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 people without children would face a hopeless future; a country without trees is almost as helpless.”
more quiz questions >>
Home > Category Index for Science Quotations > Category Index D > Category: Drop

Drop Quotes (77 quotes)

…what would be observed (if not with one’s actual eyes at least with those of the mind) if an eagle, carried by the force of the wind, were to drop a rock from its talons?
From 'The Second Day', Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems, Ptolemaic and Copernican (1953), 143, as translated by Stillman Drake.
Science quotes on:  |  Actual (118)  |  Carry (130)  |  Eagle (20)  |  Eye (440)  |  Force (497)  |  Least (75)  |  Mind (1377)  |  Observe (179)  |  Observed (149)  |  Rock (176)  |  Talon (2)  |  Wind (141)

[L]et us not overlook the further great fact, that not only does science underlie sculpture, painting, music, poetry, but that science is itself poetic. The current opinion that science and poetry are opposed is a delusion. … On the contrary science opens up realms of poetry where to the unscientific all is a blank. Those engaged in scientific researches constantly show us that they realize not less vividly, but more vividly, than others, the poetry of their subjects. Whoever will dip into Hugh Miller’s works on geology, or read Mr. Lewes's “Seaside Studies,” will perceive that science excites poetry rather than extinguishes it. And whoever will contemplate the life of Goethe will see that the poet and the man of science can co-exist in equal activity. Is it not, indeed, an absurd and almost a sacrilegious belief that the more a man studies Nature the less he reveres it? Think you that a drop of water, which to the vulgar eye is but a drop of water, loses anything in the eye of the physicist who knows that its elements are held together by a force which, if suddenly liberated, would produce a flash of lightning? Think you that what is carelessly looked upon by the uninitiated as a mere snow-flake, does not suggest higher associations to one who has seen through a microscope the wondrously varied and elegant forms of snow-crystals? Think you that the rounded rock marked with parallel scratches calls up as much poetry in an ignorant mind as in the mind of a geologist, who knows that over this rock a glacier slid a million years ago? The truth is, that those who have never entered upon scientific pursuits know not a tithe of the poetry by which they are surrounded. Whoever has not in youth collected plants and insects, knows not half the halo of interest which lanes and hedge-rows can assume. Whoever has not sought for fossils, has little idea of the poetical associations that surround the places where imbedded treasures were found. Whoever at the seaside has not had a microscope and aquarium, has yet to learn what the highest pleasures of the seaside are. Sad, indeed, is it to see how men occupy themselves with trivialities, and are indifferent to the grandest phenomena—care not to understand the architecture of the Heavens, but are deeply interested in some contemptible controversy about the intrigues of Mary Queen of Scots!—are learnedly critical over a Greek ode, and pass by without a glance that grand epic written by the finger of God upon the strata of the Earth!
In Education: Intellectual, Moral, and Physical (1889), 82-83.
Science quotes on:  |  Absurd (60)  |  Absurdity (34)  |  Activity (218)  |  Aquarium (2)  |  Architecture (50)  |  Association (49)  |  Belief (615)  |  Blank (14)  |  Call (781)  |  Care (203)  |  Collection (68)  |  Contemplation (75)  |  Contrary (143)  |  Controversy (30)  |  Critical (73)  |  Crystal (71)  |  Current (122)  |  Delusion (26)  |  Earth (1076)  |  Elegant (37)  |  Element (322)  |  Enter (145)  |  Epic (12)  |  Excitation (9)  |  Exist (458)  |  Eye (440)  |  Fact (1257)  |  Flash (49)  |  Force (497)  |  Form (976)  |  Fossil (143)  |  Geologist (82)  |  Geology (240)  |  Glacier (17)  |  Glance (36)  |  God (776)  |  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (150)  |  Grandest (10)  |  Great (1610)  |  Greek (109)  |  Halo (7)  |  Heaven (266)  |  Heavens (125)  |  Hedgerow (2)  |  Idea (881)  |  Ignorant (91)  |  Indeed (323)  |  Insect (89)  |  Interest (416)  |  Know (1538)  |  Learn (672)  |  George Henry Lewes (22)  |  Life (1870)  |  Lightning (49)  |  Little (717)  |  Look (584)  |  Lose (165)  |  Man (2252)  |  Marked (55)  |  Microscope (85)  |  Hugh Miller (18)  |  Mind (1377)  |  More (2558)  |  Music (133)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Never (1089)  |  Ode (3)  |  Open (277)  |  Opinion (291)  |  Opposition (49)  |  Other (2233)  |  Overlook (33)  |  Painting (46)  |  Parallel (46)  |  Pass (241)  |  Physicist (270)  |  Plant (320)  |  Pleasure (191)  |  Poetry (150)  |  Pursuit (128)  |  Read (308)  |  Realize (157)  |  Realm (87)  |  Research (753)  |  Rock (176)  |  Science And Art (195)  |  Science And Poetry (17)  |  Scientific (955)  |  Sculpture (12)  |  Seaside (2)  |  See (1094)  |  Show (353)  |  Snow (39)  |  Snowflake (15)  |  Strata (37)  |  Subject (543)  |  Suddenly (91)  |  Themselves (433)  |  Think (1122)  |  Through (846)  |  Together (392)  |  Treasure (59)  |  Truth (1109)  |  Underlie (19)  |  Understand (648)  |  Unscientific (13)  |  Vividly (11)  |  Vulgar (33)  |  Water (503)  |  Whoever (42)  |  Work (1402)  |  Year (963)  |  Youth (109)

[Technical courage means the] physician-scientist must be brave enough to adopt new methods. It is far too easy to learn one technique and then to repeat the same experiment over and over. In this fashion one can write many papers, receive large research grants, and remain solidly rooted in the middle of a scientific field. But the true innovator has the confidence to drop one set of experimental crutches and leap to another when he or she must move forward.
In Banquet Speech, 'The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1985', on website nobelprize.org. Published in Les Prix Nobel, 1985: Nobel Prizes, Presentations, Biographies and Lectures (1986).
Science quotes on:  |  Adopt (22)  |  Brave (16)  |  Confidence (75)  |  Courage (82)  |  Easy (213)  |  Experiment (736)  |  Experimental (193)  |  Fashion (34)  |  Forward (104)  |  Grant (76)  |  Innovator (3)  |  Large (398)  |  Leap (57)  |  Learn (672)  |  Method (531)  |  Move (223)  |  New (1273)  |  Paper (192)  |  Physician (284)  |  Receive (117)  |  Remain (355)  |  Repeat (44)  |  Research (753)  |  Same (166)  |  Scientist (881)  |  Set (400)  |  Technical (53)  |  Technique (84)  |  True (239)  |  Write (250)

L’homme n’est qu’un roseau, le plus faible de la nature, mais c’est un roseau pensant. Il ne faut pas que l’univers entier s’arme pour l’écraser; une vapeur, une goutte d’eau suffit pour le tuer. Mais quand l’univers l’écraserait, l’homme serait encore plus noble que ce qui le tue, parce qu’il sait qu’il meurt et l’avantage que l’univers a sur lui; l’univers n'en sait rien.
Man is a reed, the feeblest thing in nature. But a reed that can think. The whole universe need not fly to arms to kill him ; for a little heat or a drop of water can slay a man. But, even then, man would be nobler than his destroyer, for he would know he died, while the whole universe would know nothing of its victory.
Pensées. As given and translated in Hugh Percy Jones (ed.), Dictionary of Foreign Phrases and Classical Quotations (1908), 292.
Science quotes on:  |  Arm (82)  |  Arms (37)  |  Consciousness (132)  |  Death (406)  |  Feeble (28)  |  Fly (153)  |  Heat (180)  |  Kill (100)  |  Know (1538)  |  Little (717)  |  Man (2252)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Noble (93)  |  Nothing (1000)  |  Plus (43)  |  Reed (8)  |  Thing (1914)  |  Think (1122)  |  Universe (900)  |  Vapor (12)  |  Victory (40)  |  Water (503)  |  Whole (756)

Qu'une goutee de vin tombe dans un verre d'eau; quelle que soit la loi du movement interne du liquide, nous verrons bientôt se colorer d'une teinte rose uniforme et à partir de ce moment on aura beau agiter le vase, le vin et l'eau ne partaîtront plus pouvoir se séparer. Tout cela, Maxwell et Boltzmann l'ont expliqué, mais celui qui l'a vu plus nettement, dans un livre trop peu lu parce qu'il est difficile à lire, c'est Gibbs dans ses principes de la Mécanique Statistique.
Let a drop of wine fall into a glass of water; whatever be the law that governs the internal movement of the liquid, we will soon see it tint itself uniformly pink and from th at moment on, however we may agitate the vessel, it appears that the wine and water can separate no more. All this, Maxwell and Boltzmann have explained, but the one who saw it in the cleanest way, in a book that is too little read because it is difficult to read, is Gibbs, in his Principles of Statistical Mechanics.
La valeur de la science. In Anton Bovier, Statistical Mechanics of Disordered Systems (2006), 3.
Science quotes on:  |  Ludwig Eduard Boltzmann (25)  |  Book (413)  |  Difficult (263)  |  Explain (334)  |  Fall (243)  |  Gibbs_Josiah (2)  |  Glass (94)  |  Govern (66)  |  Internal (69)  |  Law (913)  |  Liquid (50)  |  Little (717)  |  Maxwell (42)  |  James Clerk Maxwell (91)  |  Mechanic (120)  |  Mechanics (137)  |  Moment (260)  |  More (2558)  |  Movement (162)  |  Plus (43)  |  Principle (530)  |  Read (308)  |  Rose (36)  |  Saw (160)  |  See (1094)  |  Separate (151)  |  Soon (187)  |  Statistical Mechanics (7)  |  Vessel (63)  |  Water (503)  |  Way (1214)  |  Whatever (234)  |  Will (2350)  |  Wine (39)

A drop from the nose of Fleming, who had a cold, fell onto an agar plate where large yellow colonies of a contaminant had grown, and lysosyme was discovered. He made this important discovery because when he saw that the colonies of the contaminant were fading, his mind went straight to the right cause of the phenomenon he was observing—that the drop from his nose contained a lytic substance. And also immediately, he thought that this substance might be present in many secretions and tissues of the body. And he found this was so—the substance was in tears, saliva, leucocytes, skin, fingernails, mother's milk—thus very widely distributed in amounts and also in plants.
Personal recollections of Alexander Fleming by Lady Amelia Fleming. Quoted in Molecular Cloning (2001), Vol. 1, 153.
Science quotes on:  |  Amount (153)  |  Body (557)  |  Cause (561)  |  Cold (115)  |  Discover (571)  |  Discovery (837)  |  Immediately (115)  |  Insight (107)  |  Large (398)  |  Milk (23)  |  Mind (1377)  |  Mother (116)  |  Phenomenon (334)  |  Plant (320)  |  Present (630)  |  Research (753)  |  Right (473)  |  Saliva (4)  |  Saw (160)  |  Skin (48)  |  Straight (75)  |  Substance (253)  |  Tear (48)  |  Thought (995)  |  Tissue (51)  |  Yellow (31)

A drop of old tuberculin, which is an extract of tubercle bacilli, is put on the skin and then a small superficial scarification is made by turning, with some pressure, a vaccination lancet on the surface of the skin. The next day only those individuals show an inflammatory reaction at the point of vaccination who have already been infected with tuberculosis, whereas the healthy individuals show no reaction at all. Every time we find a positive reaction, we can say with certainty that the child is tuberculous.
'The Relation of Tuberculosis to Infant Mortality', read at the third mid-year meeting of the American Academy of Medicine, New Haven, Conn, (4 Nov 1909). In Bulletin of the American Academy of Medicine (1910), 11, 75.
Science quotes on:  |  Already (226)  |  Bacillus (9)  |  Certainty (180)  |  Child (333)  |  Extract (40)  |  Find (1014)  |  Healthy (70)  |  Individual (420)  |  Infection (27)  |  Inflammation (7)  |  Next (238)  |  Old (499)  |  Point (584)  |  Positive (98)  |  Pressure (69)  |  Reaction (106)  |  Say (989)  |  Show (353)  |  Skin (48)  |  Small (489)  |  Superficial (12)  |  Surface (223)  |  Test (221)  |  Time (1911)  |  Tuberculosis (9)  |  Vaccination (7)

