Famous quotes
Quotes by famous people, credited to who said them. Your own quotes must not match any of these. More are added all the time. 1,158,808 quotes Who coined it · How we decide
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“It is merely a coincidence. When enough fiction is written and enough scientific hypotheses are proposed, sooner or later there will be accidental concordances.”
Carl Sagan (1934–1996) said by 1996 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“If a marker were to be erected today, it might read, in homage to his scientific courage: “He preferred the hard truth to his dearest illusions.”
Carl Sagan (1934–1996) said by 1996 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The Hindu religion is the only one of the world’s great faiths dedicated to the idea that the cosmos itself undergoes an immense and indeed an infinite number of deaths and rebirths. It is the only religion in which the time scales correspond […] to those of modern scientific cosmology.”
Carl Sagan (1934–1996) first seen 1980 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Sagan, Carl. Cosmos. New York: Random House, 1980. quoted in : Bhaskar Kamble, The Imperishable Seed: How Hindu Mathematics Changed the World and why this History was Erased, Garuda Prakashan Private Limited, 2022 ISBN …
“All my life, I have been fascinated by the big questions that face us, and have tried to find scientific answers to them.”
Stephen Hawking (1942–2018) first seen 1997 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: From the 1997 television program Stephen Hawking's Universe
“The Steady State theory was what Karl Popper would call a good scientific theory: it made definite predictions, which could be tested by observation, and possibly falsified. Unfortunately for the theory, they were falsified.”
Stephen Hawking (1942–2018) said by 2018 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Traditional scientific method has always been at the very best 20-20 hindsight. It's good for seeing where you've been. It's good for testing the truth of what you think you know, but it can't tell you where you ought to go.”
Robert M. Pirsig (1928–2017) said by 2017 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The scientific man does not aim at an immediate result. He does not expect that his advanced ideas will be readily taken up. His work is like that of the planter — for the future. His duty is to lay the foundation for those who are to come, and point the way. He lives and labors and hopes.”
Nikola Tesla (1856–1943) first seen 1934 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Radio Power Will Revolutionize the World" in Modern Mechanics and Inventions (July 1934)
“While I am not a believer in the orthodox sense, I commend religion, first, because every individual should have some ideal — religious, artistic, scientific, or humanitarian — to give significance to his life. Second, because all the great religions contain wise prescriptions relating to the conduct of life, which hold good now as they did when they were promulgated.”
Nikola Tesla (1856–1943) said by 1943 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I had a feeling that Pandora's box contained the mysteries of woman's sensuality, so different from man's and for which man's language was inadequate. The language of sex had yet to be invented. The language of the senses was yet to be explored. D. H. Lawrence began to give instinct a language, he tried to escape the clinical, the scientific, which only captures what the body feels.”
Anaïs Nin (1903–1977) said by 1977 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As quoted in D. H. Lawrence and Nine Women Writers (1996) by Leo Hamalian, p. 90
“New scientific ideas never spring from a communal body, however organized, but rather from the head of an individually inspired researcher who struggles with his problems in lonely thought and unites all his thought on one single point which is his whole world for the moment.”
Max Planck (1858–1947) first seen 1936 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Address on the 25th anniversary of the Kaiser-Wilhelm Gesellschaft (January 1936), as quoted in Surviving the Swastika : Scientific Research in Nazi Germany (1993)
“The first and most important quality of all scientific ways of thinking must be the clear distinction between the outer object of observation and the subjective nature of the observer.”
Max Planck (1858–1947) said by 1947 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I already see enough evidence for this optimism … in recent years I find that perhaps what Im seeking is a scientific basis for hope, and I think I've found it.”
Jonas Salk (1914–1995) said by 1995 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It's a scientific fact that if you stay in California you lose one point of your IQ every year.”
Truman Capote (1924–1984) first seen 1001 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Reported in Steven D. Price, 1001 Greatest Things Ever Said About California (2007), p. viii.
“There is no use of simply acquiring titles or amassing wealth if one has no self-respect and scientific knowledge.”
Periyar E. V. Ramasamy (1879–1973) said by 1973 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“If THIS book is to be properly understood, it must be read not as a work on metaphysics, still less as a... theological essay, but purely and simply as a scientific treatise.”
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881–1955) said by 1955 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[Footnote:] The Dotterel weighs only four ounces. It has long been a scientific riddle how so much wrong-headedness can manage to exist in so small a space. Still, there's the Least Gnatcatcher.”
Will Cuppy (1884–1949) said by 1949 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We have a habit in writing articles published in scientific journals to make the work as finished as possible, to cover all the tracks, to not worry about the blind alleys or to describe how you had the wrong idea first, and so on. So there isn't any place to publish, in a dignified manner, what you actually did in order to get to do the work.”
