John Henry Newman Quotes

Our best theories are not only truer than common sense, they make more sense than common sense.

The man of science is a poor philosopher.

Put off your imagination, as you put off your overcoat, when you enter the laboratory. Put it on again, as you put on your overcoat, when you leave.

I really like science because it seems to be that place where you get the big picture, everything connects.

I don't know anything about science.

The term Science should not be given to anything but the aggregate of the recipes that are always successful. All the rest is literature.

I am a geek. I am always in books.

During the first half of the present century we had an Alexander von Humboldt, who was able to scan the scientific knowledge of his time in its details, and to bring it within one vast generalization. At the present juncture, it is obviously very doubtful whether this task could be accomplished in a similar way, even by a mind with gifts so peculiarly suited for the purpose as Humboldt's was, and if all his time and work were devoted to the purpose.

Theory must mediate between all previous truths and certain new experiences

To a mind of sufficient intellectual power, the whole of mathematics would appear trivial, as trivial as the statement that a four-footed animal is an animal.

If you understand something in only one way, then you don't really understand it at all. The secret of what anything means to us depends on how we've connected it to all other things we know. Well-connected representations let you turn ideas around in your mind, to envision things from many perspectives until you find one that works for you. And that's what we mean by thinking!

Unfortunately, in many cases, people who write science fiction violate the laws of nature, not because they want to make a point, but because they don't know what the laws of nature are.

The modern mind always tends to reduce the greater to the lesser rather than seeing the lesser as reflecting the greater.

It seems plain and self-evident, yet it needs to be said: the isolated knowledge obtained by a group of specialists in a narrow field has in itself no value whatsoever, but only in its synthesis with all the rest of knowledge and only inasmuch as it really contributes in this synthesis toward answering the demand, "Who are we?"

By bringing together what we know and what we don't know through analogy, metaphorical thinking strikes the spark that ignites discovery.

The mere man of pleasure is miserable in old age, and the mere drudge in business is but little better, whereas, natural philosophy, mathematical and mechanical science, are a continual source of tranquil pleasure, and in spite of the gloomy dogmas of priests and of superstition, the study of these things is the true theology; it teaches man to know and admire the Creator, for the principles of science are in the creation, and are unchangeable and of divine origin.

A scientist should be the happiest of men. Not that science isn't serious; but as everyone knows, being serious is one way of being happy, just as being gay is one way of being unhappy.

SCIENCE is a part of EVERYONE'S everyday life.

Real education happens when you pick up a fact here, and another fact there, and put them together and get an insight.

The key to good decision making is not knowledge. It is understanding. We are swimming in the former. We are desperately lacking in the latter.

Knowledge is a thing that one cannot have enough of. It is the fruit of wisdom, to be eaten carefully and digested fully, unlike that lunch you are bolting down, little friend.

Understanding is a kind of ecstasy

no subject of study is more important than reading…all other intellectual powers depend on it.

The advance of scientific knowledge does not seem to make either our universe or our inner life in it any less mysterious.

When I write, I strain with every wizened fibre of my weathered frame to analyze every possible angle of any given subject.