SATICHE - 0817

Science Quotes

Astronomy & Space

In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.
Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the Western Spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun. Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-two million miles is an utterly insignificant little blue green planet whose ape-descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea.
There is a theory which states that if ever anybody discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory which states that this has already happened.
A scientist can discover a new star, but he cannot make one. He would have to ask an engineer to do that.
Last night as I lay in bed looking at the stars I thought, "Where the hell is the ceiling"?
When you reach for the stars, you may not quite get one, but you won't come up with a handful of mud either.
Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss it you will land among the stars.
The exploration and ultimate colonization of the solar system is the only future worthy of truly great nations at this time in history. The Soviets, who cannot even feed themselves, seem to understand this.
There is just one thing I can promise you about the outer-space program: your tax dollar will go farther.
Crash programs fail because they are based on theory that, with nine women pregnant, you can get a baby in a month.
We can lick gravity, but the paperwork's a bit tougher.
Research is what I'm doing when I don't know what I'm doing.
If you stacked all the US currency together, you could probably reach the moon, but I bet the Apollo program was still more economical.
Fifty-five crystal spheres geared to God's crankshaft is my idea of a satisfying universe. I can't think of anything more trivial than quarks, quasars, big bangs and black holes.
God could cause us considerable embarrassment by revealing all the secrets of nature to us: we should not know what to do for sheer apathy and boredom.
The universe is simple; it's the explanation that's complex.
Astronomers say the universe is finite, which is a comforting thought for those people who can't remember where they leave things.
In answer to the question of why it happened, I offer the modest proposal that our Universe is simply one of those things which happen from time to time.
The universe is a big place, perhaps the biggest.
Photons have mass ?!? I didn't even know they were Catholic...
I'm astounded by people who want to 'know' the universe when it's hard enough to find your way around Chinatown.
We are an impossibility in an impossible universe.
OK, so what's the speed of dark ?
Black holes are where God divided by zero.
What happens if a big asteroid hits Earth ? Judging from realistic simulations involving a sledge hammer and a common laboratory frog, we can assume it will be pretty bad.
Sometimes I think we're alone in the universe, and sometimes I think we're not. In either case the idea is quite staggering.
The surest sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe is that it has never tried to contact us.
READ THIS BEFORE OPENING PACKAGE: According to certain suggested versions of the grand unified theory, the primary particles constituting this product may decay to nothingness within the next 1032 Years.
Living on Earth may be expensive, but it includes an annual free trip around the Sun.
The Earth is the cradle of Humanity. But one doesn't always live in the cradle.
If you think there are no new frontiers, watch a boy ring the front doorbell on his first date.
During the heat of the space race in the 1960's, the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration decided it needed a ball point pen to write in the zero gravity confines of its space capsules. After considerable research and development, the Astronaut Pen was developed at a cost of about $1 million U.S. The pen worked and also enjoyed some modest success as a novelty item back here on Earth. The Soviet Union, faced with the same problem, used a pencil.
With every passing hour our solar system comes forty-three thousand miles closer to globular cluster M13 in the constellation Hercules, and still there are some misfits who continue to insist that there is no such thing as progress.
Whenever anyone says, "theoretically", they really mean, "not really".
The universe is like a safe to which there is a combination - but the combination is locked up in the safe.
Nothing is faster than the speed of light. To prove this to yourself, try opening the refrigerator door before the light comes on.
New ideas pass through three periods: It can't be done. It probably can be done, but it's not worth doing. I knew it was a good idea all along !

