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Science

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“The application of scientific formulations of the principle of probability statistically determined is thus a logical corollary of the principle already stated, that the subject matter of scientific findings is relational, not individual. It is for this reason that it is safe to predict the ultimate triumph of the statistical doctrine.”
John Dewey (1859–1952) said by 1952 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The scientific community says that if you even mention God as causes of anything scientific, you're gone.”
Ben Stein (born 1944) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I feared that such a prize, as I believe is true of the activities of some of the great scientific foundations, would tend to accentuate the swings of scientific fashion. This apprehension the selection committee has brilliantly refuted by awarding the prize to one whose views are as unfashionable as mine are.”
Friedrich Hayek (1899–1992) said by 1992 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Then something began pushing things up out of the soil and making things out of nothing. One day things weren’t there and another they were. I had never watched things before and it made me feel very curious. Scientific people are always curious and I am going to be scientific. I keep saying to myself, ’What is it? What is it?’ It’s something. It can’t be nothing!”
Frances Hodgson Burnett (1849–1924) said by 1924 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The scientific spirit is relegated to the pitiful role of an inferior attribute. However, we support it to the extent that it can serve as an alibi for the anti-scientific spirit. But, above all, we try to dismiss it as a kind of unbearable reproach for a guilty conscience. p. 287”
Alexander Zinoviev (1922–2006) said by 2006 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Our rockets can find Halley's comet, and fly to Venus with amazing accuracy, but side by side with these scientific and technical triumphs is an obvious lack of efficiency in using scientific achievements for economic needs, and many Soviet household appliances are of poor quality.”
Mikhail Gorbachev (1931–2022) first seen 1988 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As quoted in TIME magazine (4 January 1988)
“The path of the PROUN does not lie within the narrowly limited, fragmented, and isolated scientific disciplines — the builder consolidates them all together in his own experimental investigation. The path of the PROUN is not the incoherent approach of separate scientific disciplines, theories, and systems, but is rather the straightforward path of learned influence over reality.”
El Lissitsky (1890–1941) said by 1941 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[Popper's skepticism about scientific truth in The Logic of Scientific Discovery is] that kind of reaction, of which the epitome is given in Aesop's fable of the fox and the grapes. The parallel would be complete if the fox, having become convinced that neither he nor anyone else could ever succeed in tasting grapes, should nevertheless write many long books on the progress of viticulture.”
David Stove (1927–1994) first seen 1982 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Popper and After: Four Modern Irrationalists, Oxford: Pergamon, 1982. Page 52.
“To take a line of fossils and claim that they represent a lineage is not a scientific hypothesis that can be tested, but an assertion that carries the same validity as a bedtime story—amusing, perhaps even instructive, but not scientific.”
Henry Gee (born 1962) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Logic is the last scientific ingredient of Philosophy; its extraction leaves behind only a confusion of non-scientific, pseudo problems.”
Rudolf Carnap (1891–1970) said by 1970 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“My sense of the high advantage derived from this establishment in a scientific point of view, as I am fully sensible that by reason of my patronizing it, my name, however, undeserving of any celebrity is favorably noticed even in distant regions, among the scientific personages of the present day.”
Swathi Thirunal Rama Varma (1813–1846) said by 1846 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Great philosophical systems are never produced in a scientific vacuum but usually follow the formation and completion of a scientific world-perspective.”
Joseph B. Soloveitchik (1903–1993) said by 1993 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Each scientific institute in my opinion should have a public outreach program...all the research you are doing is funded by the government. The government gets MONEY from the people, so you owe something to the people. You are shutting yourself in an ivory tower, saying that all these people outside the scientific community do not understand it. That is not the right attitude.”
Jayant Narlikar (1938–2025) said by 2025 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The sciences we are familiar with have been installed in a number of great 'continents'. Before Marx, two such continents had been opened up to scientific knowledge: the continent of Mathematics and the continent of Physics. The first by the Greeks (Thales), the second by Galileo. Marx opened up a third continent to scientific knowledge: the continent of History.”
Louis Althusser (1918–1990) said by 1990 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The God of the gaps argument for God fails when a plausible scientific account for a gap in current knowledge can be given. I do not dispute that the exact nature of the origin of the universe remains a gap in scientific knowledge. But I deny that we are bereft of any conceivable way to account for that origin scientifically.”
Victor J. Stenger (1935–2014) said by 2014 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Those experiments that cannot be justified on scientific grounds can be no more justified than the frivolous killing and torturing of animals. In fact they are even less capable of justification, since such experiments block more fruitful uses of scientific resources.”
Deborah Mayo (born 1953) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Healthy skepticism is an essential and treasured feature of scientific analysis,” Gibbons added. “But willful distortion of evidence has no place at the table of scientific inquiry.”
