Science: merely a way of thinking.

Logic cannot perceive, and logic also cannot convince. You need rhetoric. And that a computer cannot do. -- Peter Drucker, Business 2.0 Interview

The essential point in science is not a complicated mathematical formalism or a ritualized experimentation. Rather the heart of science is a kind of shrewd honesty that springs from really wanting to know what the hell is going on! -- Saul-Paul Sirag

What is research but a blind date with knowledge? -- Will Harvey

The moon is covered with the results of astronomical odds.

The number of licorice gumballs you get out of a gumball machine increases in direct proportion to how much you hate licorice.

The sign of a confident scientist: Often wrong, never in doubt.

There's no sense in being precise when you don't even know what you're talking about. -- John von Neumann

On two occasions, I have been asked [by members of Parliament], 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able to rightly apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question. -- Charles Babbage

To the question, "Will there ever be a computer as smart as a human?" I think the correct answer is, "Well, yes. . . very briefly." -- Dr. Vernor Vinge [interview, Technological Singularity]

If I sit here and stare at nothing long enough, people might think I'm an engineer working on something. -- S.R. McElroy

Science is analyzing. Engineering is doing.

Woodward's Law: A theory is better than its explanation.

If in any problem you find yourself doing an immense amount of work, the answer can be obtained by simple inspection.

Anyone who cannot cope with mathematics is not fully human. At best he is a tolerable subhuman who has learned to wear shoes, bathe, and not make messes in the house. -- Robert A. Heinlein, Notebooks of Lazarus

Every time I look at you I am more convinced of Darwin's theory.

Mathematics deals exclusively with the relations of concepts to each other without consideration of their relation to experience. -- Albert Einstein

Mathematicians don't need to be good at counting, they just care if it's countable.

Algebraic symbols are used when you do not know what you are talking about. -- Philippe Schnoebelen Some men are just as sure of the truth of their opinions as are others of what they know. -- Aristotle, Nichomachean Ethics

To be "matter of fact" about the world is to blunder into fantasy -- and dull fantasy at that, as the real world is strange and wonderful. The difference between science and the fuzzy subjects is that science requires reasoning, while those other subjects merely require scholarship. -- Robert A. Heinlein, Notebooks of Lazarus

Quantum particles: The dreams that stuff is made of.

Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed. -- Francis Bacon

Reality must take precedence over public relations, for Mother Nature cannot be fooled. -- R.P. Feynman

Opinion has caused more trouble on this little earth than plagues or earthquakes. -- Voltaire

... the larger the island of knowledge, the longer the shoreline of wonder. -- Donald D. Hoffman, preface to Visual Intelligence (?)

Hope is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, no matter how it turns out. -- Václav Havel

The release of atom power has changed everything except our way of thinking... The solution to this problem lies in the heart of mankind. If only I had known, I should have become a watchmaker. -- Albert Einstein

Nature always sides with the hidden flaw.

If the thunder don't get you, then the lightning will -- The Grateful Dead, The Wheel