Quotes
Quotes about Science
We keep, in science, getting a more and more sophisticated view of our essential ignorance.
The stricter standards and independent, often conclusive, evidence in the physical sciences cannot be generalized to intellectual activity as a whole, even though the aura of scientific processes and results is often appropriated by other intellectuals.
Men never do evil so fully and so happily as when they do it for conscience's sake.
That hatred springs more from self-contempt than from a legitimate grievance is seen in the intimate connection between hatred and a guilty conscience.
There is a guilty conscience behind every brazen word and act and behind every manifestation of self-righteousness.
The most effective way to silence our guilty conscience is to convince ourselves and others that those we have sinned against are indeed depraved creatures, deserving every punishment, even extermination. We cannot pity those we have wronged, nor can we be indifferent toward them. We must hate and persecute them or else leave the door open to self-contempt.
The human understanding is no dry light, but receives infusion from the will and affections; which proceed sciences which may be called "sciences as one would." For what a man had rather were true he more readily believes. Therefore he rejects difficult things from impatience of research; sober things, because they narrow hope; the deeper things of nature, from superstition; the light of experience, from arrogance and pride; things not commonly believed, out of deference to the opinion of the vulgar. Numberless in short are the ways, and sometimes imperceptible, in which the affections color and infect the understanding.
Again men have been kept back as by a kind of enchantment from progress in science by reverence for antiquity, by the authority of men counted great in philosophy, and then by general consent.
The history of science knows scores of instances where an investigator was in the possession of all the important facts for a new theory but simply failed to ask the right questions.
Unto the pure all things are pure: but unto them that are defiled and unbelieving is nothing pure; but even their mind and conscience is defiled.
A quiet conscience sleeps in thunder.
Books have always a secret influence on the understanding; we cannot at pleasure obliterate ideas: he that reads books of science, though without any desire fixed of improvement, will grow more knowing; he that entertains himself with moral or religious treatises, will imperceptibly advance in goodness; the ideas which are often offered to the mind, will at last find a lucky moment when it is disposed to receive them.
If one of us could ascend to the heavenly realm and for a few hours accompany the divine on His daily rounds, he would see below millions of his fellow humans busily hurling themselves into the passions, sports, and action of those around him. But if our observer had the power and omniscience of the Lord, he would also feel and sense, pulsing through and vibrating from every one of us here below, a desperate and unending plea, "Notice me! I want to be known admired, and loved by the whole world!" And it is this, this glorious weakness, this dependence of ours on each other, that makes some of us usually heroes and fools at the same time.
Formerly, when religion was strong and science weak, men mistook magic for medicine; now, when science is strong and religion weak, men mistake medicine for magic.
Destiny is but a phrase of the weak human heart - the dark apology for every error. The strong and virtuous admit no destiny. On earth conscience guides; in heaven God watches. And destiny is but the phantom we invoke to silence the one and dethrone the other.
Gods are fragile things; they may be killed by a whiff of science or a dose of common sense.
Creation science is an attempt to give credibility to Hebrew mythology by making people believe that the world's foremost biologists, paleontologists, and geologists are a bunch of incompetent nincompoops.
Science has done more for the development of western civilization in one hundred years than Christianity did in eighteen hundred years.
Science without religion is lame; religion without science is blind.
The human understanding is no dry light, but receives infusion from the will and affections; which proceed sciences which may be called "sciences as one would." For what a man had rather were true he more readily believes. Therefore he rejects difficult things from impatience of research; sober things, because they narrow hope; the deeper things of nature, from superstition; the light of experience, from arrogance and pride; things not commonly believed, out of deference to the opinion of the vulgar. Numberless in short are the ways, and sometimes imperceptible, in which the affections color and infect the understanding.
A Sunday school is a prison in which children do penance for the evil conscience of their parents.
Every human being has a work to carry on within, duties to perform abroad, influence to exert, which are peculiarly his, and which no conscience but his own can teach.
There is no self-delusion more fatal than that which makes the conscience dreamy with the anodyne of lofty sentiments, while the life is groveling and sensual.
'Twas thus by the glare of false science betray'd, That leads to bewilder, and dazzles to blind.
O Timothy, keep that which is committed to thy trust, avoiding profane and vain babblings, and oppositions of science falsely so called; Which some professing have erred concerning faith. Grace be with thee. Amen.
