Quotes and Sayings about Scientists
"One way we can enliven the imagination is to push it toward the illogical. We're not scientists. We don't always have to make the logical, reasonable leap."
- Stella Adler
(Related: Imagination, Scientists)
"Science fiction is no more written for scientists that ghost stories are written for ghosts."
- Brian Aldiss
(Related: Science, Fiction, Scientists)
"Through history, people look for something spiritual. The greatest scientists in the world were men of religion and faith, too."
- Kirstie Alley
(Related: Men, Religion, Faith, History, People, Scientists, Spiritual, World)
"The mystique associated with the bomb, the role that scientists played in it, and its general importance could not fail to impress even a six-year old."
- Sidney Altman
(Related: Importance, Old, Scientists)
"When I am in the company of scientists, I feel like a shabby curate who has strayed by mistake into a drawing room full of dukes."
- W. H. Auden
(Related: Mistake, Company, Scientists)
"When I find myself in the company of scientists, I feel like a shabby curate who has strayed by mistake into a room full of dukes."
- W. H. Auden
(Related: Mistake, Company, Scientists)
"Unfortunately, Climate Science has become Political Science. It is tragic that some perhaps well-meaning but politically motivated scientists who should know better have whipped up a global frenzy about a phenomena which is statistically questionable at best."
- Robert H. Austin
(Related: Science, Climate, Scientists)
"In my grandfather's lab, scientists did independent research, and peers reviewed and commented on its merits. Politics, he taught me, had no place in the scientific process."
- Tammy Baldwin
(Related: Politics, Research, Scientists)
"The interpretation of facts in a certain way stimulates other scientists' thoughts."
- Robert Barany
(Related: Thoughts, Facts, Scientists)
"As neither of these two great research scientists was able to find the solution to the mystery, it is small wonder that none of their contemporaries were able to do so either."
- Robert Barany
(Related: Mystery, Research, Scientists, Solution, Wonder)
"Whatever the scientists may say, if we take the supernatural out of life, we leave only the unnatural."
- Amelia Barr
(Related: Life, May, Scientists, Supernatural)
"Scientists now believe that the primary biological function of breasts is to make males stupid."
- Dave Barry
(Related: Now, Scientists)
"That was the first major social sciences conference at which social scientists from all cultures wanted to reach a consensus on whether we can continue to pursue a national course in the social sciences or whether we need a cosmopolitan path that also connects us in a new way."
- Ulrich Beck
(Related: First, Scientists)
"The adequate study of culture, our own and those on the opposite side of the globe, can press on to fulfillment only as we learn today from the humanities as well as from the scientists."
- Ruth Benedict
(Related: Culture, Fulfillment, Press, Scientists, Study, Today)
"Yet the effort to inform the public also encouraged responsible public discussion that succeeded in developing a consensus for the measured approach that many scientists supported."
- Paul Berg
(Related: Effort, Public, Scientists)
"I am sure my fellow-scientists will agree with me if I say that whatever we were able to achieve in our later years had its origin in the experiences of our youth and in the hopes and wishes which were formed before and during our time as students."
- Felix Bloch
(Related: Time, Students, Will, Wishes, Years, Youth)
"We all know scientists who in private life do not come up to the standard of truthfulness, but who, nevertheless, would not consciously falsify the results of their researches."
- Franz Boas
(Related: Life, Results, Scientists)
"Most executives, many scientists, and almost all business school graduates believe that if you analyze data, this will give you new ideas. Unfortunately, this belief is totally wrong. The mind can only see what it is prepared to see."
- Edward de Bono
(Related: Business, Ideas, Belief, Mind, School, Scientists, Will, Wrong)
"Being in an area of the planet where scientists believe mankind started is quite amazing."
- Jan de Bont
(Related: Being, Mankind, Scientists)
"I am but one member of a vast team made up of many organizations, officials, thousands of scientists, and millions of farmers - mostly small and humble - who for many years have been fighting a quiet, oftentimes losing war on the food production front."
- Norman Borlaug
(Related: Food, War, Fighting, Losing, Production, Quiet, Scientists, Years)
"The most wonderful discovery made by scientists is science itself."
- Jacob Bronowski
(Related: Science, Discovery, Scientists)
"Some otherwise sane scientists have seriously proposed that we tuck this deadly garbage under the edges of drifting continents but how can they be sure the moving land masses will climb over the waste and not just push it forward?"