A few drops of science will often disinfect an entire barrel full of ignorance and prejudice.
In The Story of America (1921, 1934)
Science quotes on:  |  Barrel (5)  |  Disinfect (2)  |  Entire (50)  |  Full (68)  |  Ignorance (254)  |  Prejudice (96)  |  Will (2350)

A strict materialist believes that everything depends on the motion of matter. He knows the form of the laws of motion though he does not know all their consequences when applied to systems of unknown complexity.
Now one thing in which the materialist (fortified with dynamical knowledge) believes is that if every motion great & small were accurately reversed, and the world left to itself again, everything would happen backwards the fresh water would collect out of the sea and run up the rivers and finally fly up to the clouds in drops which would extract heat from the air and evaporate and afterwards in condensing would shoot out rays of light to the sun and so on. Of course all living things would regrede from the grave to the cradle and we should have a memory of the future but not of the past.
The reason why we do not expect anything of this kind to take place at any time is our experience of irreversible processes, all of one kind, and this leads to the doctrine of a beginning & an end instead of cyclical progression for ever.
Letter to Mark Pattison (7 Apr 1868). In P. M. Hannan (ed.), The Scientific Letters and Papers of James Clerk Maxwell (1995), Vol. 2, 1862-1873, 360-1.
Science quotes on:  |  Air (366)  |  Applied (176)  |  Backwards (18)  |  Beginning (312)  |  Cloud (111)  |  Complexity (121)  |  Consequence (220)  |  Course (413)  |  Cradle (19)  |  Cycle (42)  |  Depend (238)  |  Do (1905)  |  Dynamical (15)  |  End (603)  |  Everything (489)  |  Expect (203)  |  Experience (494)  |  Extract (40)  |  Fly (153)  |  Form (976)  |  Fresh (69)  |  Future (467)  |  Grave (52)  |  Great (1610)  |  Happen (282)  |  Heat (180)  |  Irreversible (12)  |  Kind (564)  |  Know (1538)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Law (913)  |  Laws Of Motion (10)  |  Lead (391)  |  Light (635)  |  Living (492)  |  Materialist (4)  |  Matter (821)  |  Memory (144)  |  Motion (320)  |  Past (355)  |  Process (439)  |  Progression (23)  |  Ray (115)  |  Reason (766)  |  Reverse (33)  |  River (140)  |  Run (158)  |  Sea (326)  |  Small (489)  |  Sun (407)  |  System (545)  |  Thing (1914)  |  Time (1911)  |  Unknown (195)  |  Water (503)  |  Why (491)  |  World (1850)

As I show you this liquid, I too could tell you, 'I took my drop of water from the immensity of creation, and I took it filled with that fecund jelly, that is, to use the language of science, full of the elements needed for the development of lower creatures. And then I waited, and I observed, and I asked questions of it, and I asked it to repeat the original act of creation for me; what a sight it would be! But it is silent! It has been silent for several years, ever since I began these experiments. Yes! And it is because I have kept away from it, and am keeping away from it to this moment, the only thing that it has not been given to man to produce, I have kept away from it the germs that are floating in the air, I have kept away from it life, for life is the germ, and the germ is life.'
Quoted in Patrice Debré, Louis Pasteur, trans. Elborg Forster (1994), 169.
Science quotes on:  |  Act (278)  |  Air (366)  |  Ask (420)  |  Creation (350)  |  Creature (242)  |  Development (441)  |  Element (322)  |  Experiment (736)  |  Fecund (2)  |  Float (31)  |  Germ (54)  |  Gift (105)  |  Immensity (30)  |  Jelly (6)  |  Language (308)  |  Life (1870)  |  Liquid (50)  |  Low (86)  |  Man (2252)  |  Moment (260)  |  Observation (593)  |  Observed (149)  |  Origin Of Life (37)  |  Production (190)  |  Question (649)  |  Repetition (29)  |  Show (353)  |  Sight (135)  |  Tell (344)  |  Thing (1914)  |  Use (771)  |  Wait (66)  |  Water (503)  |  Year (963)

Astronomy affords the most extensive example of the connection of physical sciences. In it are combined the sciences of number and quantity, or rest and motion. In it we perceive the operation of a force which is mixed up with everything that exists in the heavens or on earth; which pervades every atom, rules the motion of animate and inanimate beings, and is a sensible in the descent of the rain-drop as in the falls of Niagara; in the weight of the air, as in the periods of the moon.
On the Connexion of the Physical Sciences (1858), 1.
Science quotes on:  |  Air (366)  |  Animate (8)  |  Astronomy (251)  |  Atom (381)  |  Being (1276)  |  Combination (150)  |  Connection (171)  |  Descent (30)  |  Earth (1076)  |  Everything (489)  |  Example (98)  |  Exist (458)  |  Existence (481)  |  Extensive (34)  |  Fall (243)  |  Force (497)  |  Heaven (266)  |  Heavens (125)  |  Inanimate (18)  |  Mix (24)  |  Moon (252)  |  Most (1728)  |  Motion (320)  |  Niagara (8)  |  Number (710)  |  Operation (221)  |  Perception (97)  |  Period (200)  |  Pervade (10)  |  Physical (518)  |  Physical Science (104)  |  Quantity (136)  |  Rain (70)  |  Raindrop (4)  |  Rest (287)  |  Rule (307)  |  Sensible (28)  |  Weight (140)

Be not afeard.
The isle is full of noises,
Sounds, and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not.
Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments
Will hum about mine ears; and sometime voices
That if I then had waked after long sleep
Will make me sleep again; and then, in dreaming
The clouds methought would open and show riches
Ready to drop upon me, that, when I waked,
I cried to dream again.
The Tempest (1611), III, ii.
Science quotes on:  |  Air (366)  |  Cloud (111)  |  Delight (111)  |  Dream (222)  |  Ear (69)  |  Humming (5)  |  Hurt (14)  |  Instrument (158)  |  Isle (6)  |  Long (778)  |  Mine (78)  |  Noise (40)  |  Open (277)  |  Riches (14)  |  Show (353)  |  Sleep (81)  |  Sound (187)  |  Sweet (40)  |  Thought (995)  |  Thousand (340)  |  Voice (54)  |  Waking (17)  |  Will (2350)

Beyond these are other suns, giving light and life to systems, not a thousand, or two thousand merely, but multiplied without end, and ranged all around us, at immense distances from each other, attended by ten thousand times ten thousand worlds, all in rapid motion; yet calm, regular and harmonious—all space seems to be illuminated, and every particle of light a world. ... all this vast assemblages of suns and worlds may bear no greater proportion to what lies beyond the utmost boundaries of human vision, than a drop of water to the ocean.
In The Geography of the Heavens and Class-Book of Astronomy (1874), 148 That knowledge is not happiness.
Science quotes on:  |  Assemblage (17)  |  Attend (67)  |  Bear (162)  |  Beyond (316)  |  Calm (32)  |  Distance (171)  |  End (603)  |  Greater (288)  |  Harmonious (18)  |  Human (1512)  |  Immense (89)  |  Lie (370)  |  Life (1870)  |  Light (635)  |  Merely (315)  |  Motion (320)  |  Ocean (216)  |  Other (2233)  |  Particle (200)  |  Proportion (140)  |  Regular (48)  |  Space (523)  |  Sun (407)  |  System (545)  |  Thousand (340)  |  Time (1911)  |  Two (936)  |  Vast (188)  |  Vision (127)  |  Water (503)  |  World (1850)

Blood mixture and the result drop in the racial level is the sole cause of the dying out of old cultures; for men do not perish as a result of lost wars, but by the loss of that force of resistance which is continued only in pure blood. All who are not of good race in this world are chaff.
Mein Kampf (1925-26), American Edition (1943), 296. In William Lawrence Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich (1990), 88.
Science quotes on:  |  Blood (144)  |  Cause (561)  |  Culture (157)  |  Do (1905)  |  Force (497)  |  Good (906)  |  Heredity (62)  |  Loss (117)  |  Mixture (44)  |  Old (499)  |  Perish (56)  |  Pure (299)  |  Race (278)  |  Resistance (41)  |  Result (700)  |  Sole (50)  |  War (233)  |  World (1850)

Bradley is one of the few basketball players who have ever been appreciatively cheered by a disinterested away-from-home crowd while warming up. This curious event occurred last March, just before Princeton eliminated the Virginia Military Institute, the year’s Southern Conference champion, from the NCAA championships. The game was played in Philadelphia and was the last of a tripleheader. The people there were worn out, because most of them were emotionally committed to either Villanova or Temple-two local teams that had just been involved in enervating battles with Providence and Connecticut, respectively, scrambling for a chance at the rest of the country. A group of Princeton players shooting basketballs miscellaneously in preparation for still another game hardly promised to be a high point of the evening, but Bradley, whose routine in the warmup time is a gradual crescendo of activity, is more interesting to watch before a game than most players are in play. In Philadelphia that night, what he did was, for him, anything but unusual. As he does before all games, he began by shooting set shots close to the basket, gradually moving back until he was shooting long sets from 20 feet out, and nearly all of them dropped into the net with an almost mechanical rhythm of accuracy. Then he began a series of expandingly difficult jump shots, and one jumper after another went cleanly through the basket with so few exceptions that the crowd began to murmur. Then he started to perform whirling reverse moves before another cadence of almost steadily accurate jump shots, and the murmur increased. Then he began to sweep hook shots into the air. He moved in a semicircle around the court. First with his right hand, then with his left, he tried seven of these long, graceful shots-the most difficult ones in the orthodoxy of basketball-and ambidextrously made them all. The game had not even begun, but the presumably unimpressible Philadelphians were applauding like an audience at an opera.
A Sense of Where You Are: Bill Bradley at Princeton
Science quotes on:  |  Accuracy (81)  |  Accurate (88)  |  Activity (218)  |  Air (366)  |  Appreciatively (2)  |  Audience (28)  |  Back (395)  |  Basket (8)  |  Basketball (4)  |  Battle (36)  |  Begin (275)  |  Bradley (2)  |  Cadence (2)  |  Champion (6)  |  Championship (2)  |  Chance (244)  |  Cheer (7)  |  Close (77)  |  Commit (43)  |  Conference (18)  |  Country (269)  |  Court (35)  |  Crescendo (3)  |  Crowd (25)  |  Curious (95)  |  Difficult (263)  |  Disinterest (8)  |  Dropped (17)  |  Eliminate (25)  |  Emotionally (3)  |  Event (222)  |  Exception (74)  |  First (1302)  |  Foot (65)  |  Game (104)  |  Graceful (3)  |  Gradual (30)  |  Gradually (102)  |  Group (83)  |  Hand (149)  |  Hardly (19)  |  High (370)  |  Home (184)  |  Hook (7)  |  Increase (225)  |  Institute (8)  |  Interest (416)  |  Interesting (153)  |  Involve (93)  |  Involved (90)  |  Jump (31)  |  Last (425)  |  Leave (138)  |  Local (25)  |  Long (778)  |  March (48)  |  Mechanical (145)  |  Military (45)  |  More (2558)  |  Most (1728)  |  Move (223)  |  Murmur (4)  |  Nearly (137)  |  Net (12)  |  Night (133)  |  Occur (151)  |  Opera (3)  |  Orthodoxy (11)  |  People (1031)  |  Perform (123)  |  Philadelphia (3)  |  Play (116)  |  Player (9)  |  Point (584)  |  Preparation (60)  |  Presumably (3)  |  Princeton (4)  |  Promise (72)  |  Providence (19)  |  Respectively (13)  |  Rest (287)  |  Reverse (33)  |  Rhythm (21)  |  Right (473)  |  Routine (26)  |  Series (153)  |  Set (400)  |  Shoot (21)  |  Southern (3)  |  Start (237)  |  Steadily (7)  |  Still (614)  |  Sweep (22)  |  Team (17)  |  Temple (45)  |  Through (846)  |  Time (1911)  |  Try (296)  |  Two (936)  |  Unusual (37)  |  Virginia (2)  |  Warm (74)  |  Warming (24)  |  Watch (118)  |  Whirl (10)  |  Worn Out (2)  |  Year (963)