Physics

If it's green or wriggles, it's biology. If it stinks, it's chemistry. If it doesn't work, it's physics...
The effort to understand the universe is one of the very few things that lifts human life a little above the level of farce, and gives it some of the grace of tragedy.
Experiments should be reproducible - they should all fail in the same way.
What in the world is electricity ? And where does it go after it leaves the toaster ?
Electrical force is defined as something which causes motion of electrical charge; an electrical charge is something which exerts electric force.
Her own mother lived the latter years of her life in the horrible suspicion that electricity was dripping invisibly all over the house.
I like you, but I wouldn't want to see you working with subatomic particles.
Radioactive cats have 18 half-lives.
There may be more than one way to skin a cat, but you only get one try per cat.
Don't bother me, I'm busy conserving energy, momentum, and angular momentum.
When you are courting a nice girl an hour seems like a second. When you sit on a red-hot cinder a second seems like an hour. That's relativity.
If my theory of relativity is proven correct, Germany will claim me as a German and France will declare that I am a citizen of the world. Should my theory prove untrue, France will say that I am a German and Germany will declare that I am a Jew.
The faster you go, the shorter you are.
The only reason for time is so that everything doesn't happen at once.
I am somehow less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein's brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops.
Give me a firm place to stand and I will move the earth.
Research ! A mere excuse for idleness; it has never achieved, and will never achieve any results of the slightest value.
We haven't the money, so we've got to think.
Nature, and Nature's laws lay hid in night: God said: "Let Newton be !" and all was light. It did not last: the Devil howling "Ho ! Let Einstein be !" restored the status quo.
That is how the atom is split. But what does it mean ? To us who think in terms of practical use it means - Nothing!
Man is slightly nearer to the atom than the stars. From his central position he can survey the grandest works of Nature with the astronomer, or the minutest works with the physicist.
I believe my theory of relativity to be true. But it will only be proved for certain in 1981, when I am dead.
If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it ?
A vacuum can only exist, I imagine, by the things which enclose it.
Shelley and Keats were the last English poets who were at all up to date in their chemical knowledge.
Quantum Mechanics: The dreams stuff is made of.
He thought the formula for water was H-I-J-K-L-M-N-O, H-to-O.
Love is a matter of chemistry, but sex is a matter of physics.
Science has 'explained' nothing; the more we know the more fantastic the world becomes and the profounder the surrounding darkness.
We have no right to assume that any physical laws exist, or if they have existed up to now, that they will continue to exist in a similar manner in the future.
Prediction is difficult, especially the future.
The simplest schoolboy is now familiar with truths for which Archimedes would have sacrificed his life.
People must understand that science is inherently neither a potential for good nor for evil. It is a potential to be harnessed by man to do his bidding.
Modern Physics is an instrument of Jewry for the destruction of Nordic science... True physics is the creation of the German spirit.
Whenever science makes a discovery, the devil grabs it while the angels are debating the best way to use it.
Classical physics has been superseded by quantum theory: quantum theory is verified by experiments. Experiments must be described in terms of classical physics.
If silicon had been a gas I should have been a major-general.
The airplane stays up because it doesn't have the time to fall.
Physics is like sex: sure, it may give some practical results, but that's not why we do it.
I canna change the laws of physics, Captain - but I can find ye a loophole.
Some things have to be believed to be seen.
The human race likes to give itself airs. One good volcano can produce more greenhouse gases in a year than the human race has in its entire history.
It is odd, but on the infrequent occasions when I have been called upon in a formal place to play the bongo drums, the introducer never seems to find it necessary to mention that I also do theoretical physics.
The mole is a quantity of substance. The new prefix guaca is defined such that one guacamole equals Avocado's Number.
My goal is to be a meteorologist. But since I possess no training in meteorology, I suppose I should try stock brokerage.
A seminar on time travel will be held two weeks ago.

Facts

Facts are stubborn things. Facts are stupid things. If the facts don't fit the theory, change the facts. Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.
Science is facts; just as houses are made of stones, so is science made of facts; but a pile of stones is not a house and a collection of facts is not necessarily science.
The very powerful and the very stupid have one thing in common. Instead of altering their views to fit the facts, they alter the facts to fit their views... which can be very uncomfortable if you happen to be one of the facts that needs altering.
The great tragedy of Science - the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact.
As an adolescent I aspired to lasting fame, I craved factual certainty, and I thirsted for a meaningful vision of human life - so I became a scientist. This is like becoming an archbishop so you can meet girls.
Facts speak louder than statistics.
Reason, Observation, and Experience - the Holy Trinity of Science.
Many persons nowadays seem to think that any conclusion must be very scientific if the arguments in favor of it are derived from twitching of frogs' legs - especially if the frogs are decapitated - and that - on the other hand - any doctrine chiefly vouched for by the feelings of human beings - with heads on their shoulders - must be benighted and superstitious.

