Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Given the scale of issues like global warming and epidemic disease, we shouldn't underestimate the importance of a can-do attitude to science rather than a can't-afford-it attitude.
Every evening, I come home tired and have just enough energy to fill out the endless tax forms, to pay bills, not to let my house neglected and to hear the radio concert for an hour.
I worry that, especially as the Millennium edges nearer, pseudo-science and superstition will seem year by year more tempting, the siren song of unreason more sonorous and attractive.
I have been watching and drawing the surface of Mars. It is wonderfully full of detail. There is certainly no question about there being mountains and large greatly elevated plateaus.
It is in the world of ideas and in the relation of his brain to the universe itself that the superiority of Man lies. The rise of Man may justly be described as an adventure in ideas.
Oh leave the Wise our measures to collate. One thing at least is certain, light has weight. One thing is certain and the rest debate. Light rays, when near the Sun, do not go straight.
History is full of people who out of fear, or ignorance, or lust for power has destroyed knowledge of immeasurable value which truly belongs to us all. We must not let it happen again.
Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.
Starlight is falling on every square mile of the earth's surface, and the best we can do at present is to gather up and concentrate the rays that strike at area 100 inches in diameter.
The extreme sophistication of modern technology - wonderful though its benefits are - is, ironically, an impediment to engaging young people with basics: with learning how things work.
No heating system can deliver perfectly uniform temperatures throughout a house, and drafts can magnify the perceived difference in temperatures. Try walking around with a thermometer.
I consider it an extremely dangerous doctrine, because the more likely we are to assume that the solution comes from the outside, the less likely we are to solve our problems ourselves.
It feels great to discover a planet, just like any discovery in science, except that it has more of the feel of exploration - you can go back and look at it. However, I can never visit.
In future, children won't perceive the stars as mere twinkling points of light: they'll learn that each is a 'Sun', orbited by planets fully as interesting as those in our Solar system.
Typically, only about 2 percent of the American populace tunes in to PBS's 'Nova' series - the most successful science show on the tube. 'Survivor' and 'X Factor' get twice the ratings.
There was a time when we wanted to be told what an electron is. The question was never answered. No familiar conceptions can be woven around the electron; it belongs to the waiting list.
But I try not to think with my gut. If I'm serious about understanding the world, thinking with anything besides my brain, as tempting as that might be, is likely to get me into trouble.
Those afraid of the universe as it really is, those who pretend to nonexistent knowledge and envision a Cosmos centered on human beings will prefer the fleeting comforts of superstition.
I realized that I would have some very tough sledding, and I was very discouraged because I didn't see much hope of getting into the field I wanted to get into with no college education.
From the growth of the Internet through to the mapping of the human genome and our understanding of the human brain, the more we understand, the more there seems to be for us to explore.
Science is a collaborative enterprise, spanning the generations. When it permits us to see the far side of some new horizon, we remember those who prepared the way - seeing for them also.
The man who voyages strange seas must of necessity be a little unsure of himself. It is the man with the flashy air of knowing everything, who is always with it, that we should beware of.
Planets that don't currently sport plate tectonics, such as Venus and Mars, are scarcely habitable. Tectonics might be a requirement of any world that aspires to a rich diversity of life.
I had the usual friends who pointed out constellations of stars. But it really was watching the stars. It was getting some sense of the motion of the earth. I found it a remarkable thing.
I have tried to improve telescopes and practiced continually to see with them. These instruments have play'd me so many tricks that I have at last found them out in many of their humours.
The prediction of nuclear winter is drawn not, of course, from any direct experience with the consequences of global nuclear war, but rather from an investigation of the governing physics.
The secrets of evolution are death and time-the deaths of enormous numbers of lifeforms that were imperfectly adapted to the environment; and time for a long succession of small mutations.
We are at a crossroads in human history. Never before has there been a moment so simultaneously perilous and promising. We are the first species to have taken evolution into our own hands.
We send messages all the time, free of charge. There's a big shell out there now, 80 light-years around us. A civilization only a little more advanced than we are can pick those things up.
The world of learning is so broad, and the human soul is so limited in power! We reach forth and strain every nerve, but we seize only a bit of the curtain that hides the infinite from us.
The carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere is measured. It's uncontroversial. It's going up. We know that has a tendency to warm the atmosphere and we should be worried about that.
The idea of close encounters of the zero'th kind - which is to say, not a close encounter at all, but simply uncovering evidence that someone's out there - dates back to the Victorian era.
The space elevator's not just another competitive technology, promoted by people who simply like the idea of diminishing the luster of the thrusters. It would open wide the doors to space.
The ideas of science germinate in a matrix of established knowledge gained by experiment; they are not lonesome thoughts, born in a rarified realm where no researcher has ever gone before.
A hundred thousand million Stars make one Galaxy; A hundred thousand million Galaxies make one Universe. The figures may not be very trustworthy, but I think they give a correct impression.
Our loyalties are to the species and the planet. We speak for Earth. Our obligation to survive is owed not just to ourselves but also to that Cosmos, ancient and vast, from which we spring.
For women there are, undoubtedly, great difficulties in the path, but so much the more to overcome. First, no woman should say, "I am but a woman!" But a woman! What more can you ask to be?
There is an ever-widening gap between what science allows and what we should actually do. There are many doors science can open that should be kept closed, on prudential or ethical grounds.
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.
We are the only species on the planet, so far as we know, to have invented a communal memory stored neither in our genes nor in our brains. The warehouse of this memory is called the library
Both the Freudian and the Platonic metaphors emphasize the considerable independence of and tension among the constituent parts of the psyche, a point that characterizes the human condition.
Earlier generations of stars in the galaxy could well have had planets. But really, there was only hydrogen and helium to work with, so they'd all be gas giants and not small, rocky planets.
Once typecast as the indispensable altarpiece of a well-appointed living room, TVs have infected every human environment. The average American household has more television sets than people.
Star Trek's genial premise is that the cosmos is flush with intelligent species, and our descendants will interact with them face-to-face, thanks to warp drive and some winsome space cadets.
Astronomers are greatly disappointed when, having traveled halfway around the world to see an eclipse, clouds prevent a sight of it; and yet a sense of relief accompanies the disappointment.
A millennium before Europeans were willing to divest themselves of the Biblical idea that the world was a few thousand years old, the Mayans were thinking of millions and the Hindus billions.
The understanding of the intent of the artist which I can achieve when high sometimes carries over to when I’m down. This is one of many human frontiers which cannabis has helped me traverse.
And after we returned to the savannahs and abandoned the trees, did we long for those great graceful leaps and ecstatic moments of weightlessness in the shafts of sunlight of the forest roof?
Earlier theories ... were based on the hypothesis that all the matter in the universe was created in one big bang at a particular time in the remote past. [Coining the "big bang" expression.]
I think a lot of kids are interested in two science subjects: dinosaurs and aliens. The reason is almost genetic; we're hard-wired to be interested in things that might be a little dangerous.