Richard Feynman (1918–1988) first seen 1965 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Development of the Space-Time View of Quantum Electrodynamics," Nobel Lecture (11 December 1965)
“From a long view of the history of mankind — seen from, say, ten thousand years from now — there can be little doubt that the most significant event of the 19th century will be judged as Maxwell's discovery of the laws of electrodynamics. The American Civil War will pale into provincial insignificance in comparison with this important scientific event of the same decade.”
Richard Feynman (1918–1988) said by 1988 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“When I was a child, I thought as a child. But now I have put away childish things. ... I must be scientific.”
Philip K. Dick (1928–1982) said by 1982 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Crazy people do not apply the principle of scientific parsimony... they shoot for the baroque.”
Philip K. Dick (1928–1982) said by 1982 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The passing of state power from one class to another is the first, the principal, the basic sign of a revolution, both in the strictly scientific and in the practical political meaning of that term.”
Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) said by 1924 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“How rare it is to come across a piece of writing that is unambiguous, unqualified, and also unblurred by understatements or subtleties, and yet at the same time urbane and tolerant. It is a vice of the scientific method when applied to human affairs that it fosters hemming and hawing and a scrupulousness that easily degenerates into obscurity and meaninglessness.”
Eric Hoffer (1902–1983) first seen 1960 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Entry (1960)
“The metaphysical apologia at least betrayed the injustice of the established order through the incongruence of concept and reality. The impartiality of scientific language deprived what was powerless of the strength to make itself heard and merely provided the existing order with a neutral sign for itself. Such neutrality is more metaphysical than metaphysics.”
Theodor Adorno (1903–1969) said by 1969 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Also quoted by: Max Horkheimer
“Ignore death up to the last moment; then, when it can't be ignored any longer, have yourself squirted full of morphia and shuffle off in a coma. Thoroughly sensible, humane and scientific, eh?”
Aldous Huxley (1894–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I was at a hospital the other night where I think there were a few coronavirus patients and I shook hands with everybody, you will be pleased to know, and I continue to shake hands. People obviously can make up their own minds but I think the scientific evidence is... our judgement is that washing your hands is the crucial thing.”
Boris Johnson (born 1964) first seen 2020 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: On the COVID-19 pandemic in the United Kingdom, at a press conference, as quoted in U.K. Leader Boris Johnson Boasts He Has Shaken Hands With Coronavirus Patients by Khaleda Rahman, 3 March 2020, .
“The scientific mind does not so much provide the right answers as ask the right questions.”
Claude Lévi-Strauss (1908–2009) first seen 1975 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Raw and the Cooked : Introduction to a Science of Mythology (1975) Vol. I, [Le Cru et le Cuit, as translated by Doreen and John Weightman], p. 7
“All our scientific and philosophic ideals are altars to unknown gods.”
William James (1842–1910) first seen 1884 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Lecture at the Harvard Divinity School (13 March 1884); published in the The Unitarian Review and Religious Magazine as The Dilemma of Determinism (September 1884)
“We are spinning our own fates, good or evil, and never to be undone. Every smallest stroke of virtue or of vice leaves its never so little scar. ...Nothing we ever do is, in strict scientific literalness, wiped out.”
William James (1842–1910) said by 1910 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“But petitional prayer is only one department of prayer; and if we take the word in the wider sense as meaning every kind of inward communion or conversation with the power recognized as divine, we can easily see that scientific criticism leaves it untouched. Prayer in this wide sense is the very soul and essence of religion.”
William James (1842–1910) said by 1910 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“All these present struggles revolve around the question: Who are we? They are a refusal of these abstractions, of economic and ideological state violence, which ignore who we are individually, and also a refusal of a scientific or administrative inquisition which determines who one is.”
Michel Foucault (1926–1984) said by 1984 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It's a scientific-cum-sporting murder proposition with enough guns at last to account for the birds, and the Hun is having a very sickly time of it. He has the erroneous idea that he is being hurt, whereas he won't know what real pain means for a long time. I almost begin to hope that when we have done with him there will be very little Hun left.”
Rudyard Kipling (1865–1936) first seen 1916 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to L. C. Dunsterville, September 1916. Quoted in Lord Birkenhead, Rudyard Kipling. London : Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1978 (p.271).
“It is now the scientific consensus that our risk-avoidance mechanism is not mediated by the cognitive modules of our brain, but rather by the emotional ones. This may have made us fit for the Pleistocene era. Our risk machinery is designed to run away from tigers; it is not designed for the information-laden modern world.”
