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. 1,159,190 quotes Who coined it · How we decide
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“Just because science so far has failed to explain something, such as consciousness, to say it follows that the facile, pathetic explanations which religion has produced somehow by default must win the argument is really quite ridiculous.”
Richard Dawkins (born 1941) first seen 2006 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Steve Paulson, "The flying spaghetti monster" Salon.com (13 October 2006)
“It has become almost a cliché to remark that nobody boasts of ignorance of literature, but it is socially acceptable to boast ignorance of science and proudly claim incompetence in mathematics.”
Richard Dawkins (born 1941) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The feeling of awed wonder that science can give us is one of the highest experiences of which the human psyche is capable. It is a deep aesthetic passion to rank with the finest that music and poetry can deliver. It is truly one of the things that make life worth living and it does so, if anything, more effectively if it convinces us that the time we have for living is quite finite.”
Richard Dawkins (born 1941) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[...] if I am asked for a single phrase to characterize my role as Professor of the Public Understanding of Science, I think I would claim Advocate for Disinterested Truth.”
Richard Dawkins (born 1941) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The word 'mundane' has come to mean boring and dull, and it really shouldn't. It should mean the opposite because it comes from the latin 'mundus', meaning the world, and the world is anything but dull; the world is wonderful. There's real poetry in the real world. Science is the poetry of reality.”
Richard Dawkins (born 1941) first seen 2007 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: , "Slaves to Superstition" [1.01], 13 August 2007, timecode 00:38:16ff
“Science replaces private prejudice with publicly verifiable evidence.”
Richard Dawkins (born 1941) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I think there really is a place for science in literature and I think that may be increasing”
Richard Dawkins (born 1941) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“When I tweet on politics, even if I merely post a url, I get many replies like “Stick to science. Politics is not your field.” Which field, then, does qualify one to hold a political opinion? Are scientists specifically disqualified from thinking & caring about the world?”
Richard Dawkins (born 1941) first seen 2020 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: (1 November 2020)
“Supreme Court rules that a woman is legally defined as . . . a woman. Congratulations. And “The concept of sex is binary, a person is either a woman or a man”. Yes, the science was settled in the Precambrian. Nice that the law has finally caught up.”
Richard Dawkins (born 1941) first seen 2025 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Tweet (16 April 2025), quoted in "JK Rowling hails victory for women after Supreme Court trans ruling" (16 April 2025), The Telegraph.
“Mastering the lawless science of our law,— That codeless myriad of precedent, That wilderness of single instances.”
Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809–1892) first seen 1864 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Aylmer's Field (1864); reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
Also quoted by: Alfred Tennyson
“Man has to awaken to wonder — and so perhaps do peoples. Science is a way of sending him to sleep again.”
Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951) said by 1951 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Self-culture has been loudly and boastfully proclaimed as sufficient for all our ideals of perfection. But if we listen to the best men and women everywhere ... they will say that science may have found a cure for most evils; but it has found no remedy for the worst of them all — the apathy of human beings.”
Helen Keller (1880–1968) first seen 1927 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: My Religion (1927); later expanded and edited as Light in My Darkness (1995; 2000), Ch 6
“Knowledge is not happiness, and science But an exchange of ignorance for that Which is another kind of ignorance.”
Lord Byron (1788–1824) said by 1824 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Science frees us in many ways...from the bodily terror which the savage feels. But she replaces that, in the minds of many, by a moral terror which is far more overwhelming.”
Charles Kingsley (1819–1875) first seen 1866 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Sermon, The Meteor Shower (26 November 1866)
“In the light of fuller day, Of purer science, holier laws.”
Charles Kingsley (1819–1875) said by 1875 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Note in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919):— Compare: "Ring in the nobler modes of life / with sweeter manners, purer laws", Alfred Tennyson, In Memoriam, cvi, Stanza 4.
