Some of the links in this post may be affiliate links. See our disclosure for more info.
Curious about science? These science quotes show the importance of science and scientific endeavors in our daily lives.
From the first wheel to the International Space Station, scientific inquiry has advanced the human condition and pushed us to new frontiers.
The search for knowledge, advancement, and satisfaction of curiosity have all shaped the broad field of science and continue to do so today.
So here are the best quotes about science, scientists, and scientific fields to encourage you to find new ways to think and explore the world and beyond.
Top 15 Science Quotes
The science of today is the technology of tomorrow.
Edward Teller
Science is the systematic classification of experience.
George Henry Lewes
Science is organized knowledge. Wisdom is organized life.
Immanuel Kant
Reason, observation, and experience; the holy trinity of science.
Robert Green Ingersoll
Equipped with his five senses, man explores the universe around him and calls the adventure Science.
Edwin Powell Hubble
The great tragedy of science – the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact.
Thomas Huxley
Science is a way of thinking much more than it is a body of knowledge.
Carl Sagan
Science is not only a disciple of reason but, also, one of romance and passion.
Stephen Hawking
The heart of science is measurement.
Erik Brynjolfsson
Science is magic that works.
Kurt Vonnegut
Science is not finished until it is communicated.
Mark Walport
Science does not permit exceptions.
Claude Bernard
Quotes about Science
What is science? Find out what it is, how it’s done, and why it’s important with the best quotes about science. At it’s heart, science is about asking questions and applying data to draw conclusions with the Scientific Method.
Sure, we may have had a class or two that tripped us up in high school, but science is also fun! From paper mache volcanoes to model rockets, we can all remember a time when we enjoyed putting our minds to scientific thought.
Science is a beautiful gift to humanity; we should not distort it.
A. P. J. Abdul Kalam
Science is fun. Science is curiosity. We all have natural curiosity. Science is a process of investigating. It’s posing questions and coming up with a method. It’s delving in.
Sally Ride
Science knows no country, because knowledge belongs to humanity, and is the torch which illuminates the world.
Louis Pasteur
Science, like art, religion, commerce, warfare, and even sleep, is based on presuppositions.
Gregory Bateson
No science is immune to the infection of politics and the corruption of power.
Jacob Bronowski
Science without conscience is the death of the soul.
Francois Rabelais
In all science, error precedes the truth, and it is better it should go first than last.
Horace Walpole
In science, the credit goes to the man who convinces the world, not to whom the idea first occurs.
Francis Darwin
Science is not, despite how it is often portrayed, about absolute truths. It is about developing an understanding of the world, making predictions, and then testing these predictions.
Brian Schmidt
There are in fact two things, science and opinion; the former begets knowledge, the latter ignorance.
Hippocrates
Science is wonderfully equipped to answer the question ‘How?’ but it gets terribly confused when you ask the question ‘Why?’
Erwin Chargaff
Science has not yet taught us if madness is or is not the sublimity of the intelligence.
Edgar Allan Poe
I am among those who think that science has great beauty.
Marie Curie
Science and technology are the keys to both our longevity and our demise. Our entire existence on this planet is a double-edged sword.
Rhys Darby
Science gives us knowledge, but only philosophy can give us wisdom.
Will Durant
The difference between science and the fuzzy subjects is that science requires reasoning while those other subjects merely require scholarship.
Robert A. Heinlein
Every great advance in science has issued from a new audacity of imagination.
John Dewey
Science, my lad, is made up of mistakes, but they are mistakes which it is useful to make, because they lead little by little to the truth.
Jules Verne
Scientific research is one of the most exciting and rewarding of occupations.
Frederick Sanger
The nineteenth century believed in science but the twentieth century does not.
Gertrude Stein
Science is simply common sense at its best, that is, rigidly accurate in observation, and merciless to fallacy in logic.
Thomas Huxley
Art is I; science is we.
Claude Bernard
Science has made us gods even before we are worthy of being men.
Jean Rostand
I believe there are no questions that science can’t answer about a physical universe.
Stephen Hawking
Science is like a love affair with nature; an elusive, tantalising mistress. It has all the turbulence, twists and turns of romantic love, but that’s part of the game.
Vilayanur S. Ramachandran
If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it?