By research in pure science I mean research made without any idea of application to industrial matters but solely with the view of extending our knowledge of the Laws of Nature. I will give just one example of the ‘utility’ of this kind of research, one that has been brought into great prominence by the War—I mean the use of X-rays in surgery. Now, not to speak of what is beyond money value, the saving of pain, or, it may be, the life of the wounded, and of bitter grief to those who loved them, the benefit which the state has derived from the restoration of so many to life and limb, able to render services which would otherwise have been lost, is almost incalculable. Now, how was this method discovered? It was not the result of a research in applied science starting to find an improved method of locating bullet wounds. This might have led to improved probes, but we cannot imagine it leading to the discovery of X-rays. No, this method is due to an investigation in pure science, made with the object of discovering what is the nature of Electricity. The experiments which led to this discovery seemed to be as remote from ‘humanistic interest’ —to use a much misappropriated word—as anything that could well be imagined. The apparatus consisted of glass vessels from which the last drops of air had been sucked, and which emitted a weird greenish light when stimulated by formidable looking instruments called induction coils. Near by, perhaps, were great coils of wire and iron built up into electro-magnets. I know well the impression it made on the average spectator, for I have been occupied in experiments of this kind nearly all my life, notwithstanding the advice, given in perfect good faith, by non-scientific visitors to the laboratory, to put that aside and spend my time on something useful.
In Speech made on behalf of a delegation from the Conjoint Board of Scientific Studies in 1916 to Lord Crewe, then Lord President of the Council. In George Paget Thomson, J. J. Thomson and the Cavendish Laboratory in His Day (1965), 167-8.
Science quotes on:  |  Advice (57)  |  Air (366)  |  Apparatus (70)  |  Application (257)  |  Applied (176)  |  Applied Science (36)  |  Average (89)  |  Benefit (123)  |  Beyond (316)  |  Bitter (30)  |  Call (781)  |  Consist (223)  |  Discover (571)  |  Discovery (837)  |  Due (143)  |  Electricity (168)  |  Experiment (736)  |  Faith (209)  |  Find (1014)  |  Glass (94)  |  Good (906)  |  Great (1610)  |  Grief (20)  |  Idea (881)  |  Imagine (176)  |  Impression (118)  |  Induction (81)  |  Instrument (158)  |  Interest (416)  |  Investigation (250)  |  Iron (99)  |  Kind (564)  |  Know (1538)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Laboratory (214)  |  Last (425)  |  Law (913)  |  Life (1870)  |  Light (635)  |  Looking (191)  |  Magnet (22)  |  Matter (821)  |  Mean (810)  |  Method (531)  |  Money (178)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Nearly (137)  |  Non-Scientific (7)  |  Object (438)  |  Occupied (45)  |  Pain (144)  |  Perfect (223)  |  Probe (12)  |  Prominence (5)  |  Pure (299)  |  Pure Science (30)  |  Ray (115)  |  Remote (86)  |  Render (96)  |  Research (753)  |  Result (700)  |  Scientific (955)  |  Service (110)  |  Something (718)  |  Speak (240)  |  Spend (97)  |  State (505)  |  Suck (8)  |  Surgery (54)  |  Time (1911)  |  Use (771)  |  Useful (260)  |  Utility (52)  |  Value (393)  |  Vessel (63)  |  View (496)  |  War (233)  |  Will (2350)  |  Wire (36)  |  Word (650)  |  Wound (26)  |  X-ray (43)

By the act of generation nothing more is done than to ferment the sperm of ye female by the sperm of ye male that it may thereby become fit nourishment for ye Embryo: ffor ye nourishment of all animals is prepared by ferment & the ferment is taken from animals of the same kind, & makes the nourishment subtile & spiritual. In adult animals the nourishmt is fermented by the choler and pancreatic juice both wch come from the blood. The Embryo not being able to ferment its own nourishment wch comes from the mothers blood has it fermented by the sperm wch comes from ye fathers blood, & by this nourishment it swells, drops off from ye Ovarium & begins to grow with a life distinct from that of ye mother.
From 'Quæst 25' in Draft version of The Queries manuscript, Add. MS. 3970, folio 235 held by the University of Cambridge Library. As quoted and cited in R.W. Home, 'Force, Electricity, and Living Matter', from Margaret J. Osler and Paul Lawrence Farber (eds.), Religion, Science, and Worldview: Essays in Honor of Richard S. Westfall (2002), 113.
Science quotes on:  |  Act (278)  |  Animal (651)  |  Become (821)  |  Begin (275)  |  Being (1276)  |  Blood (144)  |  Both (496)  |  Distinct (98)  |  Embryo (30)  |  Father (113)  |  Female (50)  |  Ferment (6)  |  Fit (139)  |  Generation (256)  |  Grow (247)  |  Juice (7)  |  Kind (564)  |  Life (1870)  |  Male (26)  |  More (2558)  |  Mother (116)  |  Nothing (1000)  |  Nourishment (26)  |  Pancreas (4)  |  Reproduction (74)  |  Sperm (7)  |  Spiritual (94)  |  Swell (4)

Climb the mountains and get their good tidings. Nature’s peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees. The winds will blow their own freshness into you, and the storms their energy, while cares will drop off like autumn leaves.
John Muir
…...
Science quotes on:  |  Autumn (11)  |  Blow (45)  |  Care (203)  |  Climb (39)  |  Energy (373)  |  Flow (89)  |  Freshness (8)  |  Good (906)  |  Leave (138)  |  Mountain (202)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Peace (116)  |  Storm (56)  |  Storms (18)  |  Sunshine (12)  |  Tiding (2)  |  Tree (269)  |  Will (2350)  |  Wind (141)

Direct observation of the testimony of the earth … is a matter of the laboratory, of the field naturalist, of indefatigable digging among the ancient archives of the earth’s history. If Mr. Bryan, with an open heart and mind, would drop all his books and all the disputations among the doctors and study first hand the simple archives of Nature, all his doubts would disappear; he would not lose his religion; he would become an evolutionist.
'Evolution and Religion', New York Times (5 Mar 1922), 91. Written in response to an article a few days earlier in which William Jennings Bryan challenged the theory of evolution as lacking proof.
Science quotes on:  |  Ancient (198)  |  Archive (5)  |  Become (821)  |  Book (413)  |  William Jennings Bryan (20)  |  Digging (11)  |  Direct (228)  |  Disappear (84)  |  Doctor (191)  |  Doubt (314)  |  Earth (1076)  |  Evolution (635)  |  Evolutionist (8)  |  Field (378)  |  Field Naturalist (3)  |  First (1302)  |  First Hand (2)  |  Heart (243)  |  History (716)  |  Laboratory (214)  |  Lose (165)  |  Matter (821)  |  Mind (1377)  |  Naturalist (79)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Observation (593)  |  Open (277)  |  Paleontology (32)  |  Proof (304)  |  Religion (369)  |  Research (753)  |  Simple (426)  |  Study (701)  |  Testimony (21)

Electrical Engineers: No resistance can drop our potential.
Anonymous
Science quotes on:  |  Electrical (57)  |  Electrical Engineer (5)  |  Electrical Engineering (12)  |  Engineer (136)  |  Potential (75)  |  Resistance (41)

Euler could repeat the Aeneid from the beginning to the end, and he could even tell the first and last lines in every page of the edition which he used. In one of his works there is a learned memoir on a question in mechanics, of which, as he himself informs us, a verse of Aeneid gave him the first idea. [“The anchor drops, the rushing keel is staid.”]
In Letters of Euler (1872), Vol. 1, 24.
Science quotes on:  |  Anchor (10)  |  Begin (275)  |  Beginning (312)  |  Edition (5)  |  End (603)  |  Leonhard Euler (35)  |  First (1302)  |  Give (208)  |  Himself (461)  |  Idea (881)  |  Inform (50)  |  Keel (4)  |  Last (425)  |  Learn (672)  |  Learned (235)  |  Line (100)  |  Mathematicians and Anecdotes (141)  |  Mechanic (120)  |  Mechanics (137)  |  Memoir (13)  |  Page (35)  |  Question (649)  |  Refer (14)  |  Repeat (44)  |  Rush (18)  |  Tell (344)  |  Verse (11)  |  Work (1402)

Every dew-drop and rain-drop had a whole heaven within it.
In 'Hyperion', The Prose Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1851), 137.
Science quotes on:  |  Dew (10)  |  Dewdrop (2)  |  Heaven (266)  |  Meteorology (36)  |  Rain (70)  |  Raindrop (4)  |  Whole (756)

From a drop of water a logician could predict an Atlantic or a Niagara without having seen or heard of one or the other. So all life is a great chain, the nature of which is known whenever we are shown a single link of it.
In A Study in Scarlet (1887, 1892), 27.
Science quotes on:  |  Atlantic (8)  |  Chain (51)  |  Great (1610)  |  Known (453)  |  Life (1870)  |  Link (48)  |  Logic (311)  |  Logician (18)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Niagara (8)  |  Other (2233)  |  Predict (86)  |  Single (365)  |  Water (503)  |  Whenever (81)

Go, wondrous creature, mount where science guides.
Go, measure earth, weigh air, and state the tides;
Instruct the planets in what orbs to run,
Correct old Time, and regulate the sun;
Go, teach Eternal Wisdom how to rule,
Then drop into thyself and be a fool.
Quoted in James Wood Dictionary of Quotations from Ancient and Modern, English and Foreign Sources (1893), 125.
Science quotes on:  |  Air (366)  |  Creature (242)  |  Earth (1076)  |  Eternal (113)  |  Fool (121)  |  Guide (107)  |  Measure (241)  |  Measurement (178)  |  Mount (43)  |  Old (499)  |  Orb (20)  |  Planet (402)  |  Rule (307)  |  Run (158)  |  State (505)  |  Sun (407)  |  Teach (299)  |  Tide (37)  |  Time (1911)  |  Weigh (51)  |  Wisdom (235)  |  Wondrous (22)

Gravity, a mere nuisance to Christian, was a terror to Pope, Pagan, and Despair. You can drop a mouse down a thousand-yard mine shaft; and, on arriving at the bottom, it gets a slight shock and walks away, provided that the ground is fairly soft. A rat is killed, a man is broken, a horse splashes.
Essay, 'On Being the Right Size', collected in Possible Worlds: And Other Essays (1927, 1945), 19. (Note: Christian appears in John Bunyan, Pilgrim’s Progress, in which Pope, Pagan and Despair are giants — Webmaster.)
Science quotes on:  |  Bottom (36)  |  Broken (56)  |  John Bunyan (5)  |  Christian (44)  |  Despair (40)  |  Down (455)  |  Giant (73)  |  Gravity (140)  |  Ground (222)  |  Horse (78)  |  Kill (100)  |  Man (2252)  |  Mine (78)  |  Mouse (33)  |  Nuisance (10)  |  Pope (10)  |  Rat (37)  |  Shaft (5)  |  Shock (38)  |  Soft (30)  |  Terror (32)  |  Thousand (340)  |  Walk (138)

Having to squeeze the last drop of utility out of the land has the same desperate finality as having to chop up the furniture to keep warm.
…...
Science quotes on:  |  Chop (7)  |  Conservation (187)  |  Desperate (5)  |  Finality (8)  |  Furniture (8)  |  Keep (104)  |  Land (131)  |  Last (425)  |  Same (166)  |  Squeeze (7)  |  Utility (52)  |  Warm (74)

How far the main herd of metaphysicans are still lagging behind Plato; and how, for near two thousand years, they were almost all content to feed on the crumbs dropt from Aristotle’s table.
Co-author with his brother Augustus William Hare Guesses At Truth, By Two Brothers: Second Edition: With Large Additions (1848), Second Series, 13. (The volume is introduced as “more than three fourths new.” This quote is identified as by Julius; Augustus had died in 1833.)
Science quotes on:  |  Aristotle (179)  |  Behind (139)  |  Content (75)  |  Crumb (3)  |  Feed (31)  |  Herd (17)  |  Plato (80)  |  Still (614)  |  Table (105)  |  Thousand (340)  |  Two (936)  |  Year (963)