- David R. Brower
(Related: Land, Scientists, Waste, Will)
"The scientists at the end of the 19th century had people coming to them with this weird behaviour, and they didn't know what was going on but there seemed to be a similarity. They needed an answer, so they made up one."
- Chester Brown
(Related: People, End, Scientists)
"Scientists are people who build the Brooklyn Bridge and then buy it."
- William F. Buckley, Jr.
(Related: People, Scientists)
"I think there is value in having practising scientists as leaders of research institutions."
- Thomas R. Cech
(Related: Leaders, Research, Scientists, Value)
"We really think it is a good thing for scientists to spend a little bit of their time either in the community or in schools or helping to train high school teachers."
- Thomas R. Cech
(Related: Time, Community, School, Schools, Scientists, Teachers)
"I don't think that they have many of the scientists who were involved in the weapons program to talk to at this time, and there were thousands of people, engineers and scientists, they know where the weapons are."
- Ahmed Chalabi
(Related: Time, People, Scientists, Talk, Weapons)
"It probably helps that my background is in the sciences and I can speak the scientists' language."
- David Chalmers
(Related: Language, Scientists)
"Each generation of scientists stands upon the shoulders of those who have gone before."
- Owen Chamberlain
(Related: Scientists)
"I feel blessed to be here representing our country and carrying out th research of scientists around the world... I hope you could feel the positive energy that beamed to the whole planet as we glided over."
- Laurel Clark
(Related: Hope, Positive, Country, Energy, Research, Scientists, World)
"It is the greatest scam in history. I am amazed, appalled and highly offended by it. Global Warming; It is a scam. Some dastardly scientists with environmental and political motives manipulated long term scientific data to create an illusion of rapid global warming."
- John Coleman
(Related: Environmental, History, Global warming, Illusion, Motives, Scientists)
"The AEC scientists were so narrowly focused on arming the United States for nuclear war that they failed to perceive facts - even widely known ones - that were outside their limited field of vision."
- Barry Commoner
(Related: War, Vision, Facts, Scientists, states, United)
"The AEC had at its command an army of highly skilled scientists."
- Barry Commoner
(Related: Army, Scientists)
"In every case, the environmental hazards were made known only by independent scientists, who were often bitterly opposed by the corporations responsible for the hazards."
- Barry Commoner
(Related: Environmental, Corporations, Scientists)
"I hope to see the bringing together of all the best educated people of the earth into a worldwide Congress of Scientists."
- Marquis de Condorcet
(Related: People, Hope, Congress, Earth, Scientists)
"I am not a scientist. I am, rather, an impresario of scientists."
- Jacques Yves Cousteau
(Related: Scientists)
"Few scientists acquainted with the chemistry of biological systems at the molecular level can avoid being inspired."
- Donald Cram
(Related: Being, Scientists)
"I think that climatic changes have a natural causes according many geological data... I am very glad to sign the U.S. Senate's report of scientists against the theory of man-made global warming."
- Uberto Crescenti
(Related: Causes, Global warming, Man, Scientists, Senate, Theory)
"Whenever you hear the consensus of scientists agrees on something or other, reach for your wallet, because you're being had."
- Michael Crichton
(Related: Being, Scientists)
"Some of the FDA's own scientists have charged that politics, not science, is behind the FDA's actions."
- Joseph Crowley
(Related: Politics, Science, Actions, Scientists)
"There are sadistic scientists who hurry to hunt down errors instead of establishing the truth."
- Marie Curie
(Related: Truth, Errors, Scientists)
"Using adult stem cells drawn from bone marrow and umbilical cord blood system cells, scientists have discovered new treatments for scores of diseases and conditions such as Parkinson's disease, juvenile diabetes, and spinal cord injuries."
- Nathan Deal
(Related: Blood, Disease, Scientists)
"Just because scientists have the knowledge to do it, the technology to do it, and some may even have a financial motive or other incentive to do it, does not make it right."
- Nathan Deal
(Related: Technology, Knowledge, Financial, May, Motive, Right, Scientists)
"The moral issue here is whether the United States Congress is going to stand in the way of science and preclude scientists from doing lifesaving research."
- Rosa DeLauro
(Related: Science, Congress, Research, Scientists, states, United)
"Scientists often have a naive faith that if only they could discover enough facts about a problem, these facts would somehow arrange themselves in a compelling and true solution."
- Theodosius Dobzhansky
(Related: Faith, Facts, Scientists, Solution)
"There must be possible a fiction which, leaving sociology and case histories to the scientists, can arrive at the truth about the human condition, here and now, with all the bright magic of the fairy tale."
