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: “Science without religion is lame; religion without science is blind.”
more quiz questions >>
Home > Category Index for Science Quotations > Category Index D > Category: Dislike

Dislike Quotes (16 quotes)

Again the message to experimentalists is: Be sensible but don’t be impressed too much by negative arguments. If at all possible, try it and see what turns up. Theorists almost always dislike this sort of approach.
What Mad Pursuit: A Personal View of Scientific Discovery (1988), 113.
Science quotes on:  |  Approach (112)  |  Argument (145)  |  Experimentalist (20)  |  Impress (66)  |  Impressed (39)  |  Message (53)  |  Negative (66)  |  Possible (560)  |  See (1094)  |  Sensible (28)  |  Theorist (44)  |  Try (296)  |  Turn (454)

I dislike feeling at home when I am abroad
…...
Science quotes on:  |  Abroad (19)  |  Feel (371)  |  Feeling (259)  |  Home (184)

I had a dislike for [mathematics], and ... was hopelessly short in algebra. ... [One extraordinary teacher of mathematics] got the whole year's course into me in exactly six [after-school] lessons of half an hour each. And how? More accurately, why? Simply because he was an algebra fanatic—because he believed that algebra was not only a science of the utmost importance, but also one of the greatest fascination. ... [H]e convinced me in twenty minutes that ignorance of algebra was as calamitous, socially and intellectually, as ignorance of table manners—That acquiring its elements was as necessary as washing behind the ears. So I fell upon the book and gulped it voraciously. ... To this day I comprehend the binomial theorem.
In Prejudices: third series (1922), 261-262.
For a longer excerpt, see H. L. Mencken's Recollections of School Algebra.
Science quotes on:  |  Acquisition (46)  |  Algebra (117)  |  Behind (139)  |  Binomial (6)  |  Binomial Theorem (5)  |  Book (413)  |  Calamity (11)  |  Comprehension (69)  |  Convincing (9)  |  Course (413)  |  Ear (69)  |  Element (322)  |  Extraordinary (83)  |  Fanatic (7)  |  Fascination (35)  |  Greatest (330)  |  Gulp (3)  |  Half (63)  |  Hopelessness (6)  |  Hour (192)  |  How (3)  |  Ignorance (254)  |  Importance (299)  |  Intellect (251)  |  Lesson (58)  |  Manners (3)  |  Mathematics (1395)  |  Minute (129)  |  More (2558)  |  Necessary (370)  |  Necessity (197)  |  School (227)  |  Short (200)  |  Society (350)  |  Table (105)  |  Teacher (154)  |  Theorem (116)  |  Utmost (12)  |  Washing (3)  |  Whole (756)  |  Why (491)  |  Year (963)

I have just received copies of “To-day” containing criticisms of my letter. I am in no way surprised to find that these criticisms are not only unfair and misleading in the extreme. They are misleading in so far that anyone reading them would be led to believe the exact opposite of the truth. It is quite possible that I, an old and trained engineer and chronic experimenter, should put an undue value upon truth; but it is common to all scientific men. As nothing but the truth is of any value to them, they naturally dislike things that are not true. ... While my training has, perhaps, warped my mind so that I put an undue value upon truth, their training has been such as to cause them to abhor exact truth and logic.
[Replying to criticism by Colonel Acklom and other religious parties attacking Maxim's earlier contribution to the controversy about the modern position of Christianity.]
In G.K. Chesterton, 'The Maxims of Maxim', Daily News (25 Feb 1905). Collected in G. K. Chesterton and Dale Ahlquist (ed.), In Defense of Sanity: The Best Essays of G.K. Chesterton (2011), 86.
Science quotes on:  |  Abhorrence (8)  |  Belief (615)  |  Cause (561)  |  Chronic (5)  |  Common (447)  |  Content (75)  |  Contribution (93)  |  Controversy (30)  |  Copy (34)  |  Criticism (85)  |  Engineer (136)  |  Exactness (29)  |  Experimenter (40)  |  Extreme (78)  |  Find (1014)  |  Leading (17)  |  Letter (117)  |  Logic (311)  |  Mind (1377)  |  Misleading (21)  |  Modern (402)  |  Naturally (11)  |  Nothing (1000)  |  Old (499)  |  Opposite (110)  |  Other (2233)  |  Possible (560)  |  Reading (136)  |  Receive (117)  |  Religious (134)  |  Scientific (955)  |  Surprise (91)  |  Thing (1914)  |  Today (321)  |  Train (118)  |  Training (92)  |  Truth (1109)  |  Undue (4)  |  Unfair (9)  |  Value (393)  |  Way (1214)