Nuclear Issues

The way to win an atomic war is to make certain it never starts.
A nuclear war can ruin your whole day.
If only I had known, I should have become a watchmaker.
Surely the right course is to test the Russians, not the bombs.
Hitherto man had to live with the idea of death as an individual; from now onward mankind will have to live with the idea of its death as a species.
I am become death, the destroyer of worlds.
To adopt nuclear disarmament would be akin to behaving like a virgin in a brothel.
More than any other time in history, mankind faces a crossroads. One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness. The other, to total extinction. Let us pray we have the wisdom to choose correctly.
The release of atomic energy has not created a new problem. It has merely made more urgent the necessity of solving an existing one.
Building up arms is not a substitute for diplomacy.
You may reasonably expect a man to walk a tightrope safely for ten minutes; it would be unreasonable to do so without accident for two hundred years.
I don't know how the third world war will be fought, but I do know that the fourth one will be fought with sticks and stones...
The only way to reduce the number of nuclear weapons is to use them.
A nuclear war can ruin your whole day.
If we get involved in a nuclear war, would the electromagnetic pulses from exploding bombs damage my videotapes ?

Biology & Medicine

It has recently been discovered that research causes cancer in rats.
Support bacteria, it's the only culture some people have
It is not a simple life to be a single cell, although I have no right to say so, having been a single cell so long ago myself that I have no memory at all of that stage of my life.
Believe in Darwin; cancer cures smoking.
Evolution is cleverer than you are.
Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell.
A hen is only an egg's way of making another egg.
That's the problem with nature. Something's always stinging you or oozing mucus on you. Let's go watch TV.
A polar bear is a rectangular bear after a coordinate transform.
Polaroids /nm./: what polar bears get from sitting on ice caps.
Campaigns to bearproof all garbage containers in wild areas have been difficult because, as one biologist put it, 'There is a considerable overlap between the intelligence levels of the smartest bears and the dumbest tourists'.
Did you hear about the homeopath who forgot to take his medicine ? - He died of an overdose.
The human body was designed by a civil engineer. Who else would run a toxic waste pipeline through a recreational area ?'
An elephant is a mouse, built to government specifications.
I think animal testing is a terrible idea; they get all nervous and give the wrong answers.
Already for thirty-five years he had not stopped talking and almost nothing of fundamental value had emerged.
Along with many scientists he considered the discovery of psychedelics one of the three major scientific breakthroughs of the twentieth century, the other two being the splitting of the atom and the manipulation of genetic structures.
There are more microbes per person than the entire population of the world. Imagine that. Per person. This means that if the time scale is diminished in proportion to that of space it would be quite possible for the whole story of Greece and Rome to be played out between farts.
Medical scientists are nice people, but you should not let them treat you.
Life exists in the universe only because the carbon atom possesses certain exceptional properties.
Water is H2O, hydrogen two parts, oxygen one, but there is also a third thing, that makes it water and nobody knows what that is.
It is a good morning exercise for a research scientist to discard a pet hypothesis every day before breakfast.
There are no such things as applied sciences, only applications of science.
The people - could you patent the sun ?
You are 87% water; the other 13% keeps you from drowning.
Imagine a survivor of a failed civilization with only a tattered book on aromatherapy for guidance in arresting a cholera epidemic. Yet, such a book would more likely be found amid the debris than a comprehensible medical text.
We've made great medical progress in the last generation. What used to be merely an itch is now an allergy.
Organic life, we are told, has developed gradually from the protozoon to the philosopher, and this development, we are assured, is indubitably an advance. Unfortunately it is the philosopher, not the protozoon, who gives us this assurance.
Medicine, the only profession that labors incessantly to destroy the reason for its own existance.
My parents went to Zaire and all I got was this damn retrovirus...

