Genius Quotes
Timeless wisdom from history's greatest minds
"Our single greatest defense against scientific ignorance is education, and early in the life of every scientist, the child's first interest was sparked by a teacher."
Peter Agre
Science
"But mainly I learned, in approaching the measurement of new phenomena, not just to consider using existing apparatus but to allow the mind to wander freely and invent new ways of doing the job."
Val Logsdon Fitch
Science
"Don't pay too much attention to that Nobel Prize. They have to be capricious — they have to be. And that means that people fully deserving the award don't get it."
Jim Peebles
Science
"I don't think there is a final theory of anything. It's theories all the way down."
Jim Peebles
Science
"I have been working in cosmology for 55 years ... I'm the last man standing, so to speak, from those early days."
Jim Peebles
Science
"Another somewhat confusing usage is the name "the big bang" for the standard model. It is not appropriate, because it connotes a spatially isolated event, an explosion, that marked the start of everything. ... But the name has a very evident appeal and I expect that people will continue to use it."
Jim Peebles
Science
"Science is incapable of supplying answers to ultimate questions about why things exist and what their purpose is."
Nicola Cabibbo
Science
"Science that abdicates its cultural values risks being perceived as an extension of technology, an instrument in the hands of political or economic power. Humanity that disavows science risks falling into the hands of superstition."
Nicola Cabibbo
Science
"Comparatively few of the propositions and proofs in the Elements are his [Euclid's] own discoveries. In fact, the proof of the "Theorem of Pythagoras" is the only one directly ascribed to him."
Florian Cajori
Science
"It is a remarkable fact in the history of geometry, that the Elements of Euclid, written two thousand years ago, are still regarded by many as the best introduction to the mathematical sciences."
Florian Cajori
Science
"The history of mathematics is important also as a valuable contribution to the history of civilization. Human progress is closely identified with scientific thought. Mathematical and physical researches are a reliable record of intellectual progress."
Florian Cajori
Science
"Professor Sylvester's first high class at the new university Johns Hopkins consisted of only one student, G. B. Halsted, who had persisted in urging Sylvester to lecture on the modern algebra. The attempt to lecture on this subject led him into new investigations in quantics."
Florian Cajori
Science
"A mervaylous newtrality have these thinges Mathematicall, and also a straunge participatió betwene thynges supernaturall, immortall, intellectual, simple and indivisible: and thynges naturall, mortall, sensible, compounded and divisible."
John Dee
Science
"We finish the brief hieroglyphic consideration of our Monad, which we would sum up in one only hieroglyphic context: The Sun and the Moon of this Monad desire that the Elements in which the tenth proportion will flower, shall be separated, and this is done by the application of Fire."
John Dee
Science
"Therefore, the central point which we see in the centre of the hieroglyphic Monad produces the Earth, round which the Sun, the Moon, and the other planets follow their respective paths. The Sun has the supreme dignity, and we represent him by a circle having a visible centre."
John Dee
Science
"It is by the straight line and the circle that the first and most simple example and representation of all things may be demonstrated, whether such things be either non-existent or merely hidden under Nature's veils."
John Dee
Science
"Imagine all the food you have eaten in your life and consider that you are simply some of that food, rearranged."
Max Tegmark
Science
"If I get a parking ticket, there is always a parallel universe where I didn't. On the other hand, there is yet another universe where my car was stolen."
Max Tegmark
Science
"So with each advance in understanding come new questions. So we need to be very humble. We shouldn't have hubris and think that we can understand everything. But history tells us that there is good reason to believe that we will continue making fantastic progress in the years ahead."
Max Tegmark
Science
"I believe that consciousness is the way information feels when being processed."
Max Tegmark
Science
"If the reader does not like some of the facts that emerge, I hope against hope that he will not blame me for their existence."
Hans Eysenck
Science
"They bought research as they bought vegetables - a wonderful insight into official thinking about science."
Hans Eysenck
Science
"There thus appears to be an inverse correlation between recovery and psychotherapy; the more psychotherapy, the smaller the recovery rate."
Hans Eysenck
Science
"Scientists, especially when they leave the particular field in which they have specialized, are just as ordinary, pigheaded and unreasonable as anybody else."
