Quotes by famous people, credited to who said them. Your own quotes must not match any of these. More are added all the time. 1,161,747 quotes Who coined it · How we decide
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“Philosophy is not a system of propositions, and not a science.”
Moritz Schlick (1882–1936) said by 1936 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: p. 157 ; As cited in: Thomas Uebel (2012). Empiricism at the Crossroads: The Vienna Circle's Protocol-Sentence. p. 78
“Philosophy... is that activity by which the meaning of propositions is established or discovered. Philosophy elucidates propositions, science verifies them. In the latter we are concerned with the truth of statements, but in the former with what they actually mean.”
Moritz Schlick (1882–1936) said by 1936 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: p. 157 ; As cited in: Uebel (2012:78)
“Science may carry us to Mars, but it will leave the Earth peopled as ever by the inept.”
Agnes Repplier (1855–1950) first seen 1936 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: in "Pursuit of Laughter" (1936)
“Those corporations that continue to invest in new fossil fuel exploration, new fossil fuel exploitation, are really in flagrant breach of their fiduciary duty because the science is abundantly clear that this is something we can no longer do.”
Christiana Figueres (born 1956) first seen 2015 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Cited in Tim Flannery, Atmosphere of Hope. Solutions to the Climate Crisis, Penguin Books, 2015, pages 123-124 .
“We are totally on the way of smart design of cities. It is not science fiction. If you look for examples of any of this, it's all already underway.”
Christiana Figueres (born 1956) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“After all, what's the use of having developed a science well enough to make predictions, if in the end all we're willing to do is stand around and wait for them to come true.”
Frank Sherwood Rowland (1927–2012) first seen 1986 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: In Annals Of Chemistry: In the Face of Doubt by Paul Brodeur, The New Yorker, June 9, 1986. Cited in Tim Flannery, Atmosphere of Hope. Solutions to the Climate Crisis, Penguin Books, 2015, page 1 .
“If we had been allowed to talk about race and IQ, the invasion of Iraq would never have occurred, because no one would have been under the illusion that a Jeffersonian Republic was going to emerge from a population with an IQ in the 80s. Opposing science got >500k people killed.”
Stefan Molyneux (born 1966) first seen 2019 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: @StefanMolyneux, Twitter (January 8, 2019)
“As the world fights #COVID19, we are also fighting an epidemic of harmful falsehoods & lies. I'm announcing a new @UN Communications Response initiative to spread facts & science, countering the scourge of misinformation - a poison putting more lives at risk.”
António Guterres (born 1949) first seen 2020 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Twitter (14 April 2020)
“Watch the students at a vivisection. It is the blood and suffering, not the science, that rivet their breathless attention. If hospital service makes young students less tender of suffering, vivisection deadens their humanity, and begets indifference to it.”
Henry Jacob Bigelow (1818–1890) said by 1890 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There will come a time when the world will look back to modern vivisection in the name of science as they now do to burning at the stake in the name of religion.”
Henry Jacob Bigelow (1818–1890) said by 1890 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Anti-cruelty societies should be encouraged. The progress of science has suffered little by their existence, and humanity has gained much.”
Henry Jacob Bigelow (1818–1890) said by 1890 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A student of history, who cares little for Greek or mathematics in particular, but who likes to watch how things grow, will be able to extract from these pages a notion of the whole history of mathematical science down to Newton's time...”
James Gow (scholar) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“That such comparisons with non-arithmetic notions have furnished the immediate occasion for the extension of the number-concept may, in a general way, be granted (though this was certainly not the case in the introduction of complex numbers); but this surely is no sufficient ground for introducing these foreign notions into arithmetic, the science of numbers.”
Richard Dedekind (1831–1916) said by 1916 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I've let you teach too many science fiction classes," I said. Dr. Identity's pupils mutated into large asterisks. "It's possible. More likely, however, I'm just a product of the future. and the future's been extinct for a long time.”
D. Harlan Wilson (born 1971) first seen 2007 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Dr. Identity: or Farewell to Plaquedemia (2007)
“We often speak of Theosophy as not in itself a religion, but the truth which lies behind all religions alike. That is so; yet, from another point of view, we may surely say that it is at once a philosophy, a religion and a science. It is a philosophy, because it puts plainly before us an explanation of the scheme of evolution of both the souls and the bodies contained in our solar system.”
