Other Relevant Quotes
This is a gathering of quotes mainly from scientists, and particularly from scientists Brecht emulated (Bacon, Galileo, Einstein), selected for their resonance with Brecht's theory, the themes in the script, and the production concept.
Galileo Galilei
- The Milky Way is nothing else but a mass of innumerable stars planted together in clusters.
- Doubt is the father of invention.
- In questions of science, the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual.
- I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use.
- Measure what is measurable, and make measurable what is not so.
- I have never met a man so ignorant that I could not learn something from him.
- You cannot teach a man anything; you can only help him find it within himself.
- It is surely harmful to souls to make it a heresy to believe what is proved.
- By denying scientific principles, one may maintain any paradox.
- Facts which at first seem improbable will, even on scant explanation, drop the cloak which has hidden them and stand forth in naked and simple beauty.
- I've loved the stars too fondly to be fearful of the night
- The Bible shows the way to go to heaven, not the way the heavens go.
Francis Bacon
- If we begin with certainties, we shall end in doubts; but if we begin with doubts, and are patient in them, we shall end in certainties.
- Science is but an image of the truth.
- People usually think according to their inclinations, speak according to their learning and ingrained opinions, but generally act according to custom.
- Man prefers to believe what he prefers to be true.
- Our humanity is a poor thing, except for the divinity that stirs within us.
- For knowledge itself is power.
- If money be not they servant, it will be thy master. The covetous man cannot so properly be said to possess wealth, as that may be said to possess him.
- Of great wealth there is no real use, except in its distribution, the rest is just conceit.
- Books must follow sciences, and not sciences books.
- But the greatest error of all the rest is the mistaking or misplacing of the last or farthest end of knowledge: for men have entered into a desire of learning and knowledge, sometimes upon a natural curiosity and inquisitive appetite; sometimes to entertain their minds with variety and delight; sometimes for ornament and reputation; and sometimes to enable them to victory of wit and contradiction; and most times for lucre and profession; and seldom sincerely to give a true account of their gift of reason, to the benefit and use of men...
- For all knowledge and wonder (which is the seed of knowledge) is an impression of pleasure in itself.
- Silence is the virtue of fools.
- Science is the sleep that nourishes wisdom.
- If we do not maintain justice, justice will not maintain us.
- Money is like manure, of very little use except it be spread.
- Truth is the daughter of time, not of authority.
- Truth is so hard to tell, it sometimes needs fiction to make it plausible.
- Rebellions of the belly are the worst.
Albert Einstein
- The world is a dangerous place to live; not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don't do anything about it.
- We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.
- A perfection of means, and confusion of aims, seems to be our main problem.
- The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science.
- An empty stomach is not a good political adviser.
- Strive not to be a success, but rather to be of value.
- In matters of truth and justice, there is no difference between large and small problems, for issues concerning the treatment of people are all the same.
- It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity.
- Concern for man and his fate must always form the chief interest of all technical endeavors. Never forget this in the midst of your diagrams and equations.
- I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.
- Most people say that it is the intellect which makes a great scientist. They are wrong: it is character.
- No amount of experimentation can ever prove me right; a single experiment can prove me wrong.
- To raise new questions, new possibilities, to regard old problems from a new angle, requires creative imagination and marks real advance in science.
- Never do anything against conscience even if the state demands it.
- Science is a wonderful thing if one does not have to earn one's living at it.
- The release of atomic energy has not created a new problem. It has merely made more urgent the necessity of solving an existing one.
- Technological progress is like an axe in the hands of a pathological criminal.
- Knowledge of what is does not open the door directly to what should be.
- A man's ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death.
- The release of atom power has changed everything except our way of thinking...the solution to this problem lies in the heart of mankind. If only I had known, I should have become a watchmaker.
- Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the the universe.
- Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow. The important thing is to not stop questioning.
- Science can only ascertain what is, but not what should be, and outside of its domain value judgments of all kinds remain necessary.
Robert Oppenheimer
- The optimist thinks this is the best of all possible worlds. The pessimist fears it is true.
- There must be no barriers for freedom of inquiry. There is no place for dogma in science. The scientist is free, and must be free to ask any question, to doubt any assertion, to seek for any evidence, to correct any errors.
- The atomic bomb made the prospect of future war unendurable. It has led us up those last few steps to the mountain pass; and beyond there is a different country.
