Science influences most aspects of human life including health, medicines, transportation and energy. Hence, to highlight the role of science in daily life, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) proclaimed World Science Day for Peace and Development in 2001. Since then, the day has been being observed annually Nov. 10.

Apart from strengthening public awareness about science’s role in society, the day also aims at keeping people informed about the key developments in science and drawing their attention toward the challenges the progess of science is facing.

On this day, here are a few inspirational and powerful quotes by famous scientists, courtesy Famous Scientists and Forbes

  • "An experiment is a question which science poses to Nature, and a measurement is the recording of Nature’s answer." ― Max Planck
  • "It is strange that only extraordinary men make the discoveries, which later appear so easy and simple." ― Georg C. Lichtenberg
  • "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
  • "Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind." ― Albert Einstein
  • "The saddest aspect of life right now is that gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom." ― Isaac Asimov
  • "Actually, everything that can be known has a Number; for it is impossible to grasp anything with the mind or to recognize it without this." ― Philolaus
  • "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
  • "Did the genome of our cave-dwelling predecessors contain a set or sets of genes which enable modern man to compose music of infinite complexity and write novels with profound meaning? …It looks as though the early Homo was already provided with the intellectual potential which was in great excess of what was needed to cope with the environment of his time." ― Susumu Ohno
Science
A scientist lowers biological samples into a liquid nitrogen storage tank at the Cancer Research UK Cambridge Institute on December 9, 2014 in Cambridge, England. Getty Images/Dan Kitwood