WIST Quotations

Russell, Bertrand -- Conquest of Happiness, Part 2, ch. 10 “Is Happiness Still Possible?” (1930)

Dave — Wed, 15 Oct 2025 16:01:53 +0000

All the conditions of happiness are realized in the life of the man of science. He has an activity which utilizes his abilities to the full, and he achieves results which appear important not only to himself but to the general public, even when it cannot in the smallest degree understand them. In this he is more fortunate than the artists. When the public cannot understand a picture or a poem, they conclude that it is a bad picture or a bad poem. When they cannot understand the theory of relativity they conclude (rightly) that their education has been insufficient. Consequently Einstein is honored while the best painters are (or at least were) left to starve in garrets, and Einstein is happy while the painters are unhappy. Very few men can be genuinely happy in a life involving continual self-assertion against the skepticism of the mass of mankind, unless they can shut themselves up in a coterie and forget the cold outer world. The man of science has no need of a coterie, since he is thought well of by everybody except his colleagues. The artist, on the contrary, is in the painful situation of having to choose between being despised and being despicable. If his powers are of the first order, he must incur one or the other of these misfortunes — the former if he uses his powers, the latter if he does not.

Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) English mathematician and philosopher
Conquest of Happiness, Part 2, ch. 10 “Is Happiness Still Possible?” (1930)
(Source)

Curie, Marie -- “The Future of Culture [L’Avenir de la Culture]” conference, Madrid (1933-05-03/07)

Dave — Wed, 15 Nov 2023 18:48:05 +0000

I am among those who think that science has great beauty. A scientist in his laboratory is not only a technician: he is also a child placed before natural phenomena which impress him like a fairy tale. We should not allow it to be believed that all scientific progress can be reduced to mechanisms, machines, gearings, even though such machinery also has its beauty.

Marie Curie (1867-1934) Polish-French physicist and chemist [b. Maria Salomea Skłodowska]
“The Future of Culture [L’Avenir de la Culture]” conference, Madrid (1933-05-03/07)
(Source)

One of Curie's last public addresses. As quoted in Eve Curie Labouisse, Madame Curie: A Biography, ch. 24 (1937) [tr. Sheean (1938)].

Alternate translation:

I believe that science has great beauty. A scientist int he laboratory is not a mere technician; he is also a child confronting natural phenomena that impress him as though they were fairy tales. We should not allow it to believed that all scientific progress can be reduced to mechanisms, machines, and gearings, even though such machine also has beauty.
[Source]

Krogh, August -- “The Progress of Physiology,” Speech, International Congress of Physiological Sciences, Harvard University (1929-08-19)

Dave — Tue, 13 Jun 2023 16:36:34 +0000

We may fondly imagine that we are impartial seekers after truth, but with a few exceptions, to which I know that I do not belong, we are influenced, and sometimes strongly, by our personal bias; and we give our best thoughts to those ideas which we have to defend.

Nevertheless, we should of course all do our best to avoid controversy, in the sense that we should take every possible care to verify our facts and substantiate our conclusions before we publish our results.

August Krogh (1874-1949) Danish zoophysiologist, academic
“The Progress of Physiology,” Speech, International Congress of Physiological Sciences, Harvard University (1929-08-19)
(Source)

Reprinted in Science (1929-08-30). Quoted in Bodil Schmidt-Nielsen, August and Marie Krogh: Lives in Science, ch. 9 (1995).

Dyson, Freeman -- The Scientist as Rebel, Part 1, ch. 1 “The Scientist as Rebel” (2006)

Dave — Mon, 24 Apr 2023 19:19:24 +0000

Science as subversion has a long history. There is a long list of scientists who sat in jail and of other scientists who helped them get out and incidentally saved their lives. […] [Chandler] Davis and [Andrei] Sakharov belong to an old tradition in science that goes all the way back to the rebels Benjamin Franklin and Joseph Priestley in the eighteenth century, to Galileo and Giordano Bruno in the seventeenth and sixteenth. If science ceases to be a rebellion against authority, then it does not deserve the talents of our brightest children. […] We should try to introduce our children to science today as a rebellion against poverty and ugliness and militarism and economic injustice.

Freeman Dyson (1923-2020) English-American theoretical physicist, mathematician, futurist
The Scientist as Rebel, Part 1, ch. 1 “The Scientist as Rebel” (2006)
(Source)

Originally given as a lecture in Cambridge, England (1992-11). Published as "The Scientist as Rebel," in John Cornwell, ed., Nature's Imagination, Introduction (1995), and "The Scientist as Rebel," New York Review of Books (1995-05-25).

