Hard Science Quotes

If you don't care about science enough to be interested in it on its own, you shouldn't try to write hard science fiction. You can write like Ray Bradbury and Harlan Ellison as much as you want. ~ Frederik Pohl

Hope is easy; knowledge is hard. Science is the one domain in which we human beings make a truly heroic effort to counter our innate biases and wishful thinking. Science is the one endeavor in which we have developed a refined methodology for separating what a person hopes is true from what he has good reason to believe. ~ Sam Harris

Love at first sight is a myth, but thundering sexual attraction at first sight is hard science. ~ Daryl Gregory

Chubster is all for using hard science established through decades of serious study conducted by the world's experts in their respective fields -- with a few snarky jokes to keep things palatable. ~ Martin Cizmar

The answers lie in not just hard science or philosophical rhetoric but in experiments of the imagination as well. Human perspective must be re-examined through an almost whimsical fount of imagination of species, magic, and clear creative thinking. ~ Leviak B. Kelly

I thought Bill Bryson's 'A Short History of Nearly Everything' was remarkable. Managing to be entertaining while still delivering all that hard science was a pretty good trick to pull off. ~ Mark Haddon

Hard science ... is ultimately self-corrective, and wiser, in a way, than the scientists who pursue it; in the end it is apt to lead us to the truth, if only we have 'eyes to see'. But science itself cannot give us this vision: science as such cannot interpret its own findings; and neither, I would add, can modern philosophy. What is called for, I maintain, is a grounding in the traditional metaphysical doctrines of mankind: the very tenets that have been decried since the Enlightenment as primitive, pre-scientific, and puerile. Strange as it may seem to modern minds, these teachings ... derive ultimately 'from above': from the Center of the circle, if you will. Originally formulated in the language of myth, they have served as a catalyst of metaphysical vision down through the ages; neither Plato, nor Aristotle, nor Aquinas invented their own doctrines: all have drunk from this spring - except, of course, for the pundits of modernity, who have rejected that heritage. By now, to be sure, one knows very well to what destination modernity leads: we have, after all, entered the disillusioned and skeptical era of postmodernism. The argument against the traditional wisdom has now run its course, and the way to the perennial springs is open once more. The time is ripe for a new interpretation of scientific findings based upon pre-Cartesian principles; what is called for is a radical change of outlook, a veritable metanoia. Whether the doctrines of science will conduce to human enli ~ Wolfgang Smith

Unless you expect the unexpected you will never find it, for it is hard to discover and hard to attain. ~ Heraclitus

Interior decorating is a rock-hard science compared to psychology practiced by amateurs. ~ Antonin Scalia

What about our refusal to look squarely at the degradation of the planet we inhabit? In the last election cycle many candidates refused even to acknowledge the hard science, irrefutable science, of climate change. The president, while readily accepting the facts, has done far too little to alter them. How long are we, are you, prepared to wait? ~ David Remnick

Hard science gives sensational results with a horribly boring process; philosophy gives boring results with a sensational process; literature gives sensational results with a sensational process; and economics gives boring results with a boring process. ~ Nassim Nicholas Taleb

We need to get environmentalism out of the sphere of religion. We need to stop the mythic fantasies, and we need to stop the doomsday predictions. We need to start doing hard science instead. ~ Michael Crichton

Women tend to be more intuitive, or to admit to being intuitive, and maybe the hard science approach isn't so attractive. The way that science is taught is very cold. I would never have become a scientist if I had been taught like that. ~ Jane Goodall

If we are part of nature, then we are synonymous with it at the metaphysical level, every bit as much as the first all-but-inorganic animalcules that ever formed a chain of themselves in the blow hole of a primordial sea vent. There is no magic rod that comes down three hundred thousand years ago and divides our essence from the material world that produced us. This means that we cannot speak in essential terms of nature - neither of its brutality nor of its beauty - and hope to say anything true, if what we say isn't true of ourselves.

