Deborah Harkness Quotes

Science would lead you to a more interesting life than something else.

We need science education to produce scientists, but we need it equally to create literacy in the public. Man has a fundamental urge to comprehend the world about him …

But perhaps the rest of us could have separate classes in science appreciation, the wonder of science, scientific ways of thinking, and the history of scientific ideas, rather than laboratory experience.

Science is you! It's your head, it's your dog, it's your iPhone - it's the world. How do you see that as boring? If it's boring, it's because you're learning it from a textbook.

We should not teach children the sciences; but give them a taste for them.

You can't have people making decisions about the future of the world who are scientifically illiterate. That's a recipe for disaster. And I don't mean just whether a politician is scientifically literate, but people who vote politicians into office.

You don't need a science degree to understand about science. You just need to think about it.

I like to believe that science is becoming mainstream. It should have never been something that sort of geeky people do and no one else thinks about. Whether or not, it will always be what geeky people do. It should, as a minimum, be what everybody thinks about because science is all around us.

I believe we owe our young an education that captures the exhilarating drama of science.

I suggest that the introductory courses in science, at all levels from grade school through college, be radically revised. Leave the fundamentals, the so-called basics, aside for a while, and concentrate the attention of all students on the things that are not known.

At school, I was fanatical about being a scientist.

More attention to the History of Science is needed, as much by scientists as by historians, and especially by biologists, and this should mean a deliberate attempt to understand the thoughts of the great masters of the past, to see in what circumstances or intellectual milieu their ideas were formed, where they took the wrong turning or stopped short on the right track.

You have people who believe they are scientifically literate but, in fact, are not. And I don't mind if you're not scientifically literate, but just admit that to yourself, so that you'll know, and perhaps you can take a first step to try to eradicate that.

Unfortunately, science cannot be reduced to short, catchy phrases. And if this is all that the general public can comprehend, it's no wonder that we spend so much of our time in the interminable debate about belief in God, or lack thereof.

People, and especially theologians, should try to familiarize themselves with scientific ideas. Of course, science is technical in many respects, but there are some very good books that try to set out some of the conceptual structure of science.

Science is the best idea humans have ever had. The more people who embrace that idea, the better.

People don't learn science in movies. You don't go to the movies thinking, 'I hope I learn some quantum mechanics this afternoon.' But on the other hand, movies are instrumental and influential in getting young people interested in science.

Lack of scientific fundamentals causes people to make foolish decisions about issues such as the toxicity of chemicals, the efficacy of medicines, the changes in the global climate. 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.

Part of what it is to be scientifically-literate, it's not simply, 'Do you know what DNA is? Or what the Big Bang is?' That's an aspect of science literacy. The biggest part of it is do you know how to think about information that's presented in front of you.

People are interested in science, but they don't always know they're interested in science, and so I try to find a way to get them interested.

If you're talking to a child, you're going, 'This is the wonder of science and here's why I'm so fascinated by it.'

To understand a science, it is necessary to know its history.

Science literacy is the artery through which the solutions of tomorrow's problems flow.

All writers are going to have to learn more about science, because it's such an interesting part of their environment.

The people who work in the scientific field, they need help to convey what it's about.