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Science

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“Precisely because Marx was convinced that the cause of the proletariat was of decisive importance for the whole future of mankind, he wanted to create for that cause not a flimsy platform of rhetorical invective or wishful thinking, but the rock-like foundation of scientific truth.”
Ernest Mandel (1923–1995) said by 1995 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There are, and always have been, destructive pseudo-scientific notions linked to race and religion; these are the most widespread and damaging. Hopefully, educated people can succeed in shedding light into these areas of prejudice and ignorance, for as Voltaire once said: "Men will commit atrocities as long as they believe absurdities.”
Martin Gardner (1914–2010) first seen 1968 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Bernard Sussman, "Exclusive Interview with Martin Gardner", Southwind (Miami-Dade Junior College), Vol. 3, No. 1 (Fall 1968)
“the mathematical modeling of social phenomena only makes sense and can only give a positive result under one condition: if the modelers have at their disposal a scientific theory of the objects modeled. The model is not a theory, the model is only one of the means.”
Alexander Zinoviev (1922–2006) said by 2006 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“the model gives good and solid results, provided there is a scientific theory.”
Alexander Zinoviev (1922–2006) said by 2006 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The intellectual level of Westerners has never been very high. This is still the case today: you don't have to be intelligent to have power. Westerners create computer models, but they don't have scientific models.”
Alexander Zinoviev (1922–2006) said by 2006 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“None of the Marxist concepts (literally – not a single one!) matches the logical rules of scientific concepts.”
Alexander Zinoviev (1922–2006) said by 2006 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In the present case, historical judgment furthermore obstructs the scientific understanding of the society that interests us, because the stories here impose functions foreign to this society. p. 40”
Alexander Zinoviev (1922–2006) said by 2006 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Petty-bourgeois thought claims to see its results directly confirmed by observable facts. Scientific thought, on the contrary, knows that its results do not directly coincide with observable facts. They only provide means by which concrete facts can be explained and predicted. p. 35-36”
Alexander Zinoviev (1922–2006) said by 2006 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“This way that petty-bourgeois minds confuse their subjective assessments with the objective situation goes so far that the majority of notions used in conversations about social problems have currently lost their scientific character to become simple expressions of estimation. . p. 37”
Alexander Zinoviev (1922–2006) said by 2006 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The scientific approach uncovers, that Communism does not eliminate the inequality between men, the social injustice, exploitation of man by man and other evils of society – communism merely changes their form and gives birth to new evils, which become eternal fellow-travelers of communism.”
Alexander Zinoviev (1922–2006) said by 2006 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The original Golden Dawn was not always as serious as it should have been. Mathers was a clown, and Yeats was just a romantic trying to deceive himself. Most of them were interested in personal power, and it ended up by destroying them. The aim of our group is the scientific exploration of the hidden powers of the human mind.”
Colin Wilson (1931–2013) said by 2013 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“He was a man born into a world dominated by scientific materialism. His objection to this materialism was not merely intellectual, or even egotistical (the feeling 'If the world is wholly material, then I can't be very important'). It was the feeling that man is cut off from his inner powers by this superficial attitude.”
Colin Wilson (1931–2013) said by 2013 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[She] reports that [the company] recently donated fifty million dollars to a major U.S. teaching hospital, plus salaries and expenses for three top clinicians and six research assistants. Corruption of university Common Room affiliations is even easier: professorial chairs, biotech labs, research foundations, etc. 'Unbought scientific opinion is increasingly hard to find.'”
John le Carré (1931–2020) said by 2020 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In those days, before it became scientific, cricket was the best game in the world to watch, with its rapid sequence of amusing incidents, each ball a potential crisis!”
G. M. Trevelyan (1876–1962) said by 1962 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Religious faith in the case of Hindus has never been allowed to run counter to scientific laws; moreover the former is never made a condition for the knowledge they teach, but they are always scrupulously careful to take into consideration the possibility that by reason both the agnostic and atheist may attain truth in their own ways.”
Romain Rolland (1866–1944) said by 1944 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[his scientific accomplishments] were overshadowed by the photographs he took of Jews in prewar Eastern Europe and in Nazi Berlin. -- Shepard, Richard”
Roman Vishniac (1897–1990) said by 1990 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I would say that in my scientific and philosophical work, my main concern has been with understanding the nature of reality in general and of consciousness in particular as a coherent whole, which is never static or complete but which is an unending process of movement and unfoldment...”