Chris Mooney (born 1977) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Today this country is also home to a populace that, to an alarming extent, ignores scientific advances or outright rejects scientific principles.”
Chris Mooney (born 1977) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It is a great opportunity to represent the global south and hopefully inspire many women out there. Prof Dube Elected Vice Chairperson Of WMO SCientific Advisory Panel https://guardiansun.co.bw/News/prof-dube-elected-vice-chairperson-of-wmo-scientific-advisory-panel Botswana Guardian, Thursday 11 June 2020”
Opha Pauline Dube (born 1960) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In the Anglo-Saxon world the debate has been dominated by arguments between the gene-centered views of people like Richard Dawkins... and the multi-level selection views of people like Stephen Jay Gould... The gene-centered view... is a metaphorical polemic: the invention of a colourful metaphor to interpret scientific discovery. It is not a straightforward empirical scientific hypothesis.”
Denis Noble (born 1936) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The scientific realist maintains that in at least some cases, we have good evidential reasons to accept theories or theoretical claims as true, or approximately true, or on-the-road-to-truth. The scientific antirealist denies this. These attitudes come in degrees... [T]his is a question addressed by epistemology and confirmation theory...”
Tim Maudlin (born 1958) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“For example, if you have a scientific innovation, which is expected to help farmers increase their yield, how is it that you communicate to that group of farmers who don’t have so much education, such that they appreciate that scientific innovation and how it can enhance their yield?”
Nana Aba Appiah Amfo wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“My greatest scientific inspiration is Marie Skłodowska Curie. She is the embodiment of both femininity and scientific excellence. Not only did she depart from the traditional women’s roles of her time, but she went on to become one of the world’s most renowned scientists. To date she remains the only person to have won a Nobel Prize in two academic disciplines – namely, physics and chemistry.”
Marian Asantewah Nkansah (born 1979) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A scientific argument must have some degree of data, some…some sniff of theoretical basis behind it; otherwise it’s not a scientific argument, it’s a philosophical debate.”
Catherine Webb (born 1986) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“My father was a primary school teacher. We used to listen to BBC programmes and read scientific and geographical magazines. It was then that I started thinking that I should be able to go to a scientific university.”
Evelyne Isaack Mbede (born 1957) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Behe has never developed his arguments for intelligent design in peer-reviewed scientific publications. Indeed, he doesn’t actually conduct research in the field and, along with other leaders of the intelligent-design movement, concedes that there is not as yet much affirmative scientific evidence supporting the concept of intelligent design.”
Edward J. Larson (born 1953) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“ID advocates complain that their views are rejected out of hand by the scientific establishment, yet they do not play by normal rules of presenting their views first through scientific conferences and then to peer-reviewed journals and then in textbooks.”
Eugenie Scott (born 1945) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The first problem with this argument (“teach the controversy”) is that there is no scientific controversy about evolution, and the second problem is that intelligent design doesn’t qualify as a scientific theory.”
Eugenie Scott (born 1945) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Despite the long history of the “controversy over method”, which has seen a series of attempts – from Dilthey to the Frankfurt School – to deny (especially by some historians, sociologists and philosophers) the unity of the “scientific method”, today it seems increasingly clear that scientific theories are constructed, tested, confirmed or rejected through a “single methodology”.”
Dario Antiseri (1940–2026) said by 2026 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Evolution is a scientific question on the biological level; it would be unfortunate indeed if a scientific question were permitted to become the crucial point for Christian faith.”
Richard H. Bube (1927–2018) said by 2018 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The tragic conclusion of the Second World War, with the atomic destruction of Nagasaki and Hiroshima, is not just a historical fact for Jaspers, but an indicator of the nihilistic outcomes to which technical and scientific development left to its own devices can lead. (Chapter 58, “False Consciousness and the Claim of the Technical-Scientific Apparatus to be Beyond Comparison”, p. 422)”
Umberto Galimberti (born 1942) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The exploration was not made for adventure, but purely for scientific purposes, geographic and geologic, and I had no intention of writing an account of it, but only of recording the scientific results.”
John Wesley Powell (1834–1902) said by 1902 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The beauty of science and the nature of scientific revelations constitute part of the modern theologian's perspective and toolbox.”
Joseph Silk (born 1942) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Closely related to the erroneous idea that science is a body of knowledge is the equally erroneous idea that scientific theories are true.”
Carroll Quigley (1910–1977) said by 1977 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Remember, Aristotle's De Anima is a seamless mixture of the science and philosophy of his time. We can aim at something similar, i.e. we should feel very comfortable using scientific results in philosophy. It does not mean philosophers must become scientists.”
