74 quotes
Science has as many competing styles as painting or poetry. The diversity of science also finds a parallel in the diversity of religion.
Infinite in All Directions (1988)
Scientifically speaking, a butterfly is at least as mysterious as a superstring. When something ceases to be mysterious it ceases to be of absorbing interest to scientists. Almost all things scientists think and dream about are mysterious.
Infinite in All Directions (1988)
To talk about the end of science is just as foolish as to talk about the end of religion. Science and religion are both still close to their beginnings, with no ends in sight.
Progress In Religion (2000)
Without discipline there can be no greatness. Without diversity there can be no freedom. Greatness for the enterprise, freedom for the individual — these are the two themes, contrasting but not incompatible, that make up the history of science and the history of religion.
Infinite in All Directions (1988)
We must be careful not to discourage our twelve-year-olds by making them waste the best years of their lives preparing for examinations.
Infinite in All Directions (1988)
There’s very good news from the asteroids. It appears that a large fraction of them, including the big ones, are actually very rich in H2O.
Technology is a gift of God. After the gift of life it is perhaps the greatest of God's gifts. It is the mother of civilizations, of arts and of sciences.
If we start space colonies in, say, the next 20 years, I would put my money on the asteroids.
Religion amplifies the good and evil tendencies of individual souls.
Progress In Religion (2000)
I do not make any clear distinction between mind and God. God is what mind becomes when it has passed beyond the scale of our comprehension.
Infinite in All Directions (1988)
I have to clear away a few popular misconceptions about space as a habitat … It is generally considered that planets are important. Except for Earth, they are not.
The Scientist As Rebel (2006)
The right way to ask the question is: How does the concept of a point fit into the logical structure of Euclid's geometry? ...It cannot be answered by a definition.
Infinite in All Directions (1988)
Progress in religion means that, as time goes on, religion more and more takes the side of the victims against the oppressors.
Progress In Religion (2000)
I said to him, "You're crazy." But he wasn't.
I am acutely aware of the fact that the marriage between mathematics and physics, which was so enormously fruitful in past centuries, has recently ended in divorce.
Missed Opportunities (1972)
Religion to me is really not about belief — it's about belonging. It's about a way of life.
The dominance of grey technology is now coming to an end.
Progress In Religion (2000)
"I remember my friend Johnny von Neumann used to say, with four parameters I can fit an elephant, and with five I can make him wiggle his trunk." With that, the conversation was over.
It is characteristic of all deep human problems that they are not to be approached without some humor and some bewilderment.
Disturbing the Universe (1979)
I have five minutes left to give you a message to take home. The message is simple. "God forbid that we should give out a dream of our own imagination for a pattern of the world".
Progress In Religion (2000)