In my experience most mathematicians are intellectually lazy and especially dislike reading experimental papers. He (René Thom) seemed to have very strong biological intuitions but unfortunately of negative sign.
In What Mad Pursuit: A Personal View of Scientific Discovery (1988), 136.
Science quotes on:  |  Biological (137)  |  Especially (31)  |  Experience (494)  |  Experiment (736)  |  Experimental (193)  |  Intellect (251)  |  Intuition (82)  |  Lazy (10)  |  Mathematician (407)  |  Most (1728)  |  Negative (66)  |  Paper (192)  |  Read (308)  |  Reading (136)  |  Strong (182)  |   René Frédéric Thom, (2)  |  Unfortunate (19)  |  Unfortunately (40)

It is told of Faraday that he refused to be called a physicist; he very much disliked the new name as being too special and particular and insisted on the old one, philosopher, in all its spacious generality: we may suppose that this was his way of saying that he had not over-ridden the limiting conditions of class only to submit to the limitation of a profession.
Commentary (Jun 1962), 33, 461-77. Cited by Sydney Ross in Nineteenth-Century Attitudes: Men of Science (1991), 11.
Science quotes on:  |  Being (1276)  |  Biography (254)  |  Call (781)  |  Called (9)  |  Class (168)  |  Condition (362)  |  Michael Faraday (91)  |  Generality (45)  |  Insist (22)  |  Limit (294)  |  Limitation (52)  |  Name (359)  |  New (1273)  |  Nomenclature (159)  |  Old (499)  |  Over-Ride (2)  |  Particular (80)  |  Philosopher (269)  |  Physicist (270)  |  Preference (28)  |  Profession (108)  |  Refusal (23)  |  Special (188)  |  Submit (21)  |  Suppose (158)  |  Way (1214)

Natural conservatism and dislike of innovation appear in the ranks of science more strongly than most people are aware.
In 'The Discovery of Radioactivity: Radioactivity, a New Science', The Interpretation of Radium and the Structure of the Atom (4th ed., 1920), 3.
Science quotes on:  |  Aware (36)  |  Conservatism (3)  |  Innovation (49)  |  Natural (810)

Scientists who dislike constraints on research like to remark that a truly great research worker needs only three pieces of equipment: a pencil, a piece of paper and a brain. But they quote this maxim more often at academic banquets than at budget hearings.
In Dr. N Sreedharan, Quotations of Wit and Wisdom (2007), 68.
Science quotes on:  |  Brain (281)  |  Constraint (13)  |  Equipment (45)  |  Genius (301)  |  Great (1610)  |  Hearing (50)  |  Money (178)  |  More (2558)  |  Paper (192)  |  Pencil (20)  |  Quote (46)  |  Research (753)  |  Scientist (881)  |  Truly (118)

The difference between the amoeba and Einstein is that, although both make use of the method of trial and error elimination, the amoeba dislikes erring while Einstein is intrigued by it.
In Objective Knowledge: An Evolutionary Approach (1972), 70. As cited in Alexander Naraniecki, Returning to Karl Popper: A Reassessment of his Politics and Philosophy (2014), 89, footnote.
Science quotes on:  |  Amoeba (21)  |  Both (496)  |  Difference (355)  |  Einstein (101)  |  Albert Einstein (624)  |  Elimination (26)  |  Error (339)  |  Intrigued (4)  |  Method (531)  |  Trial (59)  |  Trial And Error (5)  |  Use (771)

