It was quite the most incredible event that has ever happened to me in my life. It was almost as incredible as if you fired a 15-inch shell at a piece of tissue paper and it came back and hit you.

Ernest Rutherford

The difficulties disappear if it be assumed that the radiation consists of particles of mass 1 and charge 0, or neutrons.

James Chadwick

The grand aim of all science is to cover the greatest number of empirical facts by logical deduction from the smallest number of hypotheses or axioms.

Albert Einstein

Mass and energy are both but different manifestations of the same thing.

Albert Einstein

Two seemingly incompatible conceptions can each represent an aspect of the truth.

Louis de Broglie

There is a simple relation between the brightness of the variables and their periods.

Henrietta Leavitt

A computer would deserve to be called intelligent if it could deceive a human into believing that it was human.

Alan Turing

We knew the world would not be the same. A few people laughed. A few people cried. Most people were silent. I remembered the line from the Hindu scripture: “Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.”

J. Robert Oppenheimer

So beautiful it has to be true.

James Watson, co-discoverer of DNA

We have discovered the secret of life.

Francis Crick, on the discovery of DNA

If string theory is a mistake, it’s not a trivial mistake. It’s a deep mistake and therefore kind of worthy.

Lee Smolin

We spend the first year of a child's life teaching it to walk and talk and the rest of its life to shut up and sit down. There's something wrong there.

Neil deGrasse Tyson

The more I learn about the universe, the less convinced I am that there's any sort of benevolent force that has anything to do with it, at all.

Neil deGrasse Tyson

I want to put on the table, not why 85% of the members of the National Academy of Sciences reject God, I want to know why 15% of the National Academy don't.

Neil deGrasse Tyson

By the way, were we to find life-forms on Venus, we would probably call them Venutians, just as people from Mars would be Martians. But according to rules of Latin genitives, to be “of Venus” ought to make you a Venereal. Unfortunately, medical doctors reached that word before astronomers did. Can't blame them, I suppose. Venereal disease long predates astronomy, which itself stands as only the second oldest profession.

Neil deGrasse Tyson, “Death by Black Hole: And Other Cosmic Quandaries”

When students cheat on exams it's because our school system values grades more than students value learning.

Neil deGrasse Tyson

Equipped with his five senses, man explores the universe around him and calls the adventure Science.

Edwin Powell Hubble

Science is a philosophy of discovery. Intelligent design is a philosophy of ignorance. You cannot build a program of discovery on the assumption that nobody is smart enough to figure out the answer to a problem.

Neil deGrasse Tyson, “Death by Black Hole”

Everyone should have their mind blown once a day.

Neil deGrasse Tyson

Science is basically an inoculation against charlatans.

Neil deGrasse Tyson

Part of what it is to be scientifically-literate, it's not simply, 'Do you know what DNA is? Or what the Big Bang is?' That's an aspect of science literacy. The biggest part of it is do you know how to think about information that's presented in front of you.

Neil deGrasse Tyson

Curious that we spend more time congratulating people who have succeeded than encouraging people who have not.

Neil deGrasse Tyson

The secret of business is to know something nobody else knows.

Aristotle Onassis

The best way to cheer yourself up is to try to cheer somebody else up.

Mark Twain

Opera is when a guy gets stabbed in the back and instead of bleeding, sings.

Ed Gardner