Mathematics

God is real, unless declared integer.
Math illiteracy strikes 8 out of 5 people.
Life is good for only two things, discovering mathematics and teaching mathematics.
According to my calculations, this problem doesn't exist
Belief is no substitute for arithmetic.
I never could make out what those damned dots meant.
As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain, and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality.
Alcohol and calculus don't mix. Never drink and derive.
The mathematician has reached the highest rung on the ladder of human thought.
One has to be able to count, if only so that at fifty one doesn't marry a girl of twenty.
Moriarty: - How are you at Mathematics ? Neddy Seagoon - I speak it like a native.
One geometry cannot be more true than another; it can only be more convenient. Geometry is not true, it is advantageous.
Do not worry about your difficulties in Mathematics. I can assure you mine are still greater.
I like mathematics because it is not human and has nothing particular to do with this planet or with the whole accidental universe - because, like Spinoza's God, it won't love us in return.
The whole is more than the sum of the parts.
I knew a mathematician who said 'I do not know as much as God. But I know as much as God knew at my age'.
Round numbers are always false.
No, it is a very interesting number, it is the smallest number expressible as a sum of two cubes in two different ways.
Engineers think that equations approximate the real world. Scientists think that the real world approximates equations. Mathematicians are unable to make the connection.
Lottery: A tax on people who are bad at math.
It is rare to find learned men who are clean, do not stink and have a sense of humour.
It was mentioned on CNN that the new prime number discovered recently is four times bigger than the previous record.
There are 3 kinds of people: those who can count and those who can't.
Chess is a foolish expedient for making idle people believe they are doing something very clever when they are only wasting their time.
The number you have dialed is imaginary. Rotate phone 90 degrees and try again.

Statistics

Chance is the pseudonym God uses when He'd rather not sign His own name.
The probability of the bread falling buttered side down is directly proportional to the price of the carpet.
97.25% of statistics are wrong.
96.37% of the people who use statistics in arguments make them up.
Medical statistics are a little bit like a bikini: what they reveal is suggestive, but what they conceal is vital.
There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.
He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lampposts - for support rather than illumination.
Law of Probability Dispersal: Whatever it is that hits the fan will not be evenly distributed.
All generalizations are false, including this one.
You cannot feed the hungry on statistics.
Statistics will prove anything, even the truth.
I am one of the unpraised, unrewarded millions without whom Statistics would be a bankrupt science. It is we who are born, who marry, who die, in constant ratios.
A single death is a tragedy; a million is a statistic.
I feel like a fugitive from the law of averages.
It is now proved beyond doubt that smoking is one of leading causes of statistics.
There are two kinds of statistics, the kind you look up and the kind you make up.
I gather, young man, that you wish to be a Member of Parliament. The first lesson that you must learn is, when I call for statistics about the rate of infant mortality, what I want is proof that fewer babies died when I was Prime Minister than when anyone else was Prime Minister. That is a political statistic.
Depend on the rabbit's foot if you will, but remember, it didn't work for the rabbit !

Murphy's Laws

Entropy isn't what it used to be.
Things get worse under pressure.
Any inanimate object, regardless of its composition or configuration, may be expected to perform at any time in a totally unexpected manner for reasons that are either totally obscure or completely mysterious.
Numbers written on restaurant bills within the confines of restaurants do not follow the same mathematical laws as numbers written on any other pieces of paper in any other parts of the Universe.
WARNING: Do not look into laser with remaining eye !
The future, according to some scientists, will be exactly like the past, only more expensive.
When a body is immersed in water - the telephone rings.
Be an optimist, at least until they start moving animals in pairs to Cape Kennedy.