David Bohm (1917–1992) said by 1992 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Magic is another word that makes people uneasy, so I use it deliberately, because words they are comfortable with, the words that sound acceptable, rational, scientific, and intellectually sound, are comfortable precisely because they are the language of estrangement.”
Starhawk (born 1951) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It is generally argued that our experience of free will presents a compelling mystery: On the one hand, we can't make sense of it in scientific terms; on the other, we feel that we are the authors of our own thoughts and actions.”
Sam Harris (born 1967) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The conventional sense of self is an illusion—and [] spirituality largely consists in realizing this, moment to moment. There are logical and scientific reasons to accept this claim, but recognizing it to be true is not a matter of understanding these reasons. Like many illusions, the sense of self disappears when closely examined, and this is done through the practice of meditation.”
Sam Harris (born 1967) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We live in an age which eschews sentimentality as if it were a good deal more than the devil. (Actually, of course, a writer may be just as sentimental in laying undue emphasis on sexual crimes as on dying mothers: sentimental, like scientific, is an adjective that relates to method, not to matter.)”
Randall Jarrell (1914–1965) first seen 1935 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Ten Books," The Southern Review (Autumn 1935), p. 8
“...“originality” is everyone’s aim, and novel techniques are as much prized as new scientific discoveries. [T.S.] Eliot states it with surprising naïveté: “It is exactly as wasteful for a poet to do what has been done already as for a biologist to rediscover Mendel’s discoveries.”
Randall Jarrell (1914–1965) said by 1965 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Kriya Yoga, the scientific technique of God-realization, will ultimately spread in all lands, and aid in harmonizing the nations through man's personal, transcendental perception of the Infinite Father.”
Paramahansa Yogananda (1893–1952) said by 1952 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Also quoted by: Mahavatar Babaji
“If the present study has any significance at all, this results not least from its opposition to this mingling of what is and what ought to be, of scientific analysis with ideals.”
Norbert Elias (1897–1990) said by 1990 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Sigmund Freud was a novelist with a scientific background. He just didn’t know he was a novelist. All those damn psychiatrists after him, they didn’t know he was a novelist either.”
John Irving (born 1942) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Perceptrons have been widely publicized as “pattern recognition” or “learning” machines and as such have been discussed in a large number of books, journal articles, and voluminous “reports.” Most of this writing...is without scientific value.”
Marvin Minsky (1927–2016) said by 2016 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We still remain prone to doctrines, philosophies, faiths, and beliefs that spread through the populations of entire civilizations. It is hard to imagine any foolproof ways to protect ourselves from such infections. ...the best we can do is to try to educate our children to learn more skills of critical thinking and methods of scientific verification.”
Marvin Minsky (1927–2016) said by 2016 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The potentiality is evident to me now! Then what holds them back? Lack of faith? Divine judgment? No. Those old excuses won’t suffice. They never did. For where is the logic in basing salvation on a creator’s capricious whim or craving for praise? Or on prayer-incantations that vary from culture to culture? That’s not consistent or scientific. It’s not how the rest of nature works.”
David Brin (born 1950) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The Scientific Revolution revolution was a change from a world of things ordered according to their ideal nature, to a world of events running in a steady mechanism of before and after.”
Jacob Bronowski (1908–1974) said by 1974 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The [eighteenth] century settled down in two camps of Philistines: the literary Philistines and, largely to spite them, the scientific Philistines. It was the beginning of the mistaken opposition between them from which we still suffer.”
Jacob Bronowski (1908–1974) said by 1974 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Scientific and technological “solutions” which poison the environment or degrade the social structure and man himself are of no benefit, no matter how brilliantly conceived or how great their superficial attraction.”
E. F. Schumacher (1911–1977) said by 1977 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Scientific dogmatics must devote itself to the criticism and correction of Church proclamation and not just to a repetitive exposition of it.”
Karl Barth (1886–1968) said by 1968 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The fact that we arrived here via an immensely long string of species that originated in something like Pikaia rather than some other crepuscular blob is a wonderful scientific story, but it is hardly material to our present condition.”
Simon Conway Morris (born 1951) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“If there were a clear prospect that such evils were part of a barbarian past, then at least we might find a small crumb of comfort. No such prospect exists: no scientific analysis can even remotely answer or account for past and present horrors of human behaviour.”