Nassim Nicholas Taleb (born 1960) first seen 2004 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Quoted in the introduction to "A Talk with Nassim Nicholas Taleb," Edge (April 2004)
“[E]conomists are evaluated on how intelligent they sound, not on a scientific measure of their knowledge of reality. (page 85)”
Nassim Nicholas Taleb (born 1960) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There is no such thing as a failed soldier, dead or alive (unless he acted in a cowardly manner)—likewise there is no such thing as a failed entrepreneur or failed scientific researcher ...”
Nassim Nicholas Taleb (born 1960) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The Left has become so extreme that we now have a justice being nominated to the Supreme Court who testified under oath that she could not say what a woman is, And a party that's unwilling to admit that men and women are biologically different in defiance of all scientific and human history, is a party that should not be anywhere near the levers of power in the United States of America.”
Donald Trump (born 1946) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The measure of greatness in a scientific idea is the extent to which it stimulates thought and opens up new lines of research.”
Paul Dirac (1902–1984) first seen 1968 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The scientific work of Georges Lemaître (1968), P.A.M. Dirac, Commentarii (Pontifical Academy of Sciences), vol 2, 11, pp. 1–18.
“Like all the new technologies that have arisen from scientific knowledge, biotechnology is a tool that can be used either for good or for evil purposes. The role of ethics is to strengthen the good and avoid the evil.”
Freeman Dyson (1923–2020) said by 2020 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The purpose of scientific enquiry is not to compile an inventory of factual information, nor to build up a totalitarian world picture of natural Laws in which every event that is not compulsory is forbidden. We should think of it rather as a logically articulated structure of justifiable beliefs about nature.”
Peter Medawar (1915–1987) first seen 1969 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Induction and Intuition in Scientific Thought, 1969
“Observation is the generative act in scientific discovery. For all its aberrations, the evidence of the senses is essentially to be relied upon—provided we observe nature as a child does, without prejudices and preconceptions, but with that clear and candid vision which adults lose and scientists must strive to regain.”
Peter Medawar (1915–1987) first seen 1982 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Medawar, Peter (1982). Pluto's Republic, p. 99. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
“Karl Popper’s conception of the scientific process is that is realistic – it gives a pretty fair picture of what goes on in real life laboratories.”
Peter Medawar (1915–1987) said by 1987 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Medawar, Peter B. 1990. The Threat and the Glory: Reflections on Science and Scientists. New York: HarperCollins.
“Systems, scientific and philosophic, come and go. Each method of limited understanding is at length exhausted. In its prime each system is a triumphant success: in its decay it is an obstructive nuisance.”
Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947) said by 1947 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The poets and philosophers before me discovered the unconscious; what I discovered was the scientific method by which the unconscious can be studied.”
Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) first seen 1926 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: On his seventieth birthday (1926); as quoted in The Liberal Imagination (1950) by Lionel Trilling
“Mathematical knowledge may, just like our scientific knowledge, be deep and broad, it may be subtle and wonderfully explanatory, it may be uncontroversially accepted; but it cannot be certain.”
David Deutsch (born 1953) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The rational thing for a layperson to do is to take seriously the prevailing scientific theory.”
David Deutsch (born 1953) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I have never seen the slightest scientific proof of the religious ideas of heaven and hell, of future life for individuals, or of a personal God.”
Thomas Edison (1847–1931) said by 1931 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As quoted in Jesus : Myth Or Reality? (2006) by Ian Curtis, p. 289
“This leads me to remark that I have almost always been treated honestly by my reviewers, passing over those without scientific knowledge as not worthy of notice.”
Charles Darwin (1809–1882) said by 1882 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Alas! A scientific man ought to have no wishes, no affections — a mere heart of stone.”
Charles Darwin (1809–1882) first seen 1844 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to T.H. Huxley, 9 July 1857, More Letters of Charles Darwin, Francis Darwin and A.C. Seward, editors (1903) volume I, chapter II: "Evolution, 1844-1858", page 98
“Owen says my book will be forgotten in 10 years; perhaps so, but, with such a list [of prestigious scientific supporters], I feel convinced that the subject will not.”
Charles Darwin (1809–1882) first seen 1860 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to J.D. Hooker, 3 March 1860
“In economics, hope and faith coexist with great scientific pretension and also a deep desire for respectability.”
John Kenneth Galbraith (1908–2006) first seen 1970 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The New York Times Magazine (7 June 1970)
“That one’s personal reactions signify the public reaction is not, scientifically, a defensible proposition but where the preservation of precious intellectual capital is involved, scientific method is readily sacrificed.”
John Kenneth Galbraith (1908–2006) first seen 1985 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Chapter XVIII, Section 6, p 218 (1985)