The evidence from both approaches, statistical and experimental, does not appear sufficiently significant to me to warrant forsaking the pleasure of smoking. As a matter of fact, if the investigations had been pointed toward some material that I thoroughly dislike, such as parsnips, I still would not feel that evidence of the type presented constituted a reasonable excuse for eliminating the things from my diet. I will still continue to smoke, and if the tobacco companies cease manufacturing their product, I will revert to sweet fern and grape leaves.
Introduction in Eric Northrup, Science Looks at Smoking (1957), 34.
Science quotes on:  |  Approach (112)  |  Both (496)  |  Cease (81)  |  Continuation (20)  |  Continue (179)  |  Diet (56)  |  Elimination (26)  |  Evidence (267)  |  Excuse (27)  |  Experiment (736)  |  Experimental (193)  |  Fact (1257)  |  Feel (371)  |  Fern (10)  |  Grape (4)  |  Investigation (250)  |  Leaf (73)  |  Manufacturer (10)  |  Manufacturing (29)  |  Material (366)  |  Matter (821)  |  Pleasure (191)  |  Point (584)  |  Present (630)  |  Product (166)  |  Revert (4)  |  Significance (114)  |  Significant (78)  |  Smoke (32)  |  Smoking (27)  |  Statistics (170)  |  Still (614)  |  Sufficient (133)  |  Sweet (40)  |  Thing (1914)  |  Thoroughly (67)  |  Tobacco (19)  |  Type (171)  |  Warrant (8)  |  Will (2350)

The future mathematician ... should solve problems, choose the problems which are in his line, meditate upon their solution, and invent new problems. By this means, and by all other means, he should endeavor to make his first important discovery: he should discover his likes and dislikes, his taste, his own line.
How to Solve it: A New Aspect of Mathematical Method (1957), 206.
Science quotes on:  |  Career (86)  |  Choose (116)  |  Discover (571)  |  Discovery (837)  |  Endeavor (74)  |  Endeavour (63)  |  First (1302)  |  Future (467)  |  Like (23)  |  Mathematician (407)  |  Mean (810)  |  Means (587)  |  New (1273)  |  Other (2233)  |  Problem (731)  |  Solution (282)  |  Solve (145)  |  Taste (93)

The gods love what is mysterious, and dislike what is evident.
4.2.2. Quoted in Kim Lim (ed.), 1,001 Pearls of Spiritual Wisdom: Words to Enrich, Inspire, and Guide Your Life (2014), 119
Science quotes on:  |  Evident (92)  |  God (776)  |  Love (328)  |  Mysterious (83)

The intellectual life of the whole of western society is increasingly being split into two polar groups… Literary intellectuals at one pole—at the other scientists, and as the most representative, the physical scientists. Between the two a gulf of mutual incomprehension—sometimes (particularly among the young) hostility and dislike, but most of all lack of understanding.
The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution: The Rede Lecture (1959), 4.
Science quotes on:  |  Being (1276)  |  Gulf (18)  |  Hostility (16)  |  Incomprehension (3)  |  Intellectual (258)  |  Lack (127)  |  Life (1870)  |  Literary (15)  |  Most (1728)  |  Mutual (54)  |  Other (2233)  |  Physical (518)  |  Physical Science (104)  |  Polar (13)  |  Pole (49)  |  Representative (14)  |  Scientist (881)  |  Society (350)  |  Two (936)  |  Understanding (527)  |  Western (45)  |  Whole (756)  |  Young (253)

