Scientist

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A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it... An important scientific innovation rarely makes its way by gradually winning over and converting its opponents: it rarely happens that Saul becomes Paul.

Max Planck

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Planck, Max. The Philosophy of Physics. London: George Allen & Unwin, 1936.

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Every man, when he comes to be sensible of his natural rights, and to feel his own importance, will consider himself as fully equal to any other person whatever.

Joseph Priestley

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Original Citation

Priestley, Joseph. An Essay on the First Principles of Government. London: J. Dodsley, 1768.

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Priestley, Joseph. "An Essay on the First Principles of Government." Priestley: Political Writings. Cambridge University Press, 1993.

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Language, that most human invention, can enable what, in principle, should not be possible. It can allow all of us, even the congenitally blind, to see with another person’s eyes.

Oliver Sacks

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Sacks, Oliver. The Mind's Eye. Alfred A. Knopf, 2010.

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Life exists in the universe only because the carbon atom possesses certain exceptional properties.

James Jeans

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Jeans, James. The Mysterious Universe. Cambridge University Press/Macmillan, 1930, ch. 1.

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In science the credit goes to the man who convinces the world, not to the man to whom the idea first occurs.

Francis Darwin

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Darwin, Francis. "Francis Galton." Eugenics Review, April 1914.

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"You", your joys and your sorrows, your memories and ambitions, your sense of personal identity and free will, are in fact no more than the behaviour of a vast assembly of nerve cells and their associated molecules.

Francis Crick

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Crick, Frances. The Astonishing Hypothesis: The Scientific Search for the Soul. Charles Scribner's Sons, 1994, ch. 1.

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Don't tell me that man doesn't belong out there. Man belongs wherever he wants to go-and he'll do plenty well when he gets there.

Wernher von Braun

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Von Braun, Werner. "Space: Reach for the Stars." Time, 17 Feb. 1958.

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There is no democracy in physics. We can't say that some second-rate guy has as much right to opinion as Fermi.

Luis Walter Alvarez

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Alvarez, Luis Walter. Quoted in The Politics of Pure Science, written by Daniel S. Greenberg. New American Library, 1967.

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Science is an integral part of culture. It's not this foreign thing, done by an arcane priesthood. It's one of the glories of the human intellectual tradition.

Stephen Jay Gould

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Gould, Stephen Jay. Independent. 24 Jan. 1990.

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It is always easier to believe than to deny. Our minds are naturally affirmative.

John Burroughs

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Burroughs, John. "The Modern Skeptic." The Light of Day. Houghton Mifflin, 1900.

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It has not escaped our notice that the specific pairing we have postulated immediately suggests a possible copying mechanism for the genetic material.

Francis Crick

Proposing the double helix as the structure of DNA.

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Crick, Francis and James D. Watson. "Molecular Structure of Nucleic Acids: A Structure for Deoxyribose Nucleic Acid." Nature, 25 Apr. 1953.

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I am standing on the threshold about to enter a room. It is a complicated business. In the first place I must shove against an atmosphere pressing with a force of fourteen pounds on every square inch of my body. I must make sure of landing on a plank travelling at twenty miles a second round the sun-a fraction of a second too early or too late, the plank would be miles away. I must do this whilst hanging from a round planet, head outward into space, and with a wind of aether blowing at no one knows how many miles a second through every interstice of my body.

Arthur Eddington

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Eddington, Arthur. "The Nature Of The Physical World." Gifford lecture. January – March 1927, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, Scotland.

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It is even harder to realize that this present universe has evolved from an unspeakably unfamiliar early condition, and faces a future extinction of endless cold or intolerable heat. The more the universe seems comprehensible, the more it also seems pointless.

Steven Weinberg

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Weinberg, Steven. The First Three Minutes: A Modern View of the Origin of the Universe. Basic Books, 1977, epilogue.

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There are one hundred and ninety-three living species of monkeys and apes. One hundred and ninety-two of them are covered with hair. The exception is a naked ape self-named Homo sapiens.

Desmond Morris

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Morris, Desmond. The Naked Ape: A Zoologist's Study of the Human Animal. Jonathan Cape, 1967, introduction.

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The truth is that we need invertebrates but they don't need us. If human beings were to disappear tomorrow, the world would go on with little change... But if invertebrates were to disappear, I doubt that the human species could last more than a few months.

E.O. Wilson

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Wilson, Edward Osborne. "The Little Things That Run the World." The opening of the invertebrates exhibit. 7 May 1987, National Zoological Park, Washington, DC, USA.

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The most dangerous of devotions, in my opinion, is the one endemic to Christianity: I was not born to be of this world. With a second life waiting, suffering can be endured-especially in other people. The natural environment can be used up. Enemies of the faith can be savaged and suicidal martyrdom praised.

E.O. Wilson

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Wilson, Edward Osborne. Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge. Alfred A. Knopf, 1998, ch. 11.

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The priest persuades humble people to endure their hard lot; the politician urges them to rebel against it; and the scientist thinks of a method that does away with the hard lot altogether.

Max Perutz

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Perutz, Max. Is Science Necessary? Essays on Science and Scientists. E.P. Dutton, 1989.

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It is the lone worker who makes the first advance in a subject: the details may be worked out by a team, but the prime idea is due to the enterprise, thought, and perception of an individual.

Alexander Fleming

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Fleming, Alexander. Address at Edinburgh University. 1951, Edinburgh University, Edinburgh, Scotland.

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There is nothing in the world except empty curved space. Matter, charge, electromagnetism and other fields are only manifestations of the curvature of space.

John Archibald Wheeler

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Wheeler, John Archibald. "Curved Empty Space-Time as the Building Material of the Physical World." Meeting of the International Philosophy of Science Association. 1960, Stanford, CA, USA.

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One of the great achievements of science has been, if not to make it impossible for intelligent people to be religious, then at least to make it possible for them not to be religious. We should not retreat from this accomplishment.

Steven Weinberg

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Weinberg, Steven. "A Designer Universe." Conference on Cosmic Design. 1999, Washington, DC, USA. Speech.

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