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Science

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“However a systems problem is solved—by a planner, scientist, politician, antiplanner, or whomever—the solution is wrong, even dangerously wrong. There is bound to be deception in any approach to the system.”
C. West Churchman (1913–2004) said by 2004 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: p. 229; cited in Charles Smith (2007, p. 43)
“Everybody's a mad scientist, and life is their lab. We're all trying to experiment to find a way to live, to solve problems, to fend off madness and chaos.”
David Cronenberg (born 1943) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A scientist can hardly meet with anything more undesirable than to have the foundations give way just as the work is finished. I was put in this position by a letter from Mr. Bertrand Russell when the work was nearly through the press.”
Gottlob Frege (1848–1925) said by 1925 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The professional philosopher in keen competition with the natural scientist resolves to be more certain about less.”
Russell Jacoby (born 1945) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[The particular concern of the information scientist] is with the process as a whole – the interaction between the three elements [information behaviour, records, channels] that leads to people becoming informed.”
Brian Campbell Vickery (1918–2009) said by 2009 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We define a fruitful partnership between our twin professions of librarian and information systems scientist in support of this adventure in creativity, and the pursuit of wisdom? If it is the nature of the creative mind that it sets out to grapple with the tensions and contradictions in the "paradigm", as Kuhn calls it, it follows that first of all one must know what the paradigm is.”
Douglas John Foskett (1918–2004) said by 2004 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Mr. Ellis is neither a scientist nor an expert on the natural behavior of wolves.”
L. David Mech (born 1937) first seen 2012 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: B.J. King, "Why Are Wolf Scientists Howling At Jodi Picoult?" NPR. (April 19, 2012).
“Don Kayman was too good a scientist to confuse his hopes with observations. He would report what he found. But he knew what he wanted to find.”
Frederik Pohl (1919–2013) said by 2013 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The poet is intimate with truth, while the scientist approaches awkwardly. Come someday to my laboratory and see the unequivocable testimony of the crescograph.”
Jagadish Chandra Bose (1858–1937) said by 1937 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Prof Sarabhai assessed the work capacity of an engineer or a scientist not by his degree or his training but by his self-confidence.”
Vikram Sarabhai (1919–1971) said by 1971 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“If he was not satisfied with the work of any engineer or scientist, he immediately told him his fault. He was very positive at such moments.”
Vikram Sarabhai (1919–1971) said by 1971 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It’s not about where you were born, or where you come from that makes you a good scientist. What you need are good teachers, co-students, facilities, [he said]. I honestly don’t think my roots have much to do with it. I’m sure this won’t make me popular, but this is what I think.”
Venkatraman Ramakrishnan (born 1952) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“My son Robert, the scientist, told me at dinner that blue is not blue. That what we call blue is actually something that absorbs all other energy frequencies and rejects blue. Our eyes see the frequencies cast off as blue and we call it blue. I wondered, are we defined by the things we are, or the things we reject?”
Stephen Tobolowsky (born 1951) first seen 2014 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Stephen Tobolowsky in a Facebook post on July 3, 2014.
“Nevertheless, music will not acknowledge a context greater than itself—social, cultural, or biographical—to which it is conveniently subservient. To paraphrase Goethe's grandiose warning to the scientist: do not look behind the notes, they themselves are the doctrine.”
Charles Rosen (1927–2012) said by 2012 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“To a person whose experience has never been brought into relation with the object sulphur, the name signifies nothing; to the scientist... his concept involves the ideas of specific gravity, crystalline form, element, atom, and the like, derived from past experiences. His concept is distinguished from the other by involving... number or quantity.”
J. R. Partington (1886–1965) said by 1965 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The scientist, in particular, fundamentally recognises the existence of a transcendent law, something that is outside and immanent to the natural mechanism. He recognises that this 'something' is the cause, that pulls the strings of the system. It is a 'something' that escapes us.”
Carlo Rubbia (born 1934) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The scientist is, for me, the man who wants to read the book of Nature, who is as passionate about it as and more than a novel and has, among other things, a great characteristic, that of never exhausting himself. (p. 4)”
Carlo Rubbia (born 1934) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“However, the scientist, the moment he makes them known, loses control over the practical use of his discoveries. (p. 6)”
Carlo Rubbia (born 1934) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A true scientist is bored by knowledge; it is the assault on ignorance that motivates him—the mysteries that previous discoveries have revealed.”
