"Of all the failed technologies that litter the onward march of science - steam carriages, zeppelins, armoured trains - none has been so catastrophic to prosperity as the last century's attempt to generate electricity from nuclear fission.“


-James Buchan

posted in science


Of all the failed technologies that litter the onward march of science - steam carriages, zeppelins, armoured trains - none has been so catastrophic to prosperity as the last century's attempt to generate electricity from nuclear fission.

Other Quotes You Might Like

Discover more inspiring quotes from our collection

"Saudi Arabia is a puritanical state that claims a monopoly of wisdom and virtue."

-James Buchan

wisdomView Quote
"Suicidal violence is not the exclusive property of the Muslim world. Suicide bombings were a tactic of nationalist struggles in 19th-century Europe and Russia, the far east during the second world war and the Vietnam war, and in modern Sri Lanka."

-James Buchan

warView Quote
"Since the attack on the United States on September 11 2001, and the US retaliation in Afghanistan and Iraq, there must be few people who have not felt a twinge of nostalgia for the cold war."

-James Buchan

warView Quote
"The west has a great deal to answer for in the Middle East, from Britain's belated empire-building after the First World War to the US and British policy that condemns modern Iraq to the material and social squalor of a half-century ago."

-James Buchan

warView Quote
"The world dominion of western thought, forms of organisation, technology and military force is not God-given, nor eternal, nor greatly appreciated by the rest of the world."

-James Buchan

technologyView Quote
"In modern society, where most people live in cities, and where both needs and wishes are absolved through the same remote agency - money - the distinction between wishes and needs has altogether vanished."

-James Buchan

societyView Quote

More Quotes About science

Explore other inspiring quotes in this category

"Whenever you deal with science fiction you are setting up a world of rules. I think you work hard to establish the rules. And you also have to work even harder to maintain those rules, and within that find excitement and unpredictability and all that stuff."

-Joel Edgerton

scienceView Quote
"I sort of was good at writing essays. I was never very good at mathematics, and I was never very good at algebra. I loved science, but I wasn't sure of it."

-Diane Cilento

scienceView Quote
"Science fiction is no more written for scientists that ghost stories are written for ghosts."

-Brian Aldiss

scienceView Quote
"We must always emphasize research and development of science and mathematics, and I can think of no better way to achieve this than through our future in space."

-Nick Lampson

scienceView Quote
"The relevance of Marxism to science is that it removes it from its imagined position of complete detachment and shows it as a part, but a critically important part, of economy and social development."

-John Desmond Bernal

scienceView Quote
"The recognition of the art that informs all pure science need not mean the abandonment for it of all present art, rather it will mean the completion of the transformation of art that has already begun."

-John Desmond Bernal

scienceView Quote