Science Quotes in Red Mars

How we cite our quotes: (Part.Chapter.Line)

Quote #4

Science was many things, Nadia thought, including a weapon with which to hit other scientists. (3.5.15)

Don't let all that logic and reasoning fool you—science still has to use words and ideas to get its points across. And words can always be verbal sticks and stones for those who wield them.

Quote #5

"[Data collecting is] science, yes, and needed science too. But science is more than that. Science is part of a larger human enterprise, and that enterprise includes going to the stars, adapting to other planets, adapting them to us. Science is creation." (3.6123)

Sax's take on what science is supposed to do: create. Thing is, though, we've been waiting a quarter of a century for scientists to create a hoverboard, and here we stand, hoverboardless.

Quote #6

But Ann, John thought as he listened to them; would she want to find evidence of an oceanic past? It was a model that tended to lend moral support to the terraforming project, implying as it did that they were only restoring an earlier state of things. So probably she would not want to find any such evidence. (5.2.80)

You can take the science out of the human, but can you take the human out of the science? Here, John wonders just this when he questions whether Ann's desire to preserve Mars will ultimately get in the way of her scientific rationale.