Social Scientists Quotes & Sayings

We're not policy people and we don't want to be policy people. All we're interested in, as social scientists, is data that accurately represents reality. — Orlando Rodriguez

As it turns out, social scientists have established only one fact about single women's mental health: employment improves it. — Susan Faludi

common sense observations of human behavior support a similar dissociation in reasoning abilities which cuts in both directions. We all know persons who are exceedingly clever in their social navigation, who have an unerring sense of how to seek advantage for themselves and for their group, but who can be remarkably inept when trusted with a nonpersonal, nonsocial problem. The reverse condition is just as dramatic: We all know creative scientists and artists whose social sense is a disgrace, and who regularly harm themselves and others with their behavior. The absent-minded professor is the benign variety of the latter type. At work, in these different personality styles, are the presence or absence of what Howard Gardner has called "social intelligence," or the presence or absence of one or the other of his multiple intelligences such as the "mathematical. — Antonio R. Damasio

I am pain-stricken to say, since the moment I was born, I have found nothing extraordinary in this ancient land of greatness to be exceptionally proud of. I am not a proud Indian. India at its present condition has given me no reason to feel proud.
However, I do feel proud of the ancient Indians, just like I feel proud of the ancient Greeks, the Mayans, the ancient Egyptians, the Babylonians and so on. Scientists are beyond borders, just like the ancient scientists of India, whom you prefer to call as sages. — Abhijit Naskar

Social scientists have determined that we accept inner responsibility for a behavior when we think we have chosen to perform it in the absence of strong outside pressures. A — Robert B. Cialdini

Finding the Russian scientists may be a problem being that Russia does not have a Social Security System, as here in America, that allows us to monitor, track down and capture an American citizen. — Colin Powell

According to the U.N., more than 2.7 billion people will face severe water shortages by 2025. Many social scientists predict that the next big wars will be over water. Nevertheless, the average American family blissfully consumes 300 gallons a day, when you add in watering the lawn and washing dishes, clothes, and cars. — Alex Shoumatoff

When top scientists and psychologists talk about what's important to our overall wellbeing and how satisfied we are with our lives, the only thing that they all agree on is that social relationships are probably the single best predictor of our overall happiness. — Tom Rath

Our modern conception of the average person is not a mathematical truth but a human invention, created a century and a half ago by two European scientists to solve the social problems of their era. — Todd Rose

All philosophers can do is to abstain from helping the aggressors and to enjoin social scientists to tell the truth instead of joining the choir of liars and hypocrites. — Mario Bunge

There are some people who, if they don't already know, you can't tell them.
As the great philosopher of uncertainty Yogi berra once said, Don't waste your time trying to fight forecasters, stock analysts, economists and social scientists, except to play pranks on them. — Nicholas Nassim Taleb

Historians are not scientists. They cannot (and should not even trying to) establish universal laws of social or political "physics" with reliable predictive powers. Why? Because there is no possibility of repeating the single, multi-millennium experiment that constant to the past. The sample size of human history is one. — Niall Ferguson

Presently, many behavioral and social scientists hold the deficit thinking model in disrepute - arguing that it is unduly simplistic, lacks empirical verification, more ideological than scientific, grounded in classism and racism, and offers counterproductive educational prescriptions for school success. However, because deficit thinking is so protean, taking different forms to conform to what is politically acceptable at the moment, and while the popularity of different revisions may change, it never ceases to be important in determining school policy and practice. Given — Richard R. Valencia

Abraham Lincoln was on the side of the social scientists when he said, God must have loved the people of lower and middle socioeconomic status, because he made such a multiplicity of them. — Edwin Newman

Nothing in science has any value to society if it is not communicated, and scientists are beginning to learn their social obligations. — Anne Roe

Another statistical survey, of 7,948 students at forty-eight colleges, was conducted by social scientists from Johns Hopkins University. Their preliminary report is part of a two-year study sponsored by the National Institute of Mental Health. Asked what they considered "very important" to them now, 16 percent of the students checked "making a lot of money"; 78 percent said their first goal was "finding a purpose and meaning to my life. — Viktor E. Frankl