I despair of persuading people to drop the familiar and comforting tactic of dichotomy. Perhaps, instead, we might expand the framework of debates by seeking other dichotomies more appropriate than, or simply different from, the conventional divisions. All dichotomies are simplifications, but the rendition of a conflict along differing axes of several orthogonal dichotomies might provide an amplitude of proper intellectual space without forcing us to forgo our most comforting tool of thought.
…...
Science quotes on:  |  Amplitude (4)  |  Appropriate (61)  |  Axe (16)  |  Comfort (64)  |  Conflict (77)  |  Conventional (31)  |  Debate (40)  |  Despair (40)  |  Dichotomy (4)  |  Differ (88)  |  Different (595)  |  Division (67)  |  Expand (56)  |  Familiar (47)  |  Force (497)  |  Forgo (4)  |  Framework (33)  |  Instead (23)  |  Intellectual (258)  |  More (2558)  |  Most (1728)  |  Other (2233)  |  People (1031)  |  Persuade (11)  |  Proper (150)  |  Provide (79)  |  Seek (218)  |  Several (33)  |  Simplification (20)  |  Simply (53)  |  Space (523)  |  Tactic (9)  |  Thought (995)  |  Tool (129)

I had this experience at the age of eight. My parents gave me a microscope. I don’t recall why, but no matter. I then found my own little world, completely wild and unconstrained, no plastic, no teacher, no books, no anything predictable. At first I did not know the names of the water-drop denizens or what they were doing. But neither did the pioneer microscopists. Like them, I graduated to looking at butterfly scales and other miscellaneous objects. I never thought of what I was doing in such a way, but it was pure science. As true as could be of any child so engaged, I was kin to Leeuwenhoek, who said that his work “was not pursued in order to gain the praise I now enjoy, but chiefly from a craving after knowledge, which I notice resides in me more that most other men.”
In The Creation: An Appeal to Save Life on Earth (2010), 143-144.
Science quotes on:  |  Age (509)  |  Book (413)  |  Butterfly (26)  |  Chiefly (47)  |  Child (333)  |  Complete (209)  |  Completely (137)  |  Craving (5)  |  Doing (277)  |  Enjoyment (37)  |  Experience (494)  |  Find (1014)  |  First (1302)  |  Gain (146)  |  Graduation (6)  |  Kin (10)  |  Know (1538)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Antonie van Leeuwenhoek (17)  |  Little (717)  |  Looking (191)  |  Matter (821)  |  Microscope (85)  |  Microscopist (2)  |  More (2558)  |  Most (1728)  |  Name (359)  |  Never (1089)  |  Notice (81)  |  Object (438)  |  Order (638)  |  Other (2233)  |  Parent (80)  |  Pioneer (37)  |  Plastic (30)  |  Praise (28)  |  Predictability (7)  |  Pure (299)  |  Pure Science (30)  |  Pursuit (128)  |  Reside (25)  |  Scale (122)  |  Teacher (154)  |  Thought (995)  |  Unconstrained (2)  |  Water (503)  |  Way (1214)  |  Why (491)  |  Wild (96)  |  Work (1402)  |  World (1850)

I have patiently born with abundance of Clamour and Ralary [raillery], for beginning a new Practice here (for the Good of the Publick) which comes well Recommended, from Gentlemen of Figure & Learning, and which well agrees to Reason, when try’d & duly considered, viz. Artificially giving the Small Pocks, by Inoculation, to One of my Children, and Two of my Slaves, in order to prevent the hazard of Life… . and they never took one grain or drop of Medicine since, & are perfectly well.
By “clamour” he is referring to the public commotion in Boston reacting to his introduction of smallpox inoculation. Public statement in the Gazette (Jul 10-17), No. 85, 1721. As quoted and cited in Reginald H. Fitz, 'Zabdiel Boylston, Inoculator, and the Epidemic of Smallpox in Boston in 1721', Bulletin of the Johns Hopkins Hospital (1911), 22, 319.
Science quotes on:  |  Abundance (26)  |  Beginning (312)  |  Children (201)  |  Clamor (7)  |  Consider (428)  |  Figure (162)  |  Good (906)  |  Grain (50)  |  Hazard (21)  |  Healthy (70)  |  Inoculation (9)  |  Learning (291)  |  Life (1870)  |  Medicine (392)  |  Never (1089)  |  New (1273)  |  Order (638)  |  Practice (212)  |  Prevent (98)  |  Reason (766)  |  Recommend (27)  |  Slave (40)  |  Small (489)  |  Smallpox (14)  |  Try (296)  |  Two (936)

I now saw very distinctly that these were little eels or worms... Lying huddled together and wriggling, just as if you saw with your naked eye a whole tubful of very little eels and water, the eels moving about in swarms; and the whole water seemed to be alive with the multitudinous animalcules. For me this was among all the marvels that I have discovered in nature the most marvellous of all, and I must say that, for my part, no more pleasant sight has yet met my eye than this of so many thousands of living creatures in one small drop of water, all huddling and moving, but each creature having its own motion.
Letter to H. Oldenburg, 9 Oct 1676. In The Collected Letters of Antoni van Leeuwenhoek (l957), Vol. 2, 115.
Science quotes on:  |  Alive (97)  |  Animalcule (12)  |  Creature (242)  |  Discover (571)  |  Eye (440)  |  Little (717)  |  Living (492)  |  Lying (55)  |  Marvel (37)  |  Marvellous (25)  |  Microorganism (29)  |  Microscope (85)  |  More (2558)  |  Most (1728)  |  Motion (320)  |  Multitudinous (4)  |  Must (1525)  |  Naked Eye (12)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Saw (160)  |  Say (989)  |  Sight (135)  |  Small (489)  |  Thousand (340)  |  Together (392)  |  Water (503)  |  Whole (756)  |  Worm (47)

I’m on the verge of a major breakthrough, but I’m also at the point where physics ends and chemistry begins, so I’ll have to drop the whole thing,
Epigraph in Michael Dudley Sturge , Statistical and Thermal Physics (2003), 139.
Science quotes on:  |  Begin (275)  |  Breakthrough (18)  |  Chemistry (376)  |  End (603)  |  Major (88)  |  Physic (515)  |  Physics (564)  |  Point (584)  |  Thing (1914)  |  Verge (10)  |  Whole (756)

If our tongues were as sensitive as these radiation detectors, we could easily taste one drop of vermouth in five carloads of gin.
Quoted in Esther Stineman, American Political Women (1980).
Science quotes on:  |  Radiation (48)  |  Taste (93)  |  Tongue (44)

If, then, the motion of every particle of matter in the universe were precisely reversed at any instant, the course of nature would be simply reversed for ever after. The bursting bubble of foam at the foot of a waterfall would reunite and descend into the water; the thermal motions would reconcentrate their energy, and throw the mass up the fall in drops re-forming into a close column of ascending water. Heat which had been generated by the friction of solids and dissipated by conduction, and radiation, and radiation with absorption, would come again to the place of contact, and throw the moving body back against the force to which it had previously yielded. Boulders would recover from the mud materials required to rebuild them into their previous jagged forms, and would become reunited to the mountain peak from which they had formerly broken away. And if also the materialistic hypothesis of life were true, living creatures would grow backwards, with conscious knowledge of the future but no memory of the past, and would become again unborn.
In 'The Kinetic Theory of the Dissipation of Energy', Nature (1874), 9, 442.
Science quotes on:  |  Absorption (13)  |  Against (332)  |  Back (395)  |  Backwards (18)  |  Become (821)  |  Body (557)  |  Boulder (8)  |  Broken (56)  |  Bubble (23)  |  Conduction (8)  |  Contact (66)  |  Course (413)  |  Creature (242)  |  Descend (49)  |  Energy (373)  |  Fall (243)  |  Force (497)  |  Form (976)  |  Forming (42)  |  Friction (14)  |  Future (467)  |  Grow (247)  |  Heat (180)  |  Hypothesis (314)  |  Instant (46)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Life (1870)  |  Living (492)  |  Mass (160)  |  Material (366)  |  Matter (821)  |  Memory (144)  |  Motion (320)  |  Mountain (202)  |  Mud (26)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Particle (200)  |  Past (355)  |  Precisely (93)  |  Radiation (48)  |  Required (108)  |  Solid (119)  |  Thermal (15)  |  Universe (900)  |  Water (503)  |  Waterfall (5)  |  Yield (86)

Imagine life as a game in which you are juggling five balls in the air. You name them - work, family, health, friends, and spirit - and you’re keeping all of these in the air. You will soon understand that work is a rubber ball. If you drop it, it will bounce back. But the other four balls - family, health, friends, and spirit are made of glass. If you drop one of these, they will be irrevocably scuffed, marked, nicked, damaged, or even shattered. They will never be the same. You must understand that and strive for balance in your life.
…...
Science quotes on:  |  Air (366)  |  Back (395)  |  Balance (82)  |  Ball (64)  |  Bounce (2)  |  Damage (38)  |  Family (101)  |  Five (16)  |  Friend (180)  |  Game (104)  |  Glass (94)  |  Health (210)  |  Imagine (176)  |  Irrevocably (2)  |  Keep (104)  |  Life (1870)  |  Mark (47)  |  Marked (55)  |  Must (1525)  |  Name (359)  |  Never (1089)  |  Nick (2)  |  Other (2233)  |  Rubber (11)  |  Same (166)  |  Shatter (8)  |  Shattered (8)  |  Soon (187)  |  Spirit (278)  |  Strive (53)  |  Understand (648)  |  Will (2350)  |  Work (1402)

In 1847 I gave an address at Newton, Mass., before a Teachers’ Institute conducted by Horace Mann. My subject was grasshoppers. I passed around a large jar of these insects, and made every teacher take one and hold it while I was speaking. If any one dropped the insect, I stopped till he picked it up. This was at that time a great innovation, and excited much laughter and derision. There can be no true progress in the teaching of natural science until such methods become general.
Science quotes on:  |  Address (13)  |  Become (821)  |  Conduct (70)  |  Conducting (2)  |  Derision (8)  |  Dropped (17)  |  Excitement (61)  |  General (521)  |  Grasshopper (8)  |  Great (1610)  |  Hold (96)  |  Innovation (49)  |  Insect (89)  |  Institute (8)  |  Jar (9)  |  Large (398)  |  Laughter (34)  |   Horace Mann (18)  |  Mass (160)  |  Method (531)  |  Natural (810)  |  Natural Science (133)  |  Pass (241)  |  Pick (16)  |  Progress (492)  |  Speak (240)  |  Speaking (118)  |  Stop (89)  |  Subject (543)  |  Teacher (154)  |  Teaching (190)  |  Time (1911)  |  True (239)

In my work I now have the comfortable feeling that I am so to speak on my own ground and territory and almost certainly not competing in an anxious race and that I shall not suddenly read in the literature that someone else had done it all long ago. It is really at this point that the pleasure of research begins, when one is, so to speak, alone with nature and no longer worries about human opinions, views and demands. To put it in a way that is more learned than clear: the philological aspect drops out and only the philosophical remains.
In Davis Baird, R.I.G. Hughes and Alfred Nordmann, Heinrich Hertz: Classical Physicist, Modern Philosopher (1998), 157.
Science quotes on:  |  Alone (324)  |  Anxiety (30)  |  Aspect (129)  |  Begin (275)  |  Beginning (312)  |  Certainly (185)  |  Comfort (64)  |  Competition (45)  |  Demand (131)  |  Feeling (259)  |  Ground (222)  |  Human (1512)  |  Learn (672)  |  Learned (235)  |  Literature (116)  |  Long (778)  |  More (2558)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Opinion (291)  |  Philosophy (409)  |  Pleasure (191)  |  Point (584)  |  Race (278)  |  Read (308)  |  Reading (136)  |  Remain (355)  |  Research (753)  |  Speak (240)  |  Suddenly (91)  |  Territory (25)  |  View (496)  |  Way (1214)  |  Work (1402)