- Ralph Ellison
(Related: Truth, Fiction, Magic, Now, Scientists)
"Scientists have stated that embryonic stem cells provide the best opportunity for devising unique treatments of these serious diseases since, unlike adult stem cells, they may be induced to develop into any type of cell."
- Eliot Engel
(Related: Opportunity, May, Scientists)
"I recognized that teaching and research institutions vitally depend on the involvement of active scientists also in management functions."
- Richard Ernst
(Related: Management, Research, Scientists, Teaching)
"As it turns out, social scientists have established only one fact about single women's mental health: employment improves it."
- Susan Faludi
(Related: Women, Fact, Scientists)
"Global warming is real. It is happening today. It is being charted by our satellites. It is being charted by our scientists. It is being charted by those of us in this body, and I think the real key is if we are ready to admit that fact and take the action to make the necessary conversion."
- Diane Feinstein
(Related: Action, Being, Body, Fact, Global warming, Key, Scientists, Today)
"I thought I would reflect here on a theme most scientists enjoy recalling: the part luck played in their accomplishments."
- Edmond H. Fischer
(Related: Thought, Accomplishments, Luck, Scientists)
"If they don't depend on true evidence, scientists are no better than gossips."
- Penelope Fitzgerald
(Related: Scientists)
"Science is what scientists do."
- Dennis Flanagan
(Related: Science, Scientists)
"One of the great problems of the world today is undoubtedly this problem of not being able to talk to scientists, because we don't understand science; they can't talk to us because they don't understand anything else, poor dears."
- Michael Flanders
(Related: Science, Being, Poor, Problems, Scientists, Talk, Today, World)
"Scientists are really very conscious of the fact that they stand on the shoulders of an enormous tree of preceding workers and that their own contribution is not so enormous."
- Martin Fleischmann
(Related: Fact, Scientists, Workers)
"My whole damn family was nice. I don't think I've imagined it. It's true. Maybe it has to do with being brought up as Christian Scientists. Half of my relatives were Readers or Practitioners in the church."
- Henry Fonda
(Related: Family, Christian, Church, Being, Relatives, Scientists)
"The frontier orbital approach was further developed in various directions by my own group and many other scientists, both theoretical and experimental."
- Kenichi Fukui
(Related: Scientists)
"We think that it is the best scientists working in the frontier fields of science who are best able to judge what is good and what is bad - if any - in the application of their scientific research."
- Kenichi Fukui
(Related: Science, Research, Scientists)
"I believe that the quantum of our knowledge will increase considerably in the coming years and that scientists will continue to be amongst the brave voices speaking out."
- Peter Garrett
(Related: Knowledge, Scientists, Will, Years)
"So, I am independently well-off and don't have to do anything, but I still do. I write books, lecture around the world, work with scientists and governments."
- Uri Geller
(Related: Work, Books, Scientists, World)
"Scientists tend to be skeptical, but the weakness of the community of science is that it tends to move into preformed establishment modes that say this is the only way of doing science, the only valid view."
- Walter Gilbert
(Related: Science, Community, Scientists, Weakness)
"The book is a dialogue between The Dalai Lama and a group of scientists about how we can better handle our destructive emotions and how to overcome them."
- Daniel Goleman
(Related: Emotions, Scientists)
"Anthropologists are a connecting link between poets and scientists; though their field-work among primitive peoples has often made them forget the language of science."
- Robert Graves
(Related: Science, Forget, Language, Poets, Scientists)
"Rocket scientists agree that we have about reached the limit of our ability to travel in space using chemical rockets. To achieve anything near the speed of light we will need a new energy source and a new propellant. Nuclear fission is not an option."
- Wilson Greatbatch
(Related: Travel, Ability, Energy, Light, Scientists, Space, Will)
"The great Jewish scientists and philosophers of the last few generations - Spinoza, Einstein, Freud, Robert Oppenheimer and others - were natives of Europe and America."
- David Ben Gurion
(Related: America, Europe, Generations, Scientists)
"Scientists care deeply about their place in that culture, and their contribution to it."
- Haldan Keffer Hartline
(Related: Care, Culture, Scientists)
"As scientists, we keep an open mind, but we have to base our ideas about the past on archaeological evidence."
- Zahi Hawass
(Related: Ideas, Mind, Open, Past, Scientists)
"If we do discover a complete theory, it should be in time understandable in broad principle by everyone. Then we shall all, philosophers, scientists, and just ordinary people be able to take part in the discussion of why we and the universe exist."