Many political scientists used to assume that people vote selfishly, choosing the candidate or policy that will benefit them the most. But decades of research on public opinion have led to the conclusion that self-interest is a weak predictor of policy preferences. Parents of children in public school are not more supportive of government aid to schools than other citizens; young men subject to the draft are not more opposed to military escalation than men too old to be drafted; and people who lack health insurance are not more likely to support government-issued health insurance than people covered by insurance.35 Rather, people care about their groups, whether those be racial, regional, religious, or political. The political scientist Don Kinder summarizes the findings like this: "In matters of public opinion, citizens seem to be asking themselves not 'What's in it for me?' but rather 'What's in it for my group?' "36 Political opinions function as "badges of social membership."37 — Jonathan Haidt

Social scientists could supply plenty of research to show that one member of the family, at least, is happier and more well adjusted when mum stays home and looks after the children. But that person is dada finding of limited use to backlash publicists. — Susan Faludi

Many 'hard' scientists regard the term 'social science' as an oxymoron. Science means hypotheses you can test, and prove or disprove. Social science is little more than observation putting on airs. — Michael Kinsley

My Third-World roots remind me that the vast majority of our fellow human beings live hungry, sick, and uneducated, and that most social scientists, even in that world, ignore that ugly reality. This is why my papers in mathematical sociology deal not with free choice among 30 flavors of ice-cream, but with social structure, social cohesion, and social marginality. — Mario Bunge

Science is no inexorable march to truth, mediated by the collection of objective information and the destruction of ancient superstition. Scientists, as ordinary human beings, unconsciously reflect in their theories the social and political constraints of their times. — Stephen Jay Gould

Economists and technologists bring the "bits", but it requires the social scientists and humanists to bring the "wits. — Kenneth E. Boulding

Marxists are more right than wrong when they argue that the problems scientists take up,. the way they go about solving them, and even the solutions they arc inclined to accept, arc conditioned by the intellectual, social, and economic environments in which they live and work. — Theodosius Dobzhansky

This closing chapter takes up three problems about authoritative reason giving that earlier chapters have raised but not resolved: what makes reasons credible, how people who work with specialized sorts of reason giving can make their reasons accessible to people outside their specialties, and what particular problems social scientists face when it comes to communicating their reasons, and reconciling them with the reasons that we as ordinary people give for our actions. Governmental commissions, we will see, offer just one of many ways to broadcast reasons. We will also see that the credibility of reasons always depends on the relation between speaker and audience, in part because giving of reasons always says something about the relation itself. — Charles Tilly

We're highly social animals - I'm told by scientists that what makes us different from other animals is an acute social awareness, which is what has made us so successful. — Alan Alda

The dread of a permanently wicked human nature takes two forms. One is a practical fear: that social reform is a waste of time because human nature is unchangeable. The other is a deeper concern, which grows out of the Romantic belief that what is natural is good. According to the worry, if scientists suggest it is "natural" - part of human nature - to be adulterous, violent, ethnocentric, and selfish, they would be implying that these traits are good, not just unavoidable. — Steven Pinker

But what the measured prose of psychiatrists and the carefully calculated statistics of social scientists rarely capture is the experience of inner struggle. These "significant changes" do not occur automatically. In fact, they must often fight against our resistance. In this sense, midlife is a drama more worthy of a playwright than a scholar. We are characters in the play, caught at the opening of the second act, and we do not know what will happen next. — Mark Gerzon

family structure that produces the best outcomes for children, on average, are two biological parents who remain married. Divorced parents produce the next-best outcomes. Whether the parents remarry or remain single while the children are growing up makes little difference. Never-married women produce the worst outcomes. All of these statements apply after controlling for the family's socioeconomic status.14 I know of no other set of important findings that are as broadly accepted by social scientists who follow the technical literature, liberal as well as conservative, and yet are so resolutely ignored by network news programs, editorial writers for the major newspapers, and politicians of both major political parties. In — Charles Murray

When I grew up, scientists were anti-social people who worked in basements and wore coats and worked with bunson burners, and now they're in our technology every day, and our technology has almost become fashion accessories. — Johnny Galecki

The upsides of the high-reactive temperament have been documented in exciting research that scientists are only now beginning to pull together. One of the most interesting findings, also reported in Dobbs's Atlantic article, comes from the world of rhesus monkeys, a species that shares about 95 percent of its DNA with humans and has elaborate social structures that resemble our own. — Susan Cain

