great quotes

In science, ’fact’ can only mean ’confirmed to such a degree that it would be perverse to withhold provisional assent.’ I suppose that apples might start to rise tomorrow, but the possibility does not merit equal time in physics classrooms.
  - Stephen Jay Gould

Man is a credulous animal, and must believe something; in the absence of good grounds for belief, he will be satisfied with bad ones.
  - Bertrand Russell

Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from a religious conviction.
  - Blaise Pascal

The radical novelty of modern science lies precisely in the rejection of the belief, which is at the heart of all popular religion, that the forces which move the stars and atoms are contingent upon the preferences of the human heart. 

~Walter Lippmann

Science is a wonderful thing if one does not have to earn one’s living at it. 

~Albert Einstein

Even if the open windows of science at first make us shiver after the cozy indoor warmth of traditional humanizing myths, in the end the fresh air brings vigor, and the great spaces have a splendor of their own. 

~Bertrand Russell

In science it often happens that scientists say, "You know that’s a really good argument; my position is mistaken," and then they actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again.  They really do it.  It doesn’t happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful.  But it happens every day.  I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion. 

~Carl Sagan, 1987
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The only normal people are the ones you don’t know very well.
  - Joe Ancis

If a dog jumps in your lap, it is because he is fond of you; but if a cat does the same thing, it is because your lap is warmer.

   -Alfred North Whitehead (1861 - 1947)

Our task must be to free ourselves... by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature and its beauty.

  -Albert Einstein

I had a linguistics professor who said that it’s man’s ability to use language that makes him the dominant species on the planet. That may be. But I think there’s another thing that separates us from animals. We aren’t afraid of vacuum cleaners.

  -Jeff Stilson

The best thing about animals is that they don’t talk much.

  -Thornton Wilder

At the age of eleven or thereabouts women acquire a poise and an ability to handle difficult situations which a man, if he is lucky, manages to achieve somewhere in the later seventies.
  - PG Wodehouse