150 Funny and Inspirational Science Quotes for Students and Teachers

Science has a great impact on each of us, whether we’re passionate about it or not. Our modern society wouldn’t have looked the way we know it if it wasn’t for science.

Think about it. Everything around that has made life easier for us exists because science made it possible. From the gadgets you use everyday, to cars, buildings, medicine -- we owe it all to some curious and brilliant minds that helped develop or invent things that today we take for granted.

Imagine living with no electricity, no means to travel long ways, no cures to help us treat the most common diseases that killed so many people in the past. And all of these don’t even begin to cover the good that came with the evolution of science and technology.

You might think "sure, but science is also behind many atrocities that have happened". Well, not really. There were certain mistakes made during experiments that led to disasters. But eventually, it is men who decide to use science for good or for evil.

Here are 150 Inspirational science quotes for teachers, students and the classroom:

Science quotes for students

You can be creative in anything -- in math, science, engineering, philosophy  as much as you can in music or in painting or in dance.

KEN ROBINS (more Ken Robins quotes)

The reward of the young scientist is the emotional thrill of being the first person in the history of the world to see something or to understand something. Nothing can compare with that experience.  

CECILIA PAYNE-GAPOSCHKIN

If you know you are on the right track, if you have this inner knowledge, then nobody can turn you off... no matter what they say.  

BARBARA MCCLINTOCK

Above all, don't fear difficult moments. The best comes from them.  

RITA LEVI-MONTALCINI

When kids look up to great scientists the way they do musicians, actors [and sports figures], civilization will jump to the next level.  

BRIAN GREENE

If you want to have good ideas, you must have many ideas.

 LINUS PAULING

The science of today is the technology of tomorrow.  

EDWARD TELLER

Every great advance in science has issued from a new audacity of imagination.  

JOHN DEWEY

Mathematics reveals its secrets only to those who approach it with pure love, for its own beauty.  

ARCHIMEDES

Rockets are cool. There’s no getting around that.

ELON MUSK

Do not worry too much about your difficulty in mathematics, I can assure you that mine are still greater.

ALBERT EINSTEIN

The feeling of awed wonder that science can give us is one of the highest experiences of which the human psyche is capable.  

RICHARD DAWKINS

There are in fact two things, science and opinion; the former begets knowledge, the latter ignorance.  

HIPPOCRATES

Science, my lad, is made up of mistakes, but they are mistakes which it is useful to make, because they lead little by little to the truth.  

JULES VERNE

The only way to learn mathematics is to do mathematics. 

PAUL HALMOS

There’s no reason to stereotype yourself. Doing math is like going to the gym  it’s a workout for your brain and it makes you smarter.  

DANICA MCKELLAR

Without mathematics, there’s nothing you can do. Everything around you is mathematics. Everything around you is numbers. Shakuntala Devi

Science quotes for teachers

Science and everyday life cannot and should not be separated.  

ROSALIND FRANKLIN

Research is what I’m doing when I don’t know what I’m doing.  

WERNHER VON BRAUN

Bad times have a scientific value. These are occasions a good learner would not miss.  

RALPH WALDO EMERSON

You cannot teach a man anything; you can only help him discover it in himself.  

GALILEO GALILEI

I never teach my pupils. I only attempt to provide the conditions in which they can learn.  

ALBERT EINSTEIN

The scientist does not study nature because it is useful; he studies it because he delights in it, and he delights in it because it is beautiful.  If nature were not beautiful, it would not be worth knowing, and if nature were not worth knowing, life would not be worth living.

JULES-HENRI POINCARE

In science one tries to tell people, in such a way as to be understood by everyone, something that no one ever knew before. But in poetry, it's the exact opposite.

PAUL DIRAC

I love science. I hate supposition, superstition, exaggeration and falsified data. Show me the research, show me the results, show me the conclusions - and then show me some qualified peer reviews of all that.

BILL VAUGHAN

The scientist only imposes two things, namely truth and sincerity, imposes them upon himself and upon other scientists.  

ERWIN SCHRÖDINGER

An experiment is a question which science poses to Nature, and a measurement is the recording of Nature’s answer.  

MAX PLANCK

The scientist is not a person who gives the right answers, he’s one who asks the right questions.  

CLAUDE LEVI-STRAUSS

It is the supreme art of the teacher to awaken joy in creative expression and knowledge.