Simon Conway Morris (born 1951) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Notwithstanding the quasi-religious enthusiasms of ultra-Darwinists, their own understanding of theology is a combination of ignorance and derision, philosophically limp, drawing on clichés, and happily fuelled by the idiocies of the so-called scientific creationists.”
Simon Conway Morris (born 1951) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I approach the presentation of Kierkegaard with some trepidation. Next to Nietzsche, or rather, prior to Nietzsche, I consider him to be the most important thinker of our post-Kantian age. With Goethe and Hegel, an epoch had reached its conclusion, and our prevalent way of thinking — that is, the positivistic, natural-scientific one — cannot really be considered as philosophy.”
Karl Jaspers (1883–1969) first seen 1962 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Great Philosophers (1962)
“The most important part of education — to teach the meaning of to know (in the scientific sense).”
Simone Weil (1909–1943) said by 1943 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In framing scientific terms, the appropriation of old words is preferable to the invention of new ones.”
William Whewell (1794–1866) said by 1866 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[P]hilological analogies are to be preserved if possible, but modified according to scientific convenience.”
William Whewell (1794–1866) said by 1866 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Caution must be used when there is rather question of hypotheses, having some sort of scientific foundation, in which the doctrine contained in Sacred Scripture or in Tradition is involved. If such conjectural opinions are directly or indirectly opposed to the doctrine revealed by God, then the demand that they be recognized can in no way be admitted.”
Pope Pius XII (1876–1958) said by 1958 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Charles Darwin, the Abraham of scientific men — a searcher as obedient to the command of truth as was the patriarch to the command of God.”
John Tyndall (1820–1893) said by 1893 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“However, if I shall live to be eighty I shall probably be the only person left in England who reads anything but newspapers and scientific publications.”
Matthew Arnold (1822–1888) first seen 1882 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: In a letter to his sister, New Year's Day, 1882. Quoted in the Preface
“If the country does best, where State action is least, you at least require political effort enough to reduce those noxious forms of State action which have come down to us from the imprudence of pre-scientific days. The philosopher, for example, who is most in earnest for the free play of social forces, is bound before all other men to press on for the disestablishment of the State Church.”
John Morley, 1st Viscount Morley of Blackburn (1838–1923) first seen 1875 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: 'The Liberal Eclipse', The Fortnightly Review, No. XCVIII (1 February 1875), pp. 298-299
“Mankind will possess incalculable advantages and extraordinary control over human behavior when the scientific investigator will be able to subject his fellow men to the same external analysis he would employ for any natural object, and when the human mind will contemplate itself not from within but from without.”
Ivan Pavlov (1849–1936) said by 1936 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In countries such as Pakistan and Iran, and to a lesser extent in parts of Indonesia, Malaysia, Nigeria, and Tanzania, after the introduction of Islam, a significant regression occurred in individual freedom, the acquisition of scientific knowledge, and the rights of women.”
Ayaan Hirsi Ali (born 1969) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“France provided the codes of law, the model of scientific and technical organization, the metric system of measurement for most countries. The ideology of the modern world first penetrated the ancient civilizations which had hitherto resisted European ideas through French influence. This was the work of the French Revolution.”
Eric Hobsbawm (1917–2012) said by 2012 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Having established the limits beyond which partisanship ceases to be scientifically legitimate, let me argue the case in favour of legitimate partisanship, both from the point of view of the scientific or scholarly discipline and from that of the cause to which the scholar feels committed.”
Eric Hobsbawm (1917–2012) said by 2012 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We have a peculiar interest because the true defence of our country, owing to scientific development, is now no longer the Channel...but upon the Rhine.”
Austen Chamberlain (1863–1937) first seen 1926 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech at the Imperial Conference, 1926.
“Scientific discovery consists in the interpretation for our own convenience of a system of existence which has been made with no eye to our convenience at all. One of the chief duties of a mathematician in acting as an advisor to scientists is to discourage them from expecting too much of mathematicians.”
Norbert Wiener (1894–1964) said by 1964 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As quoted in Comic Sections (1993) by D MacHale
“We never had any use for Taylor or any of the efficiency or scientific management crowd. They never realized that human toil was the last thing in the world you had to be efficient about; the only way to be really efficient is to eliminate it entirely, and this would have been heresy to any of the Taylor, Gant, Barth, Cook efficiency crowd.”
Howard Scott (1890–1970) said by 1970 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source