Matt Ridley (born 1958) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A scientist in the late nineteenth century could be forgiven for thinking that the major elements of physics were built on unshakeable foundations and effectively established for all time. The efforts of generations of scientists, philosophers, and mathematicians had culminated in Isaac Newton's grand synthesis in the late seventeenth century.”
Jim Baggott (born 1957) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“As a design-scientist the artist discovers and perfects language that corresponds more directly to experience; he develops hardware that embodies its own software as a conceptual tool for coping with reality.”
Gene Youngblood (1942–2021) said by 2021 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Lewis has written that "man makes history." Althusser unleashes a pamphlet at him maintaining that such is not the case: "Ce sont les masses qui font I'histoire." I challenge anyone to find a social scientist outside the Marxist camp who can seriously pose a problem of this type.”
Norberto Bobbio (1909–2004) first seen 1978 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: In: Telos Nr. 35-38, (1978), p. 11
“The challenges of trying to view the world of politics from so many different perspectives have threatened to overwhelm the most experienced and respected of political scientists. As you read this text, keep in mind what political scientist David Easton has observed: Politics involves change.”
Ellen Grigsby wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Politics also involves decision making over the world’s resources. Whereas we can look to Easton’s comments to appreciate the concept of change as central to politics, we can also draw on the teachings of political scientist Harold Lasswell to consider that politics is about deciding who does and does not get access to what the world has to offer.”
Ellen Grigsby wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Appreciate the magnificent brain you possess. Protect and nurture it. Strive to be a good skeptic and critical thinker so that fewer hours of your precious life will be squandered on dead-end beliefs. Always try to think like a scientist so that you might better know truth from fiction.”
Guy P. Harrison (born 1963) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Intelligent design is intellectual surrender. Not understanding how something works or how it came to be is not an answer. Our current ignorance should only be motivation to keep working the problems. Everything is irreducibly complex—until a scientist figures it out.”
Guy P. Harrison (born 1963) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Are we in a dream?” Lebret asked. “Might we actually be dead and in some afterlife?” “How could we test either supposition?” the scientist asked, with characteristic practical-mindedness. “What conceivable experiment could we design to falsify such a claim?”
Adam Roberts (born 1965) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A clue to the future must lie in the past... every scientist, and everyone with intellectual curiosity, can learn something useful from a brief study of the history of atomism.”
Lancelot Law Whyte (1896–1972) said by 1972 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“No scientist has yet provided an acceptable definition of "mind" or "mental" that reveals the character of "unconscious mental processes," and no physicist a lucid definition of "elementary particles" that shows how they can appear or disappear, and why there are so many.”
Lancelot Law Whyte (1896–1972) said by 1972 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It was really [David] Whitteridge who taught me to be a scientist.”
Peter Ladefoged (1925–2006) said by 2006 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“As a child, I wanted to become a scientist, a magician, a poet, an architect, an illustrator, a sculptor, an actor, a philosopher, a photographer, a playwright and an animator. So by the time I was 13 or 14, I was convinced that it would be possible to a be of all of these if I made films.”
Anand Gandhi (born 1980) first seen 2012 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: One-on-one with Ship of Theseus’ Anand Gandhi" at film army (3 September 2012)
“In his Table Talks, Hitler spoke of the eventual ‘elimination’ of those Germans who did not meet ‘Nordic’ criteria of racial purity. The fact was that according to Hans Guenther, Nazi Germany’s ‘racial scientist', ninety-five percent of Germans did not meet those criteria. It was no longer clear who would suffer in the serious implementation of National Socialist policy.”
A. James Gregor (1929–2019) said by 2019 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The typical scientist doesn’t actually practise meditation herself. Rather, she invites experienced meditators to her laboratory, covers their heads with electrodes, asks them to meditate, and observes the resulting brain activities. That can teach us many interesting things about the brain, but if the aim is to understand the mind, we are missing some of the most important insights.”
Yuval Noah Harari (born 1976) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“James March, a Stanford-based social scientist... is much more a gurus’ guru than a guru to the general public. He finished second on the gurus’ gurus list and 48th on the original list.”
