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“We must trust to nothing but facts: These are presented to us by Nature, and cannot deceive. We ought, in every instance, to submit our reasoning to the test of experiment, and never to search for truth but by the natural road of experiment and observation.”
― Antoine Lavoisier, Elements of Chemistry

“Thou, nature, art my goddess; to thy laws my services are bound...

{His second motto, from King Lear by Shakespeare}”
― Carl Friedrich Gauss

“A scientist has to be neutral in his search for the truth, but he cannot be neutral as to the use of that truth when found. If you know more than other people, you have more responsibility, rather than less.”
― Charles Percy Snow

“The humanitarian philosophies that have been developed (sometimes under some religious banner and invariably in the face of religious opposition) are human inventions, as the name implies - and our species deserves the credit. I am a devout atheist - nothing else makes any sense to me and I must admit to being bewildered by those, who in the face of what appears so obvious, still believe in a mystical creator. However I can see that the promise of infinite immortality is a more palatable proposition than the absolute certainty of finite mortality which those of us who are subject to free thought (as opposed to free will) have to look forward to and many may not have the strength of character to accept it.

Thus I am a supporter of Amnesty International, a humanist and an atheist. I believe in a secular, democratic society in which women and men have total equality, and individuals can pursue their lives as they wish, free of constraints - religious or otherwise. I feel that the difficult ethical and social problems which invariably arise must be solved, as best they can, by discussion and am opposed to the crude simplistic application of dogmatic rules invented in past millennia and ascribed to a plethora of mystical creators - or the latest invention; a single creator masquerading under a plethora of pseudonyms. Organisations which seek political influence by co-ordinated effort disturb me and thus I believe religious and related pressure groups which operate in this way are acting antidemocratically and should play no part in politics. I also have problems with those who preach racist and related ideologies which seem almost indistinguishable from nationalism, patriotism and religious conviction.”
― Harry Kroto

“In some strange way, any new fact or insight that I may have found has not seemed to me as a “discoveryâ€� of mine, but rather something that had always been there and that I had chanced to pick up.”
― Subrahmanijan Chandrasekhar

“I'm convinced that the best solutions are often the ones that are counterintuitive - that challenge conventional thinking - and end in breakthroughs. It is always easier to do things the same old way...why change? To fight this, keep your dissatisfaction index high and break with tradition. Don't be too quick to accept the way things are being done. Question whether there's a better way. Very often you will find that once you make this break from the usual way - and incidentally, this is probably the hardest thing to do—and start on a new track your horizon of new thoughts immediately broadens. New ideas flow in like water. Always keep your interests broad - don't let your mind be stunted by a limited view.”
― Nathaniel J. Wyeth

“It is well known that geometry presupposes not only the concept of space but also the first fundamental notions for constructions in space as given in advance. It only gives nominal definitions for them, while the essential means of determining them appear in the form of axioms. The relationship of these presumptions is left in the dark; one sees neither whether and in how far their connection is necessary, nor a priori whether it is possible. From Euclid to Legendre, to name the most renowned of modern writers on geometry, this darkness has been lifted neither by the mathematicians nor the philosophers who have laboured upon it.”
― Bernhard Riemann

“My practice as a scientist is atheistic. That is to say, when I set up an experiment I assume that no god, angel or devil is going to interfere with its course; and this assumption has been justified by such success as I have achieved in my professional career. I should therefore be intellectually dishonest if I were not also atheistic in the affairs of the world.”
― J.B.S. Haldane, Faith And Fact

“On tue un homme, on est un assassin. On tue des millions d'hommes, on est un conquérant. On les tue tous, on est un dieu.

Kill a man, and you are a murderer. Kill millions of men and you are a conqueror. Kill everyone, and you are a god.”
― Jean Rostand, Pensées d'un biologiste

“I decided that life rationally considered seemed pointless and futile, but it is still interesting in a variety of ways, including the study of science. So why not carry on, following the path of scientific hedonism? Besides, I did not have the courage for the more rational procedure of suicide.”
― Robert S. Mulliken, Life of a Scientist: An Autobiographical Account of the Development of Molecular Orbital Theory

“There is no branch of mathematics, however abstract, which may not some day be applied to phenomena of the real world.”
― Nikolai Lobachevsky

“And when statesmen or others worry him [the scientist] too much, then he should leave with his possessions. With a firm and steadfast mind one should hold under all conditions, that everywhere the earth is below and the sky above and to the energetic man, every region is his fatherland.”
― Tycho Brahe

