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: “A change in motion is proportional to the motive force impressed and takes place along the straight line in which that force is impressed.”
more quiz questions >>
Home > Category Index for Science Quotations > Category Index C > Category: China

China Quotes (27 quotes)

… it is shameful that there are so few women in science… In China there are many, many women in physics. There is a misconception in America that women scientists are all dowdy spinsters. This is the fault of men. In Chinese society, a woman is valued for what she is, and men encourage her to accomplishments yet she remains eternally feminine.
Quoted in 'Queen of Physics', Newsweek (20 May 1963) no. 61, 20.
Science quotes on:  |  Accomplishment (102)  |  America (143)  |  Chinese (22)  |  Encourage (43)  |  Fault (58)  |  Feminine (4)  |  Misconception (6)  |  Physic (515)  |  Physicist (270)  |  Physics (564)  |  Remain (355)  |  Scientist (881)  |  Shameful (3)  |  Society (350)  |  Value (393)  |  Woman (160)  |  Women Scientists (18)

A wise man in China asked his gardener to plant a shrub. The gardener objected that it only flowered once in a hundred years. “In that case,” said the wise man, “plant it immediately.” [On the importance of fundamental research.]
'A Scientist and the World He Lives In', Speech to the Empire Club of Canada (27 Nov 1986) in C. Frank Turner and Tim Dickson (eds.), The Empire Club of Canada Speeches 1986-1987 (1987), 149-161.
Science quotes on:  |  Ask (420)  |  Flower (112)  |  Flowering (2)  |  Fundamental (264)  |  Gardener (6)  |  Hundred (240)  |  Immediately (115)  |  Importance (299)  |  Man (2252)  |  Object (438)  |  Plant (320)  |  Planting (4)  |  Research (753)  |  Shrub (5)  |  Wisdom (235)  |  Wise (143)  |  Wise Man (17)  |  Year (963)

But Chinese civilization has the overpowering beauty of the wholly other, and only the wholly other can inspire the deepest love and the profoundest desire to learn.
The Grand Titration (1969), 176.
Science quotes on:  |  Beauty (313)  |  Chinese (22)  |  Civilization (220)  |  Desire (212)  |  Inspiration (80)  |  Learn (672)  |  Learning (291)  |  Love (328)  |  Other (2233)  |  Wholly (88)

But to proceed; as in order and place, so also in matter of her Creation, Woman far excells Man. things receive their value from the matter they are made of, and the excellent skill of their maker: Pots of common clay must not contend with China-dishes, nor pewter utensils vye dignity with those of silver…. Woman was not composed of any inanimate or vile dirt, but of a more refined and purified substance, enlivened and actuated by a Rational Soul, whose operations speak it a beam, or bright ray of Divinity.
In Female Pre-eminence: Or, The Dignity and Excellency of that Sex above the Male, translation (1670).
Science quotes on:  |  Beam (26)  |  Bright (81)  |  Clay (11)  |  Common (447)  |  Creation (350)  |  Dignity (44)  |  Dirt (17)  |  Divinity (23)  |  Excel (4)  |  Maker (34)  |  Man (2252)  |  Matter (821)  |  More (2558)  |  Must (1525)  |  Operation (221)  |  Operations (107)  |  Order (638)  |  Proceed (134)  |  Rational (95)  |  Ray (115)  |  Receive (117)  |  Silver (49)  |  Skill (116)  |  Soul (235)  |  Speak (240)  |  Substance (253)  |  Thing (1914)  |  Utensil (3)  |  Value (393)  |  Woman (160)

Cows are my passion. What I have ever sighed for, has been to retreat to a Swiss farm, and live entirely surrounded by cows — and china.
By fictional character Mrs. Skewton, in Dealings with the Firm of Dombey and Son: Wholesale, Retail, and for Exportation (1847), Vol. 2, 4.
Science quotes on:  |  Cow (42)  |  Farm (28)  |  Live (650)  |  Passion (121)  |  Retreat (13)  |  Sigh (3)  |  Surround (33)  |  Swiss (3)