- Stephen Hawking
(Related: Time, People, Scientists, Theory, Universe)
"I believe scientists have a duty to share the excitement and pleasure of their work with the general public, and I enjoy the challenge of presenting difficult ideas in an understandable way."
- Antony Hewish
(Related: Work, Ideas, Challenge, Duty, Excitement, Pleasure, Public, Scientists)
"Our record number of teenagers must become our record number of high school and college graduates and our record number of teachers, scientists, doctors, lawyers, and skilled professionals."
- Ruben Hinojosa
(Related: College, Doctors, Lawyers, professionals, School, Scientists, Teachers, Teenagers)
"There is not much that even the most socially responsible scientists can do as individuals, or even as a group, about the social consequences of their activities."
- Eric Hobsbawm
(Related: Consequences, Scientists)
"The most important thing about global warming is this. Whether humans are responsible for the bulk of climate change is going to be left to the scientists, but it's all of our responsibility to leave this planet in better shape for the future generations than we found it."
- Mike Huckabee
(Related: Change, Climate, Climate change, Future, Generations, Global warming, Responsibility, Scientists)
"It is inexcusable for scientists to torture animals; let them make their experiments on journalists and politicians."
- Henrik Ibsen
(Related: Animals, Politicians, Scientists)
"Some scientists use TeX or LatEX but for most people Word is the thing that writers use these days."
- Miguel de Icaza
(Related: People, Scientists, Word, Writers)
"I am optimistic globally. So many scientists are working frantically on the reparation of our planet."
- Steve Irwin
(Related: Scientists)
"The key fact missed most often by social scientists utilizing documentary films for data, is this: documentary films are not found or reported things; they're made things."
- Bruce Jackson
(Related: Fact, Key, Scientists)
"Much of Indian science seems intuitive and not bound by the rigid thinking of classical scientists."
- Roland Joffe
(Related: Science, Scientists, Thinking)
"Scientists are very afraid of being proven wrong."
- Donald Johanson
(Related: Being, Scientists, Wrong)
"No doubt it is true that science cannot study God, but it hardly follows that God had to keep a safe distance from everything that scientists want to study."
- Phillip E. Johnson
(Related: Science, God, Doubt, Scientists, Study, Want)
"The problem with allowing God a role in the history of life is not that science would cease, but rather that scientists would have to acknowledge the existence of something important which is outside the boundaries of natural science."
- Phillip E. Johnson
(Related: History, Life, Science, God, Existence, Scientists)
"Scientists have found the gene for shyness. They would have found it years ago, but it was hiding behind a couple of other genes."
- Jonathan Katz
(Related: Scientists, Shyness, Years)
"Job's forthright indictment of the injustice of this world is surely right. The ways of the world are weird and much more unpredictable than either scientists or theologians generally make things look."
- Walter Kaufmann
(Related: Injustice, Job, Right, Scientists, World)
"I am sorry to say that there is too much point to the wisecrack that life is extinct on other planets because their scientists were more advanced than ours."
- John F. Kennedy
(Related: Life, Scientists)
"What the scientists have in their briefcases is terrifying."
- Nikita Khrushchev
(Related: Scientists)
"He was a crystal of morality among our scientists."
- Nikita Khrushchev
(Related: Morality, Scientists)
"In Massachusetts, scientists have created the first human clone. The bad thing is that in thirty years, the clone will still be depressed because the Boston Red Sox will still have not won a World Series."
- Craig Kilborn
(Related: Boston, First, Scientists, Will, World, Years)
"Most of the scientific community believes that for the full potential of embryonic stem cell research to be reached, the number of cell lines readily available to scientists must increase."
- Ron Kind
(Related: Community, Potential, Research, Scientists)
"In fact what I would like to see is thousands of computer scientists let loose to do whatever they want. That's what really advances the field."
- Donald Knuth
(Related: Computer, Fact, Scientists, Want)
"Scientists are peeping toms at the keyhole of eternity."
- Arthur Koestler
(Related: Eternity, Scientists)
"It is, I think, particularly in periods of acknowledged crisis that scientists have turned to philosophical analysis as a device for unlocking the riddles of their field. Scientists have not generally needed or wanted to be philosophers."
- Thomas Kuhn
(Related: Crisis, Scientists)
"Einstein's results again turned the tables and now very few philosophers or scientists still think that scientific knowledge is, or can be, proven knowledge."