In one department of his [Joseph Black’s] lecture he exceeded any I have ever known, the neatness and unvarying success with which all the manipulations of his experiments were performed. His correct eye and steady hand contributed to the one; his admirable precautions, foreseeing and providing for every emergency, secured the other. I have seen him pour boiling water or boiling acid from a vessel that had no spout into a tube, holding it at such a distance as made the stream’s diameter small, and so vertical that not a drop was spilt. While he poured he would mention this adaptation of the height to the diameter as a necessary condition of success. I have seen him mix two substances in a receiver into which a gas, as chlorine, had been introduced, the effect of the combustion being perhaps to produce a compound inflammable in its nascent state, and the mixture being effected by drawing some string or wire working through the receiver's sides in an air-tight socket. The long table on which the different processes had been carried on was as clean at the end of the lecture as it had been before the apparatus was planted upon it. Not a drop of liquid, not a grain of dust remained.
In Lives of Men of Letters and Science, Who Flourished in the Time of George III (1845), 346-7.
Science quotes on:  |  Acid (83)  |  Adaptation (59)  |  Air (366)  |  Apparatus (70)  |  Being (1276)  |  Joseph Black (14)  |  Chlorine (15)  |  Clean (52)  |  Combustion (22)  |  Compound (117)  |  Condition (362)  |  Department (93)  |  Diameter (28)  |  Different (595)  |  Distance (171)  |  Drawing (56)  |  Dust (68)  |  Effect (414)  |  Emergency (10)  |  End (603)  |  Experiment (736)  |  Eye (440)  |  Gas (89)  |  Grain (50)  |  Inflammable (5)  |  Introduce (63)  |  Known (453)  |  Lecture (111)  |  Liquid (50)  |  Long (778)  |  Manipulation (19)  |  Mention (84)  |  Mixture (44)  |  Nascent (4)  |  Neatness (6)  |  Necessary (370)  |  Other (2233)  |  Perform (123)  |  Plant (320)  |  Remain (355)  |  Secured (18)  |  Side (236)  |  Small (489)  |  Spout (2)  |  State (505)  |  Steady (45)  |  Stream (83)  |  Substance (253)  |  Success (327)  |  Table (105)  |  Through (846)  |  Two (936)  |  Vessel (63)  |  Water (503)  |  Wire (36)

It has the property of detonating very violently in certain circumstances. On one occasion a small amount of ether solution of pyroglycerin condensed in a glass bowl. ... When the bowl was heated over a spirit lamp, an extremely violent explosion occurred, which shattered it into small fragments. On another occasion a drop was heated in a test-tube, and exploded with such violence that the glass splinters cut deep into my face and hands, and hurt other people who were standing some distance off in the room.
[Describing early experiments on his discovery of nitroglycerin.]
From speech to the Royal Academy of Turin (1847). In Robert Shaplen, 'Annals of Science, Adventures of a Pacifist,' The New Yorker (15 Mar 1958), 49.
Science quotes on:  |  Accident (92)  |  Amount (153)  |  Certain (557)  |  Circumstance (139)  |  Circumstances (108)  |  Cut (116)  |  Deep (241)  |  Detonation (2)  |  Discovery (837)  |  Distance (171)  |  Early (196)  |  Ether (37)  |  Experiment (736)  |  Exploded (11)  |  Explosion (51)  |  Explosive (24)  |  Face (214)  |  Fragment (58)  |  Glass (94)  |  Heat (180)  |  Lamp (37)  |  Occasion (87)  |  Other (2233)  |  People (1031)  |  Property (177)  |  Shattered (8)  |  Small (489)  |  Solution (282)  |  Spirit (278)  |  Test (221)  |  Test Tube (13)  |  Violence (37)

It is, as Schrödinger has remarked, a miracle that in spite of the baffling complexity of the world, certain regularities in the events could be discovered. One such regularity, discovered by Galileo, is that two rocks, dropped at the same time from the same height, reach the ground at the same time. The laws of nature are concerned with such regularities.
In 'The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences,' Communications in Pure and Applied Mathematics (Feb 1960), 13, No. 1 (February 1960). Collected in Eugene Paul Wigner, A.S. Wightman (ed.), Jagdish Mehra (ed.), The Collected Works of Eugene Paul Wigner (1955), Vol. 6, 537.
Science quotes on:  |  Baffling (5)  |  Certain (557)  |  Complexity (121)  |  Concern (239)  |  Discover (571)  |  Dropped (17)  |  Event (222)  |  Galileo Galilei (134)  |  Ground (222)  |  Height (33)  |  Law (913)  |  Law Of Nature (80)  |  Miracle (85)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Reach (286)  |  Regularity (40)  |  Remark (28)  |  Rock (176)  |  Erwin Schrödinger (68)  |  Spite (55)  |  Time (1911)  |  Two (936)  |  World (1850)

It may seem rash indeed to draw conclusions valid for the whole universe from what we can see from the small corner to which we are confined. Who knows that the whole visible universe is not like a drop of water at the surface of the earth? Inhabitants of that drop of water, as small relative to it as we are relative to the Milky Way, could not possibly imagine that beside the drop of water there might be a piece of iron or a living tissue, in which the properties of matter are entirely different.
Space and Time (1926), 227.
Science quotes on:  |  Conclusion (266)  |  Corner (59)  |  Different (595)  |  Draw (140)  |  Earth (1076)  |  Imagine (176)  |  Indeed (323)  |  Inhabitant (50)  |  Iron (99)  |  Know (1538)  |  Living (492)  |  Matter (821)  |  Milky Way (29)  |  Possibly (111)  |  Properties Of Matter (7)  |  Rash (15)  |  See (1094)  |  Small (489)  |  Surface (223)  |  Surface Of The Earth (36)  |  Tissue (51)  |  Universe (900)  |  Visible (87)  |  Water (503)  |  Way (1214)  |  Whole (756)

Knowledge and ability must be combined with ambition as well as with a sense of honesty and a severe conscience. Every analyst occasionally has doubts about the accuracy of his results, and also there are times when he knows his results to be incorrect. Sometimes a few drops of the solution were spilt, or some other slight mistake made. In these cases it requires a strong conscience to repeat the analysis and to make a rough estimate of the loss or apply a correction. Anyone not having sufficient will-power to do this is unsuited to analysis no matter how great his technical ability or knowledge. A chemist who would not take an oath guaranteeing the authenticity, as well as the accuracy of his work, should never publish his results, for if he were to do so, then the result would be detrimental not only to himself, but to the whole of science.
Anleitung zur Quantitativen Analyse (1847), preface. F. Szabadvary, History of Analytical Chemistry (1966), trans. Gyula Svehla, 176.
Science quotes on:  |  Ability (162)  |  Accuracy (81)  |  Ambition (46)  |  Analysis (244)  |  Apply (170)  |  Authenticity (5)  |  Chemist (169)  |  Conscience (52)  |  Correction (42)  |  Do (1905)  |  Doubt (314)  |  Estimate (59)  |  Experiment (736)  |  Great (1610)  |  Himself (461)  |  Honesty (29)  |  Know (1538)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Loss (117)  |  Matter (821)  |  Mistake (180)  |  Must (1525)  |  Never (1089)  |  Oath (10)  |  Other (2233)  |  Power (771)  |  Publication (102)  |  Require (229)  |  Result (700)  |  Sense (785)  |  Solution (282)  |  Strong (182)  |  Sufficient (133)  |  Time (1911)  |  Whole (756)  |  Will (2350)  |  Work (1402)

Let us sum up the three possible explanations of the decision to drop the bomb and its timing. The first that it was a clever and highly successful move in the field of power politics, is almost certainly correct; the second, that the timing was coincidental, convicts the American government of a hardly credible tactlessness [towards the Soviet Union]; and the third, the Roman holiday theory [a spectacular event to justify the cost of the Manhattan Project], convicts them of an equally incredible irresponsibility.
In The Political and Military Consequences of Atomic Energy (1948), 126. As cited by Maurice W. Kirby and Jonathan Rosenhead, 'Patrick Blackett (1897)' in Arjang A. Assad (ed.) and Saul I. Gass (ed.),Profiles in Operations Research: Pioneers and Innovators (2011), 17. Blackett regarded the dropping of the atomic bombs on Japan as unnecessary because a Japanese surrender was inevitable.
Science quotes on:  |  Atomic Bomb (115)  |  Certainly (185)  |  Clever (41)  |  Cost (94)  |  Decision (98)  |  Equally (129)  |  Event (222)  |  Explanation (246)  |  Field (378)  |  First (1302)  |  Government (116)  |  Hiroshima (18)  |  Holiday (12)  |  Incredible (43)  |  Irresponsibility (5)  |  Manhattan Project (15)  |  Move (223)  |  Politics (122)  |  Possible (560)  |  Power (771)  |  Project (77)  |  Roman (39)  |  Soviet (10)  |  Spectacular (22)  |  Successful (134)  |  Sum (103)  |  Theory (1015)  |  Union (52)

Lubin's Law: If another scientist thought your research was more important than his, he would drop what he is doing and do what you are doing.
Anonymous
In Dr. N Sreedharan, Quotations of Wit and Wisdom (2007), 68.
Science quotes on:  |  Do (1905)  |  Doing (277)  |  Law (913)  |  More (2558)  |  Research (753)  |  Scientist (881)  |  Thought (995)

Nature … is, as it were, a continual circulation. Water is rais'd in Vapour into the Air by one Quality and precipitated down in drops by another, the Rivers run into the Sea, and the Sea again supplies them.
In 'A Discourse of Earthquakes', Lectures and Discourses of Earthquakes (1668). In The Posthumous Works of Robert Hooke, containing his Cutlerian Lectures and other Discourses read at the Meetings of the Illustrious Royal Society (1705), 312.
Science quotes on:  |  Air (366)  |  Circulation (27)  |  Continual (44)  |  Down (455)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Precipitation (7)  |  Quality (139)  |  Raised (3)  |  River (140)  |  Run (158)  |  Sea (326)  |  Vapor (12)  |  Vapour (16)  |  Water (503)  |  Water Cycle (5)

Nowhere is water so beautiful as in the desert for nowhere else is it so scarce. By definition. Water, like a human being or a tree or a bird or a song gains value by rarity, singularity, isolation. In a humid climate water is common. In the desert each drop is precious.
Essay in Desert Images, collected in Beyond the Wall: Essays from the Outside (1984), 82.
Science quotes on:  |  Beautiful (271)  |  Being (1276)  |  Bird (163)  |  Climate (102)  |  Common (447)  |  Definition (238)  |  Desert (59)  |  Gain (146)  |  Human (1512)  |  Human Being (185)  |  Isolation (32)  |  Nowhere (28)  |  Precious (43)  |  Rarity (11)  |  Scarce (11)  |  Singularity (4)  |  Song (41)  |  Tree (269)  |  Value (393)  |  Water (503)

O. Hahn and F. Strassmann have discovered a new type of nuclear reaction, the splitting into two smaller nuclei of the nuclei of uranium and thorium under neutron bombardment. Thus they demonstrated the production of nuclei of barium, lanthanum, strontium, yttrium, and, more recently, of xenon and caesium. It can be shown by simple considerations that this type of nuclear reaction may be described in an essentially classical way like the fission of a liquid drop, and that the fission products must fly apart with kinetic energies of the order of hundred million electron-volts each.
'Products of the Fission of the Urarium Nucleus', Nature (1939), 143, 471.
Science quotes on:  |  Barium (4)  |  Bombardment (3)  |  Classical (49)  |  Consideration (143)  |  Demonstration (120)  |  Discover (571)  |  Electron (96)  |  Fission (10)  |  Fly (153)  |  Otto Hahn (2)  |  Hundred (240)  |  Kinetic (12)  |  Kinetic Energy (3)  |  Lanthanum (2)  |  Liquid (50)  |  More (2558)  |  Must (1525)  |  Neutron (23)  |  New (1273)  |  Nuclear (110)  |  Nuclear Reaction (2)  |  Nucleus (54)  |  Order (638)  |  Product (166)  |  Production (190)  |  Reaction (106)  |  Simple (426)  |  Strontium (2)  |  Thorium (5)  |  Two (936)  |  Type (171)  |  Uranium (21)  |  Way (1214)  |  Xenon (5)  |  Yttrium (3)

