It has often and confidently been asserted, that man's origin can never be known: but ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, and not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science.
—Charles Darwin in The Descent of Man
What is a scientist after all? It is a curious man looking through a keyhole, the keyhole of nature, trying to know what’s going on.
—Jacques Cousteau
As an adolescent I aspired to lasting fame, I craved factual certainty, and I thirsted for a meaningful vision of human life — so I became a scientist. This is like becoming an archbishop so you can meet girls.
—Matt Cartmill
In the Middle Ages people believed that the earth was flat, for which they had at least the evidence of their senses: we believe it to be round, not because as many as 1 percent of us could give the physical reasons for so quaint a belief, but because modern science has convinced us that nothing that is obvious is true, and that everything that is magical, improbable, extraordinary, gigantic, microscopic, heartless, or outrageous is scientific.
—George Bernard Shaw
Whatever the scientists may say, if we take the supernatural out of life, we leave only the unnatural.
—Amelia Barr
The scientific theory I like best is that the rings of Saturn are composed entirely of lost airline luggage.
—Mark Russell
We especially need imagination in science. It is not all mathematics, nor all logic, but it is somewhat beauty and poetry.
—Maria Mitchell
If an elderly but distinguished scientist says that something is possible, he is almost certainly right; but if he says that it is impossible, he is very probably wrong.
—Arthur C. Clarke
One thing I have learned in a long life: that all our science, measured against reality, is primitive and childlike — and yet it is the most precious thing we have.
—Albert Einstein
Science may set limits to knowledge, but should not set limits to imagination.
—Bertrand Russell
Philosophers say a great deal about what is absolutely necessary for science, and it is always, so far as one can see, rather naive, and probably wrong.
—Richard Feynman
Research is the process of going up alleys to see if they are blind.
—Marston Bates
Humor can be dissected as a frog can, but the thing dies in the process and the innards are discouraging to any but the pure scientific mind.
—E. B. White
The first principle is that you must not fool yourself - and you are the easiest person to fool.
—Richard Feynman
We live in a society exquisitely dependent on science and technology, in which hardly anyone knows anything about science and technology.
—Carl Sagan