Scientist Quotes

If children understand that beliefs should be substantiated with evidence, as opposed to tradition, authority, revelation or faith, they will automatically work out for themselves that they are atheists.

Religion is about turning untested belief into unshakable truth through the power of institutions and the passage of time.

Many of us saw religion as harmless nonsense. Beliefs might lack all supporting evidence but, we thought, if people needed a crutch for consolation, where's the harm? September 11th changed all that.

We humans are an extremely important manifestation of the replication bomb, because it is through us - through our brains, our symbolic culture and our technology - that the explosion may proceed to the next stage and reverberate through deep space.

The chances of each of us coming into existence are infinitesimally small, and even though we shall all die some day, we should count ourselves fantastically lucky to get our decades in the sun.

A universe with a God would look quite different from a universe without one. A physics, a biology where there is a God is bound to look different. So the most basic claims of religion are scientific. Religion is a scientific theory.

The essence of life is statistical improbability on a colossal scale.

One of the things that is wrong with religion is that it teaches us to be satisfied with answers which are not really answers at all.

A delusion is something that people believe in despite a total lack of evidence.

Let us try to teach generosity and altruism, because we are born selfish.

It has become almost a cliche to remark that nobody boasts of ignorance of literature, but it is socially acceptable to boast ignorance of science and proudly claim incompetence in mathematics.

The meme for blind faith secures its own perpetuation by the simple unconscious expedient of discouraging rational inquiry.

Isn't it sad to go to your grave without ever wondering why you were born? Who, with such a thought, would not spring from bed, eager to resume discovering the world and rejoicing to be part of it?

There may be fairies at the bottom of the garden. There is no evidence for it, but you can't prove that there aren't any, so shouldn't we be agnostic with respect to fairies?

I am against religion because it teaches us to be satisfied with not understanding the world.

We are all atheists about most of the gods that societies have ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further.

Faith is the great cop-out, the great excuse to evade the need to think and evaluate evidence. Faith is belief in spite of, even perhaps because of, the lack of evidence.

By all means let's be open-minded, but not so open-minded that our brains drop out.

When two elements combine and form more than one compound, the masses of one element that react with a fixed mass of the other are in the ratio of small whole numbers.

The most important of my discoveries have been suggested to me by my failures.

The art galleries of Paris contain the finest collection of frames I ever saw.

In the present state of our knowledge, it would be useless to attempt to speculate on the remote cause of the electrical energy... its relation to chemical affinity is, however, sufficiently evident. May it not be identical with it, and an essential property of matter?

I have learned more from my mistakes than from my successes.

Language is not only the vehicle of thought, it is a great and efficient instrument in thinking.

Life is made up, not of great sacrifices or duties, but of little things, in which smiles and kindness, and small obligations given habitually, are what preserve the heart and secure comfort.

You know, once something freezes, it's solid. That's the key to the arctic - they didn't fear the cold, they made use of it.

What could be more lonely than to be enveloped in silence, to be the last of your people to speak your native tongue, to have no way to pass on the wisdom of the elders, to anticipate the promise of the children. This tragic fate is indeed the plight of someone somewhere roughly every two weeks.

On paper I would be a rather bold individual in our culture.

It's haunting to realize that half of the languages of the world are teetering on the brink of extinction.

Heroes are never perfect, but they're brave, they're authentic, they're courageous, determined, discreet, and they've got grit.