Warren E. Burger Quotes

One would have to have completely forgotten the history of science so as to not remember that the desire to know nature has had the most constant and the happiest influence on the development of mathematics.

Basic research is what I'm doing when I don't know what I'm doing.

Humanity also needs dreamers, for whom the disinterested development of an enterprise is so captivating that it becomes impossible for them to devote their care to their own material profit. A well-organized society should assure to such workers the efficient means of accomplishing their task, in a life freed from material care and freely consecrated to research.

The scientist … creates more and more questions, never fewer. Indeed the measure of our intellectual maturity … is our capacity to feel less and less satisfied with our answers

The deep things in science are not found because they are useful; they are found because it was possible to find them..

A lot of high-level scientists are in fact people of almost universal interest.

I happen to love science... Scientists are all slightly mad. There is truth in the stereotype of the mad scientist. They are mad with curiosity.

Science is bound, by the everlasting vow of honor, to face fearlessly every problem which can be fairly presented to it.

Science is really about describing the way the universe works in one aspect or another in all branches of science—how a life-form works, how this works, how that works. ... You have to have a natural curiosity for that.

I felt I had had enough of politicians and government upheavals …. Suddenly I was enveloped in the feeling that only science is lasting.

In holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that could itself become the captive of a scientific technological elite.

Who does science determines what science gets done.

Science is about exploring, and the only way to uncover the secrets of the universe is to go and look.

My relationship with science is as someone who's curious and hungry to know, hungry to understand. So all I have to offer is my ignorance and my curiosity, which is a good combination, as long as they come together.

In matters of science, curiosity gratified begets not indolence, but new desires.

Those who do not stop asking silly questions become scientists.

Science will stagnate if it is made to serve practical goals.

We know next to nothing about virtually everything. It is not necessary to know the origin of the universe; it is necessary to want to know. Civilization depends not on any particular knowledge, but on the disposition to crave knowledge

I like to say, when asked why I pursue science, that it is to satisfy my curiosity, that I am by nature a searcher trying to understand. If you haven't found something strange during the day, it hasn't been much of a day.

I think that the issues we have with science these days are not restricted to what's happening with respect to religion. There are a lot of very religious scientists around.

The true scientist never loses the faculty of amazement.

But then science is nothing but a series of questions that lead to more questions.

Curiosity, earnest research to learn the hidden laws of nature, gladness akin to rapture, as they unfolded to me, are among the earliest sensations I can remember.

Scientists are explorers. Philosophers are tourists.

That's the beautiful thing about science - that it's all about things we don't understand, not just the things we do understand.