ALBERT EINSTEIN

I love science, and it pains me to think that so many are terrified of the subject or feel that choosing science means you cannot also choose compassion, or the arts, or be awed by nature. Science is not meant to cure us of mystery, but to reinvent and reinvigorate it.

ROBERT M. SAPOLSKY

Lectures which really teach will never be popular; lectures which are popular will never really teach.

MICHAEL FARADAY

Science has been seriously retarded by the study of what is not worth-knowing and of what is not knowable.

JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE

It is the duty of all teachers, and of teachers of mathematics in particular, to expose their students to problems much more than to facts.

PAUL HALMOS

The best teacher is not the one who knows most but the one who is most capable of reducing knowledge to that simple compound of the obvious and wonderful.

H. L. MENCKEN

The curriculum is so much necessary raw material, but warmth is the vital element for the growing plant and for the soul of the child.

CARL JUNG

In physics, you don't have to go around making trouble for yourself - nature does it for you.

FRANK WILCZEK

It is strange that only extraordinary men make the discoveries, which later appear so easy and simple.  

GEORG C. LICHTENBERG

I learned very early the difference between knowing the name of something and knowing something.

RICHARD P. FEYNMAN

When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.  

ARTHUR C. CLARKE

It is in scientific honesty that I endorse the presentation of alternative theories for the origin of the universe, life and man in the science classroom. It would be an error to overlook the possibility that the universe was planned rather than happening by chance.

WERNHER VON BRAUN

Science quotes for the classroom

Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood. Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear less.  

MARIE CURIE (more Marie Curie quotes)

Scientists have become the bearers of the torch of discovery in our quest for knowledge.  

STEPHEN HAWKING (more Stephen Hawking quotes)

Science is magic that works.  

KURT VONNEGUT (more Kurt Vonnegut quotes)

What we know is a drop, what we don’t know is an ocean.  

ISAAC NEWTON (more Isaac Newton quotes)

Science is the acceptance of what works and the rejection of what does not. That needs more courage than we might think.  

JACOB BRONOWSKI

Aerodynamically the bumble bee shouldn’t be able to fly, but the bumble bee doesn’t know it so it goes on flying anyway.

MARY KAY ASH

Genius is seeing what everyone else sees and thinking what no one else has thought.

ALBERT SZENT-GYÖRGYI

The important thing in science is not so much to obtain new facts as to discover new ways of thinking about them.

SIR WILLIAM LAWRENCE BRAGG

The art and science of asking questions is the source of all knowledge.  

THOMAS BERGER

On earth there is nothing great but man; and in man there is nothing great but mind.

SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON

Progress is made by trial and failure; the failures are generally a hundred times more numerous than the successes; yet they are usually left unchronicled.  

WILLIAM RAMSAY

The illiterate of the 21st Century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn.

ALVIN TOFFLER

If anybody says he can think about quantum physics without getting giddy, that only shows he has not understood the first thing about it.

NIELS BOHR

I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.

THOMAS EDISON

All of physics is either impossible or trivial. It is impossible until you understand it, and then it becomes trivial.

ERNEST RUTHERFORD

Inspirational science quotes

Every science begins as philosophy and ends as art.     

WILL DURANT

Everything is theoretically impossible, until it is done.  

ROBERT A. HEINLEIN

If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants.  

ISSAC NEWTON

Our virtues and our failures are inseparable, like force and matter. When they separate, man is no more.  

NIKOLA TESLA

We are just an advanced breed of monkeys on a minor planet of a very average star. But we can understand the Universe. That makes us something very special.  

STEPHEN HAWKING

In science the credit goes to the man who convinces the world, not to the man to whom the idea first occurs.  

SIR WILLIAM OSLER

I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.

ISAAC NEWTON

Success is a science; if you have the conditions, you get the result.   

OSCAR WILDE

We know very little, and yet it is astonishing that we know so much, and still more astonishing that so little knowledge can give us so much power.  

BERTRAND RUSSELL

Mathematics is the music of reason.

JAMES JOSEPH SYLVESTER

Life cannot have had a random beginning...

FRED HOYLE

Every brilliant experiment, like every great work of art, starts with an act of imagination.  

JONAH LEHRER

One, remember to look up at the stars and not down at your feet. Two, never give up work. Work gives you meaning and purpose and life is empty without it. Three, if you are lucky enough to find love, remember it is there and don't throw it away.

