This week, in the spirit of W Somerset Maugham, who said: "The ability to quote is a serviceable substitute for wit" Dr William Reville offers some quotations mainly by scientists and mostly about science.
If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it? - Albert Einstein (1879-1955, Scientist who proposed theory of relativity)
The voyage of discovery lies not in seeking new horizons, but in seeing with new eyes - Marcel Proust (1871-1922, French novelist)
Research is to see what everybody else has seen, and to think what nobody else has thought - Albert Szent-Gyorgyi (1893-1986, Hungarian biochemist).
Only those who attempt the absurd will achieve the impossible - M.C. Escher (1898-1972, graphic artist).
You cannot depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus - Mark Twain (1835-1910, American writer and humourist).
The soft minded man always fears change. He feels security in the status quo and he has an almost morbid fear of the new. For him, the greatest pain is the pain of a new idea - Dr Martin Luther King Jr (1928-1968, American clergyman and civil rights campaigner).
In questions of science, the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual - Galileo Galilei (1564-1642, Italian physicist, astronomer and mathematician).
A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds. - Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882, American poet and essayist).
I would have seen farther, but giants were standing on my shoulders - Anonymous.
The world was created on 22nd October, 4004 BC at six o'clock in the evening - James Ussher (1581-1656, Dublin-born Bishop who worked out date of creation from Scripture chronology).
There are some people that if they don't know, you can't tell 'em - Louis Armstrong (1898-1971, American jazz musician).
All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered; the point is to discover them. - Galileo Galilei.
Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away - Philip K. Dick (1928-1982, science fiction writer).
Everyone takes the limits of his own vision for the limits of the world - Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860, Polish philosopher).
Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence - Sir Martin Rees (1942- , UK Astronomer Royal.)
The altar cloth of one aeon is the doormat of the next - Mark Twain.
Name the greatest of our inventors - Accident - Mark Twain.
It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it - Aristotle (384-322 BC, Greek philosopher).
You cannot teach a man anything, you can only help him find it within himself - Galileo Galilei.
It is through science that we prove, but through intuition that we discover - Henri Poincare (1854-1912, French mathematician).
Scientific discovery is an irrational act. It's an intuition which turns out to be reality at the end of it. I see no difference between a scientist developing a marvellous discovery and an artist making a painting - C. Rubbia (1934- , Italian physicist).
The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant; we have created a society that honours the servant and has forgotten the gift - Albert Einstein.
If the man doesn't believe as we do, we say he is a crank, and that settles it. I mean, it does nowadays, because now we can't burn him - Mark Twain.
You can recognise a pioneer by the arrows in his back - Beverly Rubik (1951- , US biophysicist)
A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices - William James (1842-1910, American philosopher and psychologist, brother of novelist Henry James).
Heavier than air flying machines are impossible - Lord Kelvin (1824-1907, remark to Royal Society 1895, Belfast-born Kelvin was one of the principal physicists of the 19th century).
There is nothing new to be discovered in physics now. All that remains is more and more precise measurement - Lord Kelvin, 1900
Many people would rather die than think. In fact, most do - Bertrand Russell (1872-1970, British mathematician and philosopher).
All great truths begin as blasphemies - George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950, Dublin-born playwright and essayist).
To pray is to ask that the laws of the universe be annulled on behalf of a single petitioner, confessedly unworthy - Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?, US writer and essayist) .
Now my suspicion is that the universe is not only greater than we suppose, but greater than we can suppose . . . I suspect that there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in any philosophy - J.B.S. Haldane (1892-1964, British biologist and geneticist).