Science & Human Progress

"The super-national character of scientific concepts and scientific language is due to the fact that they have been set up by the best brains of all countries and all times."

"Without freedom there is no creation, no art, no science, no philosophy, and no progress."

"When I woke up just after dawn on September 28, 1928, I certainly didn't plan to revolutionize all medicine by discovering the world's first antibiotic... But I suppose that was exactly what I did."

"The Internet is a tidal wave. It changes the rules. It is the most important single development to come along since the IBM PC was introduced in 1981."

"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence."

"If in your office you, as an intellectual worker, were supplied with a computer display backed up by a computer that was alive for you all day... how much value could you derive?"

"History is going to bifurcate along two directions. One path is that we stay on Earth forever, and then there will be some extinction event. The alternative is to become a spacefaring civilization and a multiplanetary species."

"I abjure, curse, and detest the aforesaid errors and heresies... that the Sun is the center of the world and immovable."

"The most dangerous phrase in the language is, 'We've always done it this way.'"

"How dare you! You have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words."

"The cult of ignorance in the United States has been a constant strain, and there is a anti-intellectual thread winding its way through our political and cultural life."

"The people of this world must unite or they will perish."

"There is no absolute knowledge. And those who claim it, whether they are scientists or dogmatists, open the door to tragedy."

"The most intellectual creature that has ever walked the planet is destroying its only home."

"We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard."

"The present crisis is caused by an acceleration in technological progress outstripping human institutional development."

"There is no patent. Could you patent the sun?"

"No, there is now no circumstance known in which it can be affirmed that microscopic beings came into the world without germs, without parents similar to themselves."

"Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood. Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear less."

"An new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it."

"That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind."

"When an agency like NASA dares to dream big, it inspires an entire generation of young people to become scientists, engineers, and innovators."

"We have many a monument of past ages; we have the palaces and pyramids, the temples and the cathedrals; but the hydroelectric power plant at Niagara is a monument worthy of our scientific age."

"Food is the moral right of all who are born into this world."

"The balance of nature is not a status quo; it is a fluid, ever-shifting condition."

"The first principle is that you must not fool yourself—and you are the easiest person to fool."

"The principles of physics, as far as I can see, do not speak against the possibility of maneuvering things atom by atom."

"Science and everyday life cannot and should not be separated."

"Every once in a while, a revolutionary product comes along that changes everything."

"Data is precious and it's going to last longer than the systems themselves."