Science and Reason

Scepticism is the chastity of the intellect, and it is shameful to surrender it too soon or to the first comer.

It is a great advantage for a system of philosophy to be substantially true.

Miracles are propitious accidents, the natural causes of which are too complicated to be readily understood.

Freedom of thought is the only guarantee of the feasibility of a scientific democratic approach to politics, economy, and culture.

Intellectual freedom is essential to human society—freedom to obtain and distribute information, freedom for open-minded and unfearing debate, and freedom from pressure by officialdom and prejudices.

In science it often happens that scientists say,

If you can’t explain your physics to a barmaid, it is probably not very good physics.

[Science may be divided into either one of] physics and stamp-collecting.

In order to explain these and other results, it is necessary to assume that the electrified particle passes through an intense electric field within the atom. The scattering of the electrified particles is considered for a type of atom which consists of a central electric charge concentrated at a point and surrounded by a uniform spherical distribution of opposite electricity equal in amount.

From the results so far obtained it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that the long-range atoms arising from collision of *3 particles with nitrogen are not nitrogen atoms but probably atoms of hydrogen, or atoms of mass 2. If this be the case, we must conclude that the nitrogen atom is disintegrated under the intense forces developed in a close collision with a swift *3 particle, and that the hydrogen atom which is liberated formed a constituent part of the nitrogen nucleus.

Radioactivity is shown to be accompanied by chemical changes in which new types of matter are being continually produced. . . . The conclusion is drawn that these chemical changes must be sub-atomic in character.

Approximately 80% of our air pollution stems from hydrocarbons released by vegetation, so let’s not go overboard in setting and enforcing tough emission standards from man-made sources.

God ever geometrizes.

[ Welcoming back the crew of Apollo 11 from the first moon landing :] This is the greatest week in the history of the world since the Creation.

I frame no hypotheses; for whatever is not deduced from the phenomena is to be called an hypothesis; and hypotheses, whether metaphysical or physical, whether of occult qualities or mechanical, have no place in experimental philosophy.

The fatal tendency of mankind to leave off thinking about a thing when it is no longer doubtful is the cause of half their errors.

Between the layman’s “ Naturally no human society” and the anthropologist’s “No known human society” lie thousands of detailed and painstaking studies, made by hurricane-lamp and firelight, by explorer and missionary and modern scientists, in many parts of the world.

The more success the quantum theory has, the sillier it looks.

Photons have mass? I didn’t even know they were Catholic.

It is my task to convince you not to turn away because you don't understand it. You see my physics students don't understand it... That is because I don't understand it. Nobody does.

Nothing happens until something moves.

Nothing is accidental in the universe -- this is one of my Laws of Physics -- except the entire universe itself, which is Pure Accident, pure divinity.

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

Politics is far more complicated than physics.