- Imre Lakatos
(Related: Knowledge, Results, Scientists)
"If Baltimore's view, that scientists who do not take the words of authorities are far removed from the ordinary behavior of scientists, prevails in the scientific community, then something fundamental, very serious, and very disturbing is happening to the scientific community."
- Serge Lang
(Related: Behavior, Community, Scientists, Words)
"Originally, in the early eighties, the drug hypothesis was among the first which occurred to scientists."
- Serge Lang
(Related: First, Scientists)
"Happy indeed is the scientist who not only has the pleasures which I have enumerated, but who also wins the recognition of fellow scientists and of the mankind which ultimately benefits from his endeavors."
- Irving Langmuir
(Related: Benefits, Mankind, Scientists)
"At Berkeley I had my first encounter with real professional scientists."
- Robert B. Laughlin
(Related: First, Scientists)
"A number of scientists with greatly different backgrounds can come up with completely different assessments. The discussions or controversies are endless. Once a year, we try to bring the most important discoverers together to exchange their experiences and knowledge."
- Richard Leakey
(Related: Knowledge, Scientists)
"Scientists - the crowd that for dash and style make the general public look like the Bloomsbury set."
- Fran Lebowitz
(Related: Public, Scientists, Style)
"Physicists analyze systems. Web scientists, however, can create the systems."
- Tim Berners Lee
(Related: Scientists)
"As great scientists have said and as all children know, it is above all by the imagination that we achieve perception, and compassion, and hope."
- Ursula K. LeGuin
(Related: Imagination, Hope, Perception, Children, Compassion, Scientists)
"Scientists have proven that it's impossible to long-jump 30 feet, but I don't listen to that kind of talk. Thoughts like that have a way of sinking into your feet."
- Carl Lewis
(Related: Thoughts, Feet, Scientists, Talk)
"Just after World War II, this country led the world in science by every way you could measure it, yet the number of scientists was a tiny proportion of what it is now."
- James Lovelock
(Related: Science, War, Country, Measure, Now, Scientists, World, World war)
"NASA space scientists have been studying giraffe skin so they can apply what they learn from it to the construction of spacesuits."
- Joanna Lumley
(Related: Scientists, Skin, Space)
"The Church does not pretend to be scientists. It teaches based upon what science tells it."
- Wellington Mara
(Related: Science, Church, Scientists)
"Scientists at MIT and engineering schools all across America say that they could improve the fuel economy standards for the existing set of vehicles by 10 miles per gallon using existing technology, without compromising safety or comfort at all."
- Ed Markey
(Related: Technology, America, Comfort, Economy, Engineering, Safety, Schools, Scientists)
"If global cooling will come soon - scientists will lose trust."
- Shigenori Maruyama
(Related: Trust, Scientists, Will)
"And the program was developed in large part by behavioral scientists who were working with the military, who do everything they possibly can to measure a soldier's stress levels to see how they're doing physically and emotionally, as they go through this program."
- Jane Mayer
(Related: Measure, Military, Scientists, Stress)
"I get a sense that we've all been educated into one school of thought. I'm not surprised at all to find among the overwhelming majority of scientists, are people who would hold one particular view because that's all they're exposed to."
- Thabo Mbeki
(Related: Thought, People, Majority, School, Scientists, Sense)
"Scientists worldwide agree that the reduction needed to stabilize the climate is actually more like 80 percent."
- Donella Meadows
(Related: Climate, Scientists)
"I'd like to think the scientists need us - but do they? Did Newton need Blake?"
- James Merrill
(Related: Scientists)
"Scientists dream about doing great things. Engineers do them."
- James A. Michener
(Related: Dream, Scientists)
"Dedicated researchers seek better treatments and cures for diabetes, kidney disease, Alzheimer's and every form of cancer. But these scientists face an array of disincentives. We can do better."
- Michael Milken
(Related: Cancer, Disease, Scientists)
"Now, that is in a way also what scientists are trying to do they're trying to get people to see that the world can be represented in an alternative way and that it's right."
- Jonathan Miller
(Related: People, Now, Right, Scientists, Trying, World)
"A lot of high-level scientists are in fact people of almost universal interest."
- Jonathan Miller
(Related: People, Fact, Interest, Scientists)
"People are already self-selected by the time they've decided to become scientists."
- Jonathan Miller
(Related: Time, People, Scientists, Self)
"Let's be clear: the work of science has nothing whatever to do with consensus which is the business of politics. What is relevant is reproducible results. The greatest scientists in history are great precisely because they broke with the consensus."
