Aldo Leopold Quotes

The tree of research must be fed from time to time with the blood of bean-counters, for it is its natural manure.

Intellectual curiosity drove Einstein to some of the world's most important discoveries.

I have been a Professor Emeritus since 1958, and have continued my scientific studies.

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

Physics is becoming too difficult for the physicists.

I would never have been a good scientist - my attention span was too short for that.

Put off your imagination, as you put off your overcoat, when you enter the laboratory. Put it on again, as you put on your overcoat, when you leave.

Science is not addressed to poets.

The positive heuristic of the programme saves the scientist from becoming confused by the ocean of anomalies.

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

It takes so long to train a physicist to the place where he understands the nature of physical problems that he is already too old to solve them.

I was always very curious about what a scientist's life was like when I was young. Of course, when I was young, you didn't have very many opportunities to find out with no web, TV. I was very lucky: I was born in the city of Chicago and went to the University of Chicago where I actually saw things.

I wanted to be a scientist. But I had no math skills.

The type of science that I do is sometimes known as 'curiosity-driven research.' This means that my work will never result in a marketable product, a useful machine, a prescribable pill, a formidable weapon, or any direct gain.

Theoretical physics hardly requires any research funding, so I never felt the need. The overall government and institutional support has been good enough for my work.

At the undergraduate level, SNU has a unique 'Opportunities for Undergraduate Research' programme. Students are encouraged to undertake research programmes at the undergraduate level and get trained in the interdisciplinary research.

If there's a field you're interested in, do some research. If you can, go to school and study it to really understand it from its core.

My days I devote to reading and experiments in chemistry, and I spend many of the clear nights in the study of astronomy. There is, though I do not know how there is or why there is, a sense of infinite peace and protection in the glittering hosts of heaven. There it must be, I think, in the vast and eternal laws of matter, and not in the daily cares and sins and troubles of men, that whatever is more than animal within us must find its solace and its hope.

But though the professed aim of all scientific work is to unravel the secrets of nature, it has another effect, not less valuable, on the mind of the worker. It leaves him in possession of methods which nothing but scientific work could have led him to invent.

In the end, science as we know it has two basic types of practitioners. One is the educated man who still has a controlled sense of wonder before the universal mystery, whether it hides in a snail's eye or within the light that impinges on that delicate organ. The second kind of observer is the extreme reductionist who is so busy stripping things apart that the tremendous mystery has been reduced to a trifle, to intangibles not worth troubling one's head about.

But the context of religion is a great background for doing science. In the words of Psalm 19, 'The heavens declare the glory of God and the firmament showeth his handiwork'. Thus scientific research is a worshipful act, in that it reveals more of the wonders of God's creation.

The wonderful structure of the animal system will probably never permit us to look upon it as a merely physical apparatus, yet the demands of science require that the evidently magnified principles of vitality should be reduced to their natural spheres, or if truth requires, wholly subverted in favor of those more cognizable by the human understanding. The spirit of the age will not tolerate in the devotee of science a quiet indifference.

In science, address the few, in literature the many. In science, the few must dictate opinion to the many; in literature, the many, sooner or later, force their judgement on the few.

Typically, defenders of experiments on animals do not deny that animals suffer. They cannot deny the animals' suffering, because they need to stress the similarities between humans and other animals in order to claim that their experiments may have some relevance for human purposes. The experimenter who forces rats to choose between starvation and electric shock to see if they develop ulcers (which they do) does so because the rat has a nervous system very similar to a human being's, and presumably feels an electric shock in a similar way.

The mere man of pleasure is miserable in old age, and the mere drudge in business is but little better, whereas, natural philosophy, mathematical and mechanical science, are a continual source of tranquil pleasure, and in spite of the gloomy dogmas of priests and of superstition, the study of these things is the true theology; it teaches man to know and admire the Creator, for the principles of science are in the creation, and are unchangeable and of divine origin.