Charles Webster Leadbeater (1854–1934) said by 1934 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The year which has passed has not, indeed, been marked by any of those striking discoveries which at once revolutionize, so to speak, the department of science on which they bear.”
Thomas Bell (zoologist) first seen 1858 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: President's Address to the Linnean Society, 1859. The theory of natural selection had been presented in June of 1858. Wikipedia Entry
“Ideologies that seek a return to a mythical purity are flying in the face of hard science.”
David Reich (geneticist) first seen 2018 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: David Reich, Who We Are and How We Got Here: Ancient DNA and the New Science of the Human Past, Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 2018, p.179
“Of course, science lives by confusing theories, but what were accepted as 'theories' even by the many professional psychologists and psychiatrists were very poor limitations of what physical scientists call a theory.”
Raymond Cattell (1905–1998) first seen 1966 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: p. 16 (1966 edition)
“Cthelll is the terrestrial inner nightmare, nocturnal ocean, Xanadu: the anorganic metal-body trauma-howl of the earth ... [P]lutonic science slides continuously into schizophrenic delirium. Fast forward seismology and you hear the earth scream.”
Nick Land (born 1962) first seen 1999 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Barker Speaks: The CCRU Interview with Professor D.C. Barker" (1999), in Fanged Noumena, pp. 498–9
“Science is a seamless web: each idea spins out to a new research task, and each research finding suggests a repair or an elaboration of the network of theory. Most of the links connecting the nodes are short, each attaching to its predecessors. Weaving our way through the web, we stop from time to time to rest and survey the view — and to write a paper or a book.”
Pat Langley (born 1953) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“What made the West successful was neither capitalism, nor science, nor an historical accident such as a favourable geography. Instead, political and mental diversity combined to create an ever changing panorama of technologically creative societies.”
Joel Mokyr (born 1946) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“With the coming of the Jesuits in the 16th century, and the consequent introduction of Western science, China lost interest in her native algebra...”
David Eugene Smith (1860–1944) said by 1944 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The basic point-of-view is that science is a social process.”
“[Teachers] emphasize the human side of science: real activities by real human beings, both today and in specific periods of history. Personal characteristics of scientists, with which students can identify, should be emphasized rather than making scientists seem superhuman or alien.”
Jay Lemke (born 1946) first seen 2010 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: p. 175-6; as cited in: Hanuscin & Lee (2010)
“If modern science is likened to a the skyscraper, the... twentieth century triumphs are the sophisticated filigrees at its pinnacle that are supported by—and could not exist apart from—the massive foundation created by humble laborers.”
Clifford D. Conner (born 1941) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The "Baconian" sciences were the kind Francis Bacon had in mind when he issued a call to revitalize science by basing it on craftsmen's knowledge of nature. Bacon is remembered as the most effective critic of the traditional learning promulgated the elite institutions of his day. ...Bacon advocated compiling a "history of arts," or encyclopedia of crafts knowledge...”
Clifford D. Conner (born 1941) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[O]ur [small] knowledge of the relation of finite to infinite... is... continually increasing—science and philosophy are continally presenting... broader views of the relation of man to nature and of individual thought to abstract thought.”
Karl Pearson (1857–1936) said by 1936 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“An imaginary explanation... too often impedes the true explanation when man has attained it. This gives rise to the so-called contests of religion and science or of religion and philosophy—the unintelligible conflicts of "faith" and "reason" which can only arise in the minds of those, who cannot perceive clearly the distinction between myth and knowledge.”
Karl Pearson (1857–1936) said by 1936 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[T]he records of the tables are published in... Le Monaco and issued weekly in Paris... eight weeks roulette gave a grand total of 33,000 events. ...M. Blanc deserved a niche in the temple of science and Le Monaco a shelf in every mathematician's library.”
Karl Pearson (1857–1936) said by 1936 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Monte Carlo roulette, if judged by returns which are published... is, if the laws of chance rule, from the standpoint of exact science the most prodigious miracle of the nineteenth century.”
Karl Pearson (1857–1936) said by 1936 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Step by step men of science are coming to recognise that mechanism is not at the bottom of phenomena, but is only the conceptual shorthand by aid of which they can briefly describe and resume phenomena.”
Karl Pearson (1857–1936) said by 1936 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“That all science is description and not explanation, that the mystery of change in the inorganic world is just as great and just as omnipresent as in the organic world, are statements which will appear platitudes to the next generation.”