I know too much; I have stuffed too many of the facts of History and Science into my intellectuals. My eyes have grown dim over books; believing in geological periods, cave-dwellers, Chinese Dynasties, and the fixed stars has prematurely aged me.
In 'The Burden', Trivia (1917,1921), 156.
Science quotes on:  |  Age (509)  |  Belief (615)  |  Book (413)  |  Dim (11)  |  Dynasty (8)  |  Eye (440)  |  Fact (1257)  |  Fix (34)  |  Geology (240)  |  History (716)  |  Intellectual (258)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Period (200)  |  Premature (22)  |  Science (39)  |  Star (460)  |  Stuff (24)

I ought to call myself an agnostic; but, for all practical purposes, I am an atheist. I do not think the existence of the Christian God any more probable than the existence of the Gods of Olympus or Valhalla. To take another illustration: nobody can prove that there is not between the Earth and Mars a china teapot revolving in an elliptical orbit, but nobody thinks this sufficiently likely to be taken into account in practice. I think the Christian God just as unlikely.
Letter (1958) to Mr Major. Collected in Dear Bertrand Russell: A Selection of his Correspondence with the General Public, 1950 - 1968 (1969), 41-42.
Science quotes on:  |  Account (195)  |  Agnostic (10)  |  Atheist (16)  |  Call (781)  |  Christian (44)  |  Do (1905)  |  Earth (1076)  |  Existence (481)  |  God (776)  |  Illustration (51)  |  Mar (2)  |  Mars (47)  |  More (2558)  |  Myself (211)  |  Nobody (103)  |  Orbit (85)  |  Practical (225)  |  Practice (212)  |  Probable (24)  |  Prove (261)  |  Purpose (336)  |  Science And Religion (337)  |  Teapot (3)  |  Think (1122)  |  Unlikely (15)  |  Valhalla (2)

If I were to suggest that between the Earth and Mars there is a china teapot revolving about the sun in an elliptical orbit, nobody would be able to disprove my assertion provided I were careful to add that the teapot is too small to be revealed even by our most powerful telescopes. But if I were to go on to say that, since my assertion cannot be disproved, it is intolerable presumption on the part of human reason to doubt it, I should rightly be thought to be talking nonsense. If, however, the existence of such a teapot were affirmed in ancient books, taught as the sacred truth every Sunday, and instilled into the minds of children at school, hesitation to believe in its existence would become a mark of eccentricity and entitle the doubter to the attentions of the psychiatrist in an enlightened age or of the Inquisitor in an earlier time.
In unpublished manuscript, 'Is There a God', (5 Mar 1952) written for the magazine, Illustrated. Collected in Bertrand Russell, John G. Slater (ed.) and Peter Köllner (ed.) The Collected Papers of Bertran Russell: Volume II: Last Philosophical Testament: 1943-68 (1997), 547-548.
Science quotes on:  |  Age (509)  |  Ancient (198)  |  Attention (196)  |  Become (821)  |  Book (413)  |  Children (201)  |  Disprove (25)  |  Doubt (314)  |  Earth (1076)  |  Enlighten (32)  |  Enlightened (25)  |  Existence (481)  |  Hesitation (19)  |  Human (1512)  |  Inquisitor (6)  |  Mars (47)  |  Mind (1377)  |  Most (1728)  |  Nobody (103)  |  Nonsense (48)  |  Orbit (85)  |  Powerful (145)  |  Presumption (15)  |  Psychiatrist (16)  |  Reason (766)  |  Reveal (152)  |  Revealed (59)  |  Sacred (48)  |  Say (989)  |  School (227)  |  Science And Religion (337)  |  Small (489)  |  Sun (407)  |  Talking (76)  |  Teapot (3)  |  Telescope (106)  |  Thought (995)  |  Time (1911)  |  Truth (1109)