- When you see something that is technically sweet, you go ahead and do it and you argue about what to do about it only after you have had your technical success. That is the way it was with the atomic bomb.
- In some sort of crude sense, which no vulgarity, no humor, no overstatement can quite extinguish, the physicists have known sin; and this is a knowledge which they cannot lose.
- In the material sciences these are and have been, and are most surely likely to continue to be heroic days.
- I was not in a policymaking position at Los Alamos. I would have done anything that I was asked to do.
Stephen Hawking
- I have noticed even people who claim everything is predestined, and that we can do nothing to change it, look before they cross the road.
- We are just an advanced breed of monkeys on a minor planet of a very average star. But we can understand the Universe. That makes us something very special.
- My goal is simple. It is a complete understanding of the universe, why it is as it is and why it exists at all.
- Scientists have become the bearers of the torch of discovery in our quest for knowledge.
- We are in danger of destroying ourselves by our greed and stupidity. We cannot remain looking inwards at ourselves on a small and increasingly polluted and overcrowded planet.
- I believe everyone should have a broad picture of how the universe operates and our place in it. It is a basic human desire. And it also puts our worries in perspective.
- I don't think the human race will survive the next thousand years, unless we spread into space.
- Science is not only a disciple of reason but, also, one of romance and passion.
- Observations indicate that the universe is expanding at an ever increasing rate. It will expand forever, getting emptier and darker.
- Philosophers have not kept up with modern developments in science. Particularly physics.
- The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge.
- If we do discover a complete theory, it should be in time understandable in broad principle by everyone . . . . Then we shall all, philosophers, scientists, and just ordinary people be able to take part in the discussion of why we and the universe exist.
- I put a lot of effort into writing A Briefer History at a time when I was critically ill with pneumonia because I think that it's important for scientists to explain their work, particularly in cosmology. This now answers many questions once asked of religion.
- One cannot really argue with a mathematical theorem.
Miscellaneous Quotes
All truth
passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently
opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.
-Arthur Schopenhauer
Say not, 'I have found the truth,' but rather, 'I have found a truth.'
-Kahlil Gibran
The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. But the opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth.
-Niels Bohr
How wonderful that we have met with a paradox. Now we have some hope of making progress.
-Niels Bohr
Every sentence I utter must be understood not as an affirmation, but as a question.
-Niels Bohr
The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not 'Eureka!' (I found it!) but 'That's funny ...'
-Isaac Asimov
The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes.
-Marcel Proust
If knowledge can create problems, it is not through ignorance that we can solve them.
-Isaac Asimov
The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom.
-Isaac Asimov
No sensible decision can be made any longer without taking into account not only the world as it is, but the world as it will be.
-Isaac Asimov
There is a single light of science, and to brighten it anywhere is to brighten it everywhere.
-Isaac Asimov
Whenever you find that you are on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.
-Mark Twain
Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.
-Martin Luther King, Jr.
Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men.
-Martin Luther King, Jr.
We allow our ignorance to prevail upon us and make us think we can survive alone, alone in patches, alone in groups, alone in races, even alone in genders.
-Maya Angelou
It's innocence when it charms us, ignorance when it doesn't.
-Mignon McLaughlin,
Man is the interpreter of nature, science the right interpretation.
-William Whewell
Anybody who has been seriously engaged in scientific work of any kind realizes that over the entrance to the gates of the temple of science are written the words: 'Ye must have faith.'
-Max Planck
A 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.
-Max Planck
Science is a way of thinking much more than it is a body of knowledge.
-Carl Sagan
It is change, continuing change, inevitable change, that is the dominant factor in society today. No sensible decision can be made any longer without taking into
Who are we? We find that we live on an insignificant planet of a humdrum star lost in a galaxy tucked away in some forgotten corner of a universe in which there are far more galaxies than people.
-Carl Sagan
We live in a society exquisitely dependent on science and technology, in which hardly anyone knows anything about science and technology.
-Carl Sagan
The brain is like a muscle. When it is in use we feel very good. Understanding is joyous.
-Carl Sagan
Science has made us gods even before we are worthy of being men.
-Jean Rostand
Science is a first-rate piece of furniture for a man's upper chamber, if he has common sense on the ground floor.
-Oliver Wendell Holmes
A satellite has no conscience.
-Edward R. Murrow
Some dreamers demand that scientists only discover things that can be used for good.
-John Charles Polanyi
Science is one thing, wisdom is another. Science is an edged tool, with which men play like children, and cut their own fingers.