Karl Pearson (1857–1936) said by 1936 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Formerly men had belief as to the supersensuous and thought they had knowledge of the sensuous. The science of the future, while agnostic as to the supersensuous, will replace knowledge by belief in the perceptual sphere, and reserve the term knowledge for the conceptual sphere—the region of their own concepts and ideas...”
Karl Pearson (1857–1936) said by 1936 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“If the reader questions whether there is still war between science and dogma, I must reply that there always will be as long as knowledge is opposed to ignorance. To know requires exertion, and it is intellectually easiest to shirk effort altogether by accepting phrases which cloak the unknown in the undefinable.”
Karl Pearson (1857–1936) said by 1936 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[P]rogress... enables me to define several... conceptions much more accurately than was possible in 1892, and to indicate, if only in vague outline, what a fascinating field is being here transferred from the synoptic to the precise division of science.”
Karl Pearson (1857–1936) said by 1936 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“If any... work gives a description of phenomena that appeals to... imagination rather than to... reason, then it is bad science.”
Karl Pearson (1857–1936) said by 1936 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[T]he task of science can never end till man ceases to be, till history is no longer made, and development itself ceases.”
Karl Pearson (1857–1936) said by 1936 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“When... a simple principle has been discovered... then this principle or law itself generally leads to the discovery of a still wider range of hitherto unregarded phenomena... Every great advance of science opens our eyes to facts which we had failed before to observe, and makes new demands...”
Karl Pearson (1857–1936) said by 1936 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[T]he material of science is coextensive with the whole life, physical and mental, of the universe, and... the limits to our perception of the universe are only apparent, not real.”
Karl Pearson (1857–1936) said by 1936 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Our aesthetic judgment demands harmony between the representation, and the represented and in this sense science is often more artistic than modern art.”
Karl Pearson (1857–1936) said by 1936 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Science can only answer to the great majority of "metaphysical" problems "I am ignorant." Meanwhile, it is idle to be impatient or to indulge in system-making.”
Karl Pearson (1857–1936) said by 1936 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Wherever there is the slightest possibility for the human mind to know, there is a legitimate problem of science. Outside the field of actual knowledge can only lie a region of the vaguest opinion and imagination, to which... men too often... pay higher respect than to knowledge.”
Karl Pearson (1857–1936) said by 1936 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The ignorance of science means the enforced ignorance of mankind.”
Karl Pearson (1857–1936) said by 1936 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Who can give us the assurance that the fields already occupied by science are alone those in which knowledge is possible? Who, in the words of Galilei, is willing to set limits to the human intellect?”
Karl Pearson (1857–1936) said by 1936 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[T]he laws of science are products of the human mind rather than factors of the external world.”
Karl Pearson (1857–1936) said by 1936 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The ideal of value neutrality is not a single notion, but has arisen in the course of protracted struggles over the place that science should have in society.”
Robert N. Proctor (born 1954) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Towards the end of his life Neurath referred to the ‘mosaic of the sciences’. In the spirit of this formulation we can arrive at an understanding of his life’s work by means of a kind of collage, employing the regulative idea of the unity of science and society.”
Friedrich Stadler (born 1951) first seen 1882 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Friedrich Stadler (1996). "Otto Neurath—encyclopedia and utopia." In: E. Nemeth & F. Stadler (Eds.). Encyclopedia and utopia: The life and work of Otto Neurath (1882–1945), Boston: Kluwer. Stadler, 1996, p. 3
“At the present time it is of course quite customary for physicists to trespass on chemical ground, for mathematicians to do excellent work in physics, and for physicists to develop new mathematical procedures... Trespassing is one of the most successful techniques in science.”
Wolfgang Köhler (1887–1967) said by 1967 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The proof that π is a transcental number will forerver mark an epoch in mathematical science. It gives the final answer to the problem of squaring the circle and settles this vexed question once for all. This problem requires to derive the number π by a finite number of elementary geometrical processes, i.e. with the use of the ruler and compasses alone.”
Felix Klein (1849–1925) said by 1925 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I don't resent being identified with B science fiction movies at all -why should I? Even though they were not considered top of the line, for those people that like sci-fi, I guess they were fun. My whole feeling about working as an actor is, if I give anybody any enjoyment, I'm doing my job, and that's what counts.”
John Agar (1921–2002) first seen 1986 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Interview with Fangoria (1986)