In my considered opinion the peer review system, in which proposals rather than proposers are reviewed, is the greatest disaster visited upon the scientific community in this century. No group of peers would have approved my building the 72-inch bubble chamber. Even Ernest Lawrence told me he thought I was making a big mistake. He supported me because he knew my track record was good. I believe that U.S. science could recover from the stultifying effects of decades of misguided peer reviewing if we returned to the tried-and-true method of evaluating experimenters rather than experimental proposals. Many people will say that my ideas are elitist, and I certainly agree. The alternative is the egalitarianism that we now practice and I’ve seen nearly kill basic science in the USSR and in the People's Republic of China.
Alvarez: Adventures of a Physicist (1987), 200-1.
Science quotes on:  |  Basic (144)  |  Bubble (23)  |  Building (158)  |  Century (319)  |  Certainly (185)  |  Community (111)  |  Consider (428)  |  Decade (66)  |  Disaster (58)  |  Effect (414)  |  Experimental (193)  |  Experimenter (40)  |  Good (906)  |  Greatest (330)  |  Idea (881)  |  Kill (100)  |  Ernest Orlando Lawrence (5)  |  Making (300)  |  Method (531)  |  Mistake (180)  |  Nearly (137)  |  Opinion (291)  |  Peer Review (4)  |  People (1031)  |  Practice (212)  |  Proposal (21)  |  Record (161)  |  Republic (16)  |  Research (753)  |  Return (133)  |  Review (27)  |  Say (989)  |  Scientific (955)  |  Support (151)  |  System (545)  |  Thought (995)  |  Track (42)  |  Track Record (4)  |  Will (2350)

Instead of disbursing her annual millions for these dye stuffs, England will, beyond question, at no distant day become herself the greatest coloring producing country in the world; nay, by the very strangest of revolutions she may ere long send her coal-derived blues to indigo-growing India, her tar-distilled crimson to cochineal-producing Mexico, and her fossil substitutes for quercitron and safflower to China, Japan and the other countries whence these articles are now derived.
From 'Report on the Chemical Section of the Exhibition of 1862.' As quoted in Sir Frederick Abel, 'The Work of the Imperial Institute' Nature (28 Apr 1887), 35, No. 913, 620. Abel called the display of the first dye-products derived from coal tar at the Exhibition of 1862, “one of the features of greatest novelty.”
Science quotes on:  |  Become (821)  |  Beyond (316)  |  Blue (63)  |  Coal (64)  |  Color (155)  |  Country (269)  |  Crimson (4)  |  Derived (5)  |  Distilled (2)  |  Dye (10)  |  England (43)  |  Fossil (143)  |  Greatest (330)  |  Growing (99)  |  India (23)  |  Japan (9)  |  Long (778)  |  Other (2233)  |  Producing (6)  |  Question (649)  |  Revolution (133)  |  Send (23)  |  Strangest (4)  |  Substitute (47)  |  Will (2350)  |  World (1850)

Leibnitz believed he saw the image of creation in his binary arithmetic in which he employed only two characters, unity and zero. Since God may be represented by unity, and nothing by zero, he imagined that the Supreme Being might have drawn all things from nothing, just as in the binary arithmetic all numbers are expressed by unity with zero. This idea was so pleasing to Leibnitz, that he communicated it to the Jesuit Grimaldi, President of the Mathematical Board of China, with the hope that this emblem of the creation might convert to Christianity the reigning emperor who was particularly attached to the sciences.
In 'Essai Philosophique sur les Probabiliés', Oeuvres (1896), t. 7, 119.
Science quotes on:  |  Arithmetic (144)  |  Attach (57)  |  Attached (36)  |  Being (1276)  |  Belief (615)  |  Binary (12)  |  Board (13)  |  Character (259)  |  Christianity (11)  |  Communicate (39)  |  Convert (22)  |  Creation (350)  |  Emblem (4)  |  Emperor (6)  |  Employ (115)  |  Express (192)  |  God (776)  |  Hope (321)  |  Idea (881)  |  Image (97)  |  Imagine (176)  |  Jesuit (2)  |  Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (51)  |  Mathematicians and Anecdotes (141)  |  Mathematics (1395)  |  Nothing (1000)  |  Number (710)  |  Particular (80)  |  Please (68)  |  President (36)  |  Reign (24)  |  Represent (157)  |  Saw (160)  |  See (1094)  |  Supreme (73)  |  Supreme Being (8)  |  Thing (1914)  |  Two (936)  |  Unity (81)  |  Zero (38)

