the stratosphere: Troposphere, whatever. I told you before I'm not a scientist. That's why I don't want to have to deal with global warming, to tell you the truth.”

  Antonin Scalia (1936–2016) first seen 1120 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Massachusetts vs. EPA, 05-1120 (30 November 2006).

• “Ifs and buts are the stuff of politics, Mr. Parkinson. As a scientist I am concerned with facts not with motives, suspicions, and airy-fairy nothingness.”

  Fred Hoyle (1915–2001) said by 2001 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Quite recently I was asked to write an article to be entitled, “How to Become a Good Scientist.” In communicating my refusal to the periodical in question I was tempted to end the argument in one sentence, “By not writing articles such as this,” and then demanding my fee.”

  Fred Hoyle (1915–2001) said by 2001 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “My practice as a scientist is atheistic. That is to say, when I set up an experiment I assume that no god, angel, or devil is going to interfere with its course; and this assumption has been justified by such success as I have achieved in my professional career. I should therefore be intellectually dishonest if I were not also atheistic in the affairs of the world.”

  J. B. S. Haldane (1892–1964) first seen 1934 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Fact and Faith (1934) Preface

• “One thing being a scientist has taught me is that you can never be certain about anything. You never know the truth. You can only approach it and hope you get a bit nearer to it each time. You iterate towards the truth. You don't know it.”

  James Lovelock (1919–2022) said by 2022 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “My definition of a scientist is that you can complete the following sentence: ‘he or she has shown that…’,”

  E. O. Wilson (1929–2021) first seen 2014 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Why Richard Dawkins 'is not a scientist', the survival of the least selfish, and what ants tell us about humans - EO Wilson on his new book Independent, 10 November 2014

• “The ideal scientist thinks like a poet and only later works like a bookkeeper.”

  E. O. Wilson (1929–2021) said by 2021 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Dr. Davies, why are you obsessed with these?” “A scholar’s interest in the inexplicable.” “No,” Adrienne said. “A scholar would be publishing articles about these in journals, and asking every scientist and researcher she could contact for help with studying them.” Flora ignored her. “You’re keeping secrets,” Adrienne said. Again, she made no reply.”

  Gillian Anderson (born 1968) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “What is a scientist after all? It is a curious man looking through a keyhole, the keyhole of nature, trying to know what’s going on.”

  Jacques-Yves Cousteau (1910–1997) first seen 1971 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Christian Science Monitor (21 July 1971)

• “I am not a scientist. I am, rather, an impresario of scientists.”

  Jacques-Yves Cousteau (1910–1997) first seen 1986 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Christian Science Monitor (24 July 1986)

• “... Chaim Weizmann, the scientist, the great Zionist, the indomitable leader who, after his people had been all but wiped out in the greatest purge of history, assembled the remnants, led them back to the ancient homeland in face of the heaviest opposition, and welded them once more into a sovereign state among the nations. Surely his achievement bears comparison with that of Moses!”

  Jan Smuts (1870–1950) first seen 1919 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: In November 1949, as quoted by W. K. Hancock in SMUTS 2: The Fields of Force 1919-1950, p. 520

• “He was one of those scientist-artists who comes along every few centuries to justify the existence of that overworked word “genius.”

  Roger Zelazny (1937–1995) said by 1995 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “The secret of a Scientist is not what he knows. It’s what he asks.”

  Stephen Baxter (born 1957) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Ussher’s intense and obsessive project seems very odd to the eyes of a modern scientist. After all he had deduced the age of the Earth without looking at a scrap of physical evidence—not a single rock.”

  Stephen Baxter (born 1957) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Real success in business is to be found in achievements comparable rather with those of the artist or the scientist, of the inventor or statesman. And the joys sought in the profession of business must be like their joys and not the mere vulgar satisfaction which is experienced in the acquisition of money, in the exercise of power or in the frivolous pleasure of mere winning.”

  Louis Brandeis (1856–1941) first seen 1912 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Business — The New Profession", La Follette's Weekly Magazine, Volume 4, No. 47 (November 23, 1912), p. 7.

• “The way I really think is more like this "I am a scientist. I think the way to the truth is by investigation. I suspect that telepathy, clairvoyance, psychokinesis and life after death do not exist because I have been looking in vain for them for 25 years. I have been wrong lots of times before and am not afraid of it".”

