Scientist Quotes

It is one thing for the human mind to extract from the phenomena of nature the laws which it has itself put into them; it may be a far harder thing to extract laws over which it has no control.

It is impossible to trap modern physics into predicting anything with perfect determinism because it deals with probabilities from the outset.

It is even possible that laws which have not their origin in the mind may be irrational, and we can never succeed in formulating them.

It is also a good rule not to put overmuch confidence in the observational results that are put forward until they are confirmed by theory.

If your theory is found to be against the second law of theromodynamics, I give you no hope; there is nothing for it but to collapse in deepest humiliation.

If an army of monkeys were strumming on typewriters, they might write all the books in the British Museum.

Every body continues in its state of rest or uniform motion in a straight line, except insofar as it doesn't.

We used to think that if we knew one, we knew two, because one and one are two. We are finding that we must learn a great deal more about 'and'.

We often think that when we have completed our study of one we know all about two, because 'two' is 'one and one.' We forget that we still have to make a study of 'and.'

We have found that where science has progressed the farthest, the mind has but regained from nature that which the mind put into nature.

Something unknown is doing we don't know what.

Who will observe the observers?

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.

No water, no life. No blue, no green.

I hope for your help to explore and protect the wild ocean in ways that will restore the health and, in so doing, secure hope for humankind. Health to the ocean means health for us.

With every drop of water you drink, every breath you take, you're connected to the sea. No matter where on Earth you live.

Ten percent of the big fish still remain. There are still some blue whales. There are still some krill in Antarctica. There are a few oysters in Chesapeake Bay. Half the coral reefs are still in pretty good shape, a jeweled belt around the middle of the planet. There's still time, but not a lot, to

Your brain is built of cells called neurons and glia - hundreds of billions of them. Each one of these cells is as complicated as a city.

What we find is that our brains have colossal things happening in them all the time.

What has always surprised me when I walk into a bookstore is the number of books that you can find that are written with certainty. The authors tell some story as though it's true, but they don't have any evidence that it is true!

We don't really understand most of what's happening in the cosmos. Is there any afterlife? Who knows.

There are an infinite number of boring things to do in science.

There are always wonderful mysteries to confront.

The three-pound organ in your skull - with its pink consistency of Jell-o - is an alien kind of computational material. It is composed of miniaturized, self-configuring parts, and it vastly outstrips anything we've dreamt of building.

The same stimuli in the world can be inducing very different experiences internally and it's probably based on a single change in a gene. What I am doing is pulling the gene forward and imaging and doing behavioural tests to understand what that difference is and how reality can be constructed so di

People wouldn't even go into science unless there was something much bigger to be discovered, something that is transcendent.

Part of the scientific temperament is this tolerance for holding multiple hypotheses in mind at the same time.

Neuroscience over the next 50 years is going to introduce things that are mind-blowing.

My lab and academic work fill my day from about 9 am to 7 p.m. Then I zoom out the lens to work on my other writing.

My dream is to reform the legal system over the next 20 years.