TODAY IN SCIENCE HISTORY ®  •  TODAYINSCI ®
Celebrating 24 Years on the Web
Find science on or your birthday

Today in Science History - Quickie Quiz
Who said: “I was going to record talking... the foil was put on; I then shouted 'Mary had a little lamb',... and the machine reproduced it perfectly.”
more quiz questions >>
Home > Dictionary of Science Quotations > Scientist Names Index F > David Fairchild Quotes

Thumbnail of David Fairchild (source)
David Fairchild
(7 Apr 1869 - 6 Aug 1954)

American botanist and plant explorer who supervised the introduction of over 20,000 exotic plants and varieties of established crops into the U.S., including soya beans, mangos, alfalfa, nectarines, horseradish, and flowering cherries.


Science Quotes by David Fairchild (8 quotes)

...after my first feeling of revulsion had passed, I spent three of the most entertaining and instructive weeks of my life studying the fascinating molds which appeared one by one on the slowly disintegrating mass of horse-dung. Microscopic molds are both very beautiful and absorbingly interesting. The rapid growth of their spores, the way they live on each other, the manner in which the different forms come and go, is so amazing and varied that I believe a man could spend his life and not exhaust the forms or problems contained in one plate of manure.
— David Fairchild
The World Was My Garden (1938, 1941), 55.
Science quotes on:  |  Amazing (35)  |  Beautiful (271)  |  Biology (232)  |  Both (496)  |  Different (595)  |  Dung (10)  |  Entertaining (9)  |  Fascinating (38)  |  Feeling (259)  |  First (1302)  |  Form (976)  |  Growth (200)  |  Horse (78)  |  Interesting (153)  |  Life (1870)  |  Live (650)  |  Man (2252)  |  Mass (160)  |  Microscopic (27)  |  Mold (37)  |  Most (1728)  |  Other (2233)  |  Pass (241)  |  Problem (731)  |  Spend (97)  |  Spent (85)  |  Spore (3)  |  Studying (70)  |  Way (1214)  |  Week (73)

...the need for a garden of rare palms and vines and ornamental trees and shrubs which would be near enough to a growing city to form a quiet place where children with their elders could peer, as it were, into those fascinating jungles and palm glades of the tropics which have for generations stimulated the imaginations of American youth.
— David Fairchild
Science quotes on:  |  Children (201)  |  City (87)  |  Elder (9)  |  Enough (341)  |  Fascinating (38)  |  Form (976)  |  Garden (64)  |  Generation (256)  |  Growing (99)  |  Horticulture (10)  |  Imagination (349)  |  Jungle (24)  |  Quiet (37)  |  Rare (94)  |  Shrub (5)  |  Tree (269)  |  Youth (109)

For keenest enjoyment, I visit when the dew is on them, or in cloudy weather, or when the rain is falling: and I must be alone or with someone who cares for them as I do.
— David Fairchild
Science quotes on:  |  Alone (324)  |  Care (203)  |  Dew (10)  |  Do (1905)  |  Enjoyment (37)  |  Horticulture (10)  |  Must (1525)  |  Rain (70)  |  Weather (49)

