Gilbert Newton Lewis Quotes

In scientific work, those who refuse to go beyond fact rarely get as far as fact.

The best scientists that I've met are those that are humanists and scientists at the same time.

Science is a way of thinking much more than it is a body of knowledge.

Our observation of nature must be diligent, our reflection profound, and our experiments exact. We rarely see these three means combined; and for this reason, creative geniuses are not common.

There are three principal means of acquiring knowledge available to us: observation of nature, reflection, and experimentation. Observation collects facts; reflection combines them; experimentation verifies the result of that combination.

The scientist is a lover of truth for the very love of truth itself, wherever it may lead.

The man of science is a poor philosopher.

So, my advice to young scientists is, think critically about your work; probably don't blab unnecessarily.

My emotional investment is in finding truth. If string theory is wrong, I'd like to have known that yesterday. But if we can show it today or tomorrow, fantastic.

The object of opening the mind, as of opening the mouth, is to shut it again on something solid.

I read books like mad, but I am careful to to let anything I read influence me.

When it comes to art and science, people don't like a lot of either. Instead of being open to it, they're closed off about it.

The center line of science literacy - which not many people tell you, but I feel this strongly, and I will go to my grave making this point - is how you think.

Hypotheses are what we lack the least.

The key to wisdom is this - constant and frequent questioning, for by doubting we are led to question and by questioning we arrive at the truth.

Not so the scientist. The very essence of his life is the service of truth.

Research has been called good business, a necessity, a gamble, a game. It is none of these - it's a state of mind.

Part of the scientific temperament is this tolerance for holding multiple hypotheses in mind at the same time.

We live in an age of universal investigation, and of exploration of the sources of all movements.

Experience seems to most of us to lead to conclusions, but empiricism has sworn never to draw them.

I'm a huge believer in learning anything from multiple points of view.

The scientific mind does not so much provide the right answers as ask the right questions.

Nothing has such power to broaden the mind as the ability to investigate systematically and truly all that comes under thy observation in life.

If they are, then the only ultimate truths are the particulars of concrete experience, and no postulate or general assumption is inherent in science until its proceedings become systematic, or the truths already reached give direction to further research.

My job is to notice echoes and notice resonances. Scientists are not supposed to do the same thing that cultural critics do.