On the morning of 1 November 1956 the US physicist John Bardeen dropped the frying-pan of eggs that he was cooking for breakfast, scattering its contents on the kitchen floor. He had just heard that he had won the Nobel Prize for Physics along with William Shockley and Walter Brattain for their invention of the transistor. That evening Bardeen was startled again, this time by a parade of his colleagues from the University of Illinois marching to the door of his home bearing champagne and singing “For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow”.
In Abstract for 'John Bardeen: An Extraordinary Physicist', Physics World (2008), 21, No. 4, 22.
Science quotes on:  |  John Bardeen (6)  |  Biography (254)  |  Walter H. Brattain (4)  |  Breakfast (10)  |  Colleague (51)  |  Cook (20)  |  Cooking (12)  |  Door (94)  |  Dropped (17)  |  Egg (71)  |  Fellow (88)  |  Good (906)  |  Hear (144)  |  Home (184)  |  Invention (400)  |  Kitchen (14)  |  Morning (98)  |  Nobel Prize (42)  |  Parade (3)  |  Physic (515)  |  Physicist (270)  |  Physics (564)  |  Scattering (4)  |  William B. Shockley (4)  |  Sing (29)  |  Singing (19)  |  Time (1911)  |  Transistor (6)  |  University (130)  |  Win (53)

On Tuesday evening at Museum, at a ball in the gardens. The night was chill, I dropped too suddenly from Differential Calculus into ladies’ society, and could not give myself freely to the change. After an hour’s attempt so to do, I returned, cursing the mode of life I was pursuing; next morning I had already shaken hands, however, with Diff. Calculus, and forgot the ladies….
From his diary for 10 Aug 1851, as quoted in J. Helen Gardner and Robin J. Wilson, 'Thomas Archer Hirst—Mathematician Xtravagant II: Student Days in Germany', The American Mathematical Monthly (Jun-Jul 1993), 6, No. 100, 534.
Science quotes on:  |  Already (226)  |  Attempt (266)  |  Ball (64)  |  Calculus (65)  |  Change (639)  |  Chill (10)  |  Differential Calculus (11)  |  Do (1905)  |  Dropped (17)  |  Forget (125)  |  Garden (64)  |  Hand (149)  |  Hour (192)  |  Lady (12)  |  Life (1870)  |  Mode (43)  |  Morning (98)  |  Museum (40)  |  Myself (211)  |  Next (238)  |  Night (133)  |  Pursue (63)  |  Pursuing (27)  |  Return (133)  |  Shake (43)  |  Society (350)  |  Sudden (70)  |  Suddenly (91)

One of the most successful physicians I have ever known, has assured me, that he used more bread pills, drops of colored water, and powders of hickory ashes, than of all other medicines put together. It was certainly a pious fraud.
In letter to Caspar Wistar (21 Jun 1807), collected in Thomas Jefferson Randolph (ed.), Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson (1829), Vol. 4, 93.
Science quotes on:  |  Ash (21)  |  Assurance (17)  |  Bread (42)  |  Certainly (185)  |  Color (155)  |  Fraud (15)  |  Known (453)  |  Medicine (392)  |  More (2558)  |  Most (1728)  |  Other (2233)  |  Physician (284)  |  Pill (7)  |  Pious (4)  |  Powder (9)  |  Success (327)  |  Successful (134)  |  Together (392)  |  Water (503)

One-sixth gravity on the surface of the moon is just delightful. It’s not like being in zero gravity, you know. You can drop a pencil in zero gravity and look for it for three days. In one-sixth gravity, you just look down and there it is.
In Houston Chronicle (2004) as cited in Will Dunham, 'John Young, “most experienced” U.S. astronaut, dies at 87', on Reuters website (6 Jan 2018).
Science quotes on:  |  Being (1276)  |  Delightful (18)  |  Down (455)  |  Gravity (140)  |  Know (1538)  |  Look (584)  |  Look Down (3)  |  Moon (252)  |  Pencil (20)  |  Surface (223)  |  Zero (38)  |  Zero Gravity (2)

Our science is a drop, our ignorance a sea. Whatever else be certain, this at least is certain—that the world of our present natural knowledge is enveloped in a larger world of some sort of whose residual properties we at present can frame no positive idea.
In Address to Harvard Young Men’s Christian Association, 'Is Life Worth Living?', collected in The Will to Believe and other Essays in Popular Philosophy, (1897, 2006), 54. Published earlier in International Journal of Ethics (Oct 1895).
Science quotes on:  |  Certain (557)  |  Idea (881)  |  Ignorance (254)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Larger (14)  |  Natural (810)  |  Positive (98)  |  Present (630)  |  Property (177)  |  Residual (5)  |  Sea (326)  |  Sort (50)  |  Whatever (234)  |  World (1850)

Researchers, with science as their authority, will be able to cut [animals] up, alive, into small pieces, drop them from a great height to see if they are shattered by the fall, or deprive them of sleep for sixteen days and nights continuously for the purposes of an iniquitous monograph... Animal trust, undeserved faith, when at last will you turn away from us? Shall we never tire of deceiving, betraying, tormenting animals before they cease to trust us?
…...
Science quotes on:  |  Alive (97)  |  Animal (651)  |  Authority (99)  |  Betray (8)  |  Cease (81)  |  Continuously (7)  |  Cut (116)  |  Deceive (26)  |  Deceiving (5)  |  Deprive (14)  |  Faith (209)  |  Fall (243)  |  Great (1610)  |  Height (33)  |  Last (425)  |  Monograph (5)  |  Never (1089)  |  Night (133)  |  Piece (39)  |  Purpose (336)  |  Researcher (36)  |  See (1094)  |  Shatter (8)  |  Shattered (8)  |  Sleep (81)  |  Small (489)  |  Tire (7)  |  Torment (18)  |  Trust (72)  |  Turn (454)  |  Undeserved (3)  |  Will (2350)

Ten builders rear an arch, each in turn lifting it higher; but it is the tenth man, who drops in the keystone, who hears our huzzas.
From chapter 'Jottings from a Note-book', in Canadian Stories (1918), 167.
Science quotes on:  |  Arch (12)  |  Builder (16)  |  Hear (144)  |  Higher (37)  |  Invention (400)  |  Keystone (3)  |  Lift (57)  |  Man (2252)  |  Rear (7)  |  Research (753)  |  Turn (454)

The aim of natural science is to obtain connections among phenomena. Theories, however, are like withered leaves, which drop off after having enabled the organism of science to breathe for a time.
As quoted in Philipp Frank, Modern Science and its Philosophy (1949), 62, which cites Die Geschichte und die Wurzel des Satzes von der Erhaltung der Arbeit (1871) and English translation, History and Root of the Principle of the Conservation of Energy (1911).
Science quotes on:  |  Aim (175)  |  Breathe (49)  |  Connection (171)  |  Enable (122)  |  Leaf (73)  |  Natural (810)  |  Natural Science (133)  |  Obtain (164)  |  Organism (231)  |  Phenomenon (334)  |  Theory (1015)  |  Time (1911)  |  Wither (9)

The bomb took forty-five seconds to drop thirty thousand feet to its detonation point, our three parachute gauges drifting down above. For half that time we were diving away in a two-g turn. Before we leveled off and flew directly away, we saw the calibration pulses that indicated our equipment was working well. Suddenly a bright flash lit the compartment, the light from the explosion reflecting off the clouds in front of us and back through the tunnel. The pressure pulse registered its N-shaped wave on our screen, and then a second wave recorded the reflection of the pulse from the ground. A few moments later two sharp shocks slammed the plane.
Alvarez: Adventures of a Physicist (1987), 7.
Science quotes on:  |  Back (395)  |  Bomb (20)  |  Bright (81)  |  Cloud (111)  |  Down (455)  |  Equipment (45)  |  Experiment (736)  |  Explosion (51)  |  Flash (49)  |  Ground (222)  |  Light (635)  |  Moment (260)  |  Point (584)  |  Pressure (69)  |  Pulse (22)  |  Record (161)  |  Reflection (93)  |  Register (22)  |  Saw (160)  |  Shock (38)  |  Suddenly (91)  |  Thousand (340)  |  Through (846)  |  Time (1911)  |  Tunnel (13)  |  Turn (454)  |  Two (936)  |  Wave (112)

The golden age of mathematics—that was not the age of Euclid, it is ours. Ours is the age when no less than six international congresses have been held in the course of nine years. It is in our day that more than a dozen mathematical societies contain a growing membership of more than two thousand men representing the centers of scientific light throughout the great culture nations of the world. It is in our time that over five hundred scientific journals are each devoted in part, while more than two score others are devoted exclusively, to the publication of mathematics. It is in our time that the Jahrbuch über die Fortschritte der Mathematik, though admitting only condensed abstracts with titles, and not reporting on all the journals, has, nevertheless, grown to nearly forty huge volumes in as many years. It is in our time that as many as two thousand books and memoirs drop from the mathematical press of the world in a single year, the estimated number mounting up to fifty thousand in the last generation. Finally, to adduce yet another evidence of a similar kind, it requires not less than seven ponderous tomes of the forthcoming Encyclopaedie der Mathematischen Wissenschaften to contain, not expositions, not demonstrations, but merely compact reports and bibliographic notices sketching developments that have taken place since the beginning of the nineteenth century.
In Lectures on Science, Philosophy and Art (1908), 8.
Science quotes on:  |  19th Century (41)  |  Abstract (141)  |  Admit (49)  |  Age (509)  |  Beginning (312)  |  Bibliography (3)  |  Book (413)  |  Center (35)  |  Century (319)  |  Compact (13)  |  Condense (15)  |  Congress (20)  |  Course (413)  |  Culture (157)  |  Demonstration (120)  |  Development (441)  |  Devote (45)  |  Devoted (59)  |  Dozen (10)  |  Estimate (59)  |  Euclid (60)  |  Evidence (267)  |  Exclusive (29)  |  Exposition (16)  |  Generation (256)  |  Golden (47)  |  Golden Age (11)  |  Great (1610)  |  Grow (247)  |  Growing (99)  |  Huge (30)  |  Hundred (240)  |  International (40)  |  Journal (31)  |  Kind (564)  |  Last (425)  |  Light (635)  |  Mathematics (1395)  |  Membership (6)  |  Memoir (13)  |  Mere (86)  |  Merely (315)  |  Modern Mathematics (50)  |  More (2558)  |  Mount (43)  |  Nation (208)  |  Nearly (137)  |  Nevertheless (90)  |  Notice (81)  |  Number (710)  |  Other (2233)  |  Part (235)  |  Ponderous (2)  |  Press (21)  |  Publication (102)  |  Report (42)  |  Reporting (9)  |  Represent (157)  |  Require (229)  |  Scientific (955)  |  Score (8)  |  Single (365)  |  Sketch (8)  |  Society (350)  |  Thousand (340)  |  Throughout (98)  |  Time (1911)  |  Title (20)  |  Two (936)  |  Volume (25)  |  World (1850)  |  Year (963)

The particles of a dew-drop and the masses of a planet are moulded and controlled by the same force.
From Address (Oct 1874) delivered at Guy’s Hospital, 'On The Study of Medicine', printed in British Medical journal (1874), 2, 425. Collected in Sir William Withey Gull and Theodore Dyke Acland (ed.), A Collection of the Published Writings of William Withey Gull (1896), 109.
Science quotes on:  |  Control (182)  |  Dew (10)  |  Force (497)  |  Mass (160)  |  Mold (37)  |  Particle (200)  |  Planet (402)

