John Desmond Bernal Quotes

My complaint is that there are more books and news articles than there are primary scientific papers. I am probably the biggest critic of the hypesters, because it's dangerous when fields get overhyped.

Here's a news flash: scientists can be wrong. That's no big deal (unless the scientist is you), since research is self-correcting. Consequently, most errors by scientists become historical curiosities, with little long-term importance.

I claim that all those who think they can cherry-pick science simply don't understand how science works. That's what I claim. And if they did, they'd be less prone to just assert that somehow scientists are clueless.

Science is not ... a perfect instrument, but it is a superb and invaluable tool that works harm only when taken as an end in itself.

It seems to me as natural and necessary to keep notes, however brief, of one's reading, as logs of voyages or photographs of one's travels. For memory, in most of us, is a liar with galloping consumption.

The most heated defenders of a science, who cannot endure the slightest sneer at it, are commonly those who have not made very much progress in it and are secretly aware of this defect.

If there is something in nature you don't understand, odds are it makes sense in a deeper way that is beyond your understanding. So there is a logic to natural things that is much superior to our own. Just as there is a dichotomy in law: 'innocent until proven guilty' as opposed to 'guilty until proven innocent', let me express my rule as follows: what Mother Nature does is rigorous until proven otherwise; what humans and science do is flawed until proven otherwise.

There are worse sins for a scientist than to be wrong. One is to be trivial

If sentiment doesn't ultimately make fibbers of some people, their natural abominable memories almost certainly will.

Research performed on animals is, by definition, scientifically unsound.

The existence of forgetting has never been proved: We only know that some things don't come to mind when we want them.

If there ever was a misnomer, it is "exact science." Science has always been full of mistakes. The present day is no exception. And our mistakes are good mistakes; they require a genius to correct. Of course, we do not see our own mistakes.

Because computers have memories, we imagine that they must be something like our human memories, but that is simply not true. Computer memories work in a manner alien to human memories. My memory lets me recognize the faces of my friends, whereas my own computer never even recognizes me. My computer's memory stores a million phone numbers with perfect accuracy, but I have to stop and think to recall my own.

When a scientist doesn't know the answer to a problem, he is ignorant. When he has a hunch as to what the result is, he is uncertain. And when he is pretty darn sure of what the result is going to be, he is in some doubt.

Memory is a great betrayer.

It is striking how history, when resting on the memory of men, always touches the bounds of mythology.

Most man only care for science so far as they get a living by it, and that they worship even error when it affords them a subsistence.

A science only advances with certainty, when the plan of inquiry and the object of our researches have been clearly defined; otherwise a small number of truths are loosely laid hold of, without their connexion being perceived, and numerous errors, without being enabled to detect their fallacy.

There's science and there's science, is all I'm saying. Where humans are the subjects, it's mostly not science

We should not allow a tiny minority of shoddy scientists and science and extreme ideologues to compete with scientific facts.

Maybe the past is supposed to fade-and that's actually a kindness of human memory.

What beastly incidents our memories insist on cherishing, the ugly, and the disgusting; the beautiful things we have to keep diaries to remember.

I have the worst memory in the world. I can remember some of my dreams, but later that day, i'll forget them.

The memory of man is as old as misfortune

We look at science as the ultimate answer for everything yet we are really messy organisms and when the two collide in the upper echelons of medicine you think science will prevail but it's not always that way.