Man is the Reasoning Animal. Such is the claim. I think it is open to dispute. Indeed, my experiments have proven to me that he is the Unreasoning Animal. … It seems plain to me that whatever he is he is not a reasoning animal. His record is the fantastic record of a maniac. I consider that the strongest count against his intelligence is the fact that with that record back of him he blandly sets himself up as the head animal of the lot: whereas by his own standards he is the bottom one.
In truth, man is incurably foolish. Simple things which the other animals easily learn, he is incapable of learning. Among my experiments was this. In an hour I taught a cat and a dog to be friends. I put them in a cage. In another hour I taught them to be friends with a rabbit. In the course of two days I was able to add a fox, a goose, a squirrel and some doves. Finally a monkey. They lived together in peace; even affectionately.
Next, in another cage I confined an Irish Catholic from Tipperary, and as soon as he seemed tame I added a Scotch Presbyterian from Aberdeen. Next a Turk from Constantinople; a Greek Christian from Crete; an Armenian; a Methodist from the wilds of Arkansas; a Buddhist from China; a Brahman from Benares. Finally, a Salvation Army Colonel from Wapping. Then I stayed away two whole days. When I came back to note results, the cage of Higher Animals was all right, but in the other there was but a chaos of gory odds and ends of turbans and fezzes and plaids and bones and flesh—not a specimen left alive. These Reasoning Animals had disagreed on a theological detail and carried the matter to a Higher Court.
In Mark Twain and Bernard DeVoto (ed.), Letters from the Earth: Uncensored Writings (1962), 180-181. [Note: As a humorous, irreverent consideration of Man and Christianity, these essays (written c.1909) remained unpublished for over 50 years after Twain’s death (1910), because his daughter and literary executor (Clara Clemens Samossoud) felt that some of the pieces did not accurately represent her father’s beliefs, but eventually, she consented to their publication.]
Science quotes on:  |  Aberdeen (2)  |  Against (332)  |  Alive (97)  |  Animal (651)  |  Arkansas (2)  |  Army (35)  |  Back (395)  |  Bone (101)  |  Bottom (36)  |  Brahman (2)  |  Buddhist (5)  |  Cage (12)  |  Cat (52)  |  Catholic (18)  |  Chaos (99)  |  Christian (44)  |  Claim (154)  |  Consider (428)  |  Count (107)  |  Course (413)  |  Court (35)  |  Detail (150)  |  Disagreed (4)  |  Disagreement (14)  |  Dispute (36)  |  Dog (70)  |  Dove (3)  |  End (603)  |  Experiment (736)  |  Fact (1257)  |  Fantastic (21)  |  Flesh (28)  |  Fool (121)  |  Foolish (41)  |  Fox (9)  |  Friend (180)  |  Goose (13)  |  Greek (109)  |  Himself (461)  |  History (716)  |  Hour (192)  |  Incapable (41)  |  Indeed (323)  |  Intelligence (218)  |  Ireland (8)  |  Learn (672)  |  Learning (291)  |  Lot (151)  |  Man (2252)  |  Matter (821)  |  Methodist (2)  |  Monkey (57)  |  Next (238)  |  Open (277)  |  Other (2233)  |  Peace (116)  |  Proof (304)  |  Rabbit (10)  |  Reasoning (212)  |  Record (161)  |  Result (700)  |  Right (473)  |  Salvation (13)  |  Scotland (6)  |  Set (400)  |  Simple (426)  |  Soon (187)  |  Specimen (32)  |  Squirrel (11)  |  Strongest (38)  |  Tame (4)  |  Theology (54)  |  Thing (1914)  |  Think (1122)  |  Together (392)  |  Truth (1109)  |  Turban (2)  |  Two (936)  |  Whatever (234)  |  Whole (756)  |  Wild (96)

Research into the prehistory of China has only just begun… Certain stages of development appear in the full daylight, but in others we can only grope our way to the truth! At other times there is impenetrable darkness.
In 'Foreword', J. Gunnar Andersson and E. Classen (trans.), Children of the Yellow Earth; Studies in Prehistoric China (1934).
Science quotes on:  |  Darkness (72)  |  Daylight (23)  |  Development (441)  |  Grope (5)  |  Impenetrable (7)  |  Research (753)  |  Truth (1109)