“Here numerous persons, with big wigs many of them, and austere aspect, whom I take to be Professors of the Dismal Science, start up in an agitated vehement manner: but the Premier resolutely beckons them down again”
Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) said by 1881 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Pedantry iz the science ov investing what little yu know in one kind ov perfumery, and insisting upon sticking that under every man's knose whom you meet.”
Josh Billings (1818–1885) said by 1885 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Our delight in any particular study, art, or science rises and improves in proportion to the application which we bestow upon it. Thus, what was at first an exercise becomes at length an entertainment.”
Joseph Addison (1672–1719) first seen 1712 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: No. 447 (2 August 1712)
“While bright-eyed Science watches round.”
Thomas Gray (1716–1771) first seen 1769 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Ode for Music (1769), Chorus, line 3
“Here rests his head upon the lap of Earth A youth to Fortune and to Fame unknown. Fair Science frowned not on his humble birth. And Melancholy marked him for her own.”
Thomas Gray (1716–1771) said by 1771 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Seven social sins: politics without principles, wealth without work, pleasure without conscience, knowledge without character, commerce without morality, science without humanity, and worship without sacrifice.”
Mahatma Gandhi (1869–1948) first seen 1925 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: A list closing an article in Young India (22 October 1925); Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi Vol. 33 (PDF) p. 135
“Politics without principle, wealth without work, pleasure without conscience, knowledge without character, commerce without morality, science without humanity, and worship without sacrifice — are the seven social sins.”
Mahatma Gandhi (1869–1948) first seen 1925 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Originally published in Young India, 22 October 1925, in The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, Vol. 33, p. 135.
“Hinduism has made marvelous discoveries in things of religion, of the spirit, of the soul. We have no eye for these great and fine discoveries. We are dazzled by the material progress that Western science has made. Ancient India has survived because Hinduism was not developed along material but spiritual lines.”
Mahatma Gandhi (1869–1948) said by 1948 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It's this accursed science," I cried. "It's the very Devil. The medieval priests and persecutors were right and the Moderns are all wrong. You tamper with it—and it offers you gifts. And directly you take them it knocks you to pieces in some unexpected way. Old passions and new weapons—now it upsets your religion, now it upsets your social ideas, now it whirls you off to desolation and misery!”
H. G. Wells (1866–1946) said by 1946 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Science has toiled too long forging weapons for fools to use. It is time she held her hand.”
H. G. Wells (1866–1946) said by 1946 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The science hangs like a gathering fog in a valley, a fog which begins nowhere and goes nowhere, an incidental, unmeaning inconvenience to passers-by.”
H. G. Wells (1866–1946) said by 1946 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Science, when applied to personal relationships, is always just wrong.”
E. M. Forster (1879–1970) first seen 1923 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter 231, to W. J. H. Sprott, 28 June 1923
“The Foundation of Empire is Art & Science Remove them or Degrade them & the Empire is No More — Empire follows Art & Not Vice Versa as Englishmen suppose.”
William Blake (1757–1827) said by 1827 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Art is the tree of life. SCIENCE is the Tree of DEATH ART is the Tree of LIFEGOD is JESUS”
William Blake (1757–1827) said by 1827 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“He who would do good to another must do it in minute particulars; General good is the plea of the scoundrel, hypocrite, and flatterer: For art and science cannot exist but in minutely organized Particulars.”
William Blake (1757–1827) said by 1827 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Venereal: From Venus, the goddess of love, this word refers to the reality of desire. With the rise of Protestantism and science, the word "disease" was tacked on in a revealing combination of categorization and moralizing. "Which disease?" "The disease of love.”
John Ralston Saul (born 1947) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Our psychology is ... a science of mere phenomena without any metaphysical implications. [It] Treats all metaphysical claims and assertions as mental phenomena, and regards them as statements about the mind and its structure.”
Carl Jung (1875–1961) first seen 1958 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Psychology and Religion: West and East (1958), p. 476, as cited in Psychotherapy East and West (1961), p. 14
“The desire to explain what is simple by what is complex, what is easy by what is difficult, is a calamity affecting the whole body of science, known, it is true, to men of insight, but not generally admitted.”
