Quotes

Famous quotes: "Science has explained nothing; the more we know the more fantastic the world becomes and the profounder the surrounding darkness." A Huxley "Put your hand on a hot stove for a minute, and it seems like an hour. Sit with a pretty girl for an hour, and it seems like a minute. THAT S relativity." Albert Einstein "Relativity teaches us the connection between the different descriptions of one and the same reality." Albert Einstein "Few are those who see with their own eyes and feel with their own hearts." Albert Einstein "Gravitation can not be held responsible for people falling in love." Albert Einstein "Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind." Albert Einstein "I cannot believe that God would choose to play dice with the universe." Albert Einstein "Science is a wonderful thing if one does not have to earn one s living at it." Albert Einstein "You do not really understand something unless you can explain it to your grandmother." Albert Einstein "As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain, and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality." Albert Einstein "If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it?" Albert Einstein "The physicist s greatest tool is his wastebasket." Albert Einstein

"Only two things are certain: the universe and human stupidity; and I m not certain about the universe." Albert Einstein "We should make things as simple as possible, but not simpler." Albert Einstein "I don't believe in mathematics." Albert Einstein "Imagination is more important than knowledge." Albert Einstein "The human mind has first to construct forms, independently, before we can find them in things." Albert Einstein "Do not worry about your difficulties in mathematics, I assure you that mine are greater." Albert Einstein "Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds." Albert Einstein "A little knowledge is a dangerous thing. So is a lot." Albert Einstein "I have deep faith that the principle of the universe will be beautiful and simple." Albert Einstein "If any student comes to me and says he wants to be useful to mankind and go into research to alleviate human suffering, I advise him to go into charity instead. Research wants real egotists who seek their own pleasure and satisfaction, but find it in solving the puzzles of nature." Albert Szent-Gyrgi "A man, as a general rule, owes very little to what he is born with - a man is what he makes himself." Alexander Graham Bell "Give me a place to stand, and I will move the Earth." Archimedes "The whole is more than the sum of its parts." Aristotle "Hippocrates is an excellent geometer but a complete fool in everyday affairs." Aristotle

"The chief forms of beauty are order and symmetry and definiteness, which the mathematical sciences demonstrate in a special degree." Aristotle "Hope is a waking dream." Aristotle "The more original a discovery, the more obvious it seems afterward." Arthur Koestler "To define it rudely but not inaptly, engineering is the art of doing that well with one dollar which any bungler can do with two after a fashion." Arthur M. Wellington "An ocean traveler has even more vividly the impression that the ocean is made of waves than that it is made of water." Arthur S. Eddington "Clouds are not spheres, mountains are not cones, coastlines are not circles, and bark is not smooth, nor does lightning travel in a straight line." Benoit Mandelbrot "Being a language, mathematics may be used not only to inform but also, among other things, to seduce." Benoit Mandelbrot "The aim of science is not to open the door to infinite wisdom, but to set a limit to infinite error." Bertolt Brecht "We know very little, and yet it is astonishing that we know so much, and still more astonishing that so little knowledge can give us so much power." Bertrand Russell "forcing automakers to sell smaller cars to improve fuel economy [is like] fighting the nation's obesity problem by forcing clothing manufacturers to sell garments in only small sizes." Bob Lutz "There are only two kinds of math books. Those you cannot read beyond the first sentence, and those you cannot read beyond the first page." C. N. Yang "It is of interest to note that while some dolphins are reported to have learned English -- up to fifty words used in correct context -- no human being has been reported to have learned dolphinese." Carl Sagan