The alchemists in their search for gold discovered other things [of greater value].
With the phrase “of greater value” in James Wood, Dictionary of Quotations from Ancient and Modern, English and Foreign Sources (1893), 415. The more specific description '—gunpowder, china, medicines, the laws of nature' is given for 'of greater value' in Counsels and Maxims: Being the Second Part of Arthur Schopenhauer's Aphorismen Zur Lebensweisheit translated by Thomas Bailey Saunders (2nd Ed., 1890), 16.
Science quotes on:  |  Alchemist (23)  |  Discover (571)  |  Discovery (837)  |  Gold (101)  |  Greater (288)  |  Gunpowder (18)  |  Law (913)  |  Medicine (392)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Other (2233)  |  Search (175)  |  Thing (1914)  |  Value (393)

The Chinese … use fossil teeth as one of their principal medicines. Some Chinese families have for centuries been in the business of “mining” fossils to supply the drug trade.
Science quotes on:  |  Business (156)  |  Century (319)  |  Chinese (22)  |  Drug (61)  |  Family (101)  |  Fossil (143)  |  Medicine (392)  |  Mining (22)  |  Paleontology (32)  |  Principal (69)  |  Supply (100)  |  Teeth (43)  |  Tooth (32)  |  Trade (34)  |  Use (771)

The Chinese are clearly inculcating the idea that science is exciting and important, and that’s why they, as a whole—they're graduating four times as many engineers as we are, and that's just happened over the last 20 years.
NPR Radio interview, Morning Edition, (29 Apr 2005). In Lisa Rogak (ed.) The Impatient Optimist: Bill Gates in his Words (2012), 32.
Science quotes on:  |  Chinese (22)  |  Engineer (136)  |  Excitement (61)  |  Exciting (50)  |  Graduation (6)  |  Happen (282)  |  Happened (88)  |  Idea (881)  |  Importance (299)  |  Inculcate (7)  |  Last (425)  |  Time (1911)  |  Whole (756)  |  Why (491)  |  Year (963)

The Chinese are responsible for some of the greatest inventions: paper, gunpowder, ice cream, etc. But out of all the tools they could’ve invented to eat rice with, two sticks won out.
Anonymous
A “Shower Thought” posted on Reddit by baiqibeendeleted17 (sometime in Sep 2021).
Science quotes on:  |  Eat (108)  |  Gunpowder (18)  |  Ice Cream (2)  |  Invention (400)  |  Paper (192)  |  Rice (5)  |  Stick (27)  |  Tool (129)

The Chinese, who aspire to be thought an enlightened nation, to this day are ignorant of the circulation of the blood; and even in England the man who made that noble discovery lost all his practice in the consequence of his ingenuity; and Hume informs us that no physician in the United Kingdom who had attained the age of forty ever submitted to become a convert to Harvey’s theory, but went on preferring numpsimus to sumpsimus to the day of his death.
Reflection 352, in Lacon: or Many things in Few Words; Addressed to Those Who Think (1820), 164-165.
Science quotes on:  |  Age (509)  |  Anatomy (75)  |  Aspire (15)  |  Attain (126)  |  Become (821)  |  Blood (144)  |  Britain (26)  |  Chinese (22)  |  Circulation (27)  |  Consequence (220)  |  Death (406)  |  Discovery (837)  |  Enlighten (32)  |  Enlightened (25)  |  William Harvey (30)  |   David Hume (34)  |  Ignorant (91)  |  Inform (50)  |  Ingenuity (42)  |  Kingdom (80)  |  Man (2252)  |  Nation (208)  |  Noble (93)  |  Physician (284)  |  Practice (212)  |  Theory (1015)  |  Thought (995)

