The aim of science is to discover and illuminate truth. — Rachel Carson · Smartyfair

Leave without saving?

You have a change that hasn’t been saved yet. Clicking out of the box saves it — closing now throws that change away.

The aim of science is to discover and illuminate truth. — Rachel Carson · Smartyfair

The aim of science is to discover and illuminate truth.

Rachel Carson1907–1964 · scientist · 1900s USARachel Carson was a marine biologist and writer whose book Silent Spring warned the world about the dangers of harmful chemicals to nature.11 quotes

Source foundScience

In plain words

Science exists to find what is true and show it clearly.

Look up a word

aim
science
discover
illuminate
truth

Where these words come from

How sure this is: 92% sureThese words were traced back to where they first appeared. That source is listed below.
What turned up: National Book Award for Nonfiction acceptance speech (1952, for The Sea Around Us); reprinted in Lost Woods: The Discovered Writing of Rachel Carson (1999), p. 91.
Work: National Book Award acceptance speech, reprinted in Lost Woods (1999)
Occasion: 1952
Sources checked: en.wikiquote.orgChecked using claude-sonnet-5, 21 August 2026Sourced to her 1952 National Book Award acceptance speech, reprinted in Lost Woods (1999), p. 91

Nothing made from these words yet — Storyfaire is where they get made.

More from Rachel Carson

Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts.

More on science

Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I shall move the world.

1900s

Wonder and humility are wholesome emotions, and they do not exist side by side with a lust for destruction.

Rachel Carson

Every mystery solved brings us to the threshold of a greater one.

I sincerely believe that for the child, and for the parent seeking to guide him, it is not half so important to know as to feel.

Science is part of the reality of living; it is the what, the how, and the why of everything in our experience.

The materials of science are the materials of life itself.

Of all lines which have the same extremities the straight line is the least.

Archimedes

The cosmos is within us. We are made of star-stuff.

Science is a way of thinking much more than it is a body of knowledge.

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.