The importance of that proposition becomes clear only when it's reversed: What's true of us is true of nature. If we are conscious, as our species seems to have become, then nature is conscious. Nature became conscious in us, perhaps in order to observe itself. It may be holding us out and turning us around like a crab does its eyeball. Whatever the reason, that thing out there, with the black holes and the nebulae and whatnot, is conscious. One cannot look in the mirror and rationally deny this. It experiences love and desire, or thinks it does. The idea is enough to render the Judeo-Christian cosmos sort of quaint. As far as Rafinesque was concerned, it was just hard science. That part is mysterious. "She lives her life not as men or birds," said Rafinesque, "but as a world. ~ John Jeremiah Sullivan

Knowing Chris Bennett's Writing as I do, I expected Only Superhuman to have an imaginative plot and a compelling superheroine in Emry Blair. What I hadn't expected was for the backstory to make so much sense. Usually science is the first causality of superhero stories, tossed aside with the breezy rationalization: 'Hey, it's comics!' Only Superhuman is, to my knowledge, the first hard science superhero story. And the Story is the better for it. ~ Mike W. Barr

Set aside the many competing explanations of the Big Bang; something made an entire cosmos out of nothing. It is this realization-that something transcendent started it all-which has hard-science types ... using terms like 'miracle.' ~ Gregg Easterbrook

Just because it's not hard science, just because it doesn't lead to a high-paying job at a hedge fund after college, doesn't mean it's not worth pursuing. ~ Kat Rosenfield

We do a hard fantasy as well as hard science fiction, and I think I probably single-handedly recreated military science fiction. It was dead before I started working in it. ~ Jerry Pournelle

'Farscape' is not what you call hard science fiction. ~ Ben Browder

The fact that a theory so vague, so insufficiently verifiable, and so far from the criteria otherwise applied in 'hard' science has become a dogma can only be explained on sociological grounds. ~ Ludwig Von Bertalanffy

Among the social sciences, economists are the snobs. Economics, with its numbers and graphs and curves, at least has the coloration and paraphernalia of a hard science. It's not just putting on sandals and trekking out to take notes on some tribe. ~ Michael Kinsley

When I began in 1960, individuality wasn't an accepted thing to look for; it was about species-specific behaviour. But animal behaviour is not hard science. There's room for intuition. ~ Jane Goodall

I'll bite: Hard science TA's and RA's often repair equipment; it's part of our science. If you want a silver spoon, don't go to grad school. Science is all about dangerous chemicals, semi-safe experimental equipment, and 4am drives down gravel roads in old vans with a nice steep drop on one side. Guardrail? Ho ho ho. Fixing the computers is just the tip of the iceberg. Plus, where else could you get on-the-job experience with a PDP-8? ~ Greg Lindahl

Regardless of one's point of view, it's quite easy to see that Darwinism is not in the same league as the hard sciences. For instance, Darwinists will often compare their theory favorably to Einsteinian physics, claiming that Darwinism is just as well established as general relativity. Yet how many physicists, while arguing for the truth of Einsteinian physics, will claim that general relativity is as well established as Darwin's theory? Zero. ~ William A. Dembski

It could sometimes be alive and dead at the same time in its bounded but expanding domain. It experienced both conditions and simply didn't like dead. Death was a complex issue for it. ~ John Macgregor

I'd been given the hard stare by men a lot more dangerous than Donald Cole, men who would cut you up before breakfast then eat your heart and liver for lunch, and laugh with glee while they were doing it. ~ James Carol

As Jogiches walked in with her past the potted plants in the entrance, to face the smiles and all the food laid out on little tables, he whispered: 'As soon as this dinner is over, I shall kill you... ~ John Peter Nettl

Writing a song isn't that hard. Writing a good song is difficult. Let's face it, we're faced with taking a complex feeling or event, making words rhyme and saying exactly what we want them to say in a short amount of time ... the primary reason for keeping it short and to the point is to be certain that you're not boring your audience. ~ Ann Reed

A very wise person once told me marriage is hard, that you have to keep fighting for it everyday. ~ Liz Fenton

During the two months of our stay at Biarritz, my passion for Colette all but surpassed my passion for Cleopatra. Since my parents were not keen to meet hers, I saw her only on the beach; but I thought of her constantly. If I noticed she had been crying, I felt a surge of helpless anguish that brought tears to my own eyes. I could not destroy the mosquitoes that had left their bites on her frail neck, but I could, and did, have a successful fistfight with a red-haired boy who had been rude to her. She used to give me warm handfuls of hard candy. One day, as we were bending together over a starfish, and Colette's ringlets were tickling my ear, she suddenly turned toward me and kissed me on the cheek. So great was my emotion that all I could think of saying was, 'You little monkey. ~ Vladimir Nabokov

I would suggest to you that at this moment you are the only self that you have ever had; you've never had a childhood; there wasn't a five-minute-ago time. ~ Frederick Lenz