"Errors using inadequate data are much less than those using no data at all." Charles Babbage "I wish to God these calculations had been executed by steam." Charles Babbage "A man is like a fraction whose numerator is what he is and whose denominator is what he thinks of himself. The larger the denominator the smaller the fraction." Count Lev Nikolgevich Tolstoy "...it would be better for the true physics if there were no mathematicians on earth." Daniel Bernoulli "One can measure the importance of a scientific work by the number of earlier publications rendered superfluous by it." David Hilbert "Science is everything we understand well enough to explain to a computer. Art is everything else." David Knuth "There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory which states that this has already happened." Douglas Adams "The major difference between a thing that might go wrong and a thing that cannot possibly go wrong is that when a thing that cannot possibly go wrong goes wrong, it usually turns out to be impossible to get at and repair." Douglas Adams (Mostly Harmless) "A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools." Douglas Adams (Mostly Harmless) "The letter e may now no longer be used to denote anything other than this positive universal constant." Edmund Landau "It can be of no practical use to know that Pi is irrational, but if we can know, it surely would be intolerable not to know." Edward Charles Titchmarsh "Experimental confirmation of a prediction is merely a measurement. An experiment disproving a prediction is a discovery." Enrico Fermi

"The only possible conclusion the social sciences can draw is: some do, some don t." Ernest Rutherford "We haven t the money, so we ve got to think." Ernest Rutherford "All of physics is either impossible or trivial. It is impossible until you understand it, and then it becomes trivial." Ernest Rutherford "If your experiment needs statistics, then you ought to have done a better experiment." Ernest Rutherford ""I do not like it, and I am sorry I ever had anything to do with it." When talking about quantum mechanics." Erwin Schrdinger "Stand firm in your refusal to remain conscious during algebra. In real life, I assure you, there is no such thing as algebra." Fran Lebowitz "If we are to achieve results never before accomplished, we must employ methods never before attempted." Francis Bacon "Trying to determine the structure of a protein by UV spectroscopy was like trying to determine the structure of a piano by listening to the sound it made while being dropped down a flight of stairs." Francis Crick "You cannot teach a man anything; you can only help him find it within himself." Galileo Galilei "I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forego their use." Galileo Galilei "For it is unworthy of excellent men to lose hours like slaves in the labour of calculation which would safely be relegated to anyone else if machines were used." Gottfried Wilhelm Von Leibniz "Science is built upon facts, as a house is built of stones; but an accumulation of facts is no more a science that a heap of stones is a house." Henri Poincare

"It is through science that we prove, but through intuition that we discover." Henri Poincare "Whether you think you can, or whether you think you cant, youre right." Henry Ford "Any colour - so long as it's black." Henry Ford "Before everything else, getting ready is the secret of success." Henry Ford "Quality means doing it right when no one is looking." Henry Ford "To say that a man is made up of certain chemical elements is a satisfactory description only for those who intend to use him as a fertilizer. " Hermann Joseph Muller "There are in fact two things, science and opinion; the former begets knowledge, the latter ignorance." Hippocrates "The young specialist in English Lit, ...lectured me severely on the fact that in every century people have thought they understood the Universe at last, and in every century they were proved to be wrong. It follows that the one thing we can say about our modern "knowledge" is that it is wrong.... My answer to him was, "... when people thought the Earth was flat, they were wrong. When people thought the Earth was spherical they were wrong. But if you think that thinking the Earth is spherical is just as wrong as thinking the Earth is flat, then your view is wronger than both of them put together."" Isaac Asimov "The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds the most discoveries, is not "Eureka!" but "That s funny..."" Isaac Asimov "If I have seen further than others, it is by standing upon the shoulders of giants." Isaac Newton "To explain all nature is too difficult a task for any one man or even for any one age. Tis much better to do a little with certainty, and leave the rest for others that come after you, than to explain all things." Isaac Newton

"I am opposed to the laying down of rules or conditions to be observed in the construction of bridges lest the progress of improvement tomorrow might be embarrassed or shackled by recording or registering as law the prejudices or errors of today. " Isambard Kingdom Brunel "Mathematics contains much that will neither hurt one if one does not know it nor help one if one does know it." J. B. Mencken "Who never walks save where he sees men s tracks makes no discoveries." J. G. Holland "Nature uses as little as possible of anything." Johannes Kepler "When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it is tied to everything else in the universe." John Muir "Science is built up with facts, as a house is with stones. But a collection of facts is no more a science than a heap of stones is a house." Jules Henri Poincar "If the brain were simple enough for us to understand it, we would be too simple to understand it." Ken Hill "It is a good morning exercise for a research scientist to discard a pet hypothesis every day before breakfast." Konrad Lorenz "Therefore O students study mathematics and do not build without foundations." Leonardo Da Vinci "Once you have flown, you will walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been, there you long return." Leonardo Da Vinci "Now I will have less distraction. Quoted as saying upon losing the use of his right eye." Leonhard Euler "The best way to have a good idea is to have a lot of ideas." Linus Pauling "Available energy is the main object at stake in the struggle for existence and the evolution of the world." Ludwig Boltzmann

