Sunday Sensational Science

Science in Two Sentences or Less




Science is what you know. Philosophy is what you don't know.

Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) English philosopher, mathematician.



The scientist does not study nature because it is useful; he studies it because he delights in it, and he delights in it because it is beautiful. If nature were not beautiful, it would not be worth knowing, and if nature were not worth knowing, life would not be worth living.

Jules Henri Poincaré (1854-1912) French mathematician.




“Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, and not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science

Charles Darwin



One thing I have learned in a long life: that all our science, measured against reality, is primitive and childlike and yet it is the most precious thing we have.

Albert Einstein



One had to be a Newton to notice that the moon is falling, when everyone sees that it doesn't fall.

Paul Valéry (1871-1945) French poet and philosopher.


Truth in science can be defined as the working hypothesis best suited to open the way to the next better one.

Konrad (Zacharias) Lorenz (1903-89) Austrian ethologist. [Nobel prize for medicine, 1973]




Research is to see what everybody else has seen, and to think what nobody else has thought.

Albert Szent-Györgi (1893-1986) U. S. biochemist.


The world is my country, science my religion.

Christiaan Huygens




I believe there is no philosophical high-road in science, with epistemological signposts. No, we are in a jungle and find our way by trial and error, building our road behind us as we proceed.

Max Born (1882-1970) German Physicist. Nobel Prize, 1954.





Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds.

Albert Einstein


The production of useful work is strictly limited by the laws of thermodynamics. The production of useless work seems to be unlimited.

Donald E. Simanek (1936- )US physicist, educator, humorist.







If anybody says he can think about quantum problems without getting giddy, that only shows he has not understood the first thing about them.

Niels Henrik David Bohr (1885-1962) Danish physicist.





More than ever, the creation of the ridiculous is almost impossible because of the competition it receives from reality.

Robert A. Baker (1937- ) U. S. author.





Wonderful theory. Wrong species.

E.O. Wilson (verdict on Marxism)



Shall I refuse my dinner because I do not fully understand the process of digestion?

Oliver Heaviside (1850-1925) English physicist.


The man of science has learned to believe in justification, not by faith, but by verification.

Thomas H. Huxley (1825-95) English biologist.








Boswell: But, Sir is it not somewhat singular that you should happen to have Cocker's Arithmetic about you on your journey?

Dr. Johnson: Why, Sir if you are to have but one book with you upon a journey, let it be a book of science. When you read through a book of entertainment, you know it, and it can do no more for you; but a book of science is inexhaustible.

James Boswell (1740-95) Scottish author, biographer of Samuel Johnson.








Concern for man and his fate must always form the chief interest of all technical endeavors ... Never forget this in the midst of your diagrams and equations.

Albert Einstein




Compiled with help from Donald Simanek. As always, click on photos for sources and the occasional delightful find.