Quotes · Skopia

115 quotes

Moreover, in a system of two bodies mutually acting upon each other, since the differences between their centres and the common centre of gravity of both are reciprocally as the bodies, the relative motions of those bodies, whether of approaching to or of receding from that centre, will be equal junong themselves. Therefore since the changes which happen to motions are equal and directed to contrary parts. — Isaac Newton · 1687 The eternal mystery of the world is its comprehensibility. — Albert Einstein · 1936 The whole of science is nothing more than a refinement of every day thinking. — Albert Einstein · 1936 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 · 1871 Equipped with his five senses, man explores the universe around him and calls the adventure Science. — Edwin Hubble · 1929 A man does not attain the status of Galileo merely because he is persecuted; he must also be right. — Stephen Jay Gould · 1975 All 17 quotes →

Evolution16 quotes

There is grandeur in this view of life...whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved. — Charles Darwin · 1859 Man with all his noble qualities, with sympathy which feels for the most debased, with benevolence which extends not only to other men but to the humblest living creature, with his god-like intellect which has penetrated into the movements and constitution of the solar system—with all these exalted powers—Man still bears in his bodily frame the indelible stamp of his lowly origin. — Charles Darwin · 1871 I have called this principle, by which each slight variation, if useful, is preserved, by the term of Natural Selection. — Charles Darwin · 1859 We thus learn that man is descended from a hairy, tailed quadruped, probably arboreal in its habits, and an inhabitant of the Old World. — Charles Darwin · 1871 When the views advanced by me in this volume, and by Mr. Wallace, or when analogous views on the origin of species are generally admitted, we can dimly foresee that there will be a considerable revolution in natural history. — Charles Darwin · 1879 Owing to this struggle for life, any variation, however slight and from whatever cause proceeding, if it be in any degree profitable to an individual of any species, in its infinitely complex relations to other organic beings and to external nature, will tend to the preservation of that individual, and will generally be inherited by its offspring. The offspring, also, will thus have a better chance of surviving. — Charles Darwin · 1859 All 16 quotes →

Natural selection7 quotes

I have called this principle, by which each slight variation, if useful, is preserved, by the term of Natural Selection. — Charles Darwin · 1859 Owing to this struggle for life, any variation, however slight and from whatever cause proceeding, if it be in any degree profitable to an individual of any species, in its infinitely complex relations to other organic beings and to external nature, will tend to the preservation of that individual, and will generally be inherited by its offspring. The offspring, also, will thus have a better chance of surviving. — Charles Darwin · 1859 The shield may be as important for victory, as the sword or spear. — Charles Darwin · 1859 If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed, which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down. But I can find out no such case. — Charles Darwin · 1859 From the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly follows. — Charles Darwin · 1859 Natural selection, the blind, unconscious, automatic process which Darwin discovered, and which we now know is the explanation for the existence and apparently purposeful form of all life, has no purpose in mind. It has no mind and no mind's eye. It does not plan for the future. It has no vision, no foresight, no sight at all. If it can be said to play the role of watchmaker in nature, it is the blind watchmaker. — Richard Dawkins · 1986 All 7 quotes →

Human origins6 quotes

There is grandeur in this view of life...whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved. — Charles Darwin · 1859 Man with all his noble qualities, with sympathy which feels for the most debased, with benevolence which extends not only to other men but to the humblest living creature, with his god-like intellect which has penetrated into the movements and constitution of the solar system—with all these exalted powers—Man still bears in his bodily frame the indelible stamp of his lowly origin. — Charles Darwin · 1871 We thus learn that man is descended from a hairy, tailed quadruped, probably arboreal in its habits, and an inhabitant of the Old World. — Charles Darwin · 1871 The Simiadae then branched off into two great stems, the New World and Old World monkeys; and from the latter, at a remote period, Man, the wonder and glory of the Universe, proceeded. — Charles Darwin · 1871 Not in innocence, and not in Asia, was mankind born. — Robert Ardrey · 1961 For my own part I would as soon be descended from that heroic little monkey, who braved his dread enemy in order to save the life of his keeper; or from that old baboon, who descending from the mountains, carried away in triumph his young comrade from a crowd of astonished dogs--as from a savage who delights to torture his enemies, offers up bloody sacrifices, practices infanticide without remorse, treats his wives like slaves, knows no decency, and is haunted by the grossest superstitions. — Charles Darwin · 1871