"A man with a new idea is a crank until he succeeds." Mark Twain "Courage is not the lack of fear. It is acting in spite of it." Mark Twain "Only puny secrets need protection. Great discoveries are protected by public incredulity." Marshall McLuhan "Technology is the knack of so arranging the world that we do not experience it." Max Frisch "None of us knows anything, not even whether we know or do not know, nor do we know whether not knowing and knowing exist, nor in general whether there is anything or not." Metrodorus of Chios, Greek philosopher "Statistics: the mathematical theory of ignorance." Morris Kline "Mathematics is written for mathematicians." Nicholaus Copernicus "Your theory is crazy...but it s not crazy enough to be true." Niels Bohr "An expert is a person who has made all the mistakes that can be made in a very narrow field." Niels Bohr "Those who are not shocked when they first come across quantum mechanics cannot possibly have understood it." Niels Bohr "If anybody says he can think about quantum problems without getting giddy, that only shows he has not understood the first thing about them." Niels Bohr "A professor is one who can speak on any subject -- for precisely fifty minutes." Norbert Wiener "Shall I refuse my dinner because I do not fully understand the process of digestion?" Oliver Heaviside "In science one tries to tell people, in such a way as to be understood by everyone, something that no one ever knew before. But in poetry, it s the exact opposite." Paul Dirac

"Mathematics is like checkers in being suitable for the young, not too difficult, amusing, and without peril to the state." Plato "He is unworthy of the name of man who is ignorant of the fact that the diagonal of a square is incommensurable with its side." Plato "It is not enough to have a good mind. The main thing is to use it well." Ren Descartes "First you guess. Don t laugh, this is the most important step. Then you compute the consequences. Compare the consequences to experience. If it disagrees with experience, the guess is wrong. In that simple statement is the key to science. It doesn t matter how beautiful your guess is or how smart you are or what your name is. If it disagrees with experience, it s wrong. That s all there is to it." Richard Feynman "Philosophy of science is about as useful to scientists as ornithology is to birds." Richard Feynman "Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly." Robert F. Kennedy "The stone age did not end for lack of stone, and the oil age will end long before the world runs out of oil." Sheikh Zaki Yamani "One is always a long way from solving a problem until one actually has the answer." Stephen Hawking "God not only plays dice. He also sometimes throws the dice where they cannot be seen." Stephen Williams Hawking "...philosophy is to science as pornography is to sex." Steve Jones "The great tragedy of science - the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact." T H Huxley "I will be sufficiently rewarded if when telling it to others you will not claim the discovery as your own, but will say it was mine." Thales "There ain t no rules around here! We re trying to accomplish something!"

Thomas Alva Edison "Results! Why, man, I have gotten a lot of results. I know several thousand things that won t work." Thomas Edison "The great tragedy of science - the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact." Thomas H. Huxley "Every great advance in natural knowledge has involved the absolute rejection of authority." Thomas Huxley "I think there s a world market for about five computers." Thomas Watson (Founder of IBM) "The difference between the impossible and the possible lies in not giving up." Tommy Lasorda "No effect that requires more than 10 percent accuracy in measurement is worth investigating." Walther Nernst "Research is what I do when I don t know what I m doing." Wernher Von Braun "I confess that in 1901, I said to my brother Orville that man would not fly for fifty years...Ever since, I have distrusted myself and avoided all predictions." Wilbur Wright (1908) "The important thing in science is not so much to obtain new facts as to discover new ways of thinking about them." William Bragg "The great use of life is to spend it doing something that will outlast it." William James "Copy from one, it s plagiarism; copy from two, it s research." Wilson Mizner "...man will occasionally stumble over the truth, but usually manages to pick himself up, walk over or around it, and carry on." Winston Churchill