#scientists

Those whom nature destined to make her disciples have no need of teachers. Bacon, Descartes, Newton — these tutors of the human race had no need of tutors themselves, and what guides could have led them to those places where their vast genius carried them? Ordinary teachers could only have limited their understanding by confining it to their own narrow capabilities. With the first obstacles, they learned to exert themselves and made the effort to traverse the immense space they moved through. If it is necessary to permit some men to devote themselves to the study of the sciences and the arts, that should be only for those who feel in themselves the power to walk alone in those men's footsteps and to move beyond them. It is the task of this small number of people to raise monuments to the glory of the human mind. ↗

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

#descartes #genius #giants #newton #progress

Ask a true scientist a very profound question on his science, and he will be silent. Ask a true religious person a very simple question on his religion, and he will be frenzied. ↗

— Kedar Joshi

#religion #science #scientists #simplicity #religion

But you can’t be a scientist if you’re uncomfortable with ignorance, because scientists live at the boundary between what is known and unknown in the cosmos. This is very different from the way journalists portray us. So many articles begin, “Scientists now have to go back to the drawing board.” It’s as though we’re sitting in our offices, feet up on our desks—masters of the universe—and suddenly say, “Oops, somebody discovered something!” No. We’re always at the drawing board. If you’re not at the drawing board, you’re not making discoveries. You’re not a scientist; you’re something else. The public, on the other hand, seems to demand conclusive explanations as they leap without hesitation from statements of abject ignorance to statements of absolute certainty. ↗

— Neil deGrasse Tyson

#drawing-conclusions #ignorance #science #scientists #science

Through history, people look for something spiritual. The greatest scientists in the world were men of religion and faith, too. ↗

— Kirstie Alley

#greatest #history #look #men #people

Today mythical thinking has fallen into disrepute; we often dismiss it as irrational and self-indulgent. But the imagination is also the faculty that has enabled scientists to bring new knowledge to light and to invent technology that has made us immeasurably more effective. ↗

— Karen Armstrong

#bring #dismiss #effective #enabled #faculty

We all know scientists who in private life do not come up to the standard of truthfulness, but who, nevertheless, would not consciously falsify the results of their researches. ↗

— Franz Boas

#consciously #know #life #nevertheless #private

The scientists at the end of the 19th century had people coming to them with this weird behaviour, and they didn't know what was going on but there seemed to be a similarity. They needed an answer, so they made up one. ↗

— Chester Brown

#answer #behaviour #century #coming #end

I feel blessed to be here representing our country and carrying out th research of scientists around the world... I hope you could feel the positive energy that beamed to the whole planet as we glided over. ↗

— Laurel Clark

#beamed #blessed #carrying #could #country

One of the great problems of the world today is undoubtedly this problem of not being able to talk to scientists, because we don't understand science; they can't talk to us because they don't understand anything else, poor dears. ↗

— Michael Flanders

#anything #because #being #dears #else

Some of the FDA's own scientists have charged that politics, not science, is behind the FDA's actions. ↗

— Joseph Crowley

#behind #charged #fda #own #politics