A physicist is an atom’s way of knowing about atoms. - George Wald
All of science is nothing more than the refinement of everyday thinking. - Albert Einstein
All our science, measured against reality, is primitive and childlike – and yet it is the most precious thing we have. - Albert Einstein
An experiment is a question which science poses to Nature, and a measurement is the recording of Nature’s answer. - Max Planck
Any physical theory is always provisional, in the sense that it is only a hypothesis: you can never prove it. No matter how many times the results of experiments agree with some theory, you can never be sure that the next time the result will not contradict the theory. On the other hand, you can disprove a theory by finding even a single observation that disagrees with the predictions of the theory. As philosopher of science Karl Popper has emphasized, a good theory is characterized by the fact that it makes a number of predictions that could in principle be disproved or falsified by observation. Each time new experiments are observed to agree with the predictions the theory survives, and our confidence in it is increased; but if ever a new observation is found to disagree, we have to abandon or modify the theory. - Stephen Hawking
As long as men are free to ask what they must – free to say what they think – free to think what they will – freedom can never be lost and science can never regress. - J. Robert Oppenheimer
By denying scientific principles, one may maintain any paradox. - Galileo Galilei
Equipped with his five senses, man explores the universe around him and calls the adventure Science. - Edwin Powell Hubble
Even if the open windows of science at first make us shiver … in the end, the fresh air brings vigour, and the great spaces have a splendour of their own. - Bertrand Russell
Every great advance in science has issued from a new audacity of imagination. - John Dewey
False facts are highly injurious to the progress of science, for they often long endure; but false views, if supported by some evidence, do little harm, as everyone takes a salutary pleasure in proving their falseness; and when this is done, one path towards error is closed and the road to truth is often at the same time opened. - Charles Darwin
However far modern science and technics have fallen short of their inherent possibilities, they have taught mankind at least one lesson: Nothing is impossible. - Lewis Mumford
I maintain there is much more wonder in science than in pseudoscience. And in addition, to whatever measure this term has any meaning, science has the additional virtue, and it is not an inconsiderable one, of being true. - Carl Sagan
I venture to define science as a series of interconnected concepts and conceptual schemes arising from experiment and observation and fruitful of further experiments and observations. The test of a scientific theory is, I suggest, its fruitfulness. - James Bryant Conant
In all science, error precedes the truth, and it is better it should go first than last. - Hugh Walpole
In essence, science is a perpetual search for an intelligent and integrated comprehension of the world we live in. - Cornelius Bernardus Van Neil
In science one achieves the greatest impact (and often the greatest headlines) not by going along with the herd, but by bucking against it. - Lawrence M Krauss
In science one tries to tell people, in such a way as to be understood by everyone, something that no one ever knew before. - Paul Dirac
It is the tension between creativity and skepticism that has produced the stunning and unexpected findings of science. - Carl Sagan
It is through science that we prove, but through intuition that we discover. - Henri Poincaré
Men love to wonder, and that is the seed of science. - Ralph Waldo Emerson