Thomas Kuhn Quotes

The resolution of revolutions is selection by conflict within the scientific community of the fittest way to practice future science. The net result of a sequence of such revolutionary selections, separated by periods of normal research, is the wonderfully adapted set of instruments we call modern scientific knowledge.

The increase of scientific knowledge lies not only in the occasional milestones of science, but in the efforts of the very large body of men who with love and devotion observe and study nature.

Science is the best idea humans have ever had. The more people who embrace that idea, the better.

Science is a wonderful discipline, to which we are deeply indebted.

Scientific knowledge is in perpetual evolution; it finds itself changed from one day to the next.

Instead of having to be a member of the Royal Society to do science, the way you had to be in England in the 17th, 18th, centuries today pretty much anybody who wants to do it can, and the information that they need to do it is there.

The average person is gregarious; there is something in the spirit of the crowd that adds to the enjoyment of entertainment.

I believe that the quantum of our knowledge will increase considerably in the coming years and that scientists will continue to be amongst the brave voices speaking out.

Galileo was no idiot. Only an idiot could believe that science requires martyrdom - that may be necessary in religion, but in time a scientific result will establish itself.

There is nothing inherently wrong about science.

Scientific knowledge is a kind of discourse.

Science is a part of culture. Indeed, it is the only truly global culture because protons and proteins are the same all over the world, and it's the one culture we can all share.

If you go back to the 17th century, scientists generally weren't rewarded much at all for sharing discoveries, and as a result, they conducted a lot of their research very, very secretively indeed.

In the history of science, we often find that the study of some natural phenomenon has been the starting point in the development of a new branch of knowledge.

We receive the truths of science by compulsion. Nothing but ignorance is able to resist them.

Every science has been an outcast.

There is no national science just as there is no national multiplication table; what is national is no longer science.

Modern civilization depends on science …

… after some hundreds of years of experience we think that we have learned … how to teach what is known. But now with the undeniable upsurge of scientific research, we cannot continue to rely on the mere fact that we have learned how to teach what is known. We must learn to teach the best attitude to what is not yet known.

The word scientist was coined in 1834, as the sciences were becoming professionalized and specialized

One of Kuhn's marvellous legacies is science studies as we know it today.

The history of science is science itself; the history of the individual, the individual.

I do not see class as a 'structure', nor even as a 'category', but as something which in fact happens (and can be shown to have happened) in human relationships... the notion of class entails the notion of historical relationship. ...And class happens when some men, as a result of common experiences (inherited or shared), feel and articulate the identity of their interests as between themselves, and as against other men whose interests are different from (and usually opposed to) theirs

Science is neither a single tradition, nor the best tradition there is, except for people who have become accustomed to its presence, its benefits and its disadvantages. In a democracy it should be separated from the state just as churches are now separated from the state.

Knowing how contented, free, and joyful is life in the world of science, one fervently wishes that many would enter its portals.