Fringe Science Quotes

Skeptical scientists often point out, as Carl Sagan has, that the wonders of real science far surpass the supposed wonders of fringe science. I think it is possible to invert that idea, and to say that the wonders of real consciousness far surpass what conventional science admits can exist. ~ Michael Crichton

The internet is a blessing and curse, because it's a gateway to an endless plethora of information. However it's flooded with pseudoscience, fringe science, false information, contrived statements, pure lies, & utter misrepresentations of facts.
It's essentially a situation were you're mining for genuine gold in a cave of fools gold, & while genuine gold exists, it's overwhelmed & obscured so often by imitation. ~ Trevor Driggers

The evidence never seemed to matter to those in power, who had already made up their minds and did what people typically do when their worldview is threatened by new data: they attacked the messenger. ~ Sol Luckman

Rich or poor, living in a trusting society simply makes people happier. ~ Paul J. Zak

The Universe was opaque until 380.000 years after the Big Bang. ~ Neil DeGrasse Tyson

So those who wished for some central cosmic purpose for us, or at least our world, or at least our solar system, or at least our galaxy, have been disappointed, progressively disappointed. The universe is not responsive to our ambitious expectations. ~ Carl Sagan

The universe, that vast assemblage of every thing that exists, presents only matter and motion: the whole offers to our contemplation, nothing but an immense, an uninterrupted succession of causes and effects. ~ Baron D'Holbach

Creation is not a moment of inspiration but a lifetime of endurance. The drawers of the world are full of things begun. Unfinished sketches, pieces of invention, incomplete product ideas, notebooks with half-formulated hypotheses, abandoned patents, partial manuscripts. Creating is more monotony than adventure. It is early mornings and late nights: long hours doing work that will likely fail or be deleted or erased - a process without progress that must be repeated daily for years. Beginning is hard, but continuing is harder. Those who seek a glamorous life should not pursue art, science, innovation, invention, or anything else that needs new. Creation is a long journey where most turns are wrong and most ends are dead. The most important thing creators do is work. The most important thing they don't do is quit. The ~ Kevin Ashton

I believe my theory of relativity to be true. But it will only be proved for certain in 1981, when I am dead. ~ Albert Einstein

But I learned more than you know from Owen Paris. I learned that trying to live up to imagined expectations is a waste of energy. I learned that nothing can replace the time I spend with my daughter every day. I learned much too late that his way of loving me was just his way. I learned too late that he loved me at all. He chose his career over his children. He left us with you, and you are a great mom. But every day he wasn't there was another day I spent wondering what I had done wrong and why he didn't care enough to be with me. "My children are never going to wonder that. I'm going to be there for every birthday, every school assembly, every science fair, every bad grade, every fight on the playground, every good-night kiss, every messy, hard, frustrating, perfect moment of it. ~ Kirsten Beyer

The element carbon can be found in more kinds of molecules than the sum of all other kinds of molecules combined. Given the abundance of carbon in the cosmos - forged in the cores of stars, churned up to their surfaces, and released copiously into the galaxy - a better element does not exist on which to base the chemistry and diversity of life. Just edging out carbon in abundance rank, oxygen is common, too, forged and released in the remains of exploded stars. Both oxygen and carbon are major ingredients of life as we know it. ~ Neil DeGrasse Tyson

I think the discomfort that some people feel in going to the monkey cages at the zoo is a warning sign. ~ Carl Sagan

I like to browse in occult bookshops if for no other reason than to refresh my commitment to science. ~ Heinz R. Pagels

Thence results, for science as well as for industry, the necessity of the division and association of labor. I receive and I give - such is human life. Each directs and is directed in his turn. ~ Mikhail Bakunin

The oceans are full of surprises! ~ Louis P Kicha

The works which this man leaves behind him occupy a few pages only; their importance is not greatly superior to their extent; and yet his name will shine out with lustre in the history of the sciences.

{Cuvier on Joseph Banks} ~ Georges Cuvier

People can always say I don't look impressive enough, but they can't argue over how strong I am once I punch them in the face. ~ F.C. Yee

Advertising: the science of arresting the human intelligence long enough to get money from it. ~ Stephen Leacock

The modern naturalist must realize that in some of its branches his profession, while more than ever a science, has also become an art. ~ Theodore Roosevelt

Our science is like a store filled with the most subtle intellectual devices for solving the most complex problems, and yet we are almost incapable of applying the elementary principles of rational thought. ~ Simone Weil

O world, thou choosest not the better part! It is not wisdom to be only wise, And on the inward vision close the eyes, But it is wisdom to believe the heart. Columbus found a world, and had no chart, Save one that faith deciphered in the skies; To trust the soul's invincible surmise Was all his science and his only art. ~ George Santayana

Despite my admiration for scientific knowledge, I am not an adherent of scientism. For scientism dogmatically asserts the authority of scientific knowledge; whereas I do not believe in any authority and have always resisted dogmatism; and I continue to resist it, especially in science. I am opposed to the thesis that the scientist must believe in his theory. As far as I am concerned "I do not believe in belief," as E. M. Forster says; and I especially do not believe in belief in science. I believe at most that belief has a place in ethics, and even here only in a few instances. I believe, for example, that objective truth is a value - that is, an ethical value, perhaps the greatest value there is - and that cruelty is the greatest evil. ~ Karl R. Popper