Dyson, Freeman -- Infinite in All Directions, Part 1, ch. 2 “Butterflies and Superstrings” (1988)

Dave — Mon, 31 Oct 2022 19:16:15 +0000

Scientifically speaking, a butterfly is at least as mysterious as a superstring. When something ceases to be mysterious it ceases to be of absorbing interest to scientists. Almost all things scientists think and dream about are mysterious.

Freeman Dyson (1923-2020) English-American theoretical physicist, mathematician, futurist
Infinite in All Directions, Part 1, ch. 2 “Butterflies and Superstrings” (1988)
(Source)

Based on his Gifford Lectures, Aberdeen, Scotland (Apr-Nov 1985).

Dyson, Freeman -- Infinite in All Directions, Part 1, ch. 1 “In Praise of Diversity” (1988)

Dave — Mon, 17 Oct 2022 17:16:40 +0000

An awareness of our smallness may help to redeem us from the arrogance which is the besetting sin of the scientists.

Freeman Dyson (1923-2020) English-American theoretical physicist, mathematician, futurist
Infinite in All Directions, Part 1, ch. 1 “In Praise of Diversity” (1988)
(Source)

Based on a lecture on "Science and Religion," National Conference of Catholic Bishops, Detroit (Sep 1986).

Dyson, Freeman -- In Jon Else, dir., The Day After Trinity: J. Robert Oppenheimer and the Atomic Bomb, Part 2 (1981)

Dave — Tue, 21 Jun 2022 17:47:03 +0000

I felt it myself. The glitter of nuclear weapons. It is irresistible if you come to them as a scientist. To feel it’s there in your hands, to release this energy that fuels the stars, to let it do your bidding. To perform these miracles, to lift a million tons of rock into the sky. It is something that gives people an illusion of illimitable power, and it is, in some ways, responsible for all our troubles — this, what you might call technical arrogance, that overcomes people when they see what they can do with their minds.

Freeman Dyson (1923-2020) English-American theoretical physicist, mathematician, futurist
In Jon Else, dir., The Day After Trinity: J. Robert Oppenheimer and the Atomic Bomb, Part 2 (1981)
(Source)

(Source (Video)). Film written by David Peoples, Janet Peoples, and Jon Else.

Descartes, René -- Discourse on Method [Discours de la méthode], Part 2 (1637) [tr. Cottingham, Stoothoff (1985)]

Dave — Fri, 31 Dec 2021 02:57:17 +0000

But in my college days I discovered that nothing can be imagined which is too strange or incredible to have been said by some philosopher.

[Mais ayant appris dès le collège qu’on ne sauroit rien imaginer de si étrange et si peu croyable, qu’il n’ait été dit par quelqu’un des philosophes.]

René Descartes (1596-1650) French philosopher, mathematician
Discourse on Method [Discours de la méthode], Part 2 (1637) [tr. Cottingham, Stoothoff (1985)]
(Source)

See Cicero. (Source (French)). Alternate translations:

For having learnt from the very School, That one can imagin nothing so strange or incredible, which had not been said by some one of the Philosophers.
[tr. Newcombe ed. (1649)]

But I had become aware, even so early as during my college life, that no opinion, however absurd and incredible, can be imagined, which has not been maintained by some on of the philosophers.
[tr. Veitch (1901)]

But I had been taught, even in my College days, that there is nothing imaginable so strange or so little credible that it has not been maintained by one philosopher or another.
[tr. Haldane, Ross (1911)]

One cannot conceive anything so strange and so implausible that it has not already been said by one philosopher or another.

Foglio, Phil -- Agatha H. and the Siege of Mechanicsburg (2020) [with Kaja Foglio]

Dave — Mon, 08 Nov 2021 17:39:55 +0000

Everyone had heard about Abominations of Science but, like unicorns, they didn’t actually believe they existed. Thus everyone was rather grateful when the third Madrid Conference of Scientific Inquiry and Philosophical Horrors — Unleashed! released a codified list of things that constituted actual Abominations of Science. Over the years, this useful list has been updated and curated by our own Transylvanian Polygnostic University and has proven of great use to teachers, courts, and record books.

The only downside was that one of the conference members — a Herr Doktor Spanakopita — was so embarrassed that none of his previous efforts met the requirements that he, in a fit of pique, bred a race of unicorns, who went about stabbing people while quoting the parts of the list that covered biological abominations. Before he was stabbed to death, he was graciously acknowledged as a genuine Tamperer in Things Man Was Not Meant to Know and his oft-desecrated gravestone lists his accomplishments in full.

Phil Foglio (b. 1956) American writer, cartoonist
Agatha H. and the Siege of Mechanicsburg (2020) [with Kaja Foglio]
(Source)

Wilson, E. O. -- Consilience, ch. 4 (1998)

Dave — Fri, 30 Apr 2021 03:08:49 +0000

That is, natural selection built the brain to survive in the world and only incidentally to understand it at a depth greater than is needed to survive. The proper task of scientists is to diagnose and correct the misalignment.