Hans Eysenck
Science
"So extravagant is Nature with her choicest treasures, spending plant beauty as she spends sunshine, pouring it forth into land and sea, garden and desert. And so the beauty of lilies falls on angels and men, bears and squirrels, wolves and sheep, birds and bees,... ."
John Muir
Science
"Another glorious Sierra day in which one seems to be dissolved and absorbed and sent pulsing onward we know not where. Life seems neither long nor short, and we take no more heed to save time or make haste than do the trees and stars. This is true freedom, a good practical sort of immortality."
John Muir
Science
"We are now in the mountains and they are in us, kindling enthusiasm, making every nerve quiver, filling every pore and cell of us."
John Muir
Science
"I did find Calypso — but only once, far in the depths of the very wildest of Canadian dark woods, near those high, cold, moss-covered swamps. … I felt as if I were in the presence of superior beings who loved me and beckoned me to come. I sat down beside them and wept for joy."
John Muir
Science
"Nevertheless, this individual aspect [just-so-ness] of number appears to contain the mysterious factor that enables it to organize psyche and matter jointly."
Marie-Louise von Franz
Science
"It [number] preconsciously orders both psychic thought processes and the manifestations of material reality."
Marie-Louise von Franz
Science
"In one African myth the word for God is even identical with skill and capacity. The Godhead is defined as that thing which appears in man as the mystery of an unusual skill or capacity. It is something divine, a spark of the divinity in him, not his own possession or achievement, but a miracle."
Marie-Louise von Franz
Science
"Number is therefore the most primitive instrument of bringing an unconscious awareness of order into consciousness; from it you can best tap the unconscious constellation. This probably why it is used in most mantic methods."
Marie-Louise von Franz
Science
"Science is, on the whole, an informal activity, a life of shirt sleeves and coffee served in beakers."
George Porter
Science
"Quels que soient les progrès des connaissances humaines, il y aura toujours place pour l'ignorance et par suite pour le hasard et la probabilité."
Émile Borel
Science
"Jesus will take me safe trough... I shall see Jesus, who created all things, Jesus, who made the worlds; I shall see Him as He is;... Yes; I have had the Light for many years, and Oh! how bright it is! I feel SO SAFE, SO SATISFIED."
David Brewster
Science
"Man, made after God's image, was a nobler creation than twinkling sparks in the sky, or than the larger and more useful lamp of the moon."
David Brewster
Science
"Truth has no greater enemy than its unwise defenders, and no warmer friends than those who, receiving it in a meek and tolerant spirit, respect the conscientious convictions of others, and seek, in study and in prayer, for the best solution of mysterious and incomprehensible revelations."
David Brewster
Science
"How ‘real’ it is one feels when trying to form other groups…Most people will never get this other grouping as clear, stable, and optically real as the former one."
Wolfgang Köhler
Science
"I do not deny that objective experience is imbued with acquired meaning in many respects... Probably no experience escapes from the influence of meaning."
Wolfgang Köhler
Science
"Physics is becoming the study of organization. In this way ... it will converge with biology and psychology."
Wolfgang Köhler
Science
"It is hardly an exaggeration to say that a chimpanzee kept in solitude is not a real chimpanzee at all."
Wolfgang Köhler
Science
"Authority in science exists to be questioned, since heresy is the spring from which new ideas flow."
John Polanyi
Science
"Even in the world of molecules the civilising influence of modest restraints is a cause for rejoicing."
John Polanyi
Science
"When, as we must often do, we fear science, we really fear ourselves. Human dignity is better served by embracing knowledge."
John Polanyi
Science
"We are, for the rest, so wrapped up in sensations that none of our boldest conceptions can break through the circle."
Alfred Binet
Science
"The world is but an assembly of present, past, and possible sensations; the affair of science is to analyze and co-ordinate them by separating their accidental from their constant relations."
Alfred Binet
Science
"Since we seek to know what is the physical phenomenon we perceive, we must first enunciate this proposition, which will govern the whole of our discussion: to wit— Of the outer world we know nothing except our sensations."