  Susan Blackmore (born 1951) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “The man who thinks like a scientist seeks not only to note the facts, but also to analyze them taking into account their chance or their necessity, he tries to analyze the laws that immediate observation does not discern and to 'eliminate the influence of one's own inclinations on the results of one's reflections. 35”

  Alexander Zinoviev (1922–2006) said by 2006 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “On the whole, the scientist is better off if he collects his facts by accident, little by little, so he can study them before he tries to fit them into a jigsaw puzzle, This is how the late Tom Lethbridge came to arrive at his theories about other dimensions of reality. It is also how Guy Lyon Playfair came to develop his own theories about the nature of the poltergeist.”

  Colin Wilson (1931–2013) said by 2013 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Everyone here would die for the sake of truth. Everyone here lies constantly for the tiniest chance of personal gain. This is what it means to be a scientist.”

  Greg Egan (born 1961) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “To imagine is the characteristic act, not of the poet's mind, or the painter's, or the scientist's, but of the mind of man.”

  Jacob Bronowski (1908–1974) said by 1974 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “One aim of the physical sciences has been to give an exact picture of the material world. One achievement of physics in the twentieth century has been to prove that that aim is unattainable. There is no absolute knowledge and those who claim it, whether they are scientist or dogmatist, open the door to tragedy. All knowledge, all information is imperfect. We have to treat it with humility.”

  Jacob Bronowski (1908–1974) said by 1974 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “The theist and the scientist are rival interpreters of nature, the one retreats as the other advances.”

  Joseph McCabe (1867–1955) first seen 1913 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: The Existence of God (1913), p. 84.

• “Perfect as is the wing of a bird, it never could raise the bird up without resting on air. Facts are the air of a scientist. Without them you never can fly. Without them your "theories" are vain efforts.”

  Ivan Pavlov (1849–1936) first seen 1936 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Bequest of Pavlov to the Academic Youth of His Country. Science, Vol. 83, Issue 2155, pg. 369 (1936)

• “Writing freezes speech and in so doing gives birth to the grammarian, the logician, the rhetorician, the historian, the scientist -- all those who must hold language before them so that they can see what it means, where it errs, and where it is leading.”

  Neil Postman (1931–2003) said by 2003 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Don't you bully me with your politeness! Love is hard to believe, ask any lover. Life is hard to believe, ask any scientist. God is hard to believe, ask any believer. What is your problem with hard to believe?”

  Yann Martel (born 1963) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “The experience of the scientists who have worked on the atomic bomb has indicated that in any investigation of this kind the scientist ends by putting unlimited powers in the hands of the people whom he is least inclined to trust with their use.”

  Norbert Wiener (1894–1964) first seen 1946 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Wiener's response to a request for information concerning controlled missiles, first published in Atlantic Monthly, December 1946

• “IBM scientist Murray Campbell from the Deep Blue team revealed that the “extremely human move” in the chess game against Gary Kasparov was actually a bug in the program that was later fixed. What an opportune moment for a computer to evince that “To err is human!”

  Newton Lee wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “There are, of course, a number of epistemological questions, some of which lie more in the province of the philosopher than they do the economist or the social scientist. The one with which I am particularly concerned here is that of the role of knowledge in social systems, both as a product of the past and as a determinant of the future.”

  Kenneth Boulding (1910–1993) said by 1993 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “The scientist states that pressure is exerted outwards in all directions equally, whereas natural pressure (e.g. air pressure) is exerted inwards from all directions equally.”

  Viktor Schauberger (1885–1958) said by 1958 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “One could not be a successful scientist without realizing that, in contrast to the popular conception supported by newspapers and mothers of scientists, a goodly number of scientists are not only narrow-minded and dull, but also just stupid.”

  James D. Watson (1928–2025) said by 2025 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “I think the weird thing about being a scientist, or an academic in general, is you have to believe really strongly in what you do, while questioning it all the time ... and that's a hard balance to have.”

  Lisa Randall (born 1962) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Faith just doesn't have anything to do with what I'm doing as a scientist. It's nice if you can believe in God, because then you see more of a purpose in things. Even if you don't, though, it doesn't mean that there's no purpose. It doesn't mean that there's no goodness. I think that there's a virtue in being good in and of itself. I think that one can work with the world we have.”