E. O. Wilson (1929-2021) American biologist, naturalist, writer [Edward Osborne Wilson]
Consilience, ch. 4 (1998)
(Source)

Hinshelwood, Cyril -- “Classics among the intellectual disciplines,” Presidential Address to the Classical Association, Hull, UK (1959-04-09)

Dave — Mon, 19 Apr 2021 18:10:37 +0000

A common fallacy in much of the adverse criticism to which science is subjected today is that it claims certainty, infallibility and complete emotional objectivity. It would be more nearly true to say that it is based upon wonder, adventure and hope.

Cyril Norman Hinshelwood (1897-1967) British chemist and Nobel laureate
“Classics among the intellectual disciplines,” Presidential Address to the Classical Association, Hull, UK (1959-04-09)

Quoted in the Sunday Times (1959-05-17), and in E. J. Bowen's obituary of Hinshelwood, in Chemistry in Britain, Vol. 3 (1967), p. 534.

Teller, Edward -- Conversations on the Dark Secrets of Physics, ch. 10 (1991) [with Wendy Teller and Wilson Talley]

Dave — Tue, 09 Mar 2021 16:47:00 +0000

Physics is, hopefully, simple. Physicists are not.

Edward Teller (1908-2003) Hungarian-American theoretical physicist
Conversations on the Dark Secrets of Physics, ch. 10 (1991) [with Wendy Teller and Wilson Talley]
(Source)

Lorenz, Konrad -- On Aggression, ch. 2 (1966)

Dave — Tue, 09 May 2017 23:08:55 +0000

It is a good morning exercise for a research scientist to discard a pet hypothesis every day before breakfast. It keeps him young.

Konrad Lorenz (1903-1989) Austrian zoologist, ethologist, ornithologist
On Aggression, ch. 2 (1966)
(Source)

Nash, Ogden -- “The Purist”

Dave — Thu, 25 Aug 2016 04:59:35 +0000

I give you now Professor Twist,
A conscientious scientist.
Trustees exclaimed, “He never bungles!”
And sent him off to distant jungles.
Camped on a tropic riverside,
One day he missed his loving bride.
She had, the guide informed him later,
Been eaten by an alligator.
Professor Twist could not but smile.
“You mean,” he said, “a crocodile.”

Ogden Nash (1902-1971) American poet
“The Purist”

Asimov, Isaac -- Quasar, Quasar, Burning Bright (1978)

Dave — Tue, 17 May 2016 20:48:23 +0000

I believe that only scientists can understand the universe. It is not so much that I have confidence in scientists being right, but that I have so much in nonscientists being wrong.

Isaac Asimov (1920-1992) Russian-American author, polymath, biochemist
Quasar, Quasar, Burning Bright (1978)

Lehrer, Tom -- “Wernher Von Braun,” That Was the Year That Was (1965)

Dave — Thu, 31 Mar 2016 13:22:43 +0000

Don’t say that he’s hypocritical,
Say rather that he’s apolitical.
“Once the rockets are up, who cares where they come down?
That’s not my department,” says Wernher von Braun.

Tom Lehrer (b. 1928) American mathematician, satirist, songwriter
“Wernher Von Braun,” That Was the Year That Was (1965)

Shaftesbury, Earl of -- Characteristicks of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times, Vol. 2 “Miscellany III” (1711)

Dave — Fri, 16 Jan 2015 13:12:31 +0000

‘Tis not Wit merely, but a Temper which must form the Well-Bred Man. In the same manner, ’tis not a Head merely, but a Heart and Resolution which must compleat the real Philosopher.

Anthony Cooper, 3rd Earl of Shaftesbury (1671-1713) English politician and philosopher
Characteristicks of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times, Vol. 2 “Miscellany III” (1711)

Bernard, Claude -- Leçons de Pathologie Expérimentale (1872)

Dave — Fri, 26 Dec 2014 17:20:55 +0000

Science admits no exceptions; otherwise there would be no determinism in science, or rather, there would be no science.

Claude Bernard (1813-1878) French physiologist, scientist
Leçons de Pathologie Expérimentale (1872)

Butler, Samuel -- The Note-Books of Samuel Butler, “Scientists” (1912)

Dave — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 14:35:55 +0000

There are two classes [of scientists], those who want to know and do not care whether others think they know or not, and those who do not much care about knowing but care very greatly about being reputed as knowing.

Samuel Butler (1835-1902) English novelist, satirist, scholar
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler, “Scientists” (1912)

Full text.