Albert Einstein
Science is organized common sense where many a beautiful theory was killed by an ugly fact.
Thomas Huxley
Let both sides seek to invoke the wonders of science instead of its terrors. Together let us explore the stars, conquer the deserts, eradicate disease, tap the ocean depths, and encourage the arts and commerce.
John F. Kennedy
There is a single light of science, and to brighten it anywhere is to brighten it everywhere.
Isaac Asimov
The virtues of science are skepticism and independence of thought.
Walter Gilbert
Science is the great antidote to the poison of enthusiasm and superstition.
Adam Smith
Science has proof without any certainty. Creationists have certainty without any proof.
Ashley Montague
Science investigates; religion interprets. Science gives man knowledge which is power; religion gives man wisdom which is control.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
When science finally locates the center of the universe, some people will be surprised to learn they’re not it.
Bernard Bailey
Science is always wrong. It never solves a problem without creating ten more.
George Bernard Shaw
We live in a society exquisitely dependent on science and technology, in which hardly anyone knows anything about science and technology.
Carl Sagan
The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom.
Isaac Asimov
Science is a way of life. Science is a perspective. Science is the process that takes us from confusion to understanding in a manner that’s precise, predictive and reliable – a transformation, for those lucky enough to experience it, that is empowering and emotional.
Brian Greene
Science has explained nothing; the more we know the more fantastic the world becomes and the profounder the surrounding darkness.
Aldous Huxley
Scientist Quotes
If I could remember the names of all these tiny particles, I’d be a botanist.
Albert Einstein
Philosophy of science is about as useful to scientists as ornithology is to birds.
Richard P. Feynman
To me there has never been a higher source of earthly honor or distinction than that connected with advances in science.
Isaac Newton
What is required of a working hypothesis is a fine capacity for discrimination.
Jean-Francois Lyotard
There are no such things as applied sciences, only applications of science.
Louis Pasteur
The scientist is motivated primarily by curiosity and a desire for truth.
Irving Langmuir
Science commits suicide when it adopts a creed.
Thomas Huxley
Most people say that it is the intellect which makes a great scientist. They are wrong: it is character.
Albert Einstein
I think what a life in science really teaches you is the vastness of our ignorance.
David Eagleman
Statistics is the grammar of science.
Karl Pearson
In the spirit of science, there really is no such thing as a ‘failed experiment.’ Any test that yields valid data is a valid test.
Adam Savage
In science, nothing is ever 100% proven.
Michio Kaku
Science is the search for truth, that is the effort to understand the world: it involves the rejection of bias, of dogma, of revelation, but not the rejection of morality.
Linus Pauling
A true scientist would never put away a dirty test tube or falsify a report.
Virginia L. Mullen
Rocket science has been mythologized all out of proportion to its true difficulty.
John Carmack
But I don’t see myself as a woman in science. I see myself as a scientist.
Donna Strickland
Science literacy is the artery through which the solutions of tomorrow’s problems flow.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Quotes about Scientists
Scientists have become the bearers of the torch of discovery in our quest for knowledge.
Stephen Hawking
Few scientists acquainted with the chemistry of biological systems at the molecular level can avoid being inspired.
Donald Cram
Facts are the air of scientists. Without them you can never fly.
Linus Pauling
If an elderly but distinguished scientist says that something is possible, he is almost certainly right; but if he says that it is impossible, he is very probably wrong.
Arthur C. Clarke
It is inexcusable for scientists to torture animals; let them make their experiments on journalists and politicians.
Henrik Ibsen
No one should approach the temple of science with the soul of a money changer.
Thomas Browne
What is a scientist after all? It is a curious man looking through a keyhole, the keyhole of nature, trying to know what’s going on.
Jacques Yves Cousteau
If your science experiment needs a statistician, you need to design a better experiment.
Ernest Rutherford
Defintiion of a scientist: a man who understood nothing, until there was nothing left to understand.
Anthony Zerbe, The Omega Man
In questions of science, the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual.
Galileo Galilei
No amount of experimentation can ever prove me right; a single experiment can prove me wrong.
Albert Einstein
The best scientist is open to experience and begins with romance – the idea that anything is possible.
Ray Bradbury
When I find myself in the company of scientists, I feel like a shabby curate who has strayed by mistake into a room full of dukes.