The routine produces. But each day, nevertheless, when you try to get started you have to transmogrify, transpose yourself; you have to go through some kind of change from being a normal human being, into becoming some kind of slave.
I simply don’t want to break through that membrane. I’d do anything to avoid it. You have to get there and you don’t want to go there because there’s so much pressure and so much strain and you just want to stay on the outside and be yourself. And so the day is a constant struggle to get going.
And if somebody says to me, You’re a prolific writer—it seems so odd. It’s like the difference between geological time and human time. On a certain scale, it does look like I do a lot. But that’s my day, all day long, sitting there wondering when I’m going to be able to get started. And the routine of doing this six days a week puts a little drop in a bucket each day, and that’s the key. Because if you put a drop in a bucket every day, after three hundred and sixty-five days, the bucket’s going to have some water in it.
https://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/5997/john-mcphee-the-art-of-nonfiction-no-3-john-mcphee
Science quotes on:  |  Avoid (123)  |  Become (821)  |  Becoming (96)  |  Being (1276)  |  Break (109)  |  Bucket (4)  |  Certain (557)  |  Change (639)  |  Constant (148)  |  Difference (355)  |  Do (1905)  |  Doing (277)  |  Geological (11)  |  Human (1512)  |  Human Being (185)  |  Hundred (240)  |  Key (56)  |  Kind (564)  |  Little (717)  |  Long (778)  |  Look (584)  |  Lot (151)  |  Membrane (21)  |  Nevertheless (90)  |  Normal (29)  |  Odd (15)  |  Outside (141)  |  Pressure (69)  |  Produce (117)  |  Prolific (5)  |  Routine (26)  |  Say (989)  |  Scale (122)  |  Seem (150)  |  Simply (53)  |  Sit (51)  |  Sitting (44)  |  Slave (40)  |  Somebody (8)  |  Start (237)  |  Stay (26)  |  Strain (13)  |  Struggle (111)  |  Through (846)  |  Time (1911)  |  Transpose (2)  |  Try (296)  |  Want (504)  |  Water (503)  |  Week (73)  |  Wonder (251)  |  Writer (90)

The study of mathematics is apt to commence in disappointment. … We are told that by its aid the stars are weighed and the billions of molecules in a drop of water are counted. Yet, like the ghost of Hamlet's father, this greatest science eludes the efforts of our mental weapons to grasp it.
Opening of Chap 1, in An Introduction to Mathematics (1911), 7.
Science quotes on:  |  Aid (101)  |  Apt (9)  |  Billion (104)  |  Commencement (14)  |  Count (107)  |  Disappointment (18)  |  Effort (243)  |  Elude (11)  |  Father (113)  |  Ghost (36)  |  Grasp (65)  |  Greatest (330)  |  Hamlet (10)  |  Mathematics (1395)  |  Mental (179)  |  Molecule (185)  |  Star (460)  |  Stars (304)  |  Study (701)  |  Water (503)  |  Weapon (98)  |  Weapons (57)  |  Weigh (51)  |  Weighing (2)

The study of mathematics is apt to commence in disappointment. The important applications of the science, the theoretical interest of its ideas, and the logical rigour of its methods all generate the expectation of a speedy introduction to processes of interest. We are told that by its aid the stars are weighed and the billions of molecules in a drop of water are counted. Yet, like the ghost of Hamlet's father, this great science eludes the efforts of our mental weapons to grasp it.
Opening to An Introduction to Mathematics (1911), 7.
Science quotes on:  |  Aid (101)  |  Application (257)  |  Billion (104)  |  Commencement (14)  |  Count (107)  |  Disappointment (18)  |  Effort (243)  |  Elude (11)  |  Eluding (2)  |  Expectation (67)  |  Father (113)  |  Ghost (36)  |  Grasping (2)  |  Great (1610)  |  Hamlet (10)  |  Idea (881)  |  Importance (299)  |  Interest (416)  |  Introduction (37)  |  Logic (311)  |  Mathematics (1395)  |  Mental (179)  |  Method (531)  |  Molecule (185)  |  Process (439)  |  Rigour (21)  |  Speedy (2)  |  Star (460)  |  Stars (304)  |  Study (701)  |  Theory (1015)  |  Water (503)  |  Weapon (98)  |  Weapons (57)  |  Weigh (51)

The wintry clouds drop spangles on the mountains. If the thing occurred once in a century historians would chronicle and poets would sing of the event; but Nature, prodigal of beauty, rains down her hexagonal ice-stars year by year, forming layers yards in thickness. The summer sun thaws and partially consolidates the mass. Each winter's fall is covered by that of the ensuing one, and thus the snow layer of each year has to sustain an annually augmented weight. It is more and more compacted by the pressure, and ends by being converted into the ice of a true glacier, which stretches its frozen tongue far down beyond the limits of perpetual snow. The glaciers move, and through valleys they move like rivers.
The Glaciers of the Alps & Mountaineering in 1861 (1911), 247.
Science quotes on:  |  Annual (5)  |  Augment (12)  |  Augmentation (4)  |  Beauty (313)  |  Being (1276)  |  Beyond (316)  |  Century (319)  |  Chronicle (6)  |  Cloud (111)  |  Compact (13)  |  Consolidation (4)  |  Conversion (17)  |  Cover (40)  |  Down (455)  |  End (603)  |  Ensuing (3)  |  Event (222)  |  Fall (243)  |  Forming (42)  |  Freezing (16)  |  Glacier (17)  |  Hexagon (4)  |  Historian (59)  |  Ice (58)  |  Layer (41)  |  Limit (294)  |  Mass (160)  |  More (2558)  |  Mountain (202)  |  Move (223)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Occurrence (53)  |  Partially (8)  |  Perpetual (59)  |  Perpetuity (9)  |  Poet (97)  |  Pressure (69)  |  Prodigal (2)  |  Rain (70)  |  River (140)  |  Snow (39)  |  Song (41)  |  Spangle (2)  |  Star (460)  |  Stars (304)  |  Stretch (39)  |  Summer (56)  |  Sun (407)  |  Sustain (52)  |  Thaw (2)  |  Thickness (5)  |  Thing (1914)  |  Through (846)  |  Tongue (44)  |  Truth (1109)  |  Valley (37)  |  Weight (140)  |  Winter (46)  |  Yard (10)  |  Year (963)

There is a kind of plant that eats organic food with its flowers: when a fly settles upon the blossom, the petals close upon it and hold it fast till the plant has absorbed the insect into its system; but they will close on nothing but what is good to eat; of a drop of rain or a piece of stick they will take no notice. Curious! that so unconscious a thing should have such a keen eye to its own interest.
In Erewhon: Or Over the Range (1880), 190.
Science quotes on:  |  Absorb (54)  |  Blossom (22)  |  Curious (95)  |  Eat (108)  |  Eye (440)  |  Flower (112)  |  Fly (153)  |  Food (213)  |  Good (906)  |  Insect (89)  |  Interest (416)  |  Kind (564)  |  Nothing (1000)  |  Notice (81)  |  Organic (161)  |  Plant (320)  |  Rain (70)  |  System (545)  |  Thing (1914)  |  Will (2350)

Think, In mounting higher,
The angels would press on us, and aspire
To drop some golden orb of perfect song
Into our deep, dear silence.
From poem, 'Sonnets From the Portuguese' (1826), XXII. In Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Harriet Waters Preston (ed.), The Complete Poetical Works of Mrs. Browning (1900), 219.
Science quotes on:  |  Angel (47)  |  Aspire (15)  |  Deep (241)  |  Golden (47)  |  High (370)  |  Mount (43)  |  Orb (20)  |  Perfect (223)  |  Press On (2)  |  Silence (62)  |  Song (41)  |  Think (1122)

This [the fact that the pursuit of mathematics brings into harmonious action all the faculties of the human mind] accounts for the extraordinary longevity of all the greatest masters of the Analytic art, the Dii Majores of the mathematical Pantheon. Leibnitz lived to the age of 70; Euler to 76; Lagrange to 77; Laplace to 78; Gauss to 78; Plato, the supposed inventor of the conic sections, who made mathematics his study and delight, who called them the handles or aids to philosophy, the medicine of the soul, and is said never to have let a day go by without inventing some new theorems, lived to 82; Newton, the crown and glory of his race, to 85; Archimedes, the nearest akin, probably, to Newton in genius, was 75, and might have lived on to be 100, for aught we can guess to the contrary, when he was slain by the impatient and ill mannered sergeant, sent to bring him before the Roman general, in the full vigour of his faculties, and in the very act of working out a problem; Pythagoras, in whose school, I believe, the word mathematician (used, however, in a somewhat wider than its present sense) originated, the second founder of geometry, the inventor of the matchless theorem which goes by his name, the pre-cognizer of the undoubtedly mis-called Copernican theory, the discoverer of the regular solids and the musical canon who stands at the very apex of this pyramid of fame, (if we may credit the tradition) after spending 22 years studying in Egypt, and 12 in Babylon, opened school when 56 or 57 years old in Magna Græcia, married a young wife when past 60, and died, carrying on his work with energy unspent to the last, at the age of 99. The mathematician lives long and lives young; the wings of his soul do not early drop off, nor do its pores become clogged with the earthy particles blown from the dusty highways of vulgar life.
In Presidential Address to the British Association, Collected Mathematical Papers, Vol. 2 (1908), 658.
Science quotes on:  |  Account (195)  |  Act (278)  |  Action (342)  |  Age (509)  |  Aid (101)  |  Akin (5)  |  Analytic (11)  |  Apex (6)  |  Archimedes (63)  |  Art (680)  |  Aught (6)  |  Babylon (7)  |  Become (821)  |  Belief (615)  |  Blow (45)  |  Bring (95)  |  Call (781)  |  Called (9)  |  Canon (3)  |  Carry (130)  |  Clog (5)  |  Conic Section (8)  |  Contrary (143)  |  Copernican Theory (3)  |  Credit (24)  |  Crown (39)  |  Delight (111)  |  Die (94)  |  Discoverer (43)  |  Do (1905)  |  Dusty (8)  |  Early (196)  |  Egypt (31)  |  Energy (373)  |  Leonhard Euler (35)  |  Extraordinary (83)  |  Fact (1257)  |  Faculty (76)  |  Fame (51)  |  Founder (26)  |  Full (68)  |  Carl Friedrich Gauss (79)  |  General (521)  |  Genius (301)  |  Geometry (271)  |  Glory (66)  |  Great (1610)  |  Greatest (330)  |  Guess (67)  |  Handle (29)  |  Harmonious (18)  |  Highway (15)  |  Human (1512)  |  Human Mind (133)  |  Impatient (4)  |  Invent (57)  |  Inventor (79)  |  Count Joseph-Louis de Lagrange (26)  |  Pierre-Simon Laplace (63)  |  Last (425)  |  Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (51)  |  Let (64)  |  Life (1870)  |  Live (650)  |  Long (778)  |  Longevity (6)  |  Manner (62)  |  Marry (11)  |  Master (182)  |  Mathematician (407)  |  Mathematics (1395)  |  Medicine (392)  |  Mind (1377)  |  Musical (10)  |  Name (359)  |  Never (1089)  |  New (1273)  |  Sir Isaac Newton (363)  |  Old (499)  |  Open (277)  |  Originate (39)  |  Pantheon (2)  |  Particle (200)  |  Past (355)  |  Philosophy (409)  |  Plato (80)  |  Pore (7)  |  Present (630)  |  Probably (50)  |  Problem (731)  |  Pursuit (128)  |  Pyramid (9)  |  Pythagoras (38)  |  Race (278)  |  Regular (48)  |  Roman (39)  |  Say (989)  |  School (227)  |  Second (66)  |  Send (23)  |  Sense (785)  |  Sergeant (2)  |  Solid (119)  |  Soul (235)  |  Spend (97)  |  Spending (24)  |  Stand (284)  |  Study (701)  |  Studying (70)  |  Suppose (158)  |  Theorem (116)  |  Theory (1015)  |  Tradition (76)  |  Undoubtedly (3)  |  Vigour (18)  |  Vulgar (33)  |  Wide (97)  |  Wife (41)  |  Wing (79)  |  Word (650)  |  Work (1402)  |  Year (963)  |  Young (253)

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:  |  China (27)  |  Everyone (35)  |  Gram (4)  |  Impregnate (2)  |  Kill (100)  |  Planet (402)  |  Plutonium (5)  |  Say (989)  |  Sperm (7)  |  Woman (160)

