Favorite Quotes

Scientists often have a naive faith that if only they could discover enough facts about the problem, these facts would somehow arrange themselves in a compelling and true solution.

Theodosius Dobzhansky

All models are wrong but some are useful.

George Box

Science, after all, is only an expression of our ignorance of our own ignorance.

Samuel Butler

What we observe is not nature itself, but nature exposed to our method of questioning.

Werner Heisenberg

One sometimes finds what one is not looking for.

Sir Alexander Fleming

Scientists only need to be right some of the time – preferably about important things.

James P. Allison

Science is, after all, the abstraction of simple principle from complex data.

Brett Mensh and Konrad Kording

A good plan violently executed now is better than a perfect plan executed next week.

George S. patton

If you don’t know where you are going, any road will get you there.

Lewis Carroll

Any living cell carries with it the experiences of a billion years of experimentation by its ancestors. You cannot expect to explain so wise an old bird in a few simple words.

Max Delbruck

Never wrestle with a pig because you’ll both get dirty and the pig likes it.

George Bernard Shaw

There is a big difference between confidence and arrogance. Arrogance is thinking you are better than everyone else. Confidence is knowing you are the best version of yourself.

Jen Heemstra

If I had more time, I’d have written a shorter letter.

Blaise Pascal

There are two things academics hate: change, and the way things are.

Anne Fletcher

When the lightbulb was invented, no one complained it was too dim!

Steve Jobs

The only true wisdom is knowing you know nothing.

Socrates

True ignorance is not the absence of knowledge, but the refusal to acquire it.

Karl Popper

You always own the option of having no opinion. There is never any need to get worked up or to trouble your soul about things you can’t control. These things are not asking to be judged by you. Leave them alone

Marcus Aurelius

Best part of academia is you get to be your own boss. The worst part is my boss is an idiot.

Nathan Jensen

I’m in between successes right now.

Someone on the internet

There are two kinds of people: the ones who believe in evolution, and the ones whose existence disproves it.

@TheTweetOfGod

To understand how all of this works we will need something more than merely lists of components…the great difference between the telephone directory and a Shakespeare play is that, while both have a grand cast of characters, only the play has a plot.

Sydney Brenner

Do the best experiments you can, and always tell the truth. That’s all.

Sydney Brenner

Every paper is just a progress report.

George Thompson

Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius – and a lot of courage – to move in the opposite direction.

E.F. Schumacher

I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.

Thomas Edison

Science may be described as the art of systematic over-simplification – the art of discerning what we may with advantage omit.

Karl Popper

If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it?

Albert Einstein

Success is the ability to go from failure to failure without losing your enthusiasm.

Winston Churchill

Confidence is not a substitute for controls.

Someone on the internet

If you want to answer the big questions, you have to get down into the trenches. You don’t have to stay there forever, and you shouldn’t. But you have to know how it’s actually done.

Carl Woese

Nature is the way that it is, regardless of how humans feel it should be.

Someone on the internet

You cannot reason a person out of a position he did not reason himself into in the first place.

Jonathan Swift

And all the science I don’t understand, it’s just my job 5 days a week.

Sir Elton John

Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.

Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Being an intellectual creates a lot of questions and no answers.

Janis Joplin

We are drowning in data but thirsty for knowledge.

Sydney Brenner

Documentation is a love letter that you write to your future self.

Damian Conway

We’re not free in what we do because we are not free in what we want.

“Dark” (TV Series)

There is no such thing as writer’s block for writers whose standards are low enough.

William Stafford