The explosive component in the contemporary scene is not the clamor of the masses but the self-righteous claims of a multitude of graduates from schools and universities. This army of scribes is clamoring for a society in which planning, regulation, and supervision are paramount and the prerogative of the educated. They hanker for the scribe’s golden age, for a return to something like the scribe-dominated societies of ancient Egypt, China, and Europe of the Middle Ages. There is little doubt that the present trend in the new and renovated countries toward social regimentation stems partly from the need to create adequate employment for a large number of scribes. And since the tempo of the production of the literate is continually increasing, the prospect is of ever-swelling bureaucracies.
In 'Scribe, Writer, and Rebel', The Ordeal of Change (1963), 109.
Science quotes on:  |  Adequate (50)  |  Age (509)  |  Ancient (198)  |  Ancient Egypt (4)  |  Army (35)  |  Bureaucracy (8)  |  Claim (154)  |  Clamor (7)  |  Clamoring (2)  |  Component (51)  |  Contemporary (33)  |  Continually (17)  |  Country (269)  |  Create (245)  |  Doubt (314)  |  Educate (14)  |  Egypt (31)  |  Employment (34)  |  Europe (50)  |  Explosive (24)  |  Golden (47)  |  Golden Age (11)  |  Graduate (32)  |  Increase (225)  |  Large (398)  |  Literate (2)  |  Little (717)  |  Mass (160)  |  Middle Age (19)  |  Middle Ages (12)  |  Multitude (50)  |  Need (320)  |  New (1273)  |  Number (710)  |  Paramount (11)  |  Partly (5)  |  Plan (122)  |  Planning (21)  |  Prerogative (3)  |  Present (630)  |  Production (190)  |  Prospect (31)  |  Regimentation (2)  |  Regulation (25)  |  Renovate (3)  |  Return (133)  |  Scene (36)  |  School (227)  |  Scribe (3)  |  Self (268)  |  Self-Righteous (2)  |  Social (261)  |  Society (350)  |  Something (718)  |  Stem (31)  |  Supervision (4)  |  Tempo (3)  |  Toward (45)  |  Trend (23)  |  University (130)

The Patent-Office Commissioner knows that all machines in use have been invented and re-invented over and over; that the mariner’s compass, the boat, the pendulum, glass, movable types, the kaleidoscope, the railway, the power-loom, etc., have been many times found and lost, from Egypt, China and Pompeii down; and if we have arts which Rome wanted, so also Rome had arts which we have lost; that the invention of yesterday of making wood indestructible by means of vapor of coal-oil or paraffine was suggested by the Egyptian method which has preserved its mummy-cases four thousand years.
In Lecture, second in a series given at Freeman Place Chapel, Boston (Mar 1859), 'Quotation and Originality', Letters and Social Aims (1875, 1917), 178-179.
Science quotes on:  |  Art (680)  |  Boat (17)  |  Coal (64)  |  Commissioner (2)  |  Compass (37)  |  Down (455)  |  Egypt (31)  |  Find (1014)  |  Glass (94)  |  Indestructible (12)  |  Invention (400)  |  Kaleidoscope (5)  |  Know (1538)  |  Loom (20)  |  Lost (34)  |  Machine (271)  |  Make (25)  |  Making (300)  |  Mariner (12)  |  Mean (810)  |  Means (587)  |  Method (531)  |  Movable (2)  |  Mummy (7)  |  Office (71)  |  Oil (67)  |  Patent (34)  |  Patent Office (3)  |  Pendulum (17)  |  Pompeii (6)  |  Power (771)  |  Power Loom (2)  |  Preservation (39)  |  Railroad (36)  |  Railway (19)  |  Rome (19)  |  Suggest (38)  |  Thousand (340)  |  Time (1911)  |  Type (171)  |  Use (771)  |  Vapor (12)  |  Want (504)  |  Wood (97)  |  Year (963)  |  Yesterday (37)

The really profound changes in human life all have their ultimate origin in knowledge pursued for its own sake. The use of the compass was not introduced into Europe till the end of the twelfth century A.D., more than three thousand years after its first use in China. The importance which the science of electromagnetism has since assumed in every department of human life is due not to the superior practical bias of Europeans, but to the fact that in the West electrical and magnetic phenomena were studied by men who were dominated by abstract theoretic interests.
In Introduction to Mathematics (1911), 32-33.
Science quotes on:  |  12th Century (3)  |  Abstract (141)  |  Change (639)  |  Compass (37)  |  Electromagnetism (19)  |  Europe (50)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Origin (250)  |  Practical (225)  |  Profound (105)  |  Pursuit (128)  |  Sake (61)  |  Theory (1015)  |  Ultimate (152)