Social scientists and psychologists are conducting research studies that clearly show that when we behave and act as if we are happy, confident, healthy or in love, we become happy, confident, healthy and in love. — Cynthia Sue Larson

That was the first major social sciences conference at which social scientists from all cultures wanted to reach a consensus on whether we can continue to pursue a national course in the social sciences or whether we need a cosmopolitan path that also connects us in a new way. — Ulrich Beck

As with scientists, American university professors were more atheistic or agnostic than the general populace (23 percent versus 7 percent nonbelievers, respectively). But when professors from different areas were polled, it became clear that scientists were the least religious. While only 6 percent of "health" professors were atheists or agnostics, this figure was 29 percent for humanities, 33 percent for computer science and engineering, 39 percent for social sciences, and a whopping 52 percent for physical and biological scientists together. When disciplines were divided more finely, biologists and psychologists tied as the least religious: 61 percent of each group were agnostics or atheists. — Jerry A. Coyne

Indications, of course, are not enough. Knowledge of the time must be combined with obedience -- what social scientists like to call time discipline. The indications are in effect commands, for responsiveness to these cues is imprinted on us and we ignore them at our peril. — David S. Landes

The best way to avoid abuses is for the populace in general to be scientifically literate, to understand the implications of such investigations. In exchange for freedom of inquiry, scientists are obliged to explain their work. If science is considered a closed priesthood, too difficult and arcane for the average person to understand, the dangers of abuse are greater. But if science is a topic of general interest and concern - if both its delights and its social consequences are discussed regularly and competently in the schools, the press, and at the dinner table - we have greatly improved our prospects for learning how the world really is and for improving both it and us. — Carl Sagan

One reason citizens, politicians and university donors sometimes lack confidence in the social sciences is that social scientists too often miss the chance to declare victory and move on to new frontiers. — Nicholas A. Christakis

Scientists and academics in particular focus on detail and the minutiae. When they talk to each other, they usually don't focus on the broad ideas; they don't focus on social interconnectedness. They focus on the task that they're doing. — Aaron D. O'Connell

I think it is now time for social scientists to step out of the shadow and to establish an advanced social sciences methodology that integrates science (third-person view) social transformation (second-person view) and the evolution of self (first-person view) into a coherent framework of consciousness-based action research — Otto Scharmer

Some men escape the grip. Maybe their wives have no social ambitions; maybe they've hit a sentence or two in a 'dangerous book' that pleased them; maybe they started on the treadmill as I did and were knocked off. Anyway, they're the congressmen you can't bribe, the Presidents who aren't politicians, the writers, speakers, scientists, statesmen who aren't just populate grab-bags for a half-dozen women and children. — F Scott Fitzgerald

Scientists do not simply read nature to find truths to apply in the social world. Instead, they use truths taken from our social relationships to structure, read, and interpret the natural — Anne Fausto-Sterling

As a child, I had no interest in science whatsoever - then I started writing and recognized how relevant it was. My first book about science and medicine captured the world of organ transplantation in 1989 from the points of view of all of the participants - scientists, surgeons, social workers, organ recipients and even donor families. — Lee Gutkind

In a way, it's odd that the greatest sympathy for evolutionism is found among scholars who study the distant past. For events of this century, and especially of the last few decades, suggest that the arrow of history identified by some social scientists of the nineteenth century is roughly on target. Lewis Morgan's essential point was right: the endless impetus of cultural evolution has pushed society through several thresholds over the past 20,000 years. And now it is pushing society through another one. A magnificent new social structure - our future home - is being built before our eyes. — Robert Wright

Another curious aspect of the theory of evolution is that everybody thinks he understands it. I mean philosophers, social scientists, and so on. While in fact very few people understand it, actually, as it stands, even as it stood when Darwin expressed it, and even less as we now may be able to understand it in biology. — Jacques Monod

Social scientists are not universally liked or appreciated, but we are still marginally more acceptable than alcoholics and escaped lunatics. — Kate Fox

