Brian Cox Quotes

Science shouldn't be just for scientists, and there are encouraging signs that it is becoming more pervasive in culture and the media.

Anything that promotes a kernel of science, even though it's exaggerated and hyped by Hollywood, I think is a step forward. We in the ivory tower ultimately have to realize that in some sense we have to sing for our supper.

If I can get some student interested in science, if I can show members of the general public what's going on up there in the space program, then my job's been done.

It is entirely possible to present science accurately and have a hit show.

We have been talking about public engagement for a decade. For me it is about recognising that the mission of science has to be embedded within our culture - the direction in which science is going has to be determined by all of us, and so we need a dialogue with the public.

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.

I believe scientists have a duty to share the excitement and pleasure of their work with the general public, and I enjoy the challenge of presenting difficult ideas in an understandable way.

If scientists can't communicate with the public, with policy makers, with one another, the future is going to be held back. We're not going to have the future that we could have.

If you publish a scientific paper it is very hard to start a nationwide debate about something. If you do this in a movie, you can start a debate. We like to create a bridge between those two worlds - film and science.

Before I lost my voice, it was slurred, so only those close to me could understand, but with the computer voice, I found I could give popular lectures. I enjoy communicating science. It is important that the public understands basic science, if they are not to leave vital decisions to others.

I hope I have helped to raise the profile of science and to show that physics is not a mystery but can be understood by ordinary people.

Once you have an innovation culture, even those who are not scientists or engineers - poets, actors, journalists - they, as communities, embrace the meaning of what it is to be scientifically literate. They embrace the concept of an innovation culture. They vote in ways that promote it. They don't fight science and they don't fight technology.

Somehow we must reintegrate the scientific with the popular and reconnect the future to the present. This is less a job for scientists, engineers, bureaucrats, and administrators and more a job for novelists, moviemakers, popularizers, and politicians.

The way you raise the profile of an issue is by making the issue cool and relevant in pop culture.

Science is not finished until it is communicated.

The phrase ‘popular science’ has in itself a touch of absurdity. That knowledge which is popular is not scientific.

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.

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

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.

I feel like hip-hop is the new pop because it has a lot of influence because of our culture.

I love feeling like I'm 'on the pulse' of things. Nothing more satisfying, more valued, more exciting as a writer. Because shaping pop culture really means that you're saying something that a lot of people want to hear.

Having a hit is nice, having some success, but when you move popular culture, that's a high.

One of the best and most responsible things a scientist can do is to write for the popular press.

The Beatles are a passing phase, symptoms of the confusion about us.

I think it's really important that people can look at this show and be offended by it. Hopefully, then people will understand that this is still very much a problem we need to solve in other parts of the world. At least we have antibiotics.