Quip Quotes (81 quotes)
[Like people] if you torture statistics long enough, they'll tell you anything you want to hear.
[Student:} I only use my math book on special equations.
Parkinson's First Law: Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.
A mathematician thinks that two points are enough to define a straight line, while a physicist wants more data.
A neurotic is a man who builds a castle in the air. A psychotic is the man who lives in it. A psychiatrist is the man who collects the rent.
A psychiatrist is a man who goes to the Folies-Bergère and looks at the audience.
All science is either physics or stamp collecting.
An epidemiologist is a doctor broken down by age and sex.
Any clod can have the facts; having opinions is an art.
Archaeology is the science that proves you can’t keep a good man down.
ARCHIMEDES. On hearing his name, shout “Eureka!” Or else: “Give me a fulcrum and I will move the world”. There is also Archimedes’ screw, but you are not expected to know what that is.
Behaviorism is the art of pulling habits out of rats.
COLD. Healthier than heat.
DOCTOR. Always preceded by “The good”. Among men, in familiar conversation, “Oh! balls, doctor!” Is a wizard when he enjoys your confidence, a jack-ass when you're no longer on terms. All are materialists: “you can't probe for faith with a scalpel.”
Does the name Pavlov ring a bell?
Electricity is really just organized lightning.
Entropy isn’t what it used to be.
Every science thinks it is the science.
Exploratory operation: a remunerative reconnaissance.
Give 'em 2.5 cm, and they'll take 1.6 km.
Great science is an art.
Heisenberg may have slept here.
I am not unmindful of the journalist’s quip that yesterday’s paper wraps today’s garbage. I am also not unmindful of the outrages visited upon our forests to publish redundant and incoherent collections of essays; for, like Dr. Seuss’ Lorax, I like to think that I speak for the trees. Beyond vanity, my only excuses for a collection of these essays lie in the observation that many people like (and as many people despise) them, and that they seem to cohere about a common theme–Darwin’s evolutionary perspective as an antidote to our cosmic arrogance.
I don't quite hear what you say, but I beg to differ entirely with you.
I forget whether you take in the Times; for the chance of your not doing so, I send the enclosed rich letter. It is, I am sure, by Fitz-Roy. … It is a pity he did not add his theory of the extinction of Mastodon, etc., from the door of the Ark being made too small.
I think modern science should graft functional wings on a pig, simply so no one can ever use that stupid saying again.
I'd lay down my life for two brothers or eight cousins.
If a train station is where the train stops, what is a work station?
If medical science continues to prolong human life, some of us may eventually pay off the mortgage.
If there is no God, we are just molecules in motion, and we have no sense and no mind; we are just random firings of chemical in the brain. If our minds are composed only of physical matter, then our thoughts are, as Doug Wilson wittily quipped in his debate with atheist Dan Barker, just “brain gas.”
If we knew what we were doing, it wouldn’t be research.
If you ask the fish whether they’d rather have an oil spill or a season of fishing, I wouldn’t be surprised if they’d vote for another blowout.
If you've got time to kill, work it to death.
It is better to stir up a question without deciding it than to decide it without stirring it up.
LITTRÉ. Snicker on hearing his name: “the gentleman who thinks we are descended from the apes.”
Live and learn; die and forget it all.
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.
Marriage is an ancient institution and most of our knowledge of antiquity is gleaned from shattered pottery.
Microbiology Lab - Staph Only
Newton said, “If I have seen further than others, it is because I’ve stood on the shoulders of giants.” These days we stand on each other’s feet!
No man of science wants merely to know. He acquires knowledge to appease his passion for discovery. He does not discover in order to know, he knows in order to discover.
No sense being pessimistic, it probably wouldn't work anyway.
Nothing you can't spell will ever work.
Psychiatrist: A man who asks you a lot of expensive questions your wife asks you for nothing.
Research serves to make building stones out of stumbling blocks.
Science has always been too dignified to invent a good back-scratcher.
Science is a first-rate piece of furniture for a man’s upper chamber, if he has common sense on the ground floor. But if a man hasn’t got plenty of good common sense, the more science he has the worse for his patient.
Science is forever rewriting itself.
Science is like sex: sometimes something useful comes out, but that is not the reason we are doing it.
Science is the ascertainment of facts and the refusal to regard facts as permanent.
Science is wonderful: for years uranium cost only a few dollars a ton until scientists discovered you could kill people with it.
Show me an archaeologist, and I'll show you a man who practices skull drugery.
Some people have remarked that if the surface of the moon were covered with diamonds, it would hardly be worthwhile bringing them back.
Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.
Statistician: A man who believes figures don’t lie but admits that, under analysis some of them won’t stand up either.
Statistics: The only science that enables different experts using the same figures to draw different conclusions.
Supposing is good, but finding out is better.
Television is chewing gum for the eyes.
The banker asks, 'how much?' The scientist asks, 'how come?'
The brain is a wonderful organ. It starts working the moment you get up in the morning and does not stop until you get into the office.
The brain is an island in an osmotically homogeneous sea.
The moment a bar of gold walked into a pub, the landlord shouted “A U, get out!”
The more I see of men, the better I like my dog.
The scientific theory I like best is that the rings of Saturn are composed entirely of lost airline luggage
The space scientist is a most remarkable man: he has his feet on the ground and his head in the clouds.
The spine is a series of bones running down your back. You sit on one end of it and your head sits on the other.
The ways of science are unpredicatable: it can get men up to the moon, but it cannot get pigeons down from public buildings.
The word “comet” has been derived by some from the Latin coma, a tail; but the better derivation is comma, because it never can come to a full stop.
There are two kinds of sleep. The sleep of the just and the sleep of the just after.
This afternoon, I’ve arranged for this ceremony to be illuminated by solar power. [In the early afternoon, on the White House roof, dedicating solar panels installed there.]
Those people who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do.
Those who believe in telekinetics, raise my hand.
Tis better than riches
To scratch when it itches
To scratch when it itches
To many of us, the first law of dietetics seems to be: if it tastes good, it’s bad for you.
Want to make your computer go really fast? Throw it out a window.
When a man sits with a pretty girl for an hour, it seems like a minute. But let him sit on a hot stove for a minute—and it’s longer than any hour. That’s relativity.
Explanation given to his secretary, Helen Dukas, to relay to reporters and laypersons.
Explanation given to his secretary, Helen Dukas, to relay to reporters and laypersons.
When science finally locates the center of the universe, some people will be surprised to learn they're not it.
When someone abuses me I can defend myself, but against praise I am defenceless.
Wooden legs are not inherited, although wooden heads may be.
Yesterday's dreams are today's science
Zenophobia: the irrational fear of converging sequences.
Pun on the name of the Greek philosopher, Zeno, famous for his challenging paradoxes concerning converging sequences.
Pun on the name of the Greek philosopher, Zeno, famous for his challenging paradoxes concerning converging sequences.