When you're a brown Muslim from Iran talking about Jesus on TV, you need to keep your cool at all times, OK? That's not rocket science. ~ Reza Aslan

We must be on our guard against giving interpretations which are hazardous or opposed to science, and so exposing the word of God to the ridicule of unbelievers. ~ Saint Augustine

I hate and fear 'science' because of my conviction that, for long to come if not for ever, it will be the remorseless enemy of mankind. I see it destroying all simplicity and gentleness of life, all the beauty of the world; I see it restoring barbarism under a mask of civilization; I see it darkening men's minds and hardening their hearts. ~ George Gissing

For quite a while I have set for myself the rule if a theoretician says 'universal' it just means pure nonsense. ~ Wolfgang Pauli

Just as a chemist "isolates" a substance from contaminations that distort his view of its nature and effects, so the work of art purifies significant appearance. It presents abstract themes in their generality, but not reduced to diagrams. ~ Rudolf Arnheim

Eric, you need to look at the whole picture," the PM said. "You look at the jobless as a huge pile of scrap and you're looking for what can be recycled. That's good. That's your job. But what you don't realise is that this pile of scrap itself serves a purpose. I need my zeros, Eric. They put fear in people; fear of crime and terrorism. They are a stark reminder to the stakeholders that what they despise today, they may end up joining tomorrow. It keeps them obedient. Remember that! ~ Mark Cantrell

The question of the position of man, as an animal, has given rise to much disputation, with the result of proving that there is no anatomical or developmental character by which he is more widely distinguished from the group of animals most nearly allied to him, than they are from one another. ~ Thomas Henry Huxley

A curious aspect of the theory of evolution is that everybody thinks he understands it. ~ Jacques Monod

Apparent contradiction ... is often the opportunity for new discovery in science; and it even may be said that the absence of apparent contradiction is due to our want of perception, since our knowledge of laws and causes is so small compared to their total sum. ~ Margaret Benson

For a dying man it is not a difficult decision [to agree to become the world's first heart transplant] ... because he knows he is at the end. If a lion chases you to the bank of a river filled with crocodiles, you will leap into the water convinced you have a chance to swim to the other side. But you would not accept such odds if there were no lion. ~ Christiaan Barnard

One can measure the importance of a scientific work by the number of earlier publications rendered superfluous by it. ~ David Hilbert

The rapid progress true Science now makes, occasions my regretting sometimes that I was born so soon. ~ Benjamin Franklin

I find the idea quite intolerable that an electron exposed to radiation should choose of its own free will not only its moment to jump off but its direction. In that case I would rather be a cobbler, or even an employee in a gaming house, than a physicist. ~ Albert Einstein

In some sense, we're all cavemen - we can't imagine anything more frightening than a ghost or a vampire. But the violation of the principle of causality - that's actually much scarier than a whole herd of ghosts ... or Rubinstein's monsters ... or is that Wallenstein?"
"Frankenstein. ~ Arkady Strugatsky

The age of glorious wars ended with the Meiji era. Today, all the stories of past wars have sunk to the level of those edifying accounts we hear from middle-aged noncoms in the military science department or the boasts of farmers around a hot stove. There isn't much chance now to die on the battlefield. [...] But now that old wars are finished, a new kind of war has just begun; this is the era for the war of emotion. The kind of war no one can see, only feel - a war, therefore, that the dull and insensitive won't even notice. But it's begun in earnest. The young men who have been chosen to wage it have already begun to fight. [...] And just as in the old wars, there will be casualties in the war of emotion, I think. It's the fate of our age. ~ Yukio Mishima

I sort of feel that climate change will be solved by science. I just feel instinctively that we will find a way of saving ourselves. But I am less confident that we won't destroy ourselves in other ways. ~ Richard Eyre

I was worried about sex," he went on. "But you know what, Sulie? It's like being told I can't have any caviar for the next couple years. I don't even like caviar. And when you come right down to it, I don't want sex right now. I supposed you punched that into the computer? 'Cut down sex drive, increase euphoria'? Anyway, it finally penetrated my little brain that I was just making trouble for myself, worrying about whether I could get along without something I really didn't want. It's a reflection of what I think other people think I should want. ~ Frederik Pohl

I was hardly fit for human society. Thus destiny shaped me to be a science fiction writer. ~ Brian Aldiss

Emotional states are fairly quick bursts of neuronal gossip. Traits, on the other hand, are more like the neuronal equivalent of committed relationships. ~ Yongey Mingyur

Disease is an experience of mortal mind. It is fear made manifest on the body. Divine Science takes away this physical sense of discord, just as it removes a sense of moral or mental in-harmony. ~ Mary Baker Eddy

Illustrating is more about communicating specific ideas to a reader. Painting is more like pure science, more about the act of painting. ~ Shaun Tan

Religion means researching the true Eternal thing with Deluded world view (with wrong belief) and 'this' (akram vignan) is a science itself. ~ Dada Bhagwan

The glorious lamp of heaven, the radiant sun, Is Nature's eye. ~ John Dryden

The advance of science spares us from irrational dread. ~ Martin Rees

It's
my God
like you stretched a tarp across a stadium to turn it into a giant tom-tom and crashed a 747 into it. ~ Neal Stephenson