Deep Thoughts

Enough research will tend to support your theory.
I just got lost in thought. It was unfamiliar territory.
Grantarctica /n./ The cold, isolated place where scientists without funding dwell.
The Science Graduate asks How does it work ? The Economics Graduate asks How much does it cost ? The Engineering Graduate asks How can we make it ? The Liberal Arts Graduate asks Do you want fries with that ?
There are many questions which fools can ask that wise men cannot answer.
The 2 most common elements in the universe are hydrogen and stupidity.
Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe.
Insisting on perfect safety is for people who don't have the balls to live in the real world.
No one wants to learn from mistakes, but we cannot learn enough from successes to go beyond the state of the art.
The best substitute for brains is silence.
The country is accustomed to having foreign workers come here for unpleasant, low-paying jobs such as fruit picking. Why shouldn't engineering go the same way ?
We must believe in luck. For how else can we explain the success of those we don't like ?
I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use.
Better to understand a little than to misunderstand a lot.
If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.
The gene pool could use a little chlorine.
The problem with the gene pool is that there is no life guard.
Neurotics build dream castles, psychotics live in them and psychiatrists collect the rent.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people.
Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.
Very few people do anything creative after the age of thirty-five. The reason is that very few people do anything creative before the age of thirty-five.
Figures won't lie, but liars will figure.
The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not 'Eureka!' ('I found it!') but rather 'hmm....that's funny...'
Science seldom renders men amiable; women, never.
Private practice and marriage - those twin extinguishers of science.
A first-rate laboratory is one in which mediocre scientists can produce outstanding work.
That is the essence of science: ask an impertinent question, and you are on the way to the pertinent answer.
No one should approach the temple of science with the soul of a money changer.
Mystics always hope that science will some day overtake them.
The term Science should not be given to anything but the aggregate of the recipes that are always successful. All the rest is literature.
It is, of course, a bit of a drawback that science was invented after I left school.
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.
Science is always wrong. It never solves a problem without creating ten more.
Science is the great antidote to the poison of enthusiasm and superstition.
Discovery consists of seeing what everybody has seen and thinking what nobody has thought.
But in science the credit goes to the man who convinces the world, not to the man to whom the idea first occurs.
Let both sides seek to invoke the wonders of science instead of its terrors. Together let us explore the stars, conquer the deserts, eradicate disease, tap the ocean depths, and encourage the arts and commerce.
Science may be described as the art of systematic over-simplification.
Should we force science down the throats of those that have no taste for it ? Is it our duty to drag them kicking and screaming into the twenty-first century ? I am afraid that it is.
The best way to have a good idea is to have a lot of ideas.
What is the use of a new-born child? (On being asked the use of a new invention)
If A equals success, then the formula is: A = X+Y+Z. X is work. Y is play. Z is keep your mouth shut.
The hardest thing in the world to understand is the income tax.
The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources.
If you are out to describe the truth, leave elegance to the tailor.
Anyone who goes to a psychiatrist ought to have his head examined.
The function of an expert is not to be more right than other people, but to be wrong for more sophisticated reasons.
An expert is a man who has made all the mistakes which can be made in a very narrow field.
An expert is one who knows more and more about less and less.
Isn't it interesting that the same people who laugh at science fiction listen to weather forecasts and economists ?
There is no expedient to which a man will not resort to avoid the real labor of thinking.
Theft from a single author is plagiarism - from three or more it is research.
For the scientific acquisition of knowledge is almost as tedious as the routine acquisition of wealth.
The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. But the opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth.
Never express yourself more clearly than you are able to think.
You do not really understand something unless you can explain it to your grandmother.
Science is a wonderful thing if one does not have to earn one's living at it.
Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new.
The whole of science is nothing more than a refinement of everyday thinking.
As far as I'm concerned, I prefer silent vice to ostentatious virtue.
You know how people are. They only recognize greatness when some authority confirms it.
Everybody is talking about the weather but nobody does anything about it.
We are continually faced with a series of great opportunities brilliantly disguised as insoluble problems.
Thus the metric system did not really catch on in the States, unless you count the increasing popularity of the 9mm bullet.
The most dangerous thing in the world is to try to leap a chasm in two jumps.
It is better to know some of the questions than all of the answers.
One machine can do the work of fifty ordinary men. No machine can do the work of one extraordinary man.
In science, read, by preference, the newest works; in literature the oldest.
The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent full of doubt.
We have stopped believing in progress. What progress that is !
I once cheated on a metaphysics exam. I looked deep into the soul of the student beside me.
All progress is based upon a universal innate desire on the part of every organism to live beyond its income.
Conclusion /nm./: the place where you got tired of thinking.