Trying to determine the structure of a protein by UV spectroscopy was like trying to determine the structure of a piano by listening to the sound it made while being dropped down a flight of stairs.
…...
Science quotes on:  |  Being (1276)  |  Determine (152)  |  Down (455)  |  Dropped (17)  |  Flight (101)  |  Listen (81)  |  Listening (26)  |  Piano (12)  |  Protein (56)  |  Sound (187)  |  Spectroscopy (11)  |  Stairs (2)  |  Structure (365)  |  Try (296)  |  Trying (144)

Vulnerable, like all men, to the temptations of arrogance, of which intellectual pride is the worst, he [the scientist] must nevertheless remain sincere and modest, if only because his studies constantly bring home to him that, compared with the gigantic aims of science, his own contribution, no matter how important, is only a drop in the ocean of truth.
New Perspectives in Physics (1962), 215.
Science quotes on:  |  Aim (175)  |  Arrogance (22)  |  Contribution (93)  |  Gigantic (40)  |  Home (184)  |  Intellectual (258)  |  Matter (821)  |  Men Of Science (147)  |  Modest (19)  |  Must (1525)  |  Nevertheless (90)  |  Ocean (216)  |  Pride (84)  |  Remain (355)  |  Scientist (881)  |  Truth (1109)  |  Worst (57)

Water, water everywhere,
And how the boards did shrink.
Water, water everywhere,
Nor any drop to drink.
In The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (1798, 1857), 19.
Science quotes on:  |  Board (13)  |  Drink (56)  |  Everywhere (98)  |  Ocean (216)  |  Shrink (23)  |  Water (503)

We [Frisch and Lise Meitner] walked up and down in the snow, I on skis and she on foot (she said and proved that she could get along just as fast that way), and gradually the idea took shape that this was no chipping or cracking of the nucleus but rather a process to be explained by Bohr’s idea that the nucleus was like a liquid drop; such a drop might elongate and divide itself.
Otto Frisch and John A. Wheeler, 'The Discovery of Fission', Physics Today, Nov 1967, 20, 47.
Science quotes on:  |  Niels Bohr (55)  |  Divide (77)  |  Down (455)  |  Explain (334)  |  Gradually (102)  |  Idea (881)  |  Liquid (50)  |  Lise Meitner (8)  |  Nucleus (54)  |  Process (439)  |  Snow (39)  |  Walk (138)  |  Way (1214)

What is it to see, in an Eagle glide
Which fills a human heart with so much pride?
Is it that it soars effortless above the Earth
That steals us from our own limits & dearth?
Trapped in our seas of befuddling sludge
We try and try but cannot budge.
And then to see a mortal; with such ease take wing
Up in a breeze that makes our failing spirits sing?
Do we, vicarious birds, search in it our childishness -
When we too were young & yearned in heart to fly?
Taking flights of fancy through adolescent nights
Listening little, heeding less, knowing not why?
From its highest perch in the forest of snow
Majestic - the Eagle soars alone.
Riding thermals, lording clouds
Till dropping silent from the sky as a stone
But we, so quick and ready to fold
Give up our wings at the whiff of age
Losing years, cursing time, wasting spirit
Living out entire lives in futile rage!
…...
Science quotes on:  |  Adolescent (4)  |  Age (509)  |  Alone (324)  |  Bird (163)  |  Breeze (8)  |  Cloud (111)  |  Curse (20)  |  Dearth (2)  |  Do (1905)  |  Dropping (8)  |  Eagle (20)  |  Earth (1076)  |  Ease (40)  |  Effortless (3)  |  Entire (50)  |  Fail (191)  |  Fancy (50)  |  Fill (67)  |  Flight (101)  |  Fly (153)  |  Fold (9)  |  Forest (161)  |  Futile (13)  |  Give Up (10)  |  Glide (4)  |  Heart (243)  |  Heed (12)  |  High (370)  |  Human (1512)  |  Know (1538)  |  Knowing (137)  |  Less (105)  |  Limit (294)  |  Listen (81)  |  Listening (26)  |  Little (717)  |  Live (650)  |  Living (492)  |  Lord (97)  |  Lose (165)  |  Majestic (17)  |  Mortal (55)  |  Night (133)  |  Perch (7)  |  Pride (84)  |  Quick (13)  |  Rage (10)  |  Ready (43)  |  Ride (23)  |  Sea (326)  |  Search (175)  |  See (1094)  |  Silent (31)  |  Sing (29)  |  Sky (174)  |  Sludge (3)  |  Snow (39)  |  Soar (23)  |  Spirit (278)  |  Steal (14)  |  Stone (168)  |  Thermal (15)  |  Through (846)  |  Time (1911)  |  Trap (7)  |  Try (296)  |  Vicarious (2)  |  Waste (109)  |  Whiff (2)  |  Why (491)  |  Wing (79)  |  Year (963)  |  Yearn (13)  |  Young (253)

When I received the Nobel Prize, the only big lump sum of money I have ever seen, I had to do something with it. The easiest way to drop this hot potato was to invest it, to buy shares. I knew that World War II was coming and I was afraid that if I had shares which rise in case of war, I would wish for war. So I asked my agent to buy shares which go down in the event of war. This he did. I lost my money and saved my soul.
In The Crazy Ape (1970), 21.
Science quotes on:  |  Agent (73)  |  Ask (420)  |  Asking (74)  |  Buy (21)  |  Case (102)  |  Coming (114)  |  Do (1905)  |  Down (455)  |  Ease (40)  |  Event (222)  |  Fall (243)  |  Fear (212)  |  Hot (63)  |  Invest (20)  |  Loss (117)  |  Lump (5)  |  Money (178)  |  Nobel Prize (42)  |  Potato (11)  |  Rise (169)  |  Save (126)  |  Share (82)  |  Something (718)  |  Soul (235)  |  Sum (103)  |  War (233)  |  Way (1214)  |  Wish (216)  |  World (1850)  |  World War II (9)

Where do correct ideas come from? Do they drop from the skies? No. They come from social practice, and from it alone; they come from three kinds of social practice, the struggle for production, the class struggle and scientific experiment.
In Where do Correct Ideas Come From? (May 1963). As quoted and cited in Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-Tung (1966, 1972), 206.
Science quotes on:  |  Alone (324)  |  Class (168)  |  Correct (95)  |  Do (1905)  |  Experiment (736)  |  Idea (881)  |  Kind (564)  |  Practice (212)  |  Production (190)  |  Scientific (955)  |  Sky (174)  |  Social (261)  |  Society (350)  |  Struggle (111)

Where the untrained eye will see nothing but mire and dirt, Science will often reveal exquisite possibilities. The mud we tread under our feet in the street is a grimy mixture of clay and sand, soot and water. Separate the sand, however, as Ruskinn observes—let the atoms arrange themselves in peace according to their nature—and you have the opal. Separate the clay, and it becomes a white earth, fit for the finest porcelain; or if it still further purifies itself, you have a sapphire. Take the soot, and it properly treated it will give you a diamond. While lastly, the water, purified and distilled, will become a dew-drop, or crystallize into a lovely star. Or, again, you may see as you will in any shallow pool either the mud lying at the bottom, or the image of the heavens above.
The Pleasures of Life (1887, 2007), 63.
Science quotes on:  |  According (236)  |  Arrange (33)  |  Atom (381)  |  Become (821)  |  Crystallize (12)  |  Dew (10)  |  Diamond (21)  |  Dirt (17)  |  Earth (1076)  |  Exquisite (27)  |  Eye (440)  |  Fit (139)  |  Heaven (266)  |  Heavens (125)  |  Image (97)  |  Lying (55)  |  Mixture (44)  |  Mud (26)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Nothing (1000)  |  Observation (593)  |  Observe (179)  |  Peace (116)  |  Possibility (172)  |  Reveal (152)  |  Sand (63)  |  Sapphire (4)  |  See (1094)  |  Separate (151)  |  Soot (11)  |  Star (460)  |  Still (614)  |  Themselves (433)  |  Tread (17)  |  Untrained (2)  |  Water (503)  |  White (132)  |  Will (2350)

Who does not know Maxwell’s dynamic theory of gases? At first there is the majestic development of the variations of velocities, then enter from one side the equations of condition and from the other the equations of central motions, higher and higher surges the chaos of formulas, suddenly four words burst forth: “Put n = 5.” The evil demon V disappears like the sudden ceasing of the basso parts in music, which hitherto wildly permeated the piece; what before seemed beyond control is now ordered as by magic. There is no time to state why this or that substitution was made, he who cannot feel the reason may as well lay the book aside; Maxwell is no program-musician who explains the notes of his composition. Forthwith the formulas yield obediently result after result, until the temperature-equilibrium of a heavy gas is reached as a surprising final climax and the curtain drops.
In Ceremonial Speech (15 Nov 1887) celebrating the 301st anniversary of the Karl-Franzens-University Graz. Published as Gustav Robert Kirchhoff: Festrede zur Feier des 301. Gründungstages der Karl-Franzens-Universität zu Graz (1888), 29-30, as translated in Robert Édouard Moritz, Memorabilia Mathematica; Or, The Philomath’s Quotation-book (1914), 187. From the original German, “Wer kennt nicht seine dynamische Gastheorie? – Zuerst entwickeln sich majestätisch die Variationen der Geschwindigkeiten, dann setzen von der einen Seite die Zustands-Gleichungen, von der anderen die Gleichungen der Centralbewegung ein, immer höher wogt das Chaos der Formeln; plötzlich ertönen die vier Worte: „Put n=5.“Der böse Dämon V verschwindet, wie in der Musik eine wilde, bisher alles unterwühlende Figur der Bässe plötzlich verstummt; wie mit einem Zauberschlage ordnet sich, was früher unbezwingbar schien. Da ist keine Zeit zu sagen, warum diese oder jene Substitution gemacht wird; wer das nicht fühlt, lege das Buch weg; Maxwell ist kein Programmmusiker, der über die Noten deren Erklärung setzen muss. Gefügig speien nun die Formeln Resultat auf Resultat aus, bis überraschend als Schlusseffect noch das Wärme-Gleichgewicht eines schweren Gases gewonnen wird und der Vorhang sinkt.” A condensed alternate translation also appears on the Ludwig Boltzmann Quotes page of this website.
Science quotes on:  |  Bass (2)  |  Beyond (316)  |  Book (413)  |  Burst (41)  |  Cease (81)  |  Central (81)  |  Chaos (99)  |  Composition (86)  |  Condition (362)  |  Control (182)  |  Curtain (4)  |  Demon (8)  |  Development (441)  |  Disappear (84)  |  Dynamic (16)  |  Enter (145)  |  Equation (138)  |  Equilibrium (34)  |  Evil (122)  |  Explain (334)  |  Feel (371)  |  Final (121)  |  First (1302)  |  Formula (102)  |  Gas (89)  |  Heavy (24)  |  Higher (37)  |  Know (1538)  |  Magic (92)  |  Majestic (17)  |  Mathematics As A Fine Art (23)  |  Maxwell (42)  |  James Clerk Maxwell (91)  |  Motion (320)  |  Music (133)  |  Musician (23)  |  Note (39)  |  Obedient (9)  |  Order (638)  |  Other (2233)  |  Permeate (3)  |  Program (57)  |  Reach (286)  |  Reason (766)  |  Result (700)  |  Side (236)  |  State (505)  |  Substitution (16)  |  Sudden (70)  |  Suddenly (91)  |  Surge (2)  |  Surprise (91)  |  Temperature (82)  |  Theory (1015)  |  Time (1911)  |  Variation (93)  |  Velocity (51)  |  Why (491)  |  Wild (96)  |  Word (650)  |  Yield (86)

You can swim (uncomfortably) in water at a temperature slightly above freezing; a tiny drop in temperature—or a miracle—allows you to walk on water.
Co-authored with Bruce A. Albrecht.
Craig F. Bohren and Bruce A. Albrecht. In Michael Dudley Sturge , Statistical and Thermal Physics (2003), 273.
Science quotes on:  |  Author (175)  |  Freezing (16)  |  Miracle (85)  |  Swim (32)  |  Temperature (82)  |  Tiny (74)  |  Walk (138)  |  Water (503)

Your Grace will no doubt have learnt from the weekly reports of one Marco Antonio Bragadini