Alfred Binet
Science
"It seems to me that people of talent and of genius serve better than average examples for making us understand the laws of character, because they present more extreme traits."
Alfred Binet
Science
"Could the search for ultimate truth really have revealed so hideous and visceral looking an object?"
Max Perutz
Science
"Attachment is the most powerful force in the universe. We are meant to learn in the context of attachment about what we are attached to, and the things that serve our attachment needs."
Gordon Neufeld
Science
"The digital playground is an incredibly cruel playground."
Gordon Neufeld
Science
"The charity of the Gospel must extend to all religions and the French hospitality to all people."
Jacques-Henri Bernardin de Saint-Pierre
Science
"If politics is the art of the possible, research is surely the art of the soluble. Both are immensely practical-minded affairs."
Peter Medawar
Science
"Simultaneous discovery is utterly commonplace, and it was only the rarity of scientists, not the inherent improbability of the phenomenon, that made it remarkable in the past. Scientists on the same road may be expected to arrive at the same destination, often not far apart."
Peter Medawar
Science
"The similarity between them is not the taxonomic key to some other, deeper, affinity, and our recognizing its existence marks the end, not the inauguration, of a train of thought."
Peter Medawar
Science
"The bells which toll for mankind are—most of them, anyway—like the bells of Alpine cattle; they are attached to our own necks, and it must be our fault if they do not make a cheerful and harmonious sound."
Peter Medawar
Science
"In our troubled days it is good to have something outside our planet, something fine and distant for comfort."
Annie Jump Cannon
Science
"Perfect adulthood, like hyper-masculinity and ultra-normality, has become the goal of most over-socialized human beings, and modern societies have begun to produce a large number of individuals whose ego-ideal includes the concept of adult maturity as defined by the dominant norms of the society."
Ashis Nandy
Science
"For those who dare to defy the given models of defiance."
Ashis Nandy
Science
"Emotions have evolved so that we can make decisions quickly and without thinking in situations where there is no time for reasoning."
Jerzy Vetulani
Science
"Designer drugs" are a word bag, just like "drugs", by the way. But after the word "drugs" is the word: "illegal". And after the "designer drugs" there is something much worse: lack of knowledge."
Jerzy Vetulani
Science
"Creativity is an integral part of our personality."
Jerzy Vetulani
Science
"Cannabis, just like morphine, has its usage in medicine. It's unpardonable that authorities forbid sick people access to this medicament and in majesty of law permit to sell cigarettes."
Jerzy Vetulani
Science
"No monument should stand over my grave, only an apple-tree, in memory of the three apples; the two of Eve and Paris, which made hell out of earth, and that of I. Newton, which elevated the earth again into the circle of heavenly bodies."
Farkas Bolyai
Science
"A parallelákat azon az útan ne próbáld: tudom én azt az utat is mind végig — megmértem azt a feneketlen éjszakát én, és az életemnek minden világossága, minden öröme kialudt benne..."
Farkas Bolyai
Science
"Wholeness [Ganzheit], Gestalt, is the primary attribute of life."
Ludwig von Bertalanffy
Science
"It is an empirical rule that living, evolutionary, psychological, social, etc., systems tend toward increasing differentiation and organization."
Ludwig von Bertalanffy
Science
"Teleologie ist … ein Ausfluss der Systemgesetzlichkeit und damit ein legitimer Gegenstand naturwissenschaftlicher Forschung"
Ludwig von Bertalanffy
Science
"What in the whole denotes a causal equilibrium process, appears for the part as a teleological event."
Ludwig von Bertalanffy
Science
"I have not had time this last winter to apply to it sufficiently; tho I had the opportunities, my attention was too much taken up with some of the Colleges, preparing my Thesis, & recalling to my mind everything I had learned, on account of the examinations."
Joseph Black
Science
"I have now studied the Theory of medicine & have likewise been taught every thing upon the Practice which can be learned in a College. I have also seen some real Practice & have even practised a little myself. But all this is not enough."
Joseph Black
Science
"I am not yet installed into the order of the great wig, but have gone through all the examinations, & nothing is wanting but the ceremony, that has been put off by the Processors to wait for some others that are to be promoted along with me 6 days hence."