I have always liked horticulturists, people who make their living from orchards and gardens, whose hands are familiar with the feel of the bark, whose eyes are trained to distinguish the different varieties, who have a form memory. Their brains are not forever dealing with vague abstractions; they are satisfied with the romance which the seasons bring with them, and have the patience and fortitude to gamble their lives and fortunes in an industry which requires infinite patience, which raise hopes each spring and too often dashes them to pieces in fall. They are always conscious of sun and wind and rain; must always be alert lest they lose the chance of ploughing at the right moment, pruning at the right time, circumventing the attacks of insects and fungus diseases by quick decision and prompt action. They are manufacturers of a high order, whose business requires not only intelligence of a practical character, but necessitates an instinct for industry which is different from that required by the city dweller always within sight of other people and the sound of their voices. The successful horticulturist spends much time alone among his trees, away from the constant chatter of human beings.
— David Fairchild
Science quotes on:  |  Abstraction (48)  |  Action (342)  |  Alert (13)  |  Alone (324)  |  Attack (86)  |  Bark (19)  |  Being (1276)  |  Brain (281)  |  Business (156)  |  Chance (244)  |  Character (259)  |  City (87)  |  Constant (148)  |  Decision (98)  |  Different (595)  |  Disease (340)  |  Distinguish (168)  |  Eye (440)  |  Fall (243)  |  Feel (371)  |  Forever (111)  |  Form (976)  |  Fortune (50)  |  Fungus (8)  |  Garden (64)  |  High (370)  |  Hope (321)  |  Horticulture (10)  |  Human (1512)  |  Human Being (185)  |  Industry (159)  |  Infinite (243)  |  Insect (89)  |  Instinct (91)  |  Intelligence (218)  |  Live (650)  |  Living (492)  |  Lose (165)  |  Memory (144)  |  Moment (260)  |  Must (1525)  |  Order (638)  |  Other (2233)  |  Patience (58)  |  People (1031)  |  Practical (225)  |  Prompt (14)  |  Pruning (7)  |  Rain (70)  |  Require (229)  |  Required (108)  |  Right (473)  |  Romance (18)  |  Season (47)  |  Sight (135)  |  Sound (187)  |  Spend (97)  |  Spring (140)  |  Successful (134)  |  Sun (407)  |  Time (1911)  |  Train (118)  |  Tree (269)  |  Vague (50)  |  Wind (141)

Never to have seen anything but the temperate zone is to have lived on the fringe of the world. Between the Tropic of Capricorn and the Tropic of Cancer live the majority of all the plant species, the vast majority of the insects, most of the strange ... quadrupeds, all of the great and most of the poisonous snakes and large lizards, most of the brilliantly colored sea fishes, and the strangest and most gorgeously plumaged of the birds.
— David Fairchild
Exploring For Plants (1930), 329.
Science quotes on:  |  Bird (163)  |  Cancer (61)  |  Color (155)  |  Fish (130)  |  Fringe (7)  |  Great (1610)  |  Insect (89)  |  Large (398)  |  Live (650)  |  Lizard (7)  |  Majority (68)  |  Most (1728)  |  Never (1089)  |  Plant (320)  |  Reptile (33)  |  Sea (326)  |  Snake (29)  |  Species (435)  |  Strange (160)  |  Vast (188)  |  World (1850)

The avocado is a food without rival among the fruits, the veritable fruit of paradise.
— David Fairchild
Science quotes on:  |  Avocado (3)  |  Food (213)  |  Fruit (108)  |  Paradise (15)  |  Rival (20)

The human mind prefers something which it can recognize to something for which it has no name, and, whereas thousands of persons carry field glasses to bring horses, ships, or steeples close to them, only a few carry even the simplest pocket microscope. Yet a small microscope will reveal wonders a thousand times more thrilling than anything which Alice saw behind the looking-glass.
— David Fairchild
In The World Was My Garden (1938, 1941), 11.
Science quotes on:  |  Behind (139)  |  Carry (130)  |  Field (378)  |  Glass (94)  |  Horse (78)  |  Human (1512)  |  Human Mind (133)  |  Looking (191)  |  Microscope (85)  |  Mind (1377)  |  More (2558)  |  Name (359)  |  Person (366)  |  Recognize (136)  |  Reveal (152)  |  Saw (160)  |  Ship (69)  |  Small (489)  |  Something (718)  |  Thousand (340)  |  Time (1911)  |  Will (2350)  |  Wonder (251)

The mangosteen, queen of the tropical fruit.
— David Fairchild
Our Plant Immigrants', The National Geographic Magazine (Apr 1906), Vol. 17, No. 4, 196.
Science quotes on:  |  Food (213)  |  Fruit (108)


See also:

