Today Science News Quotes & Sayings

A lot of my favourite American writers are from the 1930s to the 60s. James Agee, Joseph Mitchell, AJ Liebling, Meyer Berger: they relied on their intuitions, didn't follow any who-what-where rules of reporting, frequently portrayed a contrary viewpoint. They all over-identified with their subjects. There's never the slightest pretence of objectivity. — Luc Sante

My big rattler was old, and had led too easy a life; there was not much fight in him. He had probably lived there for years, with a fat prairie-dog for breakfast whenever he felt like it, a sheltered home, even an owl-feather bed, perhaps, and he had forgot that the world doesn't owe rattlers a living. A snake of his size, in fighting trim, would be more than any boy could handle. So in reality it was a mock adventure; the game was fixed for me by chance, as it probably was for many a dragon-slayer. — Willa Cather

Today the most civilized countries of the world spend a maximum of their income on war and a minimum on education. The twenty-first century will reverse this order. It will be more glorious to fight against ignorance than to die on the field of battle. The discovery of a new scientific truth will be more important than the squabbles of diplomats. Even the newspapers of our own day are beginning to treat scientific discoveries and the creation of fresh philosophical concepts as news. The newspapers of the twenty-first century will give a mere 'stick' in the back pages to accounts of crime or political controversies, but will headline on the front pages the proclamation of a new scientific hypothesis.
Progress along such lines will be impossible while nations persist in the savage practice of killing each other off. I inherited from my father, an erudite man who labored hard for peace, an ineradicable hatred of war. — Nikola Tesla

A naturalistic Christianity leaves out all that is specifically Christian. — C.S. Lewis

I'm so tired. I'm tired of anxiety that twists my stomach so hard I can't move the rest of my body. Tired of constant vigilance. Tired of wanting to do something about myself, but always taking easy way out. — Francesca Zappia

It's not a real place, or a place that you can stay for long; it's a somewhere-over-the-rainbow archetype but rooted in genuine emotions. No matter what Guests' care might be, when they step onto Main Street they enter an evocation of the ideal home town. This is, in a sense, the 'home' to which Dorothy Gale wanted to return. Main Street welcomes all Guests with warmth as comforting today as it was to the post-war society of the 1950's for which it was originally created. — Leslie Le Mon

In old persons, when thus fully expressed, we often observe a fair, plump, perennial waxen complexion, which indicates that all the ferment of earlier days has subsided into serenity of thought and behavior. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Today's science should also relieve us of the fear that our children are at great risk to be recruited into homosexuality. I believe that if the gay community sent missionaries door to door like we Mormons do, spreading the good news of homosexuality, they would get pitifully few converts, probably only a small sliver of the terminally confused. "Join us and very possibly break your parents' hearts, throw the family into chaos, run the risk of intense self-loathing, especially if you are religious, invite the disgust of much of society, give up the warmth and benefits of marriage and probably of parenthood." (16) — Carol Lynn Pearson

That women bring home the bacon, fry it up, serve it for breakfast, and use its greasy remains to make candles for their children's science projects is hardly news. Yet how parenting responsibilities get sorted out under these conditions remains unresolved. Neither government nor private business has adapted to this reality, throwing the burden back onto individual families to cope. And while today's fathers are more engaged with their children than fathers in any previous generation, they're charting a blind course, navigating by trial and, just as critically, error. Many women can't tell whether they're supposed to be grateful for the help they're getting or enraged by the help they're failing to receive; many men, meanwhile, are struggling to adjust to the same work-life rope-a-dope as their wives, now that they too are expected to show up for Gymboree. — Jennifer Senior

I feel more at home knowing I'm not really at home. It takes all the pressure off you trying to fit in! — John Oliver