W. H. Auden
Some dreamers demand that scientists only discover things that can be used for good.
John Polanyi
The man of science has learned to believe in justification, not by faith, but by verification.
Thomas Huxley
When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.
Arthur C. Clarke
The day science begins to study non-physical phenomena, it will make more progress in one decade than in all the previous centuries of its existence.
Nikola Tesla
A first-rate laboratory is one in which mediocre scientists can produce outstanding work.
Patrick M.S. Blackett
The scientist is not a person who gives the right answers, he’s one who asks the right questions.
Claude Levi-Strauss
Scientific Quotes
These scientific quotes celebrate the soundness and structure of the scientific method and the values it brings to different fields like chemistry and physics.
Over the decades, great scientists have shaped scientific discourse with their rigorous standards, ethics, and respect for the consequences of their work.
These opinions help us to share the reverence for the sciences with those who worked in them.
Scientific theory is a contrived foothold in the chaos of living phenomena.
Wilhelm Reich
Scientific advancement should aim to affirm and to improve human life.
Nathan Deal
The characteristic of scientific progress is our knowing that we did not know.
Gaston Bachelard
Science and mindfulness complement each other in helping people to eat well and maintain their health and well-being.
Thich Nhat Hanh
A scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.
Max Planck
Every time tiny particles swing through time and space, something is changing.
Neale Donald Walsch
All science requires mathematics. The knowledge of mathematical things is almost innate in us. This is the easiest of sciences, a fact which is obvious in that no one’s brain rejects it; for laymen and people who are utterly illiterate know how to count and reckon.
Roger Bacon
Science is about knowing; engineering is about doing.
Henry Petroski
Bad times have a scientific value. These are occasions a good learner would not miss.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Nothing is less predictable than the development of an active scientific field.
Charles Francis Richter
Anybody who has been seriously engaged in scientific work of any kind realizes that over the entrance to the gates of the temple of science are written the words: ‘Ye must have faith.’
Max Planck
True science teaches, above all, to doubt and to be ignorant.
Miguel de Unamuno
By denying scientific principles, one may maintain any paradox.
Galileo Galilei
This means that to entrust to science – or to deliberate control according to scientific principles – more than scientific method can achieve may have deplorable effects.
Friedrich August von Hayek
It is right that we be concerned with the scientific probity of metaphysics.
Gabriel Marcel
Medicine is a science of uncertainty and an art of probability.
William Osler
Science and technology are going to be the basis for many of the solutions to social problems.
Frances Arnold
Science is exploration. The fundamental nature of exploration is that we don’t know what’s there. We can guess and hope and aim to find out certain things, but we have to expect surprises.
Charles H. Townes
America’s space program is a symbol of our success as a scientifically and technologically advanced nation.
Randy Forbes
Science will explain how but not why. It talks about what is, not what ought to be. Science is descriptive, not prescriptive; it can tell us about causes but it cannot tell us about purposes. Indeed, science disavows purposes.
Jonathan Sacks
The folly of mistaking a paradox for a discovery, a metaphor for a proof, a torrent of verbiage for a spring of capital truths, and oneself for an oracle, is inborn in us.
Paul Valery
Science is the acceptance of what works and the rejection of what does not. That needs more courage than we might think.
Jacob Bronkowski
Chemistry Quotes
Chemistry is not torture but instead the amazing and beautiful science of stuff, and if you give it a chance, it will not only blow your mind but also give you a deeper understanding of your world.
Hank Green
Living organisms are created by chemistry. We are huge packages of chemicals.
David Christian
Chemistry was always my weakest subject in high school and college.
Eric Betzig
Our cells engage in protein production, and many of those proteins are enzymes responsible for the chemistry of life.
Randy Schekman
Chemical synthesis is uniquely positioned at the heart of chemistry, the central science, and its impact on our lives and society is all pervasive.
Elias James Corey
I believe that the science of chemistry alone almost proves the existence of an intelligent creator.
Thomas Edison
Chemistry is necessarily an experimental science: its conclusions are drawn from data, and its principles supported by evidence from facts.
Michael Faraday
Every man who receives a liberal education now counts chemistry among the most indispensable objects of his studies.
Antoine Francois Fourcroy
The country which is in advance of the rest of the world in chemistry will also be foremost in wealth and in general prosperity.