Joseph Black
Science
"Most Honrd SirYour most affectionate letter of the 8th Aprill shews you in such a light as must warm the heart of a son with the highest degree of gratitude and affection."
Joseph Black
Science
"What makes MOND particularly intriguing is that it predicted many effects that could not even be tested when I formulated it."
Mordehai Milgrom
Science
"Dark matter cannot be any sort of matter that is known to science."
Mordehai Milgrom
Science
"Divide a right angle in as many parts as you want and construct herefrom the sine table.(Einen rechten Winckell in also viel theile theilenn alß man will, vnnd aus demselben den Canonen Sinuum vermachenn.)"
Jost Bürgi
Science
"Millions of people had been uprooted by the war and could not adapt themselves to a new way of life. On the other hand, certain people had grown rich and powerful."
Joy Adamson
Science
"Only one thing is certain. People get out of life exactly what they put into it."
Joy Adamson
Science
"Okay so Adam is there anything, do I have action items here?"
Carolyn Bertozzi
Science
"When the world is in trouble, chemistry comes to the rescue."
Carolyn Bertozzi
Science
"By the end of my PhD I could swing a sledgehammer."
Jocelyn Bell Burnell
Science
"Scientists should never claim that something is absolutely true. You should never claim perfect, or total, or 100% because you never ever get there."
Jocelyn Bell Burnell
Science
"There is now a thirteenth commandment "Thou shalt not make predictions in x-ray astronomy, lest the Lord thy God reveal the folly of thy ways unto all."
Jocelyn Bell Burnell
Science
"The girls got sent to the domestic science room and the boys to the science lab. ... I protested — unsuccessfully."
Jocelyn Bell Burnell
Science
"Ultimately, we hope to find a fundamental theory that explains everything with no input parameters."
Nathan Seiberg
Science
"Supersymmetry arises naturally in string theory. (It was originally motivated by string theory.)"
Nathan Seiberg
Science
"Most string theorists are very arrogant ... If there is something [beyond string theory], we will call it string theory."
Nathan Seiberg
Science
"Gravity is not an option in string theory. It is a logical consequence of it!"
Nathan Seiberg
Science
"Life is simply the reification of the process of living."
Ernst Mayr
Science
"According to the concept of transformational evolution, first clearly articulated by Lamarck, evolution consists of the gradual transformation of organisms from one condition of existence to another"
Ernst Mayr
Science
"Evolution, thus, is merely contingent on certain processes articulated by Darwin: variation and selection. No longer is a fixed object transformed, as in transformational evolution, but an entirely new start is, so to speak, made in every generation."
Ernst Mayr
Science
"No naturalist has devoted more painstaking attention to the structure of the barnacles than Mr. Darwin."
Richard Owen
Science
"The powers, aspirations, and mission of man are such as to raise the study of his origin and nature, inevitably and by the very necessity of the case, from the mere physiological to the psychological stage of scientific operations."
Richard Owen
Science
"Manifold subsequent experience has led to a truer appreciation and a more moderate estimate of the importance of the dependence of one living being upon another."
Richard Owen
Science
"The place of origin of the is unknown, but both and , today neatly separated by the Sahara, found their earliest ancestors in the , while a Potamochoerine, , survived in into the ."
Colin Groves
Science
"I’m convinced that, powered by hope and fueled by courage and anger, we have the power to transform our collective future."
Katharine Hayhoe
Science
"The old notion that the savage is the freest of mankind is the reverse of the truth. He is a slave, not indeed to a visible master, but to the past, to the spirits of his dead forefathers, who haunt his steps from birth to death, and rule him with a rod of iron."
James George Frazer
Science
"But once a fool always a fool, and the greater the power in his hands the more disastrous is likely to be the use he makes of it. The heaviest calamity in English history, the breach with America, might never have occurred if George the Third had not been an honest dullard."
James George Frazer
Science
"For there are strong grounds for thinking that, in the evolution of thought, magic has preceded religion."
James George Frazer
Science
"A candidate for the priesthood could only succeed to office by slaying the priest, and having slain him, he retained office till he was himself slain by a stronger or a craftier."
James George Frazer
Science