Bertrand Russell Quotes

Science is the most intimate school of resignation and humility, for it teaches us to bow before the seemingly most insignificant of facts.

One of the reasons I've gotten so attached to talking to scientists is that... they know there is a reality.

The increase of scientific knowledge lies not only in the occasional milestones of science, but in the efforts of the very large body of men who with love and devotion observe and study nature.

Science is a wonderful discipline, to which we are deeply indebted.

Science is a beautiful gift to humanity; we should not distort it.

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

There is nothing inherently wrong about science.

I want to get across that science is something that we all have ownership of and we can all take an interest in. We don't all have to understand complex theories, but we should have a working knowledge, like knowing your way round the engine of your car.

People have asked me whether I have a science background. No, but I have a great curiosity about the kinds of things we do on 'Discover.'

Why do you do science? In this particular case, we don't have a very good reason to be doing this except for the knowledge that it brings. This research is especially important to young people. We all want to know what's going on in the universe.

Science has promised us truth...It has never promised us either peace or happiness.

The principle of science, the definition, almost, is the following: The test of all knowledge is experiment. Experiment is the sole judge of scientific "truth." But what is the source of knowledge? Where do the laws that are to be tested come from? Experiment, itself, helps to produce these laws, in the sense that it gives us hints. But also needed is imagination to create from these hints the great generalizations--to guess at the wonderful, simple, but very strange patterns beneath them all, and then to experiment to check again whether we have made the right guess.

Science is a fundamental part of our existence.

I find science so much more fascinating than science fiction. It also has the advantage of being true.

A book on the new physics, if not purely descriptive of experimental work, must essentially be mathematical.

We live in a scientific age, yet we assume that knowledge of science is the prerogative of only a small number of human beings, isolated and priestlike in their laboratories. This is not true. The materials of science are the materials of life itself. Science is part of the reality of living; it is the way, the how and the why for everything in our experience.

Science gives you an understanding of the physical world, and it increases the capacity for fascination.

To make a discovery is not necessarily the same as to understand a discovery. Not only Planck but also other physicists were intially at a loss as to what the proper context of the new postulate really was.

Mathematics is the abstract key which turns the lock of the physical universe.

Mathematics is a more powerful instrument of knowledge than any other that has been bequeathed to us by human agency.

Science, you don't know, looks like magic.

Those who draw their sustenance from science are blessed. It is for me to only derive an occasional pleasure. This is nothing worthy of conceit, but I am indeed touched by the joys. This book is an ode to such joys, a digest of my collections from various sources.

Scientists are explorers. Philosophers are tourists.

In science, probably ninety-nine percent of the knowable has to be discovered. We know only a few streaks about astronomy. We are only beginning to imagine the force and composition of the atom. Physics has not yet found any indivisible matter, or psychology a sensible soul.

The most heated defenders of a science, who cannot endure the slightest sneer at it, are commonly those who have not made very much progress in it and are secretly aware of this defect.