- Timothy R. Minnich
(Related: Business, History, Science, Work, Politics, Nothing, Results, Scientists)
"The data which is used to date for making the conclusions and predictions on global warming are so rough and primitive, compared to what's needed, and so unreliable that they are not even worth mentioning by respectful scientists."
- Gregory W. Moore
(Related: Global warming, Scientists, Worth)
"You frighten a lot of scientists. If they say that climate is not changing, they lose their research grants. And some people cannot afford that; they become silent, or a few of us speak up, because we think that it's for the honesty of science, that we have to do it."
- Nils-Axel Morner
(Related: Science, People, Honesty, Climate, Research, Scientists)
"And so, I was not a military test pilot, but as soon as NASA expressed an interest in flying scientists and people who were not military test pilots, that was an epiphany that just came like a stroke of lightning."
- Story Musgrave
(Related: People, Flying, Interest, Military, Scientists)
"I seem to be thinking rationally again in the style that is characteristic of scientists. However, this is not entirely a matter of joy as if someone returned from physical disability to good physical health."
- John Forbes Nash, Jr.
(Related: Health, Disability, Joy, Scientists, Style, Thinking)
"Words of wisdom are spoken by children at least as often as scientists."
- James Newman
(Related: Wisdom, Children, Scientists, Words)
"I have some friends, colleagues here at the Karolinska Institute and even in the United States and many other countries too, because we are working together as scientists."
- Lennart Nilsson
(Related: Countries, Friends, Scientists, states, United)
"Scientists are always skeptics."
- Donald Norman
(Related: Scientists)
"The scientists often have more unfettered imaginations than current philosophers do. Relativity theory came as a complete surprise to philosophers, and so did quantum mechanics, and so did other things."
- Robert Nozick
(Related: Relativity, Scientists, Theory)
"I think philosophers can do things akin to theoretical scientists, in that, having read about empirical data, they too can think of what hypotheses and theories might account for that data. So there's a continuity between philosophy and science in that way."
- Robert Nozick
(Related: Science, Philosophy, Scientists, Theories)
"Scientists announced that they have located the gene for alcoholism. Scientists say they found it at a party, talking way too loudly."
- Conan O'Brien
(Related: Party, Scientists, Talking)
"Although reading the classics in Latin in school may be not as fulfilling as it would be at a more mature age, few scientists can afford the time for such diversion later in life."
- George Andrew Olah
(Related: Life, Time, Age, May, Reading, School, Scientists)
"As this body of knowledge has evolved, a much more critical job for researchers and scientists has evolved into explaining and educating policy makers and the public to the risks of global warming and the possible consequences of action or of no action."
- John Olver
(Related: Policy, Knowledge, Action, Body, Consequences, Global warming, Job, Public, Scientists)
"The scientists who do climate research understand that much of the ever increasing concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere since 1850 must be attributed to burning those fossil fuels to produce the energy that drives industrialization."
- John Olver
(Related: Climate, Energy, Research, Scientists)
"The conception that, instead of this, contemporary society is at or near a turning point is very prominent in the views of a school of social scientists who, though they are still comparatively few, are getting more and more of a hearing."
- Talcott Parsons
(Related: Society, Hearing, School, Scientists)
"Facts are the air of scientists. Without them you can never fly."
- Linus Pauling
(Related: Facts, Scientists)
"A large fraction of the most interesting scientists have read a lot of SF at one time or another, either early enough that it may have played a part in their becoming scientists or at some later date just because they liked the ideas."
- Frederik Pohl
(Related: Time, Ideas, May, Scientists)
"Though neglectful of their responsibility to protect science, scientists are increasingly aware of their responsibility to society."
- John Charles Polanyi
(Related: Society, Science, Responsibility, Scientists)
"Scientists and scholars should constitute themselves as an international NGO of exceptional authority."
- John Charles Polanyi
(Related: Authority, Scientists)
"Some dreamers demand that scientists only discover things that can be used for good."
- John Charles Polanyi
(Related: Scientists)
"Others think it the responsibility of scientists to coerce the rest of society, because they have the power that derives from special knowledge."
- John Charles Polanyi
(Related: Power, Society, Knowledge, Responsibility, Rest, Scientists)
"Our assessment of socio-economic worth is largely a sham. We scientists should not lend ourselves to it - though we routinely do. We should, instead, insist on applying the criterion of quality."
- John Charles Polanyi
(Related: Quality, Scientists, Worth)
"Individual scientists like myself - and many more conspicuous - pointed to the dangers of radioactive fallout over Canada if we were to launch nuclear weapons to intercept incoming bombers."
