QUOTES
"To myself I am a child playing on the beach, while vast oceans of truth lie undiscovered before me."
- Isaac Newton
“I would rather have questions that can’t be answered than answers that can’t be questioned.”
- Richard Feynman
“To be fair, I don’t have any ’views’ on climate change either. Just like I don't have any ’views’ on gravity, the fact that the Earth is round, photosynthesis nor evolution... But understanding and knowing their existence really makes life in the 21st century so much easier.”
- Greta Thunberg (Swedish environmental activist )
“The good thing about science is that it’s true whether or not you believe in it.”
- Neil deGrasse Tyson (American astrophysicist and science communicator)
“Science is not a body of knowledge nor a system of belief; it is just a term which describes humankind’s incremental acquisition of understanding through observation. Science is awesome.”
- Tim Minchin (Australian comedian, musician, actor)
“The problem in society is not kids not knowing science. The problem is adults not knowing science. They outnumber kids five to one, they wield power, they write legislation. When you have scientifically illiterate adults, you have undermined the very fabric of what makes a nation wealthy and strong.”
- Neil deGrasse Tyson (American astrophysicist and science communicator)
“Equipped with his five senses, man explores the universe around him and calls the adventure Science.”
- Edwin Hubble (American astronomer)
“I want people to have an emotional response to science, because that’s what I have. Thinking about the stars throws you outside of your own world and into the universe, and it is inspirational.”
- Brian Cox (English physicist and science communicator)
“I know that I am mortal by nature and ephemeral, but when I trace at my pleasure the windings to and fro of the heavenly bodies, I no longer touch earth with my feet. I stand in the presence of Zeus himself and take my fill of ambrosia.”
- Claudius Ptolemy (Greek astronomer, mathematician and geographer)
“Remember to look up at the stars and not down at your feet. Try to make sense of what you see and wonder about what makes the universe exist. Be curious. And however difficult life may seem, there is always something you can do and succeed at. It matters that you don’t just give up.”
- Stephen Hawking (English theoretical physicist, cosmologist, and author)
“For my part I know nothing with any certainty, but the sight of the stars makes me dream.”
- Vincent Van Gogh (Dutch post-Impressionist painter)
“Dwell on the beauty of life. Watch the stars, and see yourself running with them.”
- Marcus Aurelius
“When kids look up to great scientists they way they do to great musicians and actors, civilisation will jump to the next level.”
- Brian Greene (American theoretical physicist)
“What do you think science is? There's nothing magical about science. It is simply a systematic way for carefully and thoroughly observing nature and using consistent logic to evaluate results. Which part of that exactly do you disagree with? Do you disagree with being thorough? Using careful observation? Being systematic? Or using consistent logic?”
- Dr Steven Novella (American clinical neurologist)
“When he (Johannes Kepler) found that his long cherished beliefs did not agree with the most careful observations, he accepted the uncomfortable facts. He preferred the hard truth to his dearest delusions. That is the heart of science.”
- Carl Sagan (American astronomer, astrophysicist, cosmologist, author and science communicator)
“One good test is worth a thousand expert opinions.”
- Wernher von Braun (German rocket engineer and space architect)
“Science is not a subject you took in school. It's life. We are wrapped by it, in it, with it.”
- Neil deGrasse Tyson (American astrophysicist and science communicator)
“On one point, it strikes me that we can all agree. Science builds industries, boosts productivity and drives human progress. It is critical to national growth. The point is echoed time and time again by the OECD, the IMF and the World Bank. Here in Australia, it has been expressed by the senior leaders of the Reserve Bank, the Productivity Commission, the Business Council of Australia, the Minerals Council and the National Farmers’ Federation, as well as the leaders of all major political parties. So science is awesome.”
- Professor Ian Chubb (Chief Scientist for Australia)
“There is no shame in not knowing. The problem arises when irrational thought and attendant behavior fill the vacuum left by ignorance.”
