The history of science shows that theories are perishable. With every new truth that is revealed we get a better understanding of Nature and our conceptions and views are modified.

There is nothing that living things do that cannot be understood from the point of view that they are made of atoms acting according to the laws of physics.

The egoism which enters into our theories does not affect their sincerity; rather, the more our egoism is satisfied, the more robust is our belief.

Science does not know its debt to imagination.

‚O sleep, O gentle sleep,‘ I thought gratefully, ‚Nature’s soft nurse!‘

I was a very keen reader of science fiction, and during the time I was going to libraries, it was good, written by people who knew their science.

I would go to the deeps a hundred times to cheer a downcast spirit. It is good for me to have been afflicted, that I might know how to speak a word in season to one that is weary.

If you do not understand a man you cannot crush him. And if you do understand him, very probably you will not.

It was morning; through the high window I saw the pure, bright blue of the sky as it hovered cheerfully over the long roofs of the neighboring houses. It too seemed full of joy, as if it had special plans, and had put on its finest clothes for the occasion.

The stars shall fade away, the sun himself Grow dim with age, and nature sink in years, But thou shalt flourish in immortal youth, Unhurt amidst the wars of elements, The wrecks of matter, and the crush of worlds.

Extremes in nature equal ends produce; In man they join to some mysterious use.

Much learning does not teach understanding.

Research is creating new knowledge.

Religion and science are the two conjugated faces or phases of one and the same complete act of knowledge – the only one which can embrace the past and future of evolution and so contemplate, measure and fulfil them.

The highest form of ignorance is when you reject something you don’t know anything about.

Only that thing is free which exists by the necessities of its own nature, and is determined in its actions by itself alone.

I hope I have helped to raise the profile of science and to show that physics is not a mystery but can be understood by ordinary people.

The sun, with all those planets revolving around it and dependent on it, can still ripen a bunch of grapes as if it had nothing else in the universe to do.

And yet it moves.

If you don’t get out of the box you’ve been raised in, you won’t understand how much bigger the world is.

I thank you God for this most amazing day, for the leaping greenly spirits of trees, and for the blue dream of sky and for everything which is natural, which is infinite, which is yes.

The environment is everything that isn’t me.

I have found far greater enthusiasm for science in America than here in Britain. There is more enthusiasm for everything in America.

If a man walks in the woods for love of them half of each day, he is in danger of being regarded as a loafer. But if he spends his days as a speculator, shearing off those woods and making the earth bald before her time, he is deemed an industrious and enterprising citizen.

How terribly downright must be the utterances of storms and earthquakes to those accustomed to the soft hypocrisies of society.

The best leaders understand the motivations of their team members and know their people – their lives and their families. But a leader must never grow so close to subordinates that one member of the team becomes more important than another, or more important than the mission itself.

The least movement is of importance to all nature. The entire ocean is affected by a pebble.

Sponges grow in the ocean. That just kills me. I wonder how much deeper the ocean would be if that didn’t happen.

When we talk about understanding, surely it takes place only when the mind listens completely – the mind being your heart, your nerves, your ears – when you give your whole attention to it.

It is too late to be studying Hebrew; it is more important to understand even the slang of today.

Democracy is the art and science of running the circus from the monkey cage.

You must understand the whole of life, not just one little part of it. That is why you must read, that is why you must look at the skies, that is why you must sing and dance, and write poems and suffer and understand, for all that is life.

A leader who confines his role to his people’s experience dooms himself to stagnation; a leader who outstrips his people’s experience runs the risk of not being understood.

Love does not begin and end the way we seem to think it does. Love is a battle, love is a war; love is a growing up.

The world, we are told, was made especially for man – a presumption not supported by all the facts. A numerous class of men are painfully astonished whenever they find anything, living or dead, in all God’s universe, which they cannot eat or render in some way what they call useful to themselves.

Like music and art, love of nature is a common language that can transcend political or social boundaries.

I suppose for a very long time I’ve been trying to understand how it is that people might make sense out of their lives and make meaning and make their lives meaningful in the face of the trouble that life brings.

I can express all my views on the slavery question by quotations from Henry Clay.

Children wish fathers looked but with their eyes; fathers that children with their judgment looked; and either may be wrong.

Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better.

Aptitude found in the understanding and is often inherited. Genius coming from reason and imagination, rarely.

The violets in the mountains have broken the rocks.

Poets utter great and wise things which they do not themselves understand.

‚Thank you‘ is the best prayer that anyone could say. I say that one a lot. Thank you expresses extreme gratitude, humility, understanding.

It’s wonderful to climb the liquid mountains of the sky. Behind me and before me is God and I have no fears.

I only ask to be free. The butterflies are free.

Joy in looking and comprehending is nature’s most beautiful gift.

The credit of advancing science has always been due to individuals and never to the age.

Going to the woods is going home, for I suppose we came from the woods originally. But in some of nature’s forests, the adventurous traveler seems a feeble, unwelcome creature; wild beasts and the weather trying to kill him, the rank, tangled vegetation, armed with spears and stinging needles, barring his way and making life a hard struggle.

In nature, nothing is perfect and everything is perfect. Trees can be contorted, bent in weird ways, and they’re still beautiful.

Each has his past shut in him like the leaves of a book known to him by his heart, and his friends can only read the title.

I owe the best of myself to geology, but everything it has taught me tends to turn me away from dead things.

I used to tell my husband that, if he could make me ‚understand‘ something, it would be clear to all the other people in the country.

The sun, too, shines into cesspools and is not polluted.

In rivers, the water that you touch is the last of what has passed and the first of that which comes; so with present time.

And this, our life, exempt from public haunt, finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, sermons in stones, and good in everything.

The march of science and technology does not imply growing intellectual complexity in the lives of most people. It often means the opposite.

I have a collective sense of suffering.

I believe there are no questions that science can’t answer about a physical universe.

All the world lies warm in one heart, yet the Sierra seems to get more light than other mountains. The weather is mostly sunshine embellished with magnificent storms, and nearly everything shines from base to summit – the rocks, streams, lakes, glaciers, irised falls, and the forests of silver fir and silver pine.

Mountains are the beginning and the end of all natural scenery.