- John Charles Polanyi
(Related: Canada, Scientists, Weapons)
"Admittedly, scientific authority is not distributed evenly throughout the body of scientists; some distinguished members of the profession predominate over others of a more junior standing."
- Michael Polanyi
(Related: Authority, Body, Profession, Scientists)
"The first thing to make clear is that scientists, freely making their own choice of problems and pursuing them in the light of their own personal judgment, are in fact co-operating as members of a closely knit organization."
- Michael Polanyi
(Related: Choice, Fact, First, Judgment, Light, Problems, Scientists)
"Admittedly, the body of scientists, as a whole, does uphold the authority of science over the lay public. It controls thereby also the process by which young men are trained to become members of the scientific profession."
- Michael Polanyi
(Related: Men, Science, Authority, Body, Profession, Public, Scientists)
"My title is intended to suggest that the community of scientists is organized in a way which resembles certain features of a body politic and works according to economic principles similar to those by which the production of material goods is regulated."
- Michael Polanyi
(Related: Body, Community, Principles, Production, Scientists)
"I also think we need to maintain distinctions - the doctrine of creation is different from a scientific cosmology, and we should resist the temptation, which sometimes scientists give in to, to try to assimilate the concepts of theology to the concepts of science."
- John Polkinghorne
(Related: Science, Creation, Doctrine, Scientists, Temptation, Theology)
"Scientists are human, they're as biased as any other group. But they do have one great advantage in that science is a self-correcting process."
- Cyril Ponnamperuma
(Related: Science, Scientists, Self)
"Drug use, within entire teams continues unabated. It is planned and deliberate cheating, with complex methods, sophisticated substances and techniques, and the active complicity of doctors, scientists, team officials and riders. There is nothing accidental about it."
- Richard Pound
(Related: Cheating, Doctors, Nothing, Scientists)
"The Nobel Prize, so long regarded in our science as the highest reward a man's work can earn, must bring to its recipient a most solemn sense of his debt to his fellow scientists and those of the past."
- Edward M. Purcell
(Related: Science, Work, Debt, Man, Past, Reward, Scientists, Sense)
"However, I believe that it would be difficult to have legitimate scientists agree to participate."
- James Randi
(Related: Scientists)
"What the public needs to understand is that these new technologies, especially in recombinant DNA technology, allow scientists to bypass biological boundaries altogether."
- Jeremy Rifkin
(Related: Technology, Needs, Public, Scientists)
"Many of the mainstream agricultural scientists, especially at the agricultural schools, but at all of our major universities, are tied into all sorts of contractual relationships and consulting relationships with the life science companies."
- Jeremy Rifkin
(Related: Life, Science, Consulting, Relationships, Schools, Scientists)
"At a time when science plays such a powerful role in the life of society, when the destiny of the whole of mankind may hinge on the results of scientific research, it is incumbent on all scientists to be fully conscious of that role, and conduct themselves accordingly."
- Joseph Rotblat
(Related: Life, Science, Time, Society, Destiny, Mankind, May, Research, Results, Scientists)
"But scientists on both sides of the iron curtain played a very significant role in maintaining the momentum of the nuclear arms race throughout the four decades of the Cold War."
- Joseph Rotblat
(Related: War, Iron curtain, Race, Scientists)
"I appeal to my fellow scientists to remember their responsibility to humanity."
- Joseph Rotblat
(Related: Humanity, Responsibility, Scientists)
"I think that cognitive scientists would support the view that our visual system does not directly represent what is out there in the world and that our brain constructs a lot of the imagery that we believe we are seeing."
- Galen Rowell
(Related: Scientists, Support, World)
"In 1947 I defended my thesis on nuclear physics, and in 1948 I was included in a group of research scientists whose task was to develop nuclear weapons."
- Andrei Sakharov
(Related: Physics, Research, Scientists, Weapons)
"Scientists and creationists are always at odds, of course."
- Marilyn vos Savant
(Related: Scientists)
"The scientist only imposes two things, namely truth and sincerity, imposes them upon himself and upon other scientists."
- Erwin Schrodinger
(Related: Truth, Scientists, Sincerity)
"The future, according to some scientists, will be exactly like the past, only far more expensive."
- John Sladek
(Related: Future, Past, Scientists, Will)
"The U.S. has the finest research scientists in the world, but we are falling far behind other countries, like South Korea and Singapore, that are moving forward with embryonic stem cell research."