- Neil deGrasse Tyson (American astrophysicist and science communicator)
“I love science, and it pains me to think that so many are terrified of the subject or feel that choosing science means you cannot also choose compassion, or the arts, or be awed by nature. Science is not meant to cure us of mystery, but to reinvent or reinvigorate it.”
- Robert Sapolsky (Professor of biology, neuroscience, and neurosurgery at Stanford University)
“Science is not perfect. It is often misused. It is only a tool, but it is the best tool we have. Self correcting, ever changing, applicable to everything. With this tool, we vanquish the impossible.”
- Carl Sagan (American astronomer, astrophysicist, cosmologist, author and science communicator)
“It is a curious situation that the sea, from which life first arose, should now be threatened by the activities of one form of that life. But the sea will continue to exist - the threat is rather to life itself.”
- Rachel Carson (American marine biologist and conservationist)
“Three and a half million years ago our ancestors - yours and mine - left these traces [indicates footprints]. We stood up and parted ways from them. Once we were standing on two feet, our eyes were no longer fixated on the ground. Now, we were free to look up and wonder.”
- Neil deGrasse Tyson (American astrophysicist and science communicator)
“They'd have no desire to eat brains, because their fatty tissue would've stopped producing the hormone leptin, which triggers the sensation of hunger in the first place. I’m just saying…”
- Neil deGrasse Tyson (American astrophysicist and science communicator) on zombies
“We still talk in terms of conquest. We still haven’t become mature enough to think of ourselves as only a tiny part of a vast and incredible universe. Man’s attitude toward nature is today critically important simply because we have now acquired a fateful power to alter and destroy nature. But man is a part of nature, and his war against nature is inevitably a war against himself.”
- Rachel Carson (American marine biologist and conservationist)
“We fail in even the simplest of all scientific observations - nobody looks up anymore.”
- Neil deGrasse Tyson (American astrophysicist and science communicator)
“If you're scientifically literate, the world looks very different to you and that understanding empowers you.”
- Neil deGrasse Tyson (American astrophysicist and science communicator)
“The limits on your enlightenment come not from the age you stopped going to school but from the age you stopped being curious.”
- Neil deGrasse Tyson (American astrophysicist and science communicator)
“Life, just like the stars, the planets and the galaxies, is just a temporary structure on the long road from order to disorder. But that doesn’t make us insignificant, because we are the cosmos made conscious. Life is the means by which the universe understands itself. And for me, our true significance lies in our ability to understand and explore this beautiful universe.”
- Brian Cox (English physicist and science communicator)
“For millions of years, mankind lived just like the animals. Then something happened which unleashed the power of our imagination. We learned to talk and we learned to listen. Speech has allowed the communication of ideas, enabling human beings to work together to build the impossible. Mankind’s greatest achievements have come about by talking, and its greatest failures by not talking. It doesn’t have to be like this. Our greatest hopes could become reality in the future. With the technology at our disposal, the possibilities are unbounded. All we need to do is make sure we keep talking.”
- Stephen Hawking (English theoretical physicist, cosmologist, and author)
“When we explore the cosmos, we come to believe and prove that we can solve problems that have never been solved. It brings out the best in us. Space exploration imbues everyone with an optimistic view of the future.”
- Bill Nye (American science communicator)
“We began as wanderers, and we are wanderers still. We have lingered long enough on the shores of the cosmic ocean. We are ready at last to set sail for the stars.”
- Carl Sagan (American astronomer, astrophysicist, cosmologist, author and science communicator)
“Science and everyday life cannot, and should not, be separated.”
- Rosalind Franklin (English chemist and X-ray crystallographer)
“How can a three-pound mass of jelly that you can hold in the palm of your hand imagine angels, contemplate the meaning of infinity, and even question its own place in the cosmos? Especially awe inspiring is the fact that any single brain, including yours, is made up of atoms that were forged in the hearts of countless, far-flung stars billions of years ago. These particles drifted for eons and light-years until gravity and change brought them together here, now. These atoms now form a conglomerate - your brain - that can not only ponder the very stars that gave it birth but can also think about its own ability to think and wonder about its own ability to wonder. With the arrival of humans, it has been said, the universe has suddenly become conscious of itself. This, truly, is the greatest mystery of all.”
