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Science

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“All exact science is dominated by the idea of approximation. When a man tells you that he knows the exact truth about anything, you are safe in inferring that he is an inexact man.”
Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) first seen 1931 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Scientific Outlook (1931), Part I, chapter II, "Characteristics of the Scientific Method
“The fundamental concept in social science is Power, in the same sense in which Energy is the fundamental concept in physics.”
Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) said by 1970 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Science seems to be at war with itself.... Naive realism leads to physics, and physics, if true, shows naive realism to be false. Therefore naive realism, if true, is false; therefore it is false.”
Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) first seen 1940 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: An Inquiry into Meaning and Truth (1940), Introduction, p. 15
“Science may set limits to knowledge, but should not set limits to imagination.”
Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) said by 1970 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Science, ever since the time of the Arabs, has had two functions: (1) to enable us to know things, and (2) to enable us to do things.”
Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) said by 1970 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Psychology is in its infancy, as a science. I hope in the interests of Art, it will always remain so.”
Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) first seen 1897 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Oscar Wilde (1897), | Hart-Davis, ed., Letters of Wilde, p. 173
“Religions die when they are proved to be true. Science is the record of dead religions.”
Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) said by 1900 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Science can never grapple with the irrational. That is why it has no future before it, in this world.”
Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) said by 1900 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Monsieur ... I do not believe in God; his existence has been disproved by Science. But in the concentration camp, I learned to believe in men.”
Jean-Paul Sartre (1905–1980) said by 1980 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Politics is a science. You can demonstrate that you are right and that others are wrong.”
Jean-Paul Sartre (1905–1980) said by 1980 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We desire to see the return of a liberal age where Parliaments will guard freedom, where science will open the banqueting halls to the millions, and where what Bismarck once called "practical Christianity" will mitigate suffering and misfortunes.”
Winston Churchill (1874–1965) first seen 1936 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: 'No Intervention In Spain' (8 January 1937), quoted in Winston Churchill, Step by Step, 1936–1939 (1939; 1947), p. 84
“The Dark Ages may return, the Stone Age may return on the gleaming wings of Science, and what might now shower immeasurable material blessings upon mankind, may even bring about its total destruction. Beware, I say; time may be short.”
Winston Churchill (1874–1965) first seen 1946 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Sinews of Peace speech, Westminster College, Fulton, Missouri, March 5, 1946.
“A fool's brain digests philosophy into folly, science into superstition, and art into pedantry.”
George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Every fool believes what his teachers tell him, and calls his credulity science or morality as confidently as his father called it divine revelation.”
George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Philosophy is the science of truth.”
Aristotle (384–322 BC) said by 322 BC at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The science which has to do with nature clearly concerns itself for the most part with bodies and magnitudes and their properties and movements, but also with the principles of this sort of substance, as many as they may be.”
Aristotle (384–322 BC) first seen 350 BC wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: On the Heavens Book I, pg. 1 (350 BCE)
“Rhetoric is the counterpart of Dialectic. Both alike are concerned with such things as come, more or less, within the general ken of all men and belong to no definite science. Accordingly, all men make use, more or less, of both; for to a certain extent all men attempt to discuss statements and to maintain them, to defend themselves and to attack others.”
Aristotle (384–322 BC) said by 322 BC at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“But by far the greatest obstacle to the progress of science and to the undertaking of new tasks and provinces therein is found in this — that men despair and think things impossible.”
Francis Bacon (1561–1626) said by 1626 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“What Art was to the ancient world, Science is to the modern: the distinctive faculty. In the minds of men the useful has succeeded to the beautiful.. There are great truths to tell, if we had either the courage to announce them or the temper to receive them.”
Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881) said by 1881 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The pursuit of science leads only to the insoluble.”
Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881) said by 1881 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The Religion that is afraid of science dishonours God and commits suicide. It acknowledges that it is not equal to the whole of truth, that it legislates, tyrannizes over a village of God's empires but is not the immutable universal law. Every influx of atheism, of skepticism is thus made useful as a mercury pill assaulting and removing a diseased religion and making way for truth.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) first seen 1831 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: March 4, 1831
“Men love to wonder, and that is the seed of our science.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) said by 1882 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Science does not know its debt to imagination.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) said by 1882 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Yet the promise of this life is imperiled by the very genius that has made it possible. Nations amass wealth. Labor sweats to create—and turns out devices to level not only mountains but also cities. Science seems ready to confer upon us, as its final gift, the power to erase human life from this planet.”
Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890–1969) said by 1969 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We –finally—look upon change, the every-unfolding future, with confidence rather than doubt, hope rather than fear. We, as a people, were born of revolution. And we have lived by change—always a frontier people, exploring—if not new wilderness—then new science and new knowledge.”
Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890–1969) said by 1969 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The best way to prepare [to be a programmer] is to write programs, and to study great programs that other people have written. In my case, I went to the garbage cans at the Computer Science Center and fished out listings of their operating system.”
Bill Gates (born 1955) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The product of mental labor — science — always stands far below its value, because the labor-time necessary to reproduce it has no relation at all to the labor-time required for its original production.”
Karl Marx (1818–1883) first seen 1861 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Addenda, "Relative and Absolute Surplus Value" in Economic Manuscripts (1861-63)
“Every beginning is difficult" holds in every science.”