Scientific progress6 quotes

Finally we shall place the Sun himself at the center of the Universe. All this is suggested by the systematic procession of events and the harmony of the whole Universe, if we only face the facts, as they say, "with both eyes open." — Nicolaus Copernicus · 1543 Although we are mere sojourners on the surface of the planet, chained to a mere point in space, enduring but for a moment of time, the human mind is not only enabled to number worlds beyond the unassisted ken of mortal eye, but to trace the events of indefinite ages before the creation of our race, and is not even withheld from penetrating into the dark secrets of the ocean, or the interior of the solid globe. — Charles Lyell · 1830 As in political revolutions, so in paradigm choice-there is no standard higher than the the assent of the relevant community. To discover how scientific revolutions are effected, we shall therefore have to examine not only the impact of nature and of logic, but also the techniques of persuasive argumentation effective within the quite special groups that constitute the community of scientists. — Thomas Kuhn · 1962 A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it... An important scientific innovation rarely makes its way by gradually winning over and converting its opponents: it rarely happens that Saul becomes Paul. — Max Planck · 1936 The priest persuades humble people to endure their hard lot; the politician urges them to rebel against it; and the scientist thinks of a method that does away with the hard lot altogether. — Max Perutz · 1989 Science and technology, and the various forms of art, all unite humanity in a single and interconnected system. As science progresses, the worldwide cooperation of scientists and technologists becomes more and more of a special and distinct intellectual community of friendship, in which, in place of antagonism, there is growing up a mutually advantageous sharing of work, a coordination of efforts, a common language for exchange of information, and solidarity, which are in many cases independent of the social and political differences of individual states. — Zhores Medvedev · 1970

Laws of physics5 quotes

Every body perseveres in its state of rest, or of uniform motion in a right line, unless it is compelled to change that state by forces impressed thereon. — Isaac Newton · 1687 Moreover, in a system of two bodies mutually acting upon each other, since the differences between their centres and the common centre of gravity of both are reciprocally as the bodies, the relative motions of those bodies, whether of approaching to or of receding from that centre, will be equal junong themselves. Therefore since the changes which happen to motions are equal and directed to contrary parts. — Isaac Newton · 1687 The alteration of motion is ever proportional to the motive force impressed; and is made in the direction of the right line in which that force is impressed. — Isaac Newton · 1687 What is it that breathes fire into the equations and makes a universe for them to describe?...Why does the universe go to all the bother of existing? — Stephen Hawking · 1988 Mathematics takes us still further from what is human, into the region of absolute necessity, to which only the actual world, but every possible world, must conform. — Bertrand Russell · 1907

Mathematics5 quotes

Mathematics is the science which draws necessary conclusions. — Benjamin Peirce · 1870 Mathematics, rightly viewed, possesses not only truth, but supreme beauty—a beauty cold and austere, like that of sculpture, without appeal to any part of our weaker nature, without the gorgeous trappings of painting or music, yet sublimely pure, and capable of a stern perfection such as only the greatest art can show. — Bertrand Russell · 1907 Mathematics takes us still further from what is human, into the region of absolute necessity, to which only the actual world, but every possible world, must conform. — Bertrand Russell · 1907 The theory of probabilities is at bottom only common sense reduced to calculus. — Pierre-Simon Laplace · 1814 The science of Pure Mathematics, in its modern developments, may claim to be the most original creation of the human spirit. — Alfred North Whitehead · 1925

Nature5 quotes

In all things of nature there is something of the marvelous. — Aristotle · 350 BC Whence is it that Nature does nothing in vain: and whence arises all that Order and Beauty which we see in the World?... does it not appear from Phenomena that there is a Being incorporeal, living, intelligent, omnipresent, who in infinite Space, as it were in his Sensory, sees the things themselves intimately, and throughly perceives them, and comprehends them wholly. — Isaac Newton · 1704 The scientist does not study nature because it is useful to do so. He studies it because he takes pleasure in it, and he takes pleasure in it because it is beautiful. If nature were not beautiful, it would not be worth knowing, and life would not be worth living. — Henri Poincare · 1908 If purpose, then, is inherent in art, so is it in Nature also. The best illustration is the case of a man being his own physician, for Nature is like that-agent and patient at once. — Aristotle · 350 BC If anyone wishes to observe the works of nature, he should put his trust not in books of anatomy but in his own eyes. — Galen · 175

The universe5 quotes

What is it that breathes fire into the equations and makes a universe for them to describe?...Why does the universe go to all the bother of existing? — Stephen Hawking · 1988 From the intrinsic evidence of his creation, the Great Architect of the Universe now begins to appear as a pure mathematician. — James Jeans · 1930 The effort to understand the universe is one of the very few things that lifts human life a little above the level of farce, and gives it some of the grace of tragedy. — Steven Weinberg · 1977 If we find the answer to that, it would be the ultimate triumph of human reason-for then we would know the mind of God. — Stephen Hawking · 1988 It is even harder to realize that this present universe has evolved from an unspeakably unfamiliar early condition, and faces a future extinction of endless cold or intolerable heat. The more the universe seems comprehensible, the more it also seems pointless. — Steven Weinberg · 1977