- Vilayanur Ramachandran (Indian neuroscientist and Director of the Center for Brain and Cognition)
“I’m optimistic. I see people no longer accepting fuzzy thinking in the world. The change is not that people aren’t still saying under-informed things. The change is that if you’re in power and you say something under-informed, there are people out there with a voice who will take you to task for having done so.”
- Neil deGrasse Tyson (American astrophysicist and science communicator)
“The day we stop exploring is the day we commit ourselves to live in a stagnant world, devoid of curiosity, empty of dreams.”
- Neil deGrasse Tyson (American astrophysicist and science communicator)
“If we raise a generation of students who don't believe in the process of science, who think everything that we've come to know about nature and the universe can be dismissed by a few sentences translated into English from some ancient text, you're not going to continue to innovate.”
- Bill Nye (American science communicator and CEO of The Planetary Society)
“Science, my lad, is made up of mistakes, but they are mistakes which it is useful to make, because little by little they lead to the truth.”
- Jules Verne (French novelist)
“What is a scientist after all? It is a curious man looking through a keyhole, the keyhole of nature, trying to know what is going on.”
- Jacques-Yves Cousteau (French explorer, conservationist, researcher and filmmaker)
“The one thing I want every single child to have experienced at some point in their life, as part of their education, is to have some idea they hold to be true, and at the very basis of their being, proved to be wrong. Because that opens your mind to the realisation that the world is different than you thought it would be, and you have to begin to open your mind to the possibilities of existence. And opening your mind frees you, it doesn’t constrain you. It makes the world more wonderful, more exciting, and more worth living in.”
- Lawrence Krauss (American theoretical physicist and cosmologist)
“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.”
- Neil deGrasse Tyson (American astrophysicist and science communicator)
“Astronomy compels us to look upward, and leads us from this world to another.”
- Plato (Greek philosopher and mathematician)
“An understanding of the natural world and what's in it is a source of not only a great curiosity but great fulfillment.”
- Sir David Attenborough (English broadcaster and naturalist)
“I am among those who think that science has great beauty. A scientist in his laboratory is not only a technician, he is also a child placed before natural phenomena which impress him like a fairy tale.”
- Marie Curie (Polish-born French physicist and chemist, first female Nobel Laureate)
“Science is not a thing. It's a verb. It's a way of thinking about things. It's a way of looking for natural explanations for all phenomena.”
- Michael Shermer (American science writer)
“In the case of the artist, I don't want them to represent reality because I have that via my own telescopes. I want and I need the artist to take me to new places, and the new place that van Gogh took me is not the sky as it is but the sky as he felt it. And the more of us that feel the universe, the better off we will be in this world.”
- Neil deGrasse Tyson (American astrophysicist and science communicator)
“It surprises me how disinterested we are today about things like physics, space, the universe and philosophy of our existence, our purpose, our destination. It’s a crazy world out there. Be curious.”
- Stephen Hawking (English theoretical physicist, cosmologist, and author)
“We are dumping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere at a rate the Earth hasn’t seen since the great climate catastrophes of the past. The ones that lead to mass extinctions. We just can’t seem to break our addiction to the kinds of fuel that will bring back the climate last seen by the dinosaurs, a climate that will drown our coastal cities and wreak havoc on the environment and our ability to feed ourselves. All the while, the glorious Sun pours immaculate, free energy down upon us, more than we will ever need. Why can’t we summon the ingenuity and courage of the generations that came before us? The dinosaurs never saw that asteroid coming. What’s our excuse?”
- Neil deGrasse Tyson (American astrophysicist and science communicator)
“Science is the best idea humans have ever had. The more people who embrace that idea, the better.”