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) said by 1832 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We should not go to the people and say, "Here we are. We come to give you the charity of our presence, to teach you our science, to show you your errors, your lack of culture, your ignorance of elementary things." We should go instead with an inquiring mind and a humble spirit to learn at that great source of wisdom that is the people.”
Che Guevara (1928–1967) said by 1967 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Gloire et louange à toi, Satan, dans les hauteurs Du Ciel, où tu régnas, et dans les profondeurs de l’Enfer, où, vaincu, tu rêves en silence! Fais que mon âme un jour, sous l’Arbre de Science, Près de toi se repose, à l’heure où sur ton front Comme un Temple nouveau ses rameaux s’épandront!”
Charles Baudelaire (1821–1867) said by 1867 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There is certainly some chill and arid knowledge to be found upon the summits of formal and laborious science; but it is all round about you, and for the trouble of looking, that you will acquire the warm and palpitating facts of life.”
Robert Louis Stevenson (1850–1894) said by 1894 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“What renders man an imaginative and moral being is that in society he gives new aims to his life which could not have existed in solitude: the aims of friendship, religion, science, and art.”
George Santayana (1863–1952) said by 1952 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“O world, thou choosest not the better part! It is not wisdom to be only wise, And on the inward vision close the eyes, But it is wisdom to believe the heart. Columbus found a world, and had no chart, Save one that faith deciphered in the skies; To trust the soul's invincible surmise Was all his science and his only art.”
George Santayana (1863–1952) first seen 1894 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: O World, Thou Choosest Not (1894)
“Science is a cemetery of dead ideas, even though life may issue from them.”
Miguel de Unamuno (1864–1936) said by 1936 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“La verdadera ciencia enseña, por encima de todo, a dudar y a ser ignorante. (True science teaches, above all, to doubt and be ignorant.)”
Miguel de Unamuno (1864–1936) said by 1936 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Perl programming is an *empirical* science!”
Larry Wall (born 1954) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I write to thee on this subject, [friend], because I am angry at a book which I have just left, which is so large, that it seems to contain universal science, but it hath almost split my head, without teaching me anything.”
Montesquieu (1689–1755) said by 1755 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We are teetering on the edge. [...] Indigenous people are the stewards of much of the remaining standing forests and contain the hope that these precious places can be preserved. The science has proved the value in their preservation but that does not keep them from encroachment, and the protection they are granted is tenuous in some of the countries these assets exist in.”
Harrison Ford (born 1942) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The modern clergyman has acquired in his study of the science which I believe is called exegesis an astonishing facility for explaining things away.”
W. Somerset Maugham (1874–1965) said by 1965 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Logic has borrowed, perhaps, the rules of geometry, without comprehending their force... it does not thence follow that they have entered into the spirit of geometry, and I should be greatly averse... to placing them on a level with that science that teaches the true method of directing reason.”
Blaise Pascal (1623–1662) said by 1662 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The method of not erring is sought by all the world. The logicians profess to guide it, the geometricians alone attain it, and apart from science, and the imitations of it, there are no true demonstrations.”
Blaise Pascal (1623–1662) said by 1662 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Out of the shadow of the abstract man, who thinks for the pleasure of thinking, emerges the organic man, who thinks because of a vital imbalance, and who is beyond science and art.”
Emil Cioran (1911–1995) said by 1995 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“If truth were not boring, science would have done away with God long ago. But God as well as the saints is a means to escape the dull banality of truth.”
Emil Cioran (1911–1995) said by 1995 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Fortunate those who, born before science, were privileged to die of their first disease!”
Emil Cioran (1911–1995) said by 1995 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Every kind of science, if it has only reached a certain degree of maturity, automatically becomes a part of mathematics.”
David Hilbert (1862–1943) first seen 1918 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Axiomatic Thought" (1918), printed in From Kant to Hilbert, Vol. 2 by William Bragg Ewald