The ruthless destruction of their forests by the Chinese is one of the reasons why famine and plague today hold this nation in their sinister grasp. Denudation, wherever practiced, leaves naked soil; floods and erosion follow, and when the soil is gone men must also go—and the process does not take long. The great plains of Eastern China were centuries ago transformed from forest into agricultural land. The mountain plateau of Central China have also within a few hundred years been utterly devastated of tree growth, and no attempt made at either natural or artificial reforestation. As a result, the water rushes off the naked slopes in veritable floods, gullying away the mountain sides, causing rivers to run muddy with yellow soil, and carrying enormous masses of fertile earth to the sea. Water courses have also changed; rivers become uncontrollable, and the water level of the country is lowered perceptibly. In consequence, the unfortunate people see their crops wither and die for lack of water when it is most needed.
Statement (11 May 1921) by United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) concerning the famine in China in seven out of every ten years. Reported in 'Blames Deforestation: Department of Agriculture Ascribes Chinese Famine to it', New York Times (12 May 1921), 12.
Science quotes on:  |  Agriculture (78)  |  Artificial (38)  |  Attempt (266)  |  Become (821)  |  Central (81)  |  Century (319)  |  Changed (2)  |  Chinese (22)  |  Consequence (220)  |  Country (269)  |  Course (413)  |  Crop (26)  |  Deforestation (50)  |  Denudation (2)  |  Destruction (135)  |  Die (94)  |  Earth (1076)  |  Erosion (20)  |  Famine (18)  |  Fertile (30)  |  Flood (52)  |  Follow (389)  |  Forest (161)  |  Grasp (65)  |  Great (1610)  |  Growth (200)  |  Hundred (240)  |  Lack (127)  |  Land (131)  |  Level (69)  |  Long (778)  |  Lowered (2)  |  Most (1728)  |  Mountain (202)  |  Muddy (3)  |  Must (1525)  |  Naked (10)  |  Nation (208)  |  Natural (810)  |  Need (320)  |  People (1031)  |  Perceptibly (2)  |  Plague (42)  |  Plain (34)  |  Plateau (8)  |  Process (439)  |  Reason (766)  |  Reforestation (6)  |  Result (700)  |  River (140)  |  Run (158)  |  Ruthless (12)  |  Sea (326)  |  See (1094)  |  Side (236)  |  Sinister (8)  |  Slope (10)  |  Soil (98)  |  Today (321)  |  Transform (74)  |  Tree (269)  |  Uncontrollable (5)  |  Unfortunate (19)  |  Utterly (15)  |  Water (503)  |  Wherever (51)  |  Why (491)  |  Wither (9)  |  Year (963)  |  Yellow (31)

The sixth pre-Christian century—the miraculous century of Buddha, Confucius and Lâo-Tse, of the Ionian philosophers and Pythagoras—was a turning point for the human species. A March breeze seemed to blow across the planet from China to Samos, stirring man into awareness, like the breath of Adam's nostrils. In the Ionian school of philosophy, rational thought was emerging from the mythological dream-world. …which, within the next two thousand years, would transform the species more radically than the previous two hundred thousand had done.
In The Sleepwalkers: A History of Man’s Changing Vision of the Universe (1959), 21-22.
Science quotes on:  |  Awareness (42)  |  Blow (45)  |  Breath (61)  |   Buddha (5)  |  Century (319)  |  Christian (44)  |  Confucius (13)  |  Dream (222)  |  Human (1512)  |  Human Species (11)  |  Hundred (240)  |  Ionian (2)  |  Lao-Tse (2)  |  Man (2252)  |  March (48)  |  Miraculous (11)  |  More (2558)  |  Myth (58)  |  Next (238)  |  Philosopher (269)  |  Philosophy (409)  |  Planet (402)  |  Point (584)  |  Pythagoras (38)  |  Rational (95)  |  School (227)  |  Species (435)  |  Thought (995)  |  Thousand (340)  |  Transform (74)  |  Turning Point (8)  |  Two (936)  |  World (1850)  |  Year (963)