STEPHEN HAWKING

We pass through this world but once. Few tragedies can be more extensive than the stunting of life, few injustices deeper than the denial of an opportunity to strive or even to hope, by a limit imposed from without, but falsely identified as lying within.

STEPHEN JAY GOULD

A man who dares to waste one hour of time has not discovered the value of life.

CHARLES DARWIN

Falsity in intellectual action is intellectual immorality.

THOMAS CHROWDER CHAMBERLIN

The first principle is that you must not fool yourself  and you are the easiest person to fool.

RICHARD FEYNMAN

The black holes of nature are the most perfect macroscopic objects there are in the universe: the only elements in their construction are our concepts of space and time.

SUBRAHMANYAN CHANDRASEKHAR

Science is the great antidote to the poison of enthusiasm and superstition.  

ADAM SMITH

All sciences are vain and full of errors that are not born of Experience, the mother of all Knowledge.  

LEONARDO DA VINCI

There is no law except the law that there is no law.

JOHN ARCHIBALD WHEELER

Science and religion are not at odds. Science is simply too young to understand.

DAN BROWN

The good thing about science is that it's true whether or not you believe in it.  

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON

The essence of mathematics is not to make simple things complicated, but to make complicated things simple.

STAN GUDDER

In scientific work, those who refuse to go beyond fact rarely get as far as fact.  

THOMAS HUXLEY

I am among those who think that science has great beauty.  

MARIE CURIE

Science is not only a disciple of reason but also one of romance and passion.  

STEPHEN HAWKING

All outstanding work, in art as well as in science, results from immense zeal applied to a great idea.  

SANTIAGO RAMÓN Y CAJAL

Science means constantly walking a tightrope between blind faith and curiosity; between expertise and creativity; between bias and openness; between experience and epiphany; between ambition and passion; and between arrogance and conviction  in short, between and old today and a new tomorrow.

HENRICH ROHRER

Science knows no country, because knowledge belongs to humanity, and is the torch which illuminates the world.  

LOUIS PASTEUR

Nature is written in mathematical language.

GALILEO GALILEI

The day science begins to study non-physical phenomena, it will make more progress in one decade than in all the previous centuries of its existence.  

NIKOLA TESLA

Science is the only self-correcting human institution, but it also is a process that progresses only by showing itself to be wrong.

ALLAN SANDAGE

Science is the knowledge of consequences, and dependence of one fact upon another.  

THOMAS HOBBES

Science is vastly more stimulating to the imagination than the classics.  

J. B. S. HALDANE

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

EDWIN POWELL HUBBLE

Science is a beautiful gift to humanity; we should not distort it.  

A. P. J. ABDUL KALAM

Science quotes about love

The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances: If there is any reaction, both are transformed.

C.G. JUNG

Love is a chemical reaction. Love is the most powerful form of energy, but science cannot decipher its elements. Yet the best cure for a sick soul is love, but even the most advanced physician cannot prescribe it as medicine.

SUZY KASSEM

Gravitation is not responsible for people falling in love.

ALBERT EINSTEIN

The greatest science in the world; in heaven and on earth; is love.

MOTHER TERESA

For small creatures such as we the vastness is bearable only through love.

CARL SAGAN

When we are in love we seem to ourselves quite different from what we were before.

BLAISE PASCAL

There is only one science, love, one riches, love, only one policy, love. To make love is all the law and the prophets.

ANATOLE FRANCE

When you are courting a nice girl an hour seems like a second. When you sit on a red-hot cinder a second seems like an hour. That's relativity.

ALBERT EINSTEIN

Mathematics is like love; a simple idea, but it can get complicated.  

GEORGE POLYA

The hardest arithmetic to master is that which enables us to count our blessings.

ERIC HOFFER

Just remember you will find that one special love that you know is right but for some reason just doesn't last.

MARIE CURIE

A scientific man ought to have no wishes, no affections -- a mere heart of stone.

CHARLES DARWIN

Immature love says: 'I love you because I need you.' Mature love says: 'I need you because I love you.'

ERICH FROMM

Physics is like sex: sure, it may give some practical results, but that's not why we do it.

RICHARD P. FEYNMAN

Science quotes from Albert Einstein

The important thing is to never stop questioning [or learning].  