I am most often irritated by those who attack the bishop but somehow fall for the securities analyst
those who exercise their skepticism against religion but not against economists, social scientists, and phony statisticians. Using the confirmation bias, these people will tell you that religion was horrible for mankind by counting deaths from the Inquisition and various religious wars. But they will not show you how many people were killed by nationalism, social science, and political theory under Stalin or during the Vietnam War. Even priests don't go to bishops when they feel ill: their first stop is the doctor's. But we stop by the offices of many pseudoscientists and "experts" without alternative. We no longer believe in papal infallibility; we seem to believe in the infallibility of the Nobel, though ... — Nassim Nicholas Taleb

The key fact missed most often by social scientists utilizing documentary films for data, is this: documentary films are not found or reported things; they're made things. — Bruce Jackson

Each worldview was a cultural product, but evolution is true and separate creation is not. [ ... ] Worldviews are social constructions, and they channel the search for facts. But facts are found and knowledge progresses, however fitfully. Fact and theory are intertwined, and all great scientists understand the interaction. — Stephen Jay Gould

There is not much that even the most socially responsible scientists can do as individuals, or even as a group, about the social consequences of their activities. — Eric Hobsbawm

Q: But isn't race "just skin deep"? Don't most scientists now agree that race is a social construct, not a biological reality? A: Biological evidence shows that race is not a social construct. Coroners in crime labs can identify race from a skeleton or even just the skull. They can identify race from blood, hair, or semen as well. To deny the existence of race is unscientific and unrealistic. Race is much more than "just skin deep. — J. Philippe Rushton

We should not expect individuals to produce good, open-minded, truth-seeking reasoning, particularly when self-interest or reputational concerns are in play. But if you put individuals together in the right way, such that some individuals can use their reasoning powers to disconfirm the claims of others, and all individuals feel some common bond or shared fate that allows them to interact civilly, you can create a group that ends up producing good reasoning as an emergent property of the social system. This is why it's so important to have intellectual and ideological diversity within any group or institution whose goal is to find truth (such as an intelligence agency or a community of scientists) or to produce good public policy (such as a legislature or advisory board). — Jonathan Haidt

The great myth that many social scientists want to encourage is that there is an incompatibility between modern technology and traditional religion. This is absolute nonsense. If anything, it's the reverse. — Rodney Stark

are biased toward studying individual organisms. It is often difficult for scientists to grasp the idea that individual brains do not exist in nature. As much as one may adhere to the notion of the isolated self, humans have evolved as social creatures and are constantly regulating one another's biology. Without mutually stimulating interactions, people (and neurons for that matter) wither and die. In neurons this process is called apoptosis (programmed cell death); in humans it is called failure to thrive, depression, or dying of a broken heart. — Louis Cozolino

There is even a certain tendency to punish those who do try to see. A case in point: At the dawn of the sexual revolution, social scientists produced statistical studies purporting to show that children are better off when quarreling parents divorce, that broken homes are just as functional as intact ones, and that cohabitation has no influence on the stability of a subsequent marriage. As anyone conversant with the field now knows, newer and more careful studies show all that to be wildly false. A young, untenured family sociologist whom I know used to circulate the results of these new studies secretly among other scholars. But he asked me and his other friends never to mention his name. Why? Because calling the mirage a mirage is a good way to end a career. — J. Budziszewski

There is an insistent tendency among serious social scientists to think of any institution which features rhymed and singing commercials, intense and lachrymose voices urging highly improbable enjoyment, caricatures of the human esophagus in normal and impaired operation, and which hints implausibly at opportunities for antiseptic seduction as inherently trivial. This is a great mistake. The industrial system is profoundly dependent on commercial television and could not exist in its present form without it. — John Kenneth Galbraith

Social scientists generally agree that students' families (especially family income, which determines advantages and opportunity) have an even bigger impact on student performance than their school or teachers. — Diane Ravitch

Social scientists have observed that when members of a group are made aware of a negative stereotype, they are more likely to perform according to that stereotype. — Sheryl Sandberg

Music escapes ideological characterization. Just as there are some social scientists who believe that what cannot be measured does not truly exist, and some psychologists used to believe that consciousness does not exist because it cannot be observed by instruments, so ideologists find anything that escapes their conceptual framework threatening - because ideologists want a simple principle, or a few simple principles, by which all things may be judged. When I was a student, I lived with a hard-line dialectical materialist who said that Schubert was a typical petit bourgeois pessimist, whose music would die out once objective causes for pessimism ceased to exist. But I suspect that even he was not entirely happy with this formulation. — Theodore Dalrymple