The thought that we’re in competition with Russians or with Chinese is all a mistake, and trivial. We are one species, with a world to win. There’s life all over this universe, but the only life in the solar system is on earth, and in the whole universe we are the only men.
From speech given at an anti-war teach-in at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, (4 Mar 1969) 'A Generation in Search of a Future', as edited by Ron Dorfman for Chicago Journalism Review, (May 1969).
Science quotes on:  |  Chinese (22)  |  Competition (45)  |  Earth (1076)  |  Life (1870)  |  Mankind (356)  |  Mistake (180)  |  Russia (14)  |  Solar System (81)  |  Species (435)  |  System (545)  |  Thought (995)  |  Trivial (59)  |  Universe (900)  |  Whole (756)  |  Win (53)  |  World (1850)

To say that a gram of plutonium could kill everyone on the planet is like saying that one drop of sperm could impregnate all of the women in China.
Tom Orth
Quoted, without source, in John Laurie, Killer Quotes Knock 'Em Dead Win Your Point (2015).
Science quotes on:  |  Drop (77)  |  Everyone (35)  |  Gram (4)  |  Impregnate (2)  |  Kill (100)  |  Planet (402)  |  Plutonium (5)  |  Say (989)  |  Sperm (7)  |  Woman (160)

When we look back beyond one hundred years over the long trails of history, we see immediately why the age we live in differs from all other ages in human annals. … It remained stationary in India and in China for thousands of years. But now it is moving very fast. … A priest from Thebes would probably have felt more at home at the council of Trent, two thousand years after Thebes had vanished, than Sir Isaac Newton at a modern undergraduate physical society, or George Stephenson in the Institute of Electrical Engineers. The changes have have been so sudden and so gigantic, that no period in history can be compared with the last century. The past no longer enables us even dimly to measure the future.
From 'Fifty Years Hence', Strand Magazine (Dec 1931). Reprinted in Popular Mechanics (Mar 1932), 57, No. 3, 393.
Science quotes on:  |  19th Century (41)  |  20th Century (40)  |  Age (509)  |  Annal (3)  |  Back (395)  |  Beyond (316)  |  Century (319)  |  Change (639)  |  Compared (8)  |  Council (9)  |  Differ (88)  |  Dimly (6)  |  Electrical (57)  |  Electrical Engineer (5)  |  Electrical Engineering (12)  |  Enable (122)  |  Engineer (136)  |  Fast (49)  |  Future (467)  |  Gigantic (40)  |  History (716)  |  Home (184)  |  Human (1512)  |  Hundred (240)  |  Immediately (115)  |  India (23)  |  Institute (8)  |  Last (425)  |  Live (650)  |  Long (778)  |  Look (584)  |  Measure (241)  |  Modern (402)  |  More (2558)  |  Moving (11)  |  Sir Isaac Newton (363)  |  Other (2233)  |  Past (355)  |  Period (200)  |  Physical (518)  |  Priest (29)  |  Probably (50)  |  Remain (355)  |  Remained (2)  |  See (1094)  |  Society (350)  |  Stationary (11)  |  George Stephenson (10)  |  Sudden (70)  |  Thousand (340)  |  Trail (11)  |  Two (936)  |  Undergraduate (17)  |  Vanished (3)  |  Why (491)  |  Year (963)

While the unique crystal stands on its shelf unmeasured by the goniometer, unslit by the optical lapidary, unanalysed by the chemist,—it is merely a piece of furniture, and has no more right to be considered as anything pertaining to science, than a curious china tea-cup on a chimney-piece.
In 'Report on the Progress and Present State of Mineralogy', Report of the British Association for the Advancement of Science (1831 -32), 364-365.
Science quotes on:  |  Analysis (244)  |  Chemist (169)  |  Chimney (4)  |  Consider (428)  |  Consideration (143)  |  Crystal (71)  |  Curious (95)  |  Furniture (8)  |  Measurement (178)  |  Merely (315)  |  More (2558)  |  Optical (11)  |  Optics (24)  |  Right (473)  |  Shelf (8)  |  Stand (284)  |  Tea (13)  |  Teacup (2)  |  Unique (72)


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.