The long-range trend toward federal regulation, which found its beginnings in the Interstate Commerce Act of 1887 and the Sherman Act of 1890, which was quickened by a large number of measures in the Progressive era, and which has found its consummation in our time, was thus at first the response of a predominantly individualistic public to the uncontrolled and starkly original collectivism of big business. In America the growth of the national state and its regulative power has never been accepted with complacency by any large part of the middle-class public, which has not relaxed its suspicion of authority, and which even now gives repeated evidence of its intense dislike of statism. In our time this growth has been possible only under the stress of great national emergencies, domestic or military, and even then only in the face of continuous resistance from a substantial part of the public. In the Progressive era it was possible only because of widespread and urgent fear of business consolidation and private business authority. Since it has become common in recent years for ideologists of the extreme right to portray the growth of statism as the result of a sinister conspiracy of collectivists inspired by foreign ideologies, it is perhaps worth emphasizing that the first important steps toward the modern organization of society were taken by arch-individualists—the tycoons of the Gilded Age—and that the primitive beginning of modern statism was largely the work of men who were trying to save what they could of the eminently native Yankee values of individualism and enterprise.
…...
Science quotes on:  |  Accept (198)  |  Act (278)  |  Age (509)  |  America (143)  |  Arch (12)  |  Authority (99)  |  Become (821)  |  Begin (275)  |  Beginning (312)  |  Beginnings (5)  |  Big Business (2)  |  Business (156)  |  Class (168)  |  Collectivism (2)  |  Commerce (23)  |  Common (447)  |  Consolidation (4)  |  Conspiracy (6)  |  Consummation (7)  |  Continuous (83)  |  Domestic (27)  |  Emergency (10)  |  Eminent (20)  |  Emphasize (25)  |  Enterprise (56)  |  Era (51)  |  Evidence (267)  |  Extreme (78)  |  Face (214)  |  Fear (212)  |  Federal (6)  |  Find (1014)  |  First (1302)  |  Foreign (45)  |  Gilded (3)  |  Give (208)  |  Great (1610)  |  Growth (200)  |  Ideology (15)  |  Important (229)  |  Individualism (3)  |  Inspire (58)  |  Intense (22)  |  Large (398)  |  Largely (14)  |  Long (778)  |  Long-Range (3)  |  Measure (241)  |  Middle-Class (2)  |  Military (45)  |  Modern (402)  |  National (29)  |  Native (41)  |  Never (1089)  |  Number (710)  |  Organization (120)  |  Original (61)  |  Part (235)  |  Portray (6)  |  Possible (560)  |  Power (771)  |  Predominantly (4)  |  Primitive (79)  |  Private (29)  |  Progressive (21)  |  Public (100)  |  Quicken (7)  |  Range (104)  |  Recent (78)  |  Regulation (25)  |  Relax (3)  |  Repeat (44)  |  Resistance (41)  |  Response (56)  |  Result (700)  |  Right (473)  |  Save (126)  |  Sinister (8)  |  Society (350)  |  State (505)  |  Step (234)  |  Stress (22)  |  Substantial (24)  |  Suspicion (36)  |  Time (1911)  |  Toward (45)  |  Trend (23)  |  Try (296)  |  Trying (144)  |  Uncontrolled (2)  |  Urgent (15)  |  Value (393)  |  Widespread (23)  |  Work (1402)  |  Worth (172)  |  Yankee (2)  |  Year (963)

Those [scientists] who dislike entertaining contradictory thoughts are unlikely to enrich their science with new ideas.
Attributed. (If you know a primary source, please contact webmaster.)
Science quotes on:  |  Contradiction (69)  |  Enrich (27)  |  Enrichment (7)  |  Entertaining (9)  |  Idea (881)  |  New (1273)  |  Scientist (881)  |  Thought (995)  |  Unlikely (15)

We are many small puppets moved by fate and fortune through strings unseen by us; therefore, if it is so as I think, one has to prepare oneself with a good heart and indifference to accept things coming towards us, because they cannot be avoided, and to oppose them requires a violence that tears our souls too deeply, and it seems that both fortune and men are always busy in affairs for our dislike because the former is blind and the latter only think of their interest.
'Letter to Bellini' (17 Oct 1689), in H. B. Adelmann (ed.), The Correspondence of Marcello Malpighi (1975), Vol. 4, 1534.
Science quotes on:  |  Accept (198)  |  Affair (29)  |  Avoid (123)  |  Avoidance (11)  |  Blind (98)  |  Blindness (11)  |  Both (496)  |  Coming (114)  |  Fate (76)  |  Former (138)  |  Fortune (50)  |  Good (906)  |  Heart (243)  |  Indifference (16)  |  Interest (416)  |  Oneself (33)  |  Opposition (49)  |  Preparation (60)  |  Puppet (4)  |  Require (229)  |  Small (489)  |  Soul (235)  |  String (22)  |  Tear (48)  |  Thing (1914)  |  Think (1122)  |  Thinking (425)  |  Through (846)  |  Unseen (23)  |  Violence (37)


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.