Karl Marx (1818–1883) said by 1883 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“La tâche de l'éducateur est de faire repasser l'esprit de l'enfant par où a passé celui de ses pères, en passant rapidement par certaines étapes mais en n'en supprimant aucune. À ce compte, l'histoire de la science doit être notre guide.”
Henri Poincaré (1854–1912) first seen 1899 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: La logique et l'intuition dans la science mathématique et dans l'enseignement" [Logic and intuition in the science of mathematics and in teaching], L'enseignement mathématique (1899)
“There is no science apart from the general. It may even be said that the very object of the exact sciences is to spare us these direct verifications.”
Henri Poincaré (1854–1912) first seen 1905 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Ch. I. (1905) Tr. George Bruce Halstead
“Scientists believe there is a hierarchy of facts and that among them may be made a judicious choice. They are right, since otherwise there would be no science...”
Henri Poincaré (1854–1912) said by 1912 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“La sociologie est la science qui possède le plus de méthodes et le moins de résultats.”
Henri Poincaré (1854–1912) said by 1912 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Every poet has trembled on the verge of science.”
Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862) first seen 1852 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: July 18, 1852
“For eighteen hundred years, though perchance I have no right to say it, the New Testament has been written; yet where is the legislator who has wisdom and practical talent enough to avail himself of the light which it sheds on the science of legislation?”
Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862) said by 1862 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“You can hardly convince a man of an error in a lifetime, but must content yourself with the reflection that the progress of science is slow. If he is not convinced, his grandchildren may be.”
Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862) said by 1862 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In our science and philosophy, even, there is commonly no true and absolute account of things. The spirit of sect and bigotry has planted its hoof amid the stars. You have only to discuss the problem, whether the stars are inhabited or not, in order to discover it.”
Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862) said by 1862 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Government, the peace-officer at home, breathes war abroad, organizes it into a science, reduces it to a system, makes it a trade, and applauds it as if it were the most honorable work of nations.”
William Ellery Channing (1780–1842) said by 1842 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Science is meaningless because it gives no answer to our question, the only question important for us: 'what shall we do and how shall we live”
Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910) said by 1910 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Quoted by Max Weber in his lecture "Science as a Vocation"; in Lynda Walsh (2013), Scientists as Prophets: A Rhetorical Genealogy (2013), Oxford University Press, p. 90
“Science has adapted itself entirely to the wealthy classes and accordingly has set itself to heal those who can afford everything, and it prescribes the same methods for those who have nothing to spare.”
Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910) said by 1910 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The error arises from the learned jurists deceiving themselves and others, by asserting that government is not what it really is, one set of men banded together to oppress another set of men, but, as shown by science, is the representation of the citizens in their collective capacity.”
Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910) said by 1910 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The collegiate idealists who fill the ranks of the environmental movement seem willing to do absolutely anything to save the biosphere, except take science courses and learn something about it.”
P. J. O'Rourke (1947–2022) said by 2022 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The study of crippled, stunted, immature, and unhealthy specimens can yield only a cripple psychology and a cripple philosophy. The study of self-actualizing people must be the basis for a more universal science of psychology”
Abraham Maslow (1908–1970) said by 1970 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[Concerning] the usual contempt with which an orthodox analytic group treats all outsiders and strangers...I urge you to think of the young psychoanalysts as your colleagues, collaborators and partners and not as spies, traitors and wayward children. You can never develop a science that way, only an orthodox church.”
Abraham Maslow (1908–1970) first seen 1960 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to a colleague (November 1960), in Colin Wilson, New Pathways in Psychology: Maslow and the Post-Freudian Revolution (1972 [2001]), p. 154
“Science is turning into a monastery for the Order of Capitulant Friars. Logical calculus is supposed to supersede man as moralist. We submit to the blackmail of the "superior knowledge" that has the temerity to assert that nuclear war can be, by derivation, a good thing, because this follows from simple arithmetic.”
Stanisław Lem (1921–2006) said by 2006 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Faith as well as science endowed the visible world with properties that eliminated blind, incalculable chance as the author of all events. The war of good and evil present in all religions does not always end, in every faith, with the victory of good, but in every one it establishes a clear order of existence. The sacred as well as the profane rests on that universal order...”
Stanisław Lem (1921–2006) said by 2006 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Democracy is the art and science of running the circus from the monkey cage.”
H. L. Mencken (1880–1956) said by 1956 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Science, at bottom, is really anti-intellectual. It always distrusts pure reason, and demands the production of objective fact.”
H. L. Mencken (1880–1956) said by 1956 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“What is this Christian Science stuff that Marion is unloading on me by the gallon?” Mencken asked Estelle in September 1919. “Has she really fallen for that buncombe? I am amazed…the thing is pishposh. Its fundamental ideas are idiotic….Is she simply kidding me? I surely hope so.”
H. L. Mencken (1880–1956) said by 1956 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“For out of olde feldes, as men seith, Cometh al this newe corn fro yeer to yere; And out of olde bokes, in good feith, Cometh al this newe science that men lere.”
Geoffrey Chaucer (1343–1400) said by 1400 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I am not yet so lost in lexicography, as to forget that words are the daughters of earth, and that things are the sons of heaven. Language is only the instrument of science, and words are but the signs of ideas: I wish, however, that the instrument might be less apt to decay, and that signs might be permanent, like the things which they denote.”
Samuel Johnson (1709–1784) said by 1784 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source