Biology4 quotes

We had found the secret of life! — Francis Crick · 1968 They are in you and in me; they created us, body and mind; and their preservation is the ultimate rationale for our existence...they go by the name of genes, and we are their survival machines. — Richard Dawkins · 1976 It has not escaped our notice that the specific pairing we have postulated immediately suggests a possible copying mechanism for the genetic material. — Francis Crick · 1953 Life exists in the universe only because the carbon atom possesses certain exceptional properties. — James Jeans · 1930

Origin of the universe4 quotes

This most beautiful system of the sun, planets and comets, could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and powerful Being... This Being governs all things, not as the soul of the world, but as Lord over all; and on account of his dominion he is wont, to be called Lord God παντοκρατωρ or Universal Ruler. — Isaac Newton · 1713 What is it that breathes fire into the equations and makes a universe for them to describe?...Why does the universe go to all the bother of existing? — Stephen Hawking · 1988 From the intrinsic evidence of his creation, the Great Architect of the Universe now begins to appear as a pure mathematician. — James Jeans · 1930 If we find the answer to that, it would be the ultimate triumph of human reason-for then we would know the mind of God. — Stephen Hawking · 1988

Physics4 quotes

Moreover, in a system of two bodies mutually acting upon each other, since the differences between their centres and the common centre of gravity of both are reciprocally as the bodies, the relative motions of those bodies, whether of approaching to or of receding from that centre, will be equal junong themselves. Therefore since the changes which happen to motions are equal and directed to contrary parts. — Isaac Newton · 1687 If we find the answer to that, it would be the ultimate triumph of human reason-for then we would know the mind of God. — Stephen Hawking · 1988 There is no democracy in physics. We can't say that some second-rate guy has as much right to opinion as Fermi. — Luis Walter Alvarez · 1967 I am standing on the threshold about to enter a room. It is a complicated business. In the first place I must shove against an atmosphere pressing with a force of fourteen pounds on every square inch of my body. I must make sure of landing on a plank travelling at twenty miles a second round the sun-a fraction of a second too early or too late, the plank would be miles away. I must do this whilst hanging from a round planet, head outward into space, and with a wind of aether blowing at no one knows how many miles a second through every interstice of my body. — Arthur Eddington · 1928

Progress4 quotes

It is a profoundly erroneous truism, repeated by all copy-books and by eminent people when they are making speeches, that we should cultivate the habit of thinking of what we are doing. The precise opposite is the case. Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking about them. Operations of thought are like cavalry charges in a battle-they are strictly limited in number, they require fresh horses, and must only be made at decisive moments. — Alfred North Whitehead · 1911 Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking about them. — Alfred North Whitehead · 1911 A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it... An important scientific innovation rarely makes its way by gradually winning over and converting its opponents: it rarely happens that Saul becomes Paul. — Max Planck · 1936 Science and technology, and the various forms of art, all unite humanity in a single and interconnected system. As science progresses, the worldwide cooperation of scientists and technologists becomes more and more of a special and distinct intellectual community of friendship, in which, in place of antagonism, there is growing up a mutually advantageous sharing of work, a coordination of efforts, a common language for exchange of information, and solidarity, which are in many cases independent of the social and political differences of individual states. — Zhores Medvedev · 1970

Artificial intelligence3 quotes

I propose to consider the question, "Can machines think?" — Alan Turing · 1950 "Could a machine think?" my own view is that only a machine could think, and indeed only very special kinds of machines, namely brains and machines that had the same causal powers as brains... Whatever else intentionality is, it is a biological phenomenon, and it is as likely to be as causally dependent on the specific biochemistry of its origins as lactation, photosynthesis, or any other biological phenomena. — John R. Searle · 1980 The Analytical Engine has no pretensions whatever to originate anything. It can do whatever to originate anything. It can do whatever we know how to order it to perform. It can follow analysis; but it has no power of anticipating any analytical relations or truths. — Ada Lovelace · 1843

Genetics3 quotes

God3 quotes

This most beautiful system of the sun, planets and comets, could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and powerful Being... This Being governs all things, not as the soul of the world, but as Lord over all; and on account of his dominion he is wont, to be called Lord God παντοκρατωρ or Universal Ruler. — Isaac Newton · 1713 There are reverent minds who ceaselessly scan the fields of Nature and the books of Science in search for gaps-gaps which they will fill up with God. As if God lived in gaps? — Henry Drummond · 1894 From the intrinsic evidence of his creation, the Great Architect of the Universe now begins to appear as a pure mathematician. — James Jeans · 1930