- Louise Slaughter
(Related: Countries, Research, Scientists, World)
"Sure, science involves trial and error. Scientists refine theories each day. But as they do, they help us grasp more clearly the wonders of the world and the universe."
- Tony Snow
(Related: Science, Day, Error, Help, Scientists, Theories, Universe, Wonders, World)
"Contrary to popular accounts, very few scientists in the world - possibly none - have a sufficiently thorough, "big picture" understanding of the climate system to be relied upon for a prediction of the magnitude of global warming. To the public, we all might seem like experts, but the vast majority of us work on only a small portion of the problem."
- Roy Spencer
(Related: Work, Climate, Experts, Global warming, Majority, Popular, Public, Scientists, Understanding, World)
"Many scientists will have to contribute to the solution of the great problem; they will have to follow up and measure all those phenomena in which the atomic structure is directly expressed."
- Johannes Stark
(Related: Measure, Scientists, Solution, Will)
"And yet I would not freely exchange my science for those of my fellow laureates. They are forever confined in their professional discussions to the small numbers of their fellow scientists."
- George Stigler
(Related: Science, Numbers, Scientists)
"Scientists across the globe are catching on - global warming is not real science. There is a sucker born every minute who believes in it, and Al Gore is playing the role of P.T. Barnum."
- Max S. Strozier
(Related: Science, Global warming, Scientists)
"The only people who have the long view are some scientists and some science fiction writers."
- Sheri S. Tepper
(Related: Science, People, Fiction, Scientists, Writers)
"The scientists of today think deeply instead of clearly. One must be sane to think clearly, but one can think deeply and be quite insane."
- Nikola Tesla
(Related: Scientists, Today)
"Today's scientists have substituted mathematics for experiments, and they wander off through equation after equation, and eventually build a structure which has no relation to reality."
- Nikola Tesla
(Related: Mathematics, Reality, Scientists, Today)
"I think you will find scientists that think like you in Germany and Britain, and you will find politicians that think like Weinberger. I think the most bellicose ruling group in the Western world at the moment is the British."
- E. P. Thompson
(Related: Germany, Politicians, Scientists, Will, World)
"Some people think that our planet is suffering from a fever. Now scientists are telling us that Mars is experiencing its own planetary warming: Martian warming. This has led some people, not necessarily scientists, to wonder if Mars and Jupiter, non signatories to the Kyoto Treaty, are actually inhabited by alien SUV-driving industrialists."
- Fred Thompson
(Related: People, Now, Scientists, Suffering, Wonder)
"Now that women are jockeys, baseball umpires, atomic scientists, and business executives, maybe someday they can master parallel parking."
- Bill Vaughan
(Related: Business, Women, Baseball, Now, Scientists)
"A scientist is in a sense a learned small boy. There is something of the scientist in every small boy. Others must outgrow it. Scientists can stay that way all their lives."
- George Wald
(Related: Scientists, Sense)
"One could not be a successful scientist without realizing that, in contrast to the popular conception supported by newspapers and mothers of scientists, a goodly number of scientists are not only narrow-minded and dull, but also just stupid."
- James D. Watson
(Related: Successful, Contrast, Mothers, Newspapers, Popular, Scientists)
"What the poor, the weak, and the inarticulate desperately require is power, organization, and a sense of identity and purpose, not rarefied advice of political scientists."
- Paul Wellstone
(Related: Power, Purpose, Advice, Identity, Poor, Scientists, Sense)
"Month after month, Wizard Academy equips people who want to make a difference. This is why journalists and scientists and artists and educators and business owners and advertising professionals and ministers are attracted to our little school."
- Roy H. Williams
(Related: Business, People, Advertising, Artists, Difference, professionals, School, Scientists, Want)
"Scientists under all forms of government must be able to participate fully in international efforts."
- Kenneth G. Wilson
(Related: Government, Scientists)
"They decided that unpaid leave could only be granted through the decision of a council that consisted almost entirely of scientists who couldn't understand my reasons for wanting to go so. They said no, no unpaid. So I immediately resigned."
- George Woodcock
(Related: Decision, Scientists)
"Some scientists claim that hydrogen, because it is so plentiful, is the basic building block of the universe. I dispute that. I say there is more stupidity than hydrogen, and that is the basic building block of the universe."
- Frank Zappa
(Related: Building, Scientists, Stupidity, Universe)
"The athlete of today is not an athlete alone. He's the center of a team - doctors, scientists, coaches, agents and so on."
- Emil Zatopek
(Related: Coaches, Doctors, Scientists, Today)