A scientist in his laboratory is not only a technician: He is also a child placed before natural phenomena which impress him like a fairy tale.
I like the scientific spirit—the holding off, the being sure but not too sure, the willingness to surrender ideas when the evidence is against them: This is ultimately fine—it always keeps the way beyond open.
The task is not so much to see what nobody has yet seen, as to think what nobody has yet thought.
I never had an idea in my life. I’ve got no imagination. I never dream. My so-called inventions already existed in the environment—I took them out. I’ve created nothing. Nobody does. . . . The “genius” hangs around his laboratory day and night. If anything happens, he’s there to catch it; if he wasn’t, it might happen just the same, only it would never be his.
We owe ourselves and our descendants the opportunity to explore—in part because it’s fun to do. But there’s a far nobler reason. The day our knowledge of the cosmos ceases to expand, we risk regressing to the childish view that the universe figuratively and literally revolves around us.
Modern science has been a voyage into the unknown, with a lesson in humility waiting at every stop. Many passengers would rather have stayed home.
The world of learning is so broad, and the human soul is so limited in power! We reach forth and strain every nerve, but we seize only a bit of the curtain that hides the infinite from us.
Our diseases are due to microbes? Very well. But where do those microbes come from? And the diseases of these invisible ones? And the suns, whence do they come from? We know nothing, we understand nothing, we can do nothing, we foresee nothing, we imagine nothing. And there are people who marvel at the genius of humanity!
It must be remembered that evidence is never complete, that knowledge of truth is always partial, and that to await certainty is to await eternity.
People keep saying, “Science doesn’t know everything!” Well, science knows it doesn’t know everything; otherwise it would stop.
The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance—it is the illusion of knowledge.
Science and technology revolutionize our lives, but memory, tradition, and myth frame our response.
If we would have new knowledge, we must get us a whole world of new questions.
I think somebody should come up with a way to breed a very large shrimp. That way, you could ride him; then, after you camped at night, you could eat him. How about it, science?
The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom.
The scientific man does not aim at an immediate result. He does not expect that his advanced ideas will be readily taken up. His work is like that of the planter—for the future. His duty is to lay the foundation for those who are to come, and point the way. He lives and labors and hopes.
Our universe is a sorry little affair unless it has in it something for every age to investigate.
Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.