- Bill Nye (American science communicator)
“The main reason I’m personally accumulating assets is in order to fund this. I really don’t have any other motivation for personally accumulating assets except to be able to make the biggest contribution I can to making life multi-planetary.”
- Elon Musk (South African-born Canadian-American business magnate, investor, engineer and inventor - founder and CEO of SpaceX)
“There is no such thing as a person who isn’t interested in science. If people aren’t interested, they’ve not understood what you mean by science.”
- Brian Cox (English physicist and science communicator)
“Supposing that those people who had invented the steam engine and so on had in fact turned their thoughts on how to use energy and heat from the Sun - that could have changed history. We would no longer have to fell forest, we would no longer have to take oil over vast areas of land that have been completely destroyed. Above all we would no longer have to pollute the atmosphere. If we get cheap energy which doesn’t pollute, then we are into a golden age.”
- Sir David Attenborough (English broadcaster and naturalist)
“The problem, often not discovered until late in life, is that when you look for things in life like love, meaning, motivation, it implies they are sitting behind a tree or under a rock. The most successful people in life recognise that in life they create their own love, they manufacture their own meaning, they generate their own motivation. For me, I am driven by two main philosophies: know more today about the world than I knew yesterday, and lessen the suffering of others. You’d be surprised how far that gets you.”
- Neil deGrasse Tyson (American astrophysicist and science communicator)
“Homeopathy is the equivalent to taking something potentially beneficial, like a 300 mg aspirin, and throwing it into Lake Tikal, stirring it with a very big stick, and then leaving for two years until it’s homogenised and then drinking the lake water as a remedy for a headache.”
- James Randi (Canadian-American retired stage magician and scientific skeptic)
“Science makes people reach selflessly for truth and objectivity. It teaches people to accept reality, with wonder and admiration, not to mention the deep awe and joy that the natural order of things brings to the true scientist.”
- Lise Meitner (Austrian-Swedish physicist)
“The care of the Earth is our most ancient and most worthy and most pleasing responsibility. To cherish what remains of it, and to foster its renewal, is our only legitimate hope.”
- Wendell Berry (American novelist, poet, and environmental activist)
“To the creative mind there is no right or wrong. Every action is an experiment, and every experiment yields its fruit in knowledge.”
- Robert Anton Wilson (American author, poet, and futurist)
“Science is a systematic process of using logic to accumulate, and make sense of, knowledge of the physical or material world gained through observation and experimentation. Science is not one study or a sensational headline. It is a process that leads to a body of research that tells us with a high degree of certainty something about the natural world. You don’t get to cherry pick what science you believe. You either accept science or you don’t. And if you don’t accept science, then you shouldn’t be allowed to use bridges, cell phones or antibiotics.”
- Eric Green (director of the U.S. National Human Genome Research Institute)
“People think that if you are a scientist you have to give up that joy of discovery, that passion, that sense of the great romance of life. I say that’s completely opposite of the truth.”
- Ann Druyan (Emmy Award-winning American writer)
“One in 200 stars has habitable Earth-like planets surrounding it. In the Galaxy, half a billion stars have Earth-like planets going around them. That’s huge. Half a billion! So when we look up at the night, it makes sense that someone is looking back at us.”
- Michio Kaku (American theoretical physicist)
“All questions can lead to knowledge. Curiosity is the key, and questions are one way to help turn that key. There are no stupid questions.”
- Karl Kruszelnicki, a.k.a. Dr Karl (Australian science communicator and populariser)
“The challenges many people face today may be different to those faced by my generation, but I have been struck by how new generations have brought a similar sense of purpose to issues such as protecting our environment and our climate.”
- Queen Elizabeth II
“Nothing has such power to broaden the mind as the ability to investigate systematically and truly all that comes under thy observation in life.”
- Marcus Aurelius (Roman emperor)
“We live in a society exquisitely dependent on science and technology, in which hardly anyone knows anything about science and technology.”
- Carl Sagan (American astronomer, astrophysicist, cosmologist, author and science communicator)