Recommendation 7: Build human capital in government. While Moneyball uses big data and advanced statistics, the endeavor ultimately depends on people. To take one example: rapid-cycle evaluation at a service-delivery agency requires policy experts to identify plausible new approaches; program managers to implement them; technologists to create or modernize data systems to capture effects; social scientists or statisticians to analyze the data on effects; and crosscutting leaders who know how to bring these pieces together with inspiration and precision. — Kelly Ayotte

2011 study conducted by a team of social scientists at the University of Canberra in Australia concluded that having a job we hate is as bad for our health and sometimes worse than not having a job at all. — Simon Sinek

This segregation is confirmed by the common stereotypes of these two disciplines and their representatives. While scientists are perceived as absentminded, casually dressed individuals who live in a refined world of abstract theory with little practical reality, lawyers are usually perceived as formally dressed people who are practically oriented, concentrating mainly on trivialities (such as negotiating their retaining fee) and engaging professionally in all sorts of nitty-gritty social intercourse - the kind of things that normal people, although worried by them, would rather not have to deal with themselves. — Fritjof Capra

Some social scientists say that in-group/out-group biases are hard-wired into the human brain. Even without overt prejudice, it is cognitively convenient for people to sort items into categories and respond based on what is usually associated with those categories: a form of statistical discrimination, playing the odds. — Rosabeth Moss Kanter

My own ongoing research among secular Americans-as well as that of a handful of other social scientists who have only recently turned their gaze on secular culture-confirms that nonreligious family life is replete with its own sustaining moral values and enriching ethical precepts. — Phil Zuckerman

In my work, I am not attempting to predict the future. I am only pointing out what is possible with the intelligent application and humane use of science and technology. This does not call for scientists to manage society. What I suggest is applying the methods of science to the social system for the benefit of human kind and the environment. — Jacque Fresco

There are many compelling reasons why social scientists should turn more attention to the situation of whites in the underclass. Prime among these is that researchers and politicians have constructed a grossly distorted image of poverty in this country. While whites constitute a vast majority of the poor population in the United States, blackness composes the most familiar visage in representations of poverty. — Annalee Newitz

The Reformation may have resulted in a "Protestant work ethic," but this was not due to the pressure to prove one's election by worldly success, as certain social scientists ludicrously maintain. Rather, the work ethic emerged out of an understanding of the meaning of work and the satisfaction and fulfillment that come from ordinary human labor when seen through the light of the doctrine of vocation. — Gene Edward Veith Jr.

Some of the more sought-after signers are, in no particular order, presidents, military heroes, sports icons, actors, singers, artists, religious and social leaders, scientists, astronauts, authors, and Kardashians. — Carrie Fisher

It seems we would rather have a past filled with great scientists than just great artists and writers who could dream up these wonderful and awe-inspiring creations. It's a strange irony: we're spending our time trying to find the truth in our past, but creating myths of ourselves in the present. — Aditya Iyengar

Social scientists have found that the fastest way to feel happiness is to practice gratitude. — Chip Conley

Social scientists emphasize that people use the "availability heuristic," which means that we assess risks by asking whether a bad (or good) event is cognitively "available." It — Cass R. Sunstein

Biblical social scientists have an advantage because they know truths about human nature. Those who dismiss the Bible and create surveys that don't measure crucial factors are the ones who have closed minds. Sometimes the Bible gives us clear answers and sometimes it doesn't, but it always helps us to ask the right questions. — Marvin Olasky

Language is too complex for a computer to understand. It's not going to be able to make sense of what people are saying en masse. We need a new type of discipline that puts together computer scientists and social scientists, who can add context to the situation. — Noreena Hertz

Many philosophers, economists and social scientists saw the middle classes, as the tool to end all class division, with an end of days revolution — Owen H. Lewis

I felt I was moving among two groups [literary intellectuals and scientists] comparable in intelligence, identical in race, not grossly different in social origin, earning about the same incomes, who had almost ceased to communicate at all, who in intellectual, moral and psychological climate had so little in common that instead of going from Burlington Hom or South Kensington to Chelsea, one might have crossed an ocean. — C.P. Snow