  Lisa Randall (born 1962) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “I guess I’m just an old mad scientist at bottom. Give me an underground laboratory, half a dozen atom-smashers, and a beautiful girl in a diaphanous veil waiting to be turned into a chimpanzee, and I care not who writes the nation’s laws.”

  S. J. Perelman (1904–1979) first seen 1940 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Captain Future, Block That Kick!," The New Yorker (20 January 1940) p. 23

• “[T]here must be possible a fiction which, leaving sociology and case histories to the scientist, can arrive at the truth about the human condition, here and now, with all the bright magic of the fairy tale.”

  Ralph Ellison (1914–1994) first seen 1953 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Brave Words for a Startling Occasion" (1953), in The Collected Essays, ed. John F. Callahan (New York: Modern Library, 1995), p. 153.

• “The emancipation of the scholars and scientists from philosophy is according to [Nietzsche] only a part of the democratic movement, i.e. of the emancipation of the low from subordination to the high. … The plebeian character of the contemporary scholar or scientist is due to the fact that he has no reverence for himself.”

  Leo Strauss (1899–1973) first seen 1973 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Note on the Plan of Nietzsche's Beyond Good and Evil", Interpretation: A Journal of Political Philosophy 3, nos. 2 and 3 (1973)

• “But how is one to make a scientist understand that there is something unalterably deranged about differential calculus, quantum theory, or the obscene and so inanely liturgical ordeals of the precession of the equinoxes.”

  Antonin Artaud (1896–1948) said by 1948 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Buddhism is a practice, not a belief, and every Buddhist is, in some way, lay clergy — involved in the way a scientist is involved in his or her work, or in the way a writer's mind is involved in writing, present in the background, all the time.”

  Francisco Varela (1946–2001) said by 2001 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Cognitivism bridges the chasm between what the writer C. P. Snow has called the "two cultures" — the widening gap between the world view of the scientist and the humanist. The Caltech philosopher W. T. Jones has called this the crisis of contemporary culture.”

  Roger Wolcott Sperry (1913–1994) said by 1994 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “A scientist can be tactful and PC with his mouth, but not his ears or eyes and certainly not his mind. Truth must reign there above all. For your first allegiance is either to Truth or to Ignorance. Worry about offending, and you are choosing Ignorance.”

  Patri Friedman (born 1976) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “The creative scientist lives in a 'wildness of logic,' where reason is the handmaiden and not the master.”

  Marston Morse (1892–1977) said by 1977 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “The complete man, then, is the “lover” added to the scientist; the rhetorician to the dialectician.”

  Richard Weaver (1910–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Nietzsche [claims] that the scientist is at best an instrument, a useful slave: he does not command or decide, he is not a whole man.”

  John Carroll (born 1944) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “I’m a scientist, not a psychiatrist. I don’t believe dreams have a ‘real’ meaning. They’re a physical process, and any ‘reality’ they have lies in the physical. Freud made no attempt to understand the physical. He felt the key to understanding dream lay in content, and came up with an elaborate system of symbols to explain the images in dreams.”

  Connie Willis (born 1945) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Tez always had warm feelings about paradoxes. It was the scientist in her.”

  James K. Morrow (born 1947) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Entering a cell, penetrating deep as a flying saucer to find a new galaxy would be an honorable task for a new scientist interested more in the inner state of the soul than in outer space.”

  Dejan Stojanovic (born 1959) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “A conscientious and diligent scientist—” “—must remain a continual student,” a deep voice finished the quotation.”

  Avram Davidson (1923–1993) said by 1993 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “A problem never exists in isolation; it is surrounded by other problems in space and time. The more of the context of a problem that a scientist can comprehend, the greater are his chances of finding a truly adequate solution.”

  Russell L. Ackoff (1919–2009) first seen 1992 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Partly cited in: Jean-Marc Choukroun, Roberta Snow (1992) Planning for human systems: essays in honor of Russell L. Ackoff. p. 287.

• “What seems to emerge is not a moral reprimand of the management scientist, but rather a moral problem of the profession, a wicked moral problem.”

  C. West Churchman (1913–2004) said by 2004 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: p. 142 cited in: Rob Hundman (2010) Weerbarstig veranderen. p. 38

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