Home / Quotes / Quote by Sydney Brenner

Quote by Sydney Brenner

“Progress in science depends on new techniques, new discoveries and new ideas, probably in that order.”

Quote by Sydney Brenner

Author

Sydney Brenner is a renowned molecular biologist known for his pioneering work in gene editing and molecular biology. In the 1970s, he discovered the first eukaryotic gene, and for his contributions to molecular biology and genetics, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. more

You May Also Like

“Reason must approach nature with the view, indeed, of receiving information from it, not, however, in the character of a pupil, who listens to all that his master chooses to tell him, but in that of a judge, who compels the witnesses to reply to those questions which he himself thinks fit to propose. To this single idea must the revolution be ascribed, by which, after groping in the dark for so many centuries, natural science was at length conducted into the path of certain progress.”

Source: Critique of pure reason

“Science is a cemetery of dead ideas, even though life may issue from them.”

May Ideas Science Issues Accounts Cemetery

Book:Tragic Sense of Life

Source: Tragic Sense of Life

“Scientists constantly get clobbered with the idea that we spent 27 billion dollars on the Apollo programs, and are asked "What more do you want?" We didn't spend it; it was done for political reasons. ... Apollo was a response to the Bay of Pigs fiasco and to the successful orbital flight of Yuri Gagarin. President Kennedy's objective was not to find out the origin of the moon by the end of the decade; rather it was to put a man on the moon and bring him back, and we did that.”

Men Want Ideas Ends Reason Done Science Political President Successful Moon Program Scientist Dollars Response Decades Billions Objectives Flight Pigs Apollo Fiasco President Kennedy Bay Of Pigs

Author:Carl Sagan

“Since Pawlow [Pavlov] and his pupils have succeeded in causing the secretion of saliva in the dog by means of optic and acoustic signals, it no longer seems strange to us that what the philosopher terms an 'idea' is a process which can cause chemical changes in the body.”

Mean Ideas Body Seems Causes Process Term Dog Strange Philosopher Chemicals Signals Pupils Acoustics Biochemistry Saliva Pavlov

Author:Jacques Loeb

“The Chinese are clearly inculcating the idea that science is exciting and important, and that's why they, as a whole-they're graduating four times as many engineers as we are, and that's just happened over the last 20 years.”

Years Important Ideas Whole Lasts Science Four Happened Accounts Importance Exciting Chinese Excitement Graduates Engineers

Author:Bill Gates

“The elegance of a mathematical theorem is directly proportional to the number of independent ideas one can see in the theorem and inversely proportional to the effort it takes to see them.”

Ideas Numbers Effort Mathematics Independent Mathematical Elegance Theorems

Author:George Polya

“The first rule of discovery is to have brains and good luck. The second rule of discovery is to sit tight and wait till you get a bright idea.”

Firsts Ideas Science Waiting Brain Discovery Luck Math Good Luck Good Math Bright Ideas

Book:How to solve it: a new aspect of mathematical method

Source: How to solve it: a new aspect of mathematical method

“The fundamental idea of these pylons, or great archways, is based on a method of construction peculiar to me, of which the principle consists in giving to the edges of the pyramid a curve of such a nature that this pyramid shall be capable of resisting the force of the wind without necessitating the junction of the edges by diagonals as is usually done.”

Giving Ideas Done Science Force Principles Wind Capable Method Fundamentals Edges Peculiar Construction Curves Pyramids Resisting Junction Archways

Author:Gustave Eiffel

“What then is freedom? The power to live as one wishes.”

Wish Philosophical

Author:Marcus Tullius Cicero

“The history of science, like the history of all human ideas, is a history of irresponsible dreams, of obstinacy, and of error. But science is one of the very few human activities-perhaps the only one-in which errors are systematically criticized and fairly often, in time, corrected. This is why we can say that, in science, we often learn from our mistakes, and why we can speak clearly and sensibly about making progress there. In most other fields of human endeavour there is change, but rarely progress ... And in most fields we do not even know how to evaluate change.”