A ... difference between most system-building in the social sciences and systems of thought and classification of the natural sciences is to be seen in their evolution. In the natural sciences both theories and descriptive systems grow by adaptation to the increasing knowledge and experience of the scientists. In the social sciences, systems often issue fully formed from the mind of one man. Then they may be much discussed if they attract attention, but progressive adaptive modification as a result of the concerted efforts of great numbers of men is rare. — Lawrence Joseph Henderson

Social scientific research is and always will be tentative and imperfect. It does not claim to transform economics, sociology, and history into exact sciences. But by patiently searching for facts and patterns and calmly analyzing the economic, social, and political mechanisms that might explain them, it can inform democratic debate and focus attention on the right questions. It can help to redefine the terms of debate, unmask certain preconceived or fraudulent notions, and subject all positions to constant critical scrutiny. In my view, this is the role that intellectuals, including social scientists, should play, as citizens like any other but with the good fortune to have more time than others to devote themselves to study (and even to be paid for it - a signal privilege). — Thomas Piketty

I think it's very important to invite and encourage people to talk about climate change who have a lay understanding. In general, there is a lot of confusion among climate activists about the role of science, that scientists should be social and political leaders of this movement. — Margaret D. Klein

...obscurantist feature in social scientists trying to combine pluralism with environmentalism. They are so preoccupied with the role of prejudice in creating hostile environments that they perpetually deny the obvious, that stereotypes are rough generalizations about groups derived from long-term observation. Such generalizations are usually correct in describing group tendencies and in predicting certain collective actions, even if they do not adequately account for differences among individuals. Nonetheless, as Goldberg explains, the self-described pluralist and prominent psychologist Gordon Allport went out of his way in The Nature of Prejudice (1954) to reject stereotypes as factually inaccurate as well as socially harmful. For Allport and a great many other social Scientists, nothing is intuitively correct unless it is politically so. — Paul Edward Gottfried

Social scientists sometimes talk about the concept of "identity". It is the idea that you have a particular vision of the kind of person you are, and you feel awful when you do things that are out of line with that vision. — Steven D. Levitt

Actors and directors have written about it, psychologists, philosophers, social scientists, and even biologists have pondered it. What is acting, and how is it done? How does someone become someone else? Can someone become someone else? How much of what an actor does is due to that mysterious quality we call talent? — Richard Brestoff

We have to understand ourselves as a part of the narrative of evolution. And evolution never stops. The notion that human evolution at some point stopped and "history" took over is absurd, though it is widespread among various social scientists and humanists. — Robert Neelly Bellah

Social scientists have written papers analyzing Eshelman's every move in there, including the strange detail that the more brutally he behaved, the more American South his accent sounded. — Jon Ronson

All around me, I see misery. A blind man with sunglasses and cane, like some caricature of a blind man, hobbling down the street. An old woman hunched over so far that her torso is nearly parallel to the ground. I hear someone sobbing behind me, and turn to see a middle-aged woman with dark hair, her eyes red from crying. I wonder, though: Is this place really so miserable, or have I fallen prey to what social scientists call confirmation bias? I expect Moldova to be miserable, so I see misery everywhere. — Eric Weiner

Gods also remain important because of their functions. We can turn to places with relatively less religiosity to see why gods are so important everywhere else. In Sacred and Secular (2004), the political scientists Pippa Norris of Harvard and Ronald Inglehart of the University of Michigan show that, in prosperous regions where secular forms of social services and justice become really effective, religiosity dwindles. This inverse relationship between secular justice and economic equality and religious adherence suggests that the social functions of religion can be co-opted by secular institutions, thus rendering our obsession with what God knows and cares about more or less irrelevant. — Anonymous

But our ways of learning about the world are strongly influenced by the social preconceptions and biased modes of thinking that each scientist must apply to any problem. The stereotype of a fully rational and objective scientific method, with individual scientists as logical (and interchangeable) robots, is self-serving mythology. — Stephen Jay Gould

We need scientists and mathematicians explaining why they are excited about their subjects but also why they are important for solving social problems, informing political debate and for the economy. — Marcus Du Sautoy