Thomas H. Davenport (born 1954) first seen 2003 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Laurence Prusak, Thomas H. Davenport, "Who Are the Gurus' Gurus," Harvard Business Review Survey, December 2003, p.14–16
“Here’s a test you can try at home: put a two-year-old in a playpen with an apple and a rabbit. If it plays with the apple and eats the rabbit, you’ve got a carnivore. According to numerous studies … vegetarians have 60% less cancer than meat-eaters, and a tiny fraction of the heart attack rate. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out we aren’t very well designed to eat meat.”
Dan Piraro (born 1958) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In some ways she was not a very good scientist: impatient with data, too ready to leap to conclusions, apt to judge an idea not by its merits but by its sheer niftiness.”
Michael Swanwick (born 1950) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Keep stupid, keep crazy. Knowledge begins with wonder. Success as a scientist is based on keen curiosity. If one wants to enjoy academic life, I would recommend him or her to be different.”
Ryōji Noyori (born 1938) first seen 2018 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Ryōji Noyori (2018) cited in "Diverse culture, free environment keys for Nobel prizes: Nobel winner" on Focus Taiwan, 9 May 2018.
“My puppeteer was Olly Taylor. The first couple of sessions, I said, "Who's the guy going the Scientist?" It was Olly Taylor, and I loved his vocal performance. [expressing his inner monologue at the time] "Why are you voicing this guy? He's great!”
Mark Hamill (born 1951) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Our prime task now is to look after the environment. This will become the responsibility of every individual, politician, guru, saint and scientist. Our energies will be spent in making it healthy again. When that happens there will be less suffering, disease and poverty.”
Benjamin Creme (1922–2016) said by 2016 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[According to John Locke] the enlightened philosopher is to accept a subordinate position: he must be, says Locke, an “underlaborer” to the empirical scientist.”
Bruce Wilshire (1932–2015) said by 2015 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“But why did I do it? I confess that I'm an unabashed Old Leftist who never quite understood how deconstruction was supposed to help the working class. And I'm a stodgy old scientist who believes, naively, that there exists an external world, that there exist objective truths about that world, and that my job is to discover some of them.”
Alan Sokal (born 1955) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Do you realize that when I get back from this trip two years from now I am going to be getting more in royalties from children’s books than I will in salary for being a space scientist?”
Robert L. Forward (1932–2002) said by 2002 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“As a scientist, I know this is madness. But I also know this is an act of faith.”
Emma Newman (born 1976) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I got Christianity at school and Stalinism at home. I think that was a very good preparation for being a scientist because I got used to the idea that at least half the people are completely wrong.”
Geoffrey Hinton (born 1947) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Is this secular education which we receive in our public schools an essential part of our education? Most assuredly. If we have any rational idea of God we must conceive that he is a great scholar, a scientist, an inventor, a discoverer, with full knowledge of the forces of the universe, a chemist, a mathematician. He who framed the universe is surely educated along all these lines.”
J. Golden Kimball (1853–1938) first seen 1931 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Conference Report, October 1931
“Darya stood up, heard her voice rising, and knew she was doing what she insisted what a scientist should never do: allowing passion and the defense of personal theories to interfere with logical analysis.”
Charles Sheffield (1935–2002) said by 2002 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“To become great, whether an artist, a musician, a writer, a philosopher or creator or scientist, even as one great in sport, the secret lies, assuming there is some native ability in the first place, in one factor above all others – emotion.”
Percy Cerutty (1895–1975) said by 1975 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: On Greatness; as quoted in "Unrequited obsession" by Chris Jefferis, The Sydney Morning Herald (11 October 2008).
“See how calm and reposeful Nature is and how restless is man... He doesn't know that he has to evolve in a certain direction, that he has to reach a dimension where he will combine the scientist, the sage and the illuminated in himself.”
Gopi Krishna (yogi) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“To be a scientist is to learn to live all one's life with questions that will never be answered, with the knowledge that one was too early or too late, with the anguish of not having been able to guess at the solution that, once presented, seems so obvious that one can only curse oneself for not seeing what one ought to have, if only one had looked in a slightly different direction.”
Hanya Yanagihara (born 1974) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Any scientist, myself or another, can become so enamoured of his brain child that he resents criticism.”
Nevill Francis Mott (1905–1996) first seen 1986 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: (1995 pbk reprint of 1986 original)