Patrick Suppes (1922–2014) said by 2014 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“To my knowledge significant progress has never been born of competition. … In science, being 'better' than others is of little practical value. Examples of how absurd the idea of scientific competition is are abundant.”
Heinrich Rohrer (1933–2013) first seen 1994 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Heinrich Rohrer, in Science - A Part of Our Future, Interdisciplinary Science Reviews Vol. 19, 193, 1994.
“Science and mathematics... have added little to our understanding of such things as Truth, Beauty, and Justice. There may be definite limits to the applicability of the scientific method.”
Richard Hamming (1915–1998) said by 1998 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Men whose research is based on shared paradigms are committed to the same rules and standards for scientific practice. That commitment and the apparent consensus it produces are prerequisites for normal science, i.e., for the genesis and continuation of a particular research tradition.”
Thomas Kuhn (1922–1996) said by 1996 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: p. 11 (2012 ed.)
“Science, like art, religion, commerce, warfare, and even sleep, is based on presuppositions. It differs, however, from most other branches of human activity in that not only are the pathways of scientific thought determined by the presuppositions of the scientists but their goals are the testing and revision of old presuppositions and the creation of new.”
Gregory Bateson (1904–1980) said by 1980 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The chief requisite for the making of a good chicken pie is chicken; no amount of culinary legerdemain can make up for the lack of chicken. In the same way, the chief requisite for the history of science is intimate scientific knowledge; no amount of philosophic legerdemain can make up for its absence.”
George Sarton (1884–1956) first seen 1918 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Teaching of the History of Science" Sci. Monthly 7, 193-211 (1918).
“The scientific books written in Arabic during the Middle Ages were, for a few centuries, the main vehicle of the living science.”
George Sarton (1884–1956) said by 1956 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: George Sarton, ‘Science' in Mid-East: World-Center, Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow, ed. Ruth Nanda Anshen, Cooper Square Publishers, New York, 1975, p. 269.
“Scientific achievements seem evanescent, because the very progress of science causes their supersedure; yet some of them are of so fundamental a nature that they are immortal in a deeper way.”
George Sarton (1884–1956) said by 1956 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Origami helps in the study of mathematics and science in many ways. … Using origami anyone can become a scientific experimenter with no fuss.”
Martin David Kruskal (1925–2006) first seen 2002 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: at the AAAS meeting: Mathematics and Science of Origami: Visualize the Possibilities, February 15, 2002, as quoted by Science Daily Origami Helps Scientists Solve Problems, February 21, 2002.
“Just as a new scientific discovery manifests sometimes that was already latent in the order of nature, and at the same time is logically related to the total structure of the existing science, so the new poem manifests something that was already latent in the order of words.”
Northrop Frye (1912–1991) said by 1991 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It is some relief to move from the exalted realm of philosophical ethics to the mundane realm of scientific methodology. However, I rather shy away from discussions of Methodology with a capital M. To paraphrase Shaw: Those who can do science; those who can’t prattle about its methodology.”
Paul Samuelson (1915–2009) first seen 1992 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: My Life Philosophy: Policy Credos and Working Ways,” in M. Szenberg (ed.) Eminent Economists: Their Life Philosophies (1992)
“The truth is Darwinism is not a scientific theory, but a materialistic creation myth masquerading as science. It is first and foremost a weapon against religion – especially traditional Christianity. Evidence is brought in afterwards, as window dressing.”
Jonathan Wells (1942–2024) first seen 2006 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Why Darwinism is Doomed, 2006.
“The Theory of Evolution, like the Theory of Gravity, is a scientific fact. Evolution really happened. Accepting our kinship with all life on earth is not only solid science, in my view, it's also a soaring spiritual experience. (From the second Cosmos: ASO episode, Some of the Things That Molecules Do.)”
Neil deGrasse Tyson (born 1958) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“All knowledge of reality starts from experience and ends in it. Propositions arrived at by purely logical means are completely empty as regards reality. Because Galileo saw this, and particularly because he drummed it into the scientific world, he is the father of modern physics – indeed, of modern science altogether.”
Albert Einstein (1879–1955) first seen 1934 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: On the Method of Theoretical Physics" (1934) from Einstein's essays in science. Translated by Alan Harris. Dover (2009). pp. 12–21. ISBN 9780486470115.
“The most essential characteristic of scientific technique is that it proceeds from experiment, not from tradition. The experimental habit of mind is a difficult one for most people to maintain; indeed, the science of one generation has already become the tradition of the next...”
Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) first seen 1931 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Scientific Outlook (1931)
“I do not believe that science per se is an adequate source of happiness, nor do I think that my own scientific outlook has contributed very greatly to my own happiness, which I attribute to defecating twice a day with unfailing regularity.”
Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) first seen 1931 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to W. W. Norton (publisher), 27 January, 1931