-Sir Arthur Eddington
Science progresses best when observations force us to alter our preconceptions.
-Vera Rubin
The most important scientific revolutions all include, as their only common feature, the dethronement of human arrogance from one pedestal after another of previous convictions about our centrality in the cosmos.
-Stephen Jay Gould
Science can teach us, and I think our own hearts can teach us, no longer to look around for imaginary supports, no longer to invent allies in the sky, but rather to look to our own efforts here below to make this world a fit place to live in, instead.
-Bertrand Russell
Science may have found a cure for most evils, but it has found no remedy for the worst of them all--the apathy of human beings.
-Helen Keller
Science cannot resolve moral conflicts, but it can help to more accurately frame the debates about those conflicts.
-Heinz R. Pagels
True science investigates and brings to human perception such truths and such knowledge as the people of a given time and society consider most important. Art transmits these truths from the region of perception.
-Leo Nikolaevich Tolstoy
-Arthur Schopenhauer
Say not, 'I have found the truth,' but rather, 'I have found a truth.'
-Kahlil Gibran
The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. But the opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth.
-Niels Bohr
How wonderful that we have met with a paradox. Now we have some hope of making progress.
-Niels Bohr
Every sentence I utter must be understood not as an affirmation, but as a question.
-Niels Bohr
The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not 'Eureka!' (I found it!) but 'That's funny ...'
-Isaac Asimov
The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes.
-Marcel Proust
If knowledge can create problems, it is not through ignorance that we can solve them.
-Isaac Asimov
The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom.
-Isaac Asimov
No sensible decision can be made any longer without taking into account not only the world as it is, but the world as it will be.
-Isaac Asimov
There is a single light of science, and to brighten it anywhere is to brighten it everywhere.
-Isaac Asimov
Whenever you find that you are on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.
-Mark Twain
Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.
-Martin Luther King, Jr.
Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men.
-Martin Luther King, Jr.
We allow our ignorance to prevail upon us and make us think we can survive alone, alone in patches, alone in groups, alone in races, even alone in genders.
-Maya Angelou
It's innocence when it charms us, ignorance when it doesn't.
-Mignon McLaughlin,
Man is the interpreter of nature, science the right interpretation.
-William Whewell
Anybody who has been seriously engaged in scientific work of any kind realizes that over the entrance to the gates of the temple of science are written the words: 'Ye must have faith.'
-Max Planck
A 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.
-Max Planck
Science is a way of thinking much more than it is a body of knowledge.
-Carl Sagan
It is change, continuing change, inevitable change, that is the dominant factor in society today. No sensible decision can be made any longer without taking into
Who are we? We find that we live on an insignificant planet of a humdrum star lost in a galaxy tucked away in some forgotten corner of a universe in which there are far more galaxies than people.
-Carl Sagan
We live in a society exquisitely dependent on science and technology, in which hardly anyone knows anything about science and technology.
-Carl Sagan
The brain is like a muscle. When it is in use we feel very good. Understanding is joyous.
-Carl Sagan
Science has made us gods even before we are worthy of being men.
-Jean Rostand
Science is a first-rate piece of furniture for a man's upper chamber, if he has common sense on the ground floor.
-Oliver Wendell Holmes
A satellite has no conscience.
-Edward R. Murrow
Some dreamers demand that scientists only discover things that can be used for good.
-John Charles Polanyi
Science is one thing, wisdom is another. Science is an edged tool, with which men play like children, and cut their own fingers.
-Sir Arthur Eddington
Science progresses best when observations force us to alter our preconceptions.
-Vera Rubin
The most important scientific revolutions all include, as their only common feature, the dethronement of human arrogance from one pedestal after another of previous convictions about our centrality in the cosmos.
-Stephen Jay Gould
Science can teach us, and I think our own hearts can teach us, no longer to look around for imaginary supports, no longer to invent allies in the sky, but rather to look to our own efforts here below to make this world a fit place to live in, instead.
-Bertrand Russell
Science may have found a cure for most evils, but it has found no remedy for the worst of them all--the apathy of human beings.
-Helen Keller
Science cannot resolve moral conflicts, but it can help to more accurately frame the debates about those conflicts.
-Heinz R. Pagels
True science investigates and brings to human perception such truths and such knowledge as the people of a given time and society consider most important. Art transmits these truths from the region of perception.
-Leo Nikolaevich Tolstoy