Like black, do you? (Cassandra)
It serves its purpose. It's hard to look intimidating in pastels. (Wulf) ~ Sherrilyn Kenyon

If you're working, you're working hard, and if you're not doing that, what are you doing? ~ Sophia Amoruso

If only, I thought, I could talk to Eugene just one more time. This was before I came to understand that you cannot make someone fall in love with you But here's what you can do. By arguing and pleading and screaming and crying and throwing plates and phoning a lot and bringing hot food and sending flowers and buying gifts and doing unsolicited favors and remembering a birthday and being nice and declaring your abiding love and trying hard or sometimes merely by being present, you can make someone who was hitherto lukewarm really detest you. ~ Patricia Marx

Intelligent design, unlike creationism, is a science in its own right and can stand on its own feet. ~ William A. Dembski

The American dream means that you have the chance to work hard, get an education and do great things for yourself, for your kids. The great thing in American is it doesn't matter what your last name is, doesn't matter if you're wealthy. ~ Bobby Jindal

It's hard to imagine the whole punk movement without The Velvet Underground. I toured with them when they did their reunion tour, and no one sounds like that; they are a very unique-sounding band. ~ Dean Wareham

I love Ruth Brown, not just her singing, but Ruth Brown has more girl power than anyone, because she fought hard against people who ripped her off and then helped other artists through the Rhythm and Blues Foundation. ~ Ronnie Spector

It may be hard to monetize fame, but it is impossible to monetize obscurity. ~ Cory Doctorow

It's the same with the wound in our hearts. We need to give them our attention so that they can heal. Otherwise the wounds continue to cause us pain. Sometimes for a very long time. We're all going to get hurt. But here's the trick - they also serve an amazing purpose.
When our hearts are wounded that's when they open.
We grow through pain.
We grow through difficult situations.
That's why you have to embrace each and every difficult thing in your life. ~ James R. Doty

This, in essence, is the problem with the scientific view of reality. Science is a kind of glorified tailoring enterprise, a method for taking measurements that describe something - reality - that may not be understood at all. ~ Michael Crichton

Mary Shelley may well have invented science fiction. I think she did! But after that it seemed to be a boys' game. ~ William Gibson

Jacob: 'So have you heard that in seventy years there won't be any gingers left on Earth?'

Jules: 'Really? Huh. Nature. Awesome.'

Sam: 'Actually, it's not true. It was some bogus report cooked up by a hair-dye company to get some extra press.'

Jacob: 'Sure it was, Fanta-pants.'

Ava: 'He's right. The recessive gene that causes red hair is totally able to skip generations, so redheads won't die out due to genetics.'

Sam: 'Thank you, Ava. It's nice to know that someone around here is sensible.'

Ava: 'Of course, redheads might become extinct because they find it so hard to get laid... ~ Lili Wilkinson

I bet all I had on a thing called love; guess in the end it wasn't enough. And it's hard to watch you leave right now; I'm gonna have to learn to let you go somehow. ~ Carrie Underwood

We seem to have forgotten that the expression "a liberal education" originally meant among the Romans one worthy of free men; while the learning of trades and professions by which to get your livelihood merely, was considered worthy of slaves only. But taking a hint from the word, I would go a step further and say, that it is not the man of wealth and leisure simply, though devoted to art, or science, or literature, who, in a true sense, is liberally educated, but only the earnest and free man. ~ Henry David Thoreau

The steam engine has done much more for science than science has done for the steam engine. ~ William Thomson, 1st Baron Kelvin

They are a very tough opponent, and they took us the first game. So we want our revenge, and we are going to go right back after them hard. We are really looking forward to getting after them. ~ Brian Jeroloman

life doesn't often spell things out for you or give you what you want exactly when you want it, otherwise it wouldn't be called life, it would be called vending machine. It's hard to say exactly when it will happen, and it's true that whatever you're after may not drop down the moment you spend all your quarters, but someday soon a train is coming. In fact, it may already be on the way. You just don't know it yet. ~ Lauren Graham

The universe is governed by science. But science tells us that we can't solve the equations, directly in the abstract. ~ Stephen Hawking

It's very hard to respect people on holiday - everybody looks so silly at the beach, it makes you hate humanity - but when you see people at their work they elicit respect, whether it's a mechanic, a stonemason or an accountant. ~ Alain De Botton

The only kicks and highs people got then were the ones dished out in nightclub fights. ~ Stephen Richards

Creativity...passion...sweat...heartbreak...inspiration...and lots of hard work...that is what books are made of! ~ Tara Fairfield