ALBERT EINSTEIN

We cannot solve problems with the same thinking we used to create them.  

ALBERT EINSTEIN

Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.  

ALBERT EINSTEIN

The whole of science is nothing more than a refinement of everyday thinking.  

ALBERT EINSTEIN

The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science.

ALBERT EINSTEIN

Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen.

ALBERT EINSTEIN

All religions, arts and sciences are branches of the same tree.

ALBERT EINSTEIN

Science can flourish only in an atmosphere of free speech.

ALBERT EINSTEIN

I believe in intuitions and inspirations. I sometimes feel that I am right. I do not know that I am.

ALBERT EINSTEIN

Pure mathematics is, in its way, the poetry of logical ideas.

ALBERT EINSTEIN

Science quotes about life

What you learn from a life in science is the vastness of our ignorance.  

DAVID EAGLEMAN

The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom.  

ISAAC ASIMOV

Evolution is the fundamental idea in all of life science - in all of biology.

BILL NYE

We can't help it.  Life looks for life.

CARL SAGAN

Life is a math equation. In order to gain the most, you have to know how to convert negatives into positives. 

UNKNOWN

Science is organized knowledge. Wisdom is organized life.  

IMMANUEL KANT

Art is the tree of life. Science is the tree of death.  

WILLIAM BLAKE

The beauty of a living thing is not the atoms that go into it, but the way those atoms are put together.  

CARL SAGAN

Life is like riding a bicycle, in order to keep your balance, you must keep moving.

ALBERT EINSTEIN

Mathematics, even in its present and most abstract state, is not detached from life. It is just the ideal handling of the problems of life.  

CASSIUS JACKSON KEYSER

Science is a way of life. Science is a perspective. Science is the process that takes us from confusion to understanding in a manner that's precise, predictive and reliable - a transformation, for those lucky enough to experience it, that is empowering and emotional.

BRIAN GREENE

Life would be tragic if it weren’t funny.

STEPHEN HAWKING

Life science research can be done on multiple platforms. Since we have a very small number of people flying into space, the more people you have, the better.

LAUREL CLARK

There are only two ways to live your life.  One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything in a miracle.

ALBERT EINSTEIN

If people do not believe that mathematics is simple, it is only because they do not realize how complicated life is.

JOHN VON NEUMANN

Funny science quotes

When science finally locates the center of the universe, some people will be surprised to learn they're not it.     

BERNARD BAILEY

If we knew what we were doing, it wouldn't be called research.     

ALBERT EINSTEIN

Nothing travels faster than the speed of light, with the possible exception of bad news, which obeys its own set of laws.     

DOUGLAS ADAMS

I see they found out the universe is 80 million years older than we thought. It's also been lying about its weight.     

BILL MAHER

Electricity is really just organized lightning.     

GEORGE CARLIN

Scientists are peeping toms at the keyhole of eternity.     

ARTHUR KOESTLER

Shall I refuse my dinner because I do not fully understand the process of digestion?  

OLIVER HEAVISIDE

Electricity is actually made up of extremely tiny particles called electrons, that you cannot see with the naked eye unless you have been drinking.     

DAVE BARRY

What is a scientist after all? It is a curious man looking through a keyhole, the keyhole of nature, trying to know what's going on.     

JACQUES YVES COUSTEAU

Science is a wonderful thing if one does not have to earn one's living at it.     

ALBERT EINSTEIN

Sometimes I think the surest sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe is that none of it has tried to contact us.     

BILL WATTERSON

Science, never solves a problem without creating ten more.     

GEORGE BERNARD SHAW

That's the whole problem with science. You've got a bunch of empiricists trying to describe things of unimaginable wonder.     

BILL WATTERSON

If your result needs a statistician then you should design a better experiment.     

ERNEST RUTHERFORD

An important scientific innovation rarely makes its way by gradually winning over and converting its opponents: What does happen is that the opponents gradually die out.     

MAX PLANCK

There are three stages in scientific discovery. First, people deny that it is true, then they deny that it is important; finally, they credit the wrong person.

 BILL BRYSON

Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the universe.     

ALBERT EINSTEIN

The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not 'Eureka!' (I found it!) but 'That's funny ...'

ISAAC ASIMOV

To invent, you need a good imagination and a pile of junk.

THOMAS A. EDISON