I am not a scientist. I am, rather, an impresario of scientists.
This means that to entrust to science – or to deliberate control according to scientific principles – more than scientific method can achieve may have deplorable effects.
Mars has been flown by, orbited, smacked into, radar inspected, and rocketed onto, as well as bounced upon, rolled over, shoveled, drilled into, baked, and even laser blasted.
When I investigate and when I discover that the forces of the heavens and the planets are within ourselves, then truly I seem to be living among the gods.
Adventure upon all the tickets in the lottery, and you lose for certain; and the greater the number of your tickets the nearer your approach to this certainty.
Luckily, unreasonable expectations go hand in hand with naive young scientists. The more naive the better – otherwise we would never have the audacity to try and build a 22,000-mile-high space elevator or some sprawling underwater hotel.
It stands to the everlasting credit of science that by acting on the human mind it has overcome man’s insecurity before himself and before nature.
That’s what Hubble can do for us. It can tell us whether the universe is expanding forever or if one day it’s going to come back together.
Scientific knowledge is a kind of discourse.
I believe in general in a dualism between facts and the ideas of those facts in human heads.
Most people don’t realize it, because they’re invisible, but microbes make up about a half of the Earth’s biomass, whereas all animals only make up about one one-thousandth of all the biomass.
There is no complete theory of anything.
Polygraph tests are 20th-century witchcraft.
And, that’s what I truly believe that we’re doing when we’re advancing scientific knowledge is we’re someday making the world better. Not only for our children, but for all people after that.
One can not impede scientific progress.
People think of the inventor as a screwball, but no one ever asks the inventor what he thinks of other people.
Half of the modern drugs could well be thrown out of the window, except that the birds might eat them.
We should be increasing research and development into our fossil fuel program.
For an object under the eye will appear very different from the same object placed above it; in an inclosed space, very different from the same in an open space.
He is so old that his blood type was discontinued.
Whenever anyone says, ‘theoretically,’ they really mean, ‘not really.’
Statistics is the grammar of science.
The essence of science is independent thinking, hard work, and not equipment. When I got my Nobel Prize, I had spent hardly 200 rupees on my equipment.
Science can purify religion from error and superstition. Religion can purify science from idolatry and false absolutes.
The art and science of asking questions is the source of all knowledge.