William Ramsay
The laws of physics and chemistry must be the same in a crucible as in the larger laboratory of Nature.
Alfred Harker
All theoretical chemistry is really physics, and all theoretical chemists know it.
Richard P. Feynman
Chemistry, unlike other sciences, sprang originally from delusions and superstitions, and was at its commencement exactly on a par with magic and astrology.
Thomas Thomson
To my disappointment, not many young people seem to be interested in science, especially chemistry.
Akira Suzuki
Physics Quotes
Physics is experience, arranged in economical order.
Ernst Mach
Physics is, hopefully, simple. Physicists are not.
Edward Teller
In science there is only physics; all the rest is stamp collecting.
Lord Kelvin
Physics is becoming too difficult for the physicists.
David Hilbert
A person who isn’t outraged on first hearing about quantum theory doesn’t understand what has been said.
Neils Bohr
Gravity explains the motions of the planets, but it cannot explain who sets the planets in motion.
Isaac Newton
It should be possible to explain the laws of physics to a barmaid.
Albert Einstein
It is wrong to think that the task of physics is to find out how Nature is. Physics concerns what we say about Nature.
Niels Bohr
Physics is really figuring out how to discover new things that are counterintuitive, like quantum mechanics.
Elon Musk
We live in a Newtonian world of Einsteinian physics ruled by Frankenstein logic.
David Russell
Quantum physics thus reveals a basic oneness of the universe.
Erwin Schrodinger
Studying physics, mathematics, and chemistry is worshipping God.
Fethullah Gulen
Physics is the only profession in which prophecy is not only accurate but routine.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
I am now convinced that theoretical physics is actually philosophy.
Max Born
Funny Science Quotes
One thing to be said for scientists is despite the seriousness and meticulous nature of their work, many of them haven’t lost their senses of humor.
From Albert Einstein to Neil deGrasse Tyson, these fun lines show even the best scientists know how to bring some levity to their fields.
Even if you think the Big Bang created the stars, don’t you wonder who sent the flowers?
Robert Breault
Basic research is what I am doing when I don’t know what I am doing.
Wernher von Braun
If I were ever abducted by aliens, the first thing I’d ask is whether they came from a planet where people also deny science.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Science is basically an inoculation against charlatans.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
The dinosaurs became extinct because they didn’t have a space program.
Larry Niven
A bacteriologist is a man whose conversation always starts with the germ of an idea.
Evan Esar
Science is a wonderful thing if one does not have to earn one’s living at it.
Albert Einstein
Science never solves a problem without creating ten more.
George Bernard Shaw
Science may never come up with a better office communication system than the coffee break.
Earl Wilson
A fool’s brain digests philosophy into folly, science into superstition, and art into pedantry. Hence University education.
George Bernard Shaw
Science can purify religion from error and superstition. Religion can purify science from idolatry and false absolutes.
Pope John Paul II
Facts are not science – as the dictionary is not literature.
Martin H. Fischer
Great moments in science: Einstein discovers that time is actually money.
Gary Larson
Other than the laws of physics, rules have never really worked out for me.
Craig Ferguson
Science and religion are not at odds. Science is simply too young to understand.
Dan Brown
Hypotheses, like professors, when they are seen not to work any longer in the laboratory, should disappear.
Henry Edward Armstrong
Statistics: The only science that enables different experts using the same figures to draw different conclusions.
Evan Esar
An expert is a person who has made all the mistakes that can be made in a very narrow field.
Neils Bohr
My theory of evolution is that Darwin was adopted.
Steven Wright
If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe.
Carl Sagan
Scientists are toms, peeping toms at the keyhole of eternity in human stupidity.
Arthur Koestler
Still looking for laughs? Check out more funny quotes here!
Conclusion
We hope these quotes from great scientists gave you a new appreciation for the scientific method and all science has given humanity.
Science allowed the most intrepid minds to go from gazing at stars to soaring among them. The curiosity and experimentation of great scientific minds is a cornerstone of all our advances as a species.
While it takes time for ideas to form, hypotheses to be tested, and thoughts to develop into technologies, science is how it happens.
So the next time you use that iPhone, visit the doctor, or even flick a light switch, remember to be thankful for the science that provided it.