“The mind likes a strange idea as little as the body likes a strange protein and resists it with similar energy. It would not perhaps be too fanciful to say that a new idea is the most quickly acting antigen known to science. If we watch ourselves honestly we shall often find that we have begun to argue against a new idea even before it has been completely stated.”
― Wilfred Trotter

“A body of work such as Pasteur's is inconceivable in our time: no man would be given a chance to create a whole science. Nowadays a path is scarcely opened up when the crowd begins to pour in.”
― Jean Rostand, Pensées d'un biologiste

“Much as I admired the elegance of physical theories, which at that time geology wholly lacked, I preferred a life in the woods to one in the laboratory.”
― J. Tuzo Wilson

“This theory [the oxygen theory] is not as I have heard it described, that of the French chemists, it is mine (elle est la mienne); it is a property which I claim from my contemporaries and from posterity.”
― Antoine Lavoisier

“The alchemists of past centuries tried hard to make the elixir of life: ... Those efforts were in vain; it is not in our power to obtain the experiences and the views of the future by prolonging our lives forward in this direction. However, it is well possible in a certain sense to prolong our lives backwards by acquiring the experiences of those who existed before us and by learning to know their views as well as if we were their contemporaries. The means for doing this is also an elixir of life.”
― Hermann Franz Moritz Kopp

“{In a letter to his friend Rudolf Wagner}

I believe you are more believing in the Bible than I. I am not.”
― Carl Friedrich Gauss

“Consistent with the liberal views of the Enlightenment, Leibniz was an optimist with respect to human reasoning and scientific progress. Although he was a great reader and admirer of Spinoza, Leibniz, being a confirmed deist, rejected emphatically Spinoza's pantheism.”
― Shelby D. Hunt, Marketing Theory: Foundations, Controversy, Strategy, and Resource-Advantage Theory

“It is a matter for considerable regret that Fermat, who cultivated the theory of numbers with so much success, did not leave us with the proofs of the theorems he discovered. In truth, Messrs Euler and Lagrange, who have not disdained this kind of research, have proved most of these theorems, and have even substituted extensive theories for the isolated propositions of Fermat. But there are several proofs which have resisted their efforts.”
― Adrien-Marie Legendre

“The text-book is rare that stimulates its reader to ask, Why is this so? Or, How does this connect with what has been read elsewhere?”
― J. Norman Collie

“I should like to preface my remarks with a personal statement in order that my later remarks will not be misunderstood. I consider myself an atheist.”
― Subrahmanijan Chandrasekhar

“This [discovery of a cell-free yeast extract] will make him famous, even though he has no talent for chemistry.

{Comment on German scientist Eduard Buchner who later ironically won a Nobel Prize in Chemistry for this discovery}”
― Adolf Von Baeyer

“[On Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz]

The answer is unknowable, but it may not be unreasonable to see him, at least in theological terms, as essentially a deist. He is a determinist: there are no miracles (the events so called being merely instances of infrequently occurring natural laws); Christ has no real role in the system; we live forever, and hence we carry on after our deaths, but then everything â€� every individual substance â€� carries on forever.”
― Peter Loptson

“Et peut-être la posterité me saura gré de lui avoir fait connaître que les Anciens n’ont pas tout su. (And perhaps, posterity will thank me for having shown that the ancients did not know everything.)”
― Pierre De Fermat

“Evolution on the large scale unfolds, like much of human history, as a succession of dynasties.”
― Edmund Beecher Wilson

“Mathematics is much more than a language for dealing with the physical world. It is a source of models and abstractions which will enable us to obtain amazing new insights into the way in which nature operates.”
― Melvin Schwartz, Principles of Electrodynamics

“My final remark to young women and men going into experimental science is that they should pay little attention to the speculative physics ideas of my generation. After all, if my generation has any really good speculative ideas, we will be carrying these ideas out ourselves.”
― Martin L. Perl, Reflections on Experimental Science

“If a problem is clearly stated, it has no further interest to the physicist.”
― Peter J. W. Debye

“Not only in antiquity but in our own times also laws have been passed...to secure good conditions for workers; so it is right that the art of medicine should contribute its portion for the benefit and relief of those for whom the law has shown such foresight...[We] ought to show peculiar zeal...in taking precautions for their safety. I for one have done all that lay in my power, and have not thought it beneath me to step into workshops of the meaner sort now and again and study the obscure operations of mechanical arts.”
― Bernardino Ramazzini