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Nature, and Nature's laws lay hid in night:
God said, 'Let Newton be!' and all was light.
– Alexander Pope (1688–1744), British poet
It did not last: the Devil howling 'Ho!
Let Einstein be!' restored the status quo.
– John Collings Squire (1884–1958), British journalist
Whenever science makes a discovery, the devil grabs it while the angels are debating the best way to use it.
– Alan Valentine (1901–1980), American author and university president
The dreams of reason bring forth monsters.
– Francisco José de Goya (1746–1828), Spanish painter
Technology is a queer thing. It brings you great gifts with one hand, and it stabs you in the back with the other.
– C. P. Snow (1905–1980), English physicist, scientific statesman, and novelist
To the politician, the scientist is like a trained monkey who goes up the coconut tree to bring down choice coconuts. If he is successful in bringing down a very choice one, the owner of the monkey begins to worry, lest somebody else learn the trick. The priest is in the same position. He is asked to bless the arms of the nation; he is not asked what the nation should do with those arms. [Scientists and religious leaders] are exactly in the same place.
– I. I. Rabi (1898–1988), American Nobel-laureate physicist and scientific statesman. Witnessed first test of atomic bomb and advised the U. S. government on science policy.
The unleashed power of the atom has changed everything save our modes of thinking and we thus drift toward unparalleled catastrophe.
– Albert Einstein
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.
– J. Robert Oppenheimer (1904–1967), American nuclear physicist, "Father of the atom bomb." (The reaction of many physicists to this controversial remark was, "Speak for yourself, 'Oppie'.")
People must understand that science is inherently neither a potential for good nor for evil. It is a potential to be harnessed by man to do his bidding.
– Glenn Seaborg (1912–1999), American nuclear chemist and scientific statesman, discoverer of plutonium and other transuranic elements.
The content of physics is the concern of physicists, its effect the concern of all men.
– Frederick Dürrenmatt (1921–1990), Swiss writer
Birth is the most hazardous time of life.
– Virginia Apgar (1909–1974), developer of the "Apgar score," a test of vital signs given worldwide to newborns during the first minute of life to see if emergency measures are indicated.
I was bothered by the fact that thalidomide would not put a horse to sleep.
– Frances Kelsey (1914– ), American research physician whose suspicions kept thalidomide—Europe's favorite sleeping pill—from the United States market and thus prevented thousands of birth defects.
At temperatures above freezing one is between the Scylla of excessive drying and the Charybdis of molds.
– Mary Pennington (1872–1952), American bacteriologist whose research on refrigeration led to a revolution in the preservation of perishable foods.
Before a war military science seems a real science, like astronomy. But after a war it seems more like astrology.
– Rebecca West (1892–1983), Irish writer
Though many have tried, no one has ever yet explained away the decisive fact that science, which can do so much, cannot decide what it ought to do.
– Joseph Wood Krutch (1893–1970), American critic
Science increases our power in proportion as it lowers our pride.
– Claude Bernard (1813–1878), French physiologist
Science must constantly be reminded that her purposes are not the only purposes and that the order of uniform causation which she has use for, and is therefore right in postulating, may be enveloped in a wider order, on which she has no claim at all.
– William James (1842–1910), American philosopher and psychologist. He posed the question, "Is there a moral equivalent of war?"
The Three Laws of Robotics:
1. A robot may not injure a human being, or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
2. A robot must obey orders given it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.
– Isaac Asimov (1920–1992), Russian-born American writer and futurist who coined the term "robotics."
The future offers very little hope for those who expect that our new mechanical slaves will offer us a world in which we may rest from thinking. Help us they may, but at the cost of supreme demands upon our honesty and our intelligence. The world of the future will be an ever more demanding struggle against the limitations of our intelligence, not a comfortable hammock in which we can lie down to be waited upon by our robot slaves.
We can be humble and live a good life with the aid of machines, or we can be arrogant and die.
– Norbert Wiener (1894–1964), American mathematician
