Steven Weinberg Quotes

Through basic science literacy, people can understand the policy choices we need to be making. Scientists are not necessarily the greatest communicators, but science and communication is one of the fundamentals we need to address. People are interested.

I recognize that there's an appetite that I'm now serving, and I'm happy to do so. I think it means quite a bit that science has achieved this level of public interest and access. And so I'm simultaneously astonished every day upon recognizing this, and I think it's a good sign for the country and possibly for the world.

The future lies with those wise political leaders who realize that the great public is interested more in government than in politics.

One of the things that really worries me, in part about Mexico, in part about Latin America, and in part about the Hispanic population in the U.S. and Canada. It's the lack of awareness of this whole science world.

In general, a little controversy isn't harmful: if anything, it gets people interested.

Technology isn't fulfilling its promise of unlimited progress and solving every problem through technology. With the Enlightenment and its aftermath, there already was a general loss of confidence in the Western religions.

This is perhaps the most beautiful time in human history; it is really pregnant with all kinds of creative possibilities made possible by science and technology which now constitute the slave of man - if man is not enslaved by it.

Professional baseball is on the wane. Salaries must come down or the interest of the public must be increased in some way.

With science becoming far more accessible to all of us, I've become a pretty avid reader and devourer of it. One of the objectives that I had working with Fringe was to get more people talking about it because it's such fun.

The media loves to spend a lot of time talking about itself and do a lot of navel-gazing, which the general public isn't quite that interested in. They aren't really particularly concerned with whether our feelings are hurt or the things that we complain about. They have their own lives and their own jobs that are difficult as well. I think where the media has gotten itself in trouble is the sense that they're much more interested in things like parsing words and getting into fights about little minutia, as opposed to stepping back and seeing what the big picture is.

An Athenian citizen does not neglect his state because he takes care of his own household; even those of us who are engaged in business have a very fair idea of politics. We do not regard a man who takes no interest in public affairs as harmless. We do not say that such a man 'minds his own business'. Rather we say he has no business here at all.

Today, nothing is unusual about a scientific discovery's being followed soon after by a technical application: The discovery of electrons led to electronics; fission led to nuclear energy. But before the 1880's, science played almost no role in the advances of technology. For example, James Watt developed the first efficient steam engine long before science established the equivalence between mechanical heat and energy.

Interference with communications of science to the public has been greater during the current administration than at any time in my career.

Israel's economic and cultural progress is due to three things: the pioneering spirit that inspires the best of our immigrant and Israeli youth, who respond to the challenge of our desolute areas and the ingathering of the exiles; the feeling of Diaspora Jewry that they are partners in the enterprise of Israel's resurgence in the ancient homeland of the Jewish people; and the power of science, and technology which Israel unceasingly, and not without success, tries to enhance.

To me, this is not an information age. It's an age of networked intelligence, it's an age of vast promise.

Certain elements of today's ecological crisis reveal its moral character. First among these is the indiscriminate application of advances in science and technology. Many recent discoveries have brought undeniable benefits to humanity. Indeed, they demonstrate the nobility of the human vocation to participate responsibly in God's creative action in the world. Unfortunately, it is now clear that the application of these discoveries in the fields of industry and agriculture have produced harmful long-term effects.

The museums want large crowds coming to the shows - it's the same thing. It's hype. Absolutely. But there's nothing evil about it.

The success of this Government, and thus the success of our Nation, depends in the last analysis upon the quality.of our career services. The legislation enacted by the Congress, as well as the decisions made by me and by the department and agency heads, must all be implemented by the career men and women in the Federal service. In foreign affairs, national defense, science and technology, and a host of other fields, they face problems of unprecedented importance and perplexity. We are all dependent on their sense of loyalty and responsibility as well as their competence and energy.

I hold that popularization of science is successful if, at first, it does no more than spark the sense of wonder.

You see, when medicine works, it is blessed science, and when it fails, it is witchcraft. - Polidori

Science and medicine and technology have all produced the breathtaking advances with which they have gifted the human race, only because they have been willing to do what religion has consistently, staunchly, and stubbornly refused to do: question the prior assumption.

Some speak of the public as if it were someone with whom they have had dinner at the Leipzig Fair in the Hotel de Saxe. Who is this public? The public is not a thing, but rather an idea, a postulate, like the Church.

No medicine man these days can afford to be without a portable tape recorder. Without the aid of this modern device, which may be easily concealed in the undergrowth of the jungle, the old tribal authority will rapidly become undermined by the mounting influenece of modern skepticism.

People also like partnerships because they can identify with the drama of two people in partnership. They can feed off a partnership, and that keeps people entertained. Besides, if you have a successful partnership, it's self-sustaining.

Anything, even the conceptually most complex material, can be written for general audiences without any dumbing down. Of course you have to explain things carefully. This goes back to Galileo, who wrote his great books as dialogues in Italian, not as treatises in Latin. And to Darwin, who wrote The Origin of Species for general readers. I think a lot of people pick up Darwin's book and assume it must be a popular version of some technical monograph, but there is no technical monograph. That's what he wrote. So what I'm doing is part of a great humanistic tradition.