Carl Sagan Thumbnail In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion. (1987) -- Carl Sagan
Quotations by:Albert EinsteinIsaac NewtonLord KelvinCharles DarwinSrinivasa RamanujanCarl SaganFlorence NightingaleThomas EdisonAristotleMarie CurieBenjamin FranklinWinston ChurchillGalileo GalileiSigmund FreudRobert BunsenLouis PasteurTheodore RooseveltAbraham LincolnRonald ReaganLeonardo DaVinciMichio KakuKarl PopperJohann GoetheRobert OppenheimerCharles Kettering  ... (more people)

Quotations about:Atomic  BombBiologyChemistryDeforestationEngineeringAnatomyAstronomyBacteriaBiochemistryBotanyConservationDinosaurEnvironmentFractalGeneticsGeologyHistory of ScienceInventionJupiterKnowledgeLoveMathematicsMeasurementMedicineNatural ResourceOrganic ChemistryPhysicsPhysicianQuantum TheoryResearchScience and ArtTeacherTechnologyUniverseVolcanoVirusWind PowerWomen ScientistsX-RaysYouthZoology  ... (more topics)
Sitewide search within all Today In Science History pages:
Visit our Science and Scientist Quotations index for more Science Quotes from archaeologists, biologists, chemists, geologists, inventors and inventions, mathematicians, physicists, pioneers in medicine, science events and technology.

Names index: | A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | J | K | L | M | N | O | P | Q | R | S | T | U | V | W | X | Y | Z |

Categories index: | 1 | 2 | A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | J | K | L | M | N | O | P | Q | R | S | T | U | V | W | X | Y | Z |
Thank you for sharing.
- 100 -
Sophie Germain
Gertrude Elion
Ernest Rutherford
James Chadwick
Marcel Proust
William Harvey
Johann Goethe
John Keynes
Carl Gauss
Paul Feyerabend
- 90 -
Antoine Lavoisier
Lise Meitner
Charles Babbage
Ibn Khaldun
Euclid
Ralph Emerson
Robert Bunsen
Frederick Banting
Andre Ampere
Winston Churchill
- 80 -
John Locke
Bronislaw Malinowski
Bible
Thomas Huxley
Alessandro Volta
Erwin Schrodinger
Wilhelm Roentgen
Louis Pasteur
Bertrand Russell
Jean Lamarck
- 70 -
Samuel Morse
John Wheeler
Nicolaus Copernicus
Robert Fulton
Pierre Laplace
Humphry Davy
Thomas Edison
Lord Kelvin
Theodore Roosevelt
Carolus Linnaeus
- 60 -
Francis Galton
Linus Pauling
Immanuel Kant
Martin Fischer
Robert Boyle
Karl Popper
Paul Dirac
Avicenna
James Watson
William Shakespeare
- 50 -
Stephen Hawking
Niels Bohr
Nikola Tesla
Rachel Carson
Max Planck
Henry Adams
Richard Dawkins
Werner Heisenberg
Alfred Wegener
John Dalton
- 40 -
Pierre Fermat
Edward Wilson
Johannes Kepler
Gustave Eiffel
Giordano Bruno
JJ Thomson
Thomas Kuhn
Leonardo DaVinci
Archimedes
David Hume
- 30 -
Andreas Vesalius
Rudolf Virchow
Richard Feynman
James Hutton
Alexander Fleming
Emile Durkheim
Benjamin Franklin
Robert Oppenheimer
Robert Hooke
Charles Kettering
- 20 -
Carl Sagan
James Maxwell
Marie Curie
Rene Descartes
Francis Crick
Hippocrates
Michael Faraday
Srinivasa Ramanujan
Francis Bacon
Galileo Galilei
- 10 -
Aristotle
John Watson
Rosalind Franklin
Michio Kaku
Isaac Asimov
Charles Darwin
Sigmund Freud
Albert Einstein
Florence Nightingale
Isaac Newton


by Ian Ellis
who invites your feedback
Thank you for sharing.
Today in Science History
Sign up for Newsletter
with quiz, quotes and more.