quotations about science
There is no human experience that can be termed true science unless it can be mathematically demonstrated. And if thou sayest that the sciences which begin and end in the mind are true, this cannot be conceded, but must be denied for many reasons, and firstly because in such mental discourses experience is eliminated, and without experience there can be no certainty.
LEONARDO DA VINCI
Thoughts on Art and Life
The real and legitimate goal of the sciences is the endowment of human life with new commodities.
FRANCIS BACON
Novum Organum
The sole mission of science is to light the road.
MIKHAIL BAKUNIN
God and the State
In science it is a service of the highest merit to seek out those fragmentary truths attained by the ancients, and to develop them further.
JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE
The Maxims and Reflections of Goethe
Science ... commits suicide when it adopts a creed.
THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY
"The Darwin Memorial"
Science, already oppressive with its shocking revelations, will perhaps be the ultimate exterminator of our human species -- if separate species we be -- for its reserve of unguessed horrors could never be borne by mortal brains if loosed upon the world.
H. P. LOVECRAFT
"Facts Concerning the Late Arthur Jermyn and His Family"
Science is where knowledge extends, not where it begins.
DAVID L. KATZ
"Science And Sense In A Post-Truth World: How Do We Know?", Huffington Post, September 29, 2017
Science is the systematic classification of experience.
GEORGE HENRY LEWES
The Physical Basis of Mind
True science knows that man invents nothing, but merely finds out what God has invented.
HENRY WHITNEY BELLOWS
Re-statements of Christian Doctrine
Science, like life, feeds on its own decay. New facts burst old rules; then newly divined conceptions bind old and new together into a reconciling law.
WILLIAM JAMES
The Will to Believe and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy
Ah, it is the fault of our science that it wants to explain all; and if it explain not, then it says there is nothing to explain.
BRAM STOKER
Dracula
We say that science is in its infancy; it will never become decrepit, for if truth be infinite, there will always be new aspects of it to be discovered.
SABINE BARING-GOULD
The Origin and Development of Religious Belief: Christianity
Science ... is organized common sense.
JOSEPH ALEXANDER LEIGHTON
The Field of Philosophy
The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom.
ISAAC ASIMOV
attributed, The Mammoth Book of Zingers, Quips and One-liners
In science, all facts, no matter how trivial or banal, enjoy democratic equality.
MARY MCCARTHY
"The Fact in Fiction", On the Contrary
If a given science accidentally reached its goal, this would by no means stop the workers in the field, who would be driven past their goal by the sheer momentum of the illusion of unlimited progress.
HANNAH ARENDT
The Life of the Mind
In the temple of science are many mansions ... and various indeed are they that dwell therein and the motives that have led them there.
ROBERT M. PIRSIG
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
Oh, that's typical of you modern young men; you've nibbled at science and it's made you ill, because you've not been able to satisfy that old craving for the absolute that you absorbed in your nurseries. You'd like science to give you all the answers at one go, whereas we're only just beginning to understand it, and it'll probably never be anything but an eternal quest. And so you repudiate science, you fall back on religion, and religion won't have you any more.
ÉMILE ZOLA
The Joy of Life
Science, my lad, is made up of mistakes, but they are mistakes which it is useful to make, because they lead little by little to the truth.
JULES VERNE
A Journey to the Center of the Earth
Science is an intellectual dead end, you know? It's a lot of little guys in tweed suits cutting up frogs on foundation grants.
WOODY ALLEN
Sleeper