The secrets of the universe are written in a language we cannot understand, printed in a book we cannot find, however hard we try. ~ Rajesh`

You can play hard. You can play aggressive. You can give 120% but if one guy is out of position then someone is running through the line of scrimmage and he is going to gain a bunch of yards. ~ Bill Belichick

That's the difference between a champ and a knife thrower. The champ may have lost his stuff temporarily or permanently, he can't be sure. But when he can no longer throw the high hard one, he throws his heart instead. He throws something. He doesn't just walk off the mound and weep. ~ Raymond Chandler

I'm thinking of being a professional mourner. How hard can it be? Tear at your hair, sing a dirge or two, take the rest of the week off. ~ Christopher Moore

As soon as you enter the system to denounce it, you are automatically made a part of it. There is no ideal omega point today from which hard and fast judgments can be made. You can see that those who make accusations against the political class are the same ones who replenish it. The class is fed by the accusations made against it. Even the bluntest critic is caught up in this circularity. ~ Jean Baudrillard

NASA scientists announced the discovery of 50 new planets, among them what they're calling Super Earth. It's indistinguishable from regular earth until it removes its glasses. ~ Peter Sagal

10:16am
Thinking about Tina.
11:04am
Thinking about Tina's perfect ass.
12:37pm
Thinking about Tina panting under me in bed.
1:02pm
Going to the bathroom to jerk off.
I walk back into my office after finally getting some much needed relief.
Not hard anymore, are you?! Take that, penis! ~ Belle Aurora

My blood relatives are dead," Chen stated. "The Prominence Royal Army killed them. I'm the only one left. My given name is Qiao. I tell people my name is Chen, my surname, to honor the ones I lost. ~ J.K. Bailey

What did we talk about?

I don't remember. We talked so hard and sat so still that I got cramps in my knee. We had too many cups of tea and then didn't want to leave the table to go to the bathroom because we didn't want to stop talking. You will think we talked of revolution but we didn't. Nor did we talk of our own souls. Nor of sewing. Nor of babies. Nor of departmental intrigue. It was political if by politics you mean the laboratory talk that characters in bad movies are perpetually trying to convey (unsuccessfully) when they Wrinkle Their Wee Brows and say (valiantly--dutifully--after all, they didn't write it) "But, Doctor, doesn't that violate Finagle's Constant?" I staggered to the bathroom, released floods of tea, and returned to the kitchen to talk. It was professional talk. It left my grey-faced and with such concentration that I began to develop a headache. We talked about Mary Ann Evans' loss of faith, about Emily Brontë's isolation, about Charlotte Brontë's blinding cloud, about the split in Virginia Woolf's head and the split in her economic condition. We talked about Lady Murasaki, who wrote in a form that no respectable man would touch, Hroswit, a little name whose plays "may perhaps amuse myself," Miss Austen, who had no more expression in society than a firescreen or a poker. They did not all write letters, write memoirs, or go on the stage. Sappho--only an ambiguous, somewhat disagreeable name. Corinna? The teacher of Pindar. Olive Schriener, gr ~ Joanna Russ

Though often scoffed at by "serious" writers, science fiction worms its way into our cultural psyche in interesting ways, and not just as predictors of technology. Many of these writers translate the –isms of our times into imagined futures populated with characters coping with the consequences. ~ Frank Daniels III

And this year, when we end the cruel, defeatist practice of passing children who cannot read into fourth grade, and when our most diligent students begin to graduate from high school in 11 years, and get a head start on college costs with the dollars they earned through their hard work, others will take notice of Indiana yet again. ~ Mitch McConnell

The rich are the laziest of men. They pay others to do the hard work. ~ Tim Westover

They always act like they're having an amazing time, they're louder and high-pitched, shoving each other and screaming with laughter at nothing. But Becca knows what they're like when they're happy, and that's not it. Their faces on the way home afterwards look older and strained, smeared with the scraps of leftover expressions that were pressed on too hard and won't lift away. ~ Tana French

You can't really be scientifically literate if you don't understand evolution. And you can't be an educated member of society if you don't understand science. ~ Eugenie Scott

Justice Sandra Day O'Connor decisions reflect, in my view, that our society has worked very hard to improve the workaday world, to open doors to workers confronted by powerful employers and for women facing harassment and stereotypes. ~ Joe Biden

So part of the job of philosophy of science is to question assumptions that scientists take for granted. ~ Samir Okasha