Heinz R. Pagels Quotes

Upon the progress of knowledge the whole progress of the human race is immediately dependent: he who retards that, hinders this also.

You are challenged to avoid mediocrity, acquire knowledge from the sages of antiquity, the achievements of the scientific present, and the prophets of the living God.

The progress of science can be said to be harmful to religion only in so far as it is used for evil aims and not because it claims a priority over religion in its revelation to man.

The first duty of man is the seeking after and the investigation of truth.

Thus identified with astronomy, in proclaiming truths supposed to be hostile to Scripture, Geology has been denounced as the enemy of religion. The twin sisters of terrestrial and celestial physics have thus been joint-heirs of intolerance and persecution—unresisting victims in the crusade which ignorance and fanaticism are ever waging against science. When great truths are driven to make an appeal to reason, knowledge becomes criminal, and philosophers martyrs. Truth, however, like all moral powers, can neither be checked nor extinguished. When compressed, it but reacts the more. It crushes where it cannot expand—it burns where it is not allowed to shine.

Every great scientific truth goes through three states: first, people say it conflicts with the Bible; next, they say it has been discovered before; lastly, they say they always believed it.

While it is true that science cannot decide questions of value, that is because they cannot be intellectually decided at all, and lie outside the realm of truth and falsehood. Whatever knowledge is attainable, must be attained by scientific methods; and what science cannot discover, mankind cannot know.

Religion and science are the two conjugated faces or phases of one and the same complete act of knowledge - the only one which can embrace the past and future of evolution and so contemplate, measure and fulfil them.

Some things mankind can finish and be done with, but not ... science, that persists, and changes from ancient Chaldeans studying the stars to a new telescope with a 200-inch reflector and beyond; not religion, that persists, and changes from old credulities and world views to new thoughts of God and larger apprehensions of his meaning.

There are but few saints amongst scientists, as among other men, but truth itself is a goal comparable with sanctity.

To use Newton's words, our efforts up till this moment have but turned over a pebble or shell here and there on the beach, with only a forlorn hope that under one of them was the gem we were seeking. Now we have the sieve, the minds, the hands, the time, and, particularly, the dedication to find those gems-no matter in which favorite hiding place the children of distant worlds have placed them.

One of the greatest gifts science has brought to the world is continuing elimination of the supernatural.

Our understanding of the world around us is constantly being redefined and expanded, and so therefore, it is wiser to be passionate about seeking for truth than knowing it.

Science is but an image of the truth.

There's no question that as science, knowledge and technology advance, that we will attempt to do more significant things. And there's no question that we will always have to temper those things with ethics.

After all, the ultimate goal of all research is not objectivity, but truth.

It is no good to try to stop knowledge from going forward. Ignorance is never better than knowledge.

Science, in the broadest sense, includes all reasonable claims to knowledge about ourselves and the world.

To try to write a grand cosmical drama leads necessarily to myth. To try to let knowledge substitute ignorance in increasingly larger regions of space and time is science.

It is not knowledge, but the act of learning, not possession but the act of getting there, which grants the greatest enjoyment.

I believe that science is the engine of prosperity, that if you look around at the wealth of civilization today, it's the wealth that comes from science.

I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. My sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history, naval architecture, navigation, commerce, and agriculture, in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry, and porcelain.

In all science, error precedes the truth, and it is better it should go first than last.

As we gain more knowledge about materials and processes in the universe, that could open up benefits that we can't even imagine. But you have to be willing to fund science without knowledge of the benefits.

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