James Hansen Quotes

Science is organized knowledge.

Lack of scientific fundamentals causes people to make foolish decisions about issues such as the toxicity of chemicals, the efficacy of medicines, the changes in the global climate. Our single greatest defense against scientific ignorance is education, and early in the life of every scientist, the child's first interest was sparked by a teacher.

I really like science because it seems to be that place where you get the big picture, everything connects.

It doesn't matter whether it is chemistry or immunology or neuroscience: I just do research on what I find interesting.

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.

Professors in every branch of the sciences, prefer their own theories to truth: the reason is that their theories are private property, but truth is common stock.

If people don’t have an understanding of what science is and what scientists do, then they can tend to think that global warming, for example, is just a matter of opinion.

The United States will continue its efforts to improve our understanding of climate change - to seek hard data, accurate models, and new ways to improve the science - and determine how best to meet these tremendous challenges.

Though the world does not change with a change of paradigm, the scientist afterward works in a different world... I am convinced that we must learn to make sense of statements that at least resemble these. What occurs during a scientific revolution is not fully reducible to a re-interpretation of individual and stable data. In the first place, the data are not unequivocally stable.

I have faith that science is a good thing. Seriously, I'd say that I am very much in awe of nature. In fact, I think to some extent, "awe" was a word that was almost invented for scientists.

It was getting the results that made science worth doing; the accolades were a thin, secondary pleasure.

The TV scientist who mutters sadly, "The experiment is a failure; we have failed to achieve what we had hoped for," is suffering mainly from a bad script writer. An experiment is never a failure solely because it fails to achieve predicted results. An experiment is a failure only when it also fails adequately to test the hypothesis in question, when the data it produces don't prove anything one way or another.

Science is voiceless; it is the scientists who talk.

Possession of a program with unique analytic capabilities puts a scientist in as much of a priveleged position to make new discoveries as the possession of a powerful telescope.

The scientist needs an artistically creative imagination.

I think that it's good for us to be able to travel in space and do research in space, and I emphasize the research, because space travel to me is far more than just seeing how far we can go.

I am only a physicist with nothing material to show for my labours. I have never even seen the ionosphere, although I have worked on the subject for thirty years. That does show how lucky people can be. If there had been no ionosphere I would not have been standing here this morning.

The science hangs like a gathering fog in a valley, a fog which begins nowhere and goes nowhere, an incidental, unmeaning inconvenience to passers-by.

Science is a fundamental part of our existence.

It can be said with complete confidence that any scientist of any age who wants to make important discoveries must study important problems. Dull or piffling problems yield dull or piffling answers. It is not enough that a problem should be "interesting".

This climate surrounding me has reached Clive Oppenheimer. In practical terms he sees that I'm not interested in any sort of daredevil stunts, I'm just interested in the work. And he's convinced that I'm clinically sane.

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

Most man only care for science so far as they get a living by it, and that they worship even error when it affords them a subsistence.

Whoever, in the pursuit of science, seeks after immediate practical utility, may generally rest assured that he will seek in vain.

Fact explains nothing. On the contrary, it is fact that requires explanation.