“We have to learn again that science without contact with experiments is an enterprise which is likely to go completely astray into imaginary conjecture.”— Hannes Alfvén
“Argument is conclusive, but it does not remove doubt, so that the mind may rest in the sure knowledge of the truth, unless it finds it by the method of experiment.”— Roger Bacon
“The movement of the plane of oscillation of the pendulum is a real, mechanical, and visible proof of the rotation of the Earth.”— Léon Foucault
“The value and utility of any experiment are determined by the fitness of the material to the purpose for which it is used.”— Gregor Mendel
“The observer listens to nature: the experimenter questions and forces her to reveal herself.”— Georges Cuvier
“We ought, in every instance, to submit our reasoning to the test of experiment, and never to search for truth but by the natural road of experiment and observation.”— Antoine Lavoisier
“Every experiment may be said to exist only in order to give the facts a chance of disproving the null hypothesis.”— Ronald Aylmer Fisher
“On the 20th of May, 1747, I took twelve patients in the scurvy, on board the Salisbury at sea.”— James Lind
“No aphorism is more frequently repeated in connection with field trials, than that we must ask Nature few questions, or, ideally, one question, at a time.”— Ronald Aylmer Fisher
“An experiment is a question which science poses to Nature, and a measurement is the recording of Nature's answer.”— Max Planck
“In every department of physical science, there is only one language, and that is the language of experiment.”— Benjamin Silliman
“An experiment is a question which science poses to Nature, and a measurement is the recording of Nature’s answer.”— Enrico Fermi
“It is impossible to devise a scientific experiment to describe the creation process, or even to ascertain whether such a process can take place.”— Henry M. Morris
“It doesn't matter how beautiful your theory is, it doesn't matter how smart you are. If it doesn't agree with experiment, it's wrong.”— Richard P. Feynman
“I shall lose no time in repeating and extending these experiments, being satisfied that the grand agents of nature are, by the Creator's fiat, indestructible.”— James Prescott Joule
“It is my belief that the experimental physicist has to be a jack-of-all-trades.”— Robert Hofstadter