Man and animals3 quotes

If an army of monkeys were strumming on typewriters they might write all the books in the British Museum. — Arthur Eddington · 1928 There are one hundred and ninety-three living species of monkeys and apes. One hundred and ninety-two of them are covered with hair. The exception is a naked ape self-named Homo sapiens. — Desmond Morris · 1967 Man alone consumes and engulfs more flesh than all other animals put together. He is, then, the greatest destroyer, and he is so more by abuse than by necessity. — Georges Louis Leclerc · 1753

Ocean and sea3 quotes

For all at last returns to the sea...the beginning and the end. — Rachel Carson · 1951 The edge of the sea is a strange and beautiful place. All through the long history of Earth it has been an area of unrest where waves have broken heavily against the land, where the tides have pressed forward over the continents, receded, and then returned. For no two successive days is the shore line precisely the same. — Rachel Carson · 1955 The sea lies all about us. The commerce of all lands must cross it. The very winds that move over the lands have been cradled on its broad expanse and seek ever to return to it. The continents themselves dissolve and pass to the sea, in grain after grain of eroded land. So the rains that rose from it return again in rivers. In its mysterious past it encompasses all the dim origins of life and receives in the end, after, it may be, many transmutations, the dead husks of that same life. For all at least return to the sea—to Oceanus, the ocean river, like the everflowing stream of time, the beginning and the end. — Rachel Carson · 1951

Randomness3 quotes

If an army of monkeys were strumming on typewriters they might write all the books in the British Museum. — Arthur Eddington · 1928 Life is a copiously branching bush, continually pruned by the grim reaper of extinction, not a ladder of predictable progress. — Stephen Jay Gould · 1989 Wind back the tape of life to the early days of the Burgess Shale; let it play again from an identical starting point, and the chance becomes vanishingly small that anything like human intelligence would grace the replay. — Stephen Jay Gould · 1989

Science and religion3 quotes

For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountains of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries. — Robert Jastrow · 1978 Not in innocence, and not in Asia, was mankind born. — Robert Ardrey · 1961 There are reverent minds who ceaselessly scan the fields of Nature and the books of Science in search for gaps-gaps which they will fill up with God. As if God lived in gaps? — Henry Drummond · 1894

Scientific method3 quotes

The whole of science is nothing more than a refinement of every day thinking. — Albert Einstein · 1936 In the discovery of secret things and in the investigation of hidden causes, stronger reasons are obtained from sure experiments and demonstrated arguments than from probable conjectures and the opinions of philosophical speculators of the common sort. — William Gilbert · 1600 We must trust to nothing but facts: these are presented to us by nature and cannot deceive. — Antoine Lavoisier · 1789

Beauty of nature2 quotes

In all things of nature there is something of the marvelous. — Aristotle · 350 BC The scientist does not study nature because it is useful to do so. He studies it because he takes pleasure in it, and he takes pleasure in it because it is beautiful. If nature were not beautiful, it would not be worth knowing, and life would not be worth living. — Henri Poincare · 1908

Common sense2 quotes

The whole of science is nothing more than a refinement of every day thinking. — Albert Einstein · 1936 Common sense is actually nothing more than a deposit of prejudices laid down in the mind prior to the age of eighteen. — Albert Einstein · 1948

Creation2 quotes

Creation of the world2 quotes

God in the Beginning form'd Matter in solid, massy, hard, impenetrable, moveable Particles, of such Sizes and Figures, and with such other Properties, and in such Proportion to Space, as most conduced to the End for which he form'd them. — Isaac Newton · 1704 This most beautiful system of the sun, planets and comets, could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and powerful Being... This Being governs all things, not as the soul of the world, but as Lord over all; and on account of his dominion he is wont, to be called Lord God παντοκρατωρ or Universal Ruler. — Isaac Newton · 1713

Curiosity2 quotes

Wonder... And not any expectation of advantage from its discoveries, is the first principle which prompts mankind to the study of Philosophy, of that science which pretends to lay open the concealed connections that unite the various appearances of nature. — Adam Smith · 1790 The effort to understand the universe is one of the very few things that lifts human life a little above the level of farce, and gives it some of the grace of tragedy. — Steven Weinberg · 1977

DNA2 quotes

We had found the secret of life! — Francis Crick · 1968 It has not escaped our notice that the specific pairing we have postulated immediately suggests a possible copying mechanism for the genetic material. — Francis Crick · 1953

Human evolution2 quotes

Human fallibility2 quotes

Errors are not in the art, but in the artificers. — Isaac Newton · 1687 No man is wise at all times. — Pliny the Elder · 77 BC

Life2 quotes

Life is a copiously branching bush, continually pruned by the grim reaper of extinction, not a ladder of predictable progress. — Stephen Jay Gould · 1989 Life exists in the universe only because the carbon atom possesses certain exceptional properties. — James Jeans · 1930

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