YourDictionary

Dictionary Home » Famous Quotes » scientist

scientist quotes

  • Dissent isthenativeactivityofthescientist, and it hasgot himintoa good deal oftrouble inthelast years.But ifthat is cut off, what is left will not be a scientist. And I doubt whether it will be a man.

    -Jacob Bronowski
      'The Sense of Human Dignity', lecture at Massachusetts Institute of  Technology,19 Mar.

  • When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible he is almost certainly right.When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.

    - SirArthur C(harles) Clarke
      Profiles of the Future.

  • In a world where it is so easy to neglect, deny, pervert and suppress the truth, the scientist may find his discipline severe. For him, truth is so seldom the sudden lightthat showsneworderand beauty; more often, truth is the uncharted rock that sinks his ship in the dark.

    - SirJohnWarcup Cornforth
      Nobel prize speech.

  • I believe that the scientist is trying to expand absolute truth and the artist absolute beauty, so that I find in art and science, and in an attempt to live a good life, all the religion I want.

    -J(ohn) B(urdon) S(anderson) Haldane
    Living Philosophies.

  • The social scientist is in a difficult, if not impossible position.On the one hand there is the temptation to see all of societyas one's autobiography writ large, surely not the path to general truth.On the other hand, there is the attempt to be general and objective by pretending that one knows nothing about the experience of being human, forcing the investigator to pretend that people usually know and tell the truth about important issues, when we all know from our own lives how impossible that is.

    - Richard Charles Lewontin
      'Sex, Lies, and Social Science', in the NewYork Review of Books, 20  Apr.

  • Dessa civiliza c° a‹  o so   pode sair quem tem como fun c° a‹  o especial a de sair: a um cientista e   dada a licen c° a, a um padre e   dada a permissa‹  o. Mas na‹  o a uma mulher que nem sequer tem as garantias de um t|tulo. Only he whose special function is departure can depart from that civilization: a scientist isgiven license, a priest isgiven permission. But these are not given to a woman who does not even have the guarantee of a title.

    - Clarice Lispector
      A Paixa‹  o Segundo G.H. ( The Passion  According to G.H.).

  • Uberhaupt ist es fu«  r den Forscher ein guter Morgensport, t a« glich vor dem Fru«  hstu«  ck eine Lieblingshypothese einzustampfendas erh a« lt jung. It is a good morning exercise for a research scientist to discard a pet hypothesis every day before breakfast. It keeps him young.

    - Konrad Lorenz
      Das sogenannte Bo«  se ('The So-Called Evil', translated by Marjorie Latzke as On  Aggression,1966), ch.2.

  •    I cannot give any scientist of anyage better advice than this: the intensityof a conviction that a hypothesisistrue has no bearing over whether it is true or not.

    - Sir Peter Brian Medawar
      Advice to aYoung Scientist.

  •    A scientist soondiscoversthat hehas becomea member of the cast of 'them' in the context 'what mischief are they up to now?'

    - Sir Peter Brian Medawar
      Advice to aYoung Scientist.

  •    Aunt Sadie†so much disliked hearing about health that people often took her for a Christian Scientist, which, indeed, she might have become had she not disliked hearing about religion even more.

    - Nancy Freeman Mitford
      The Pursuit of Love, ch.4.

  • Iguess I'mjust anoldmad scientist at bottom.Givemean underground laboratory, half a dozen atomsmashers, and a beautiful girl in a diaphanous veil waiting to be turned into a chimpanzee, and I care not who writes the nation's laws.

    - S(ydney) J(oseph) Perelman
      Crazy Like a Fox,'Captain Future, BlockThat Kick'.

  • The scientist doesnot study nature because it isuseful to do so. He studies it because he takes pleasure in it, and he takes pleasure in it because it is beautiful.

    - (Jules) Henri Poincare 
      Science and Method, vol.1, ch.1 (translated by Francis Maitland).

  • Every scientist should remove the word 'impossible' from their lexicon.

    - Christopher Reeve
      In the Observer,15 Feb.

  •    Nothing leadsthescientist soastrayas a prematuretruth.

    -Jean Rostand
      'Pense  es d'un Biologiste', collected inTheSubstance of Man (translated by Irma Brandeis,1962).

  • No one ever complains if a great artist says that he was driven to create a masterpiece by a hunger for recognition and money.But a scientist? Well, he ismeant to be disinterested, pure, his ambition merely to descry the cement of the universe. He isn't meant to use it to start laying his own patio.

    -Will Self
    The QuantityTheory of Insanity and Five Supporting Propositions,'The QuantityTheory of Insanity'.

Webster's New World Dictionary of Quotations Copyright © 2010 by Chambers Harrap Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved. Published by Wiley, Hoboken, NJ. Used by arrangement with John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Learn more about scientist

link/cite print suggestion box