Irving Langmuir Quotes

In science, every question answered leads to 10 more. I love that science can never, ever be finished. From a young age, people think, 'Science is hard and boring.' We don't tell children, 'Yes, you have to learn these formulae and theorems, but then you go on to learn about nuclear reactions and stars.'

... things that people learn purely out of curiosity can have a revolutionary effect on human affairs.

No one will be able to deter the scientific mind from probing into the unknown any more than Canute could command the tides.

It is a profound and necessary truth that the deep things in science are not found because they are useful; they were found because it was possible to find them.

We should not allow it to be believed that all scientific progress can be reduced to mechanisms, machines, gearings, even though such machinery also has its beauty. Neither do I believe that the spirit of adventure runs any risk of disappearing in our world.

Science is to do research because of the target's fascinating and interesting characteristics.

Twentieth century man must boldly reach out... And purposefully strive to discover the hidden secrets of our universe.

Only by ignorance is science threatened.

We should not be a party that is opposed to science.

Pursue science because it is knowledge, because it broadens our horizons. There is so much more to be discovered.

A true scientist doesn't perform prescribed experiments; she develops her own and thus generates wholly new knowledge.

Except for children (who don't know enough not to ask the important questions), few of us spendtime wondering why nature is the way it is . . .

It's the questions we ask, the journey we take to get to where we are going that is more important than the actual answer.

One of the chief inhibitions to human progress arises because of the extreme slowness with which the advances in knowledge become translated into action for the benefit of society as a whole. There is no step more important for the removal of that inhibition than that of providing for intimate contact between the leaders in the fields of pure and applied science.

Again there is another great and powerful cause why the sciences have made but little progress; which is this. It is not possible to run a course aright when the goal itself has not been rightly placed.

All human progress is preceded by new questions

I am convinced that everything that is worth while in the world has been accomplished by the free, inquiring, critical spirit, and that the preservation of this spirit is more important than any social system whatsoever. But the men of ritual and the men of barbarism are capable of shutting up the men of science and silencing them forever.

In other studies you go as far as other have gone before you, and there is nothing more to know; but in a scientific pursuit there is continual food for discovery and wonder.

The most successful scientists are not the most talented. But they are the ones who are impelled by curiosity. They've got to know what the answer is

It is the tension between creativity and skepticism that has produced the stunning and unexpected findings of science.

I am progressing very slowly, for nature reveals herself to me in very complex forms; and the progress needed is incessant.

It is the great beauty of our science, chemistry, that advancement in it, whether in a degree great or small, instead of exhausting the subjects of research, opens the doors to further and more abundant knowledge, overflowing with beauty and utility.

If humans are organisms like every other organism - which they are - then we should expect that if there are some domains where real scientific progress is possible, then there are others where it is not.

The capacity to tolerate complexity and welcome contradiction, not the need for simplicity and certainty, is the attribute of an explorer. Centuries ago, when some people suspended their search for absolute truth and began instead to ask how things worked, modern science was born. Curiously, it was by abandoning the search for absolute truth that science began to make progress, opening the material universe to human exploration.

Without science, there would be no such hope.