A preoccupation with theory has been a defensive response by academic biographers in this country, I submit, to the condescension of traditional humanists and social scientists pervading higher education for many years. — David Levering Lewis

Social psychology, the science of how people behave toward one another, is often a mishmash of interesting phenomena that are "explained" by giving them fancy names. Missing is the rich deductive structure of other sciences, in which a few deep principles can generate a wealth of subtle predictions - the kind of theory that scientists praise as "beautiful" or — Steven Pinker

There is a noticeable general difference between the sciences and mathematics on the one hand, and the humanities and social sciences on the other. It's a first approximation, but one that is real. In the former, the factors of integrity tend to dominate more over the factors of ideology. It's not that scientists are more honest people. It's just that nature is a harsh taskmaster. You can lie or distort the story of the French Revolution as long as you like, and nothing will happen. Propose a false theory in chemistry, and it'll be refuted tomorrow. — Noam Chomsky

Early biologists were the social scientists of their times, because their racial descriptions of the human species contain explicit behavioral correlations. Racial attributes were cited to explain social conditions, which then became a natural state of affairs. In the process of their construction, races are deemed part of nature; they are alleged to have been "discovered," not constructed by an emphasis on particular anatomical attributes. This assumption of the naturalness of race is connected with the pursuit of an explanation of a particular social condition - inequality. Races, as unequal biological entities, must be said to have their peculiar cultures, psychologies, and unequal economic circumstances. — Yehudi O. Webster

A single human brain has about a hundred million nerve cells ... and a computer program that throws light on the mind/brain problem will have to incorporate the deepest insights of biologists, nerve scientists, psychologists, physiologists, linguists, social scientists, and even philosophers. — Tony Hoare

The overwhelming majority of social scientists were irreligious or even anti-religious. This led them to believe that religion was a disappearing and unimportant factor in human affairs. — Rodney Stark

The conception that, instead of this, contemporary society is at or near a turning point is very prominent in the views of a school of social scientists who, though they are still comparatively few, are getting more and more of a hearing. — Talcott Parsons

Only now are increasing numbers of political and social scientists beginning to realize that Kelso's theories provide a private-property-based alternative to the imminent passage of a government-distributed "guaranteed income" or "negative income tax." — Hazel Henderson

When an animal is looking for something that increases its chances of survival and reproduction (e.g. food, partners or social status), the brain produces sensations of alertness and excitement, which drive the animal to make even greater efforts because they are so very agreeable. In a famous experiment scientists connected electrodes to the brains of several rats, enabling the animals to create sensations of excitement simply by pressing a pedal. When the rats were given a choice between tasty food and pressing the pedal, they preferred the pedal (much like kids preferring to play video games rather than come down to dinner). The rats pressed the pedal again and again, until they collapsed from hunger and exhaustion — Yuval Noah Harari

You never know what will spark a student's interest and feed the flame of learning. For me, all subjects are connected: writing, reading, science, art, music, math, social studies. By presenting myself as a writer with wide ranging passions - for astronomy, volcanology, art, music, history, and community service - I hope to inspire not only budding writers but also budding scientists, artists, activists... — Elizabeth Rusch

The development of science is basically a social phenomenon, dependent on hard work and mutual support of many scientists and on the societies in which they live. — Charles H. Townes

I'm not suggesting that social scientists stop teaching and investigating classic topics like monopoly power, racial profiling and health inequality. But everyone knows that monopoly power is bad for markets, that people are racially biased and that illness is unequally distributed by social class. — Nicholas A. Christakis

Social scientists estimate that about 70 percent of our happiness stems from our relationships, both quantity and quality, with friends, family, coworkers, and neighbors. During life's difficult patches, camaraderie blunts our misery; during the good times, it boosts our happiness. — Eric Weiner

Ambiguous loss is considered by social scientists to be one of the most stressful kinds of loss owing to its nature: it is the loss that happens without possibility for closure. — Sonya Lea

Photographers learn to interpret photographs in that technical way because they want to understand and use that 'language' themselves just as musicians learn a more technical musical language than the layman needs. Social scientists who want to work with visual materials will have to learn to approach them in this more studious and time-consuming way. — Howard S. Becker