I am a scientist and a nature photographer. The following quote from Bengt Goran Hellekant who is a scientist and an artist described beautifully why we want to be both.

“Science turns dreams into realities in a way that art never can, and that is one reason why I am a researcher. On the other hand, art allows you to express yourself more individually than you can in science – as a matter of fact, that is one of the conditions of being a good artist. In art at its best, brush strokes catch not only what you see but also what you feel when you see. In science, objectivity, exactness and a single interpretation should be the goals of what you create. However, in both art and science, creativity and breaking rules are valuable. And both have cherished moments when everything falls into place.”


On Science, Aesthetics, and Humanity


“The scientist does not study nature because it is useful; he studies it because he delights in it, and he delights in it because it is beautiful.”
Jules Henri Poincaré


“The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science.”
Albert Einstein


"The artist is a receptacle for emotions that come from all over the place: from the sky, from the earth, from a scrap of paper, from a passing shape, from a spider's web."
Pablo Picasso

“Science is science fiction where the only boundary for your imagination is reality.”
Goran Hellekanta

“Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.”
Albert Einstein

“The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing.”
Albert Einstein

“Research is to see what everybody else has seen and to think what nobody else has thought.”
Albert Szent-Györgi

“When you get a result that you expect, you have another result, but when you get a result you don’t expect, you have a discovery.”
Frank Westheimer

"Talent and drive are not nearly such good indicators of success as the simple act of doing work that matches and expresses one's own personality."
Galen Rowell

"The limitations of photography are in yourself, for what we see is only what we are."
Ernest Haas

"The camera always points both ways. In expressing the subject, you also express yourself."
Freeman White

“We all live under the same sky, but we don’t all have the same horizon.”
Konrad Adenauer


“Only two things are infinite – the universe and human stupidity, and I’m not so sure about the universe.”
Albert Einstein


"Nothing that is worth doing can be achieved in our lifetime; therefore we must be saved by hope. Nothing which is true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history; therefore we must be saved by faith. Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone; therefore we must be saved by love."
Reinhold Niebuhr