- 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.
- The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.
- Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
Sturgeon's law (and without meaning disrespect, infact as a matter of offering my respects, I think Mr. Sturgeon was a seasoned stoner):
The first is: "Nothing is always absolutely so".
The second, and more famous, of these adages is: "Ninety percent of everything is crud." (The last word is typically misquoted as "crap".)
Occam's Razor, now famous thanks to Dr. Gregory House: entities must not be multiplied beyond necessity.... Occam's razor may be alternatively phrased as pluralitas non est ponenda sine necessitate ("plurality should not be posited without necessity").
Hofstader's law (he could probably be the only guy who beats Sturgeon):
And to end this post, the Drake's equation:
"It is an equation to organize our guesses about the potential number of extraterrestrial civilizations in our galaxy, the Milky Way. It is used in the fields of exobiology and the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI)."
And well, just as a reassurance, the Mediocrity principle:
The assumptions of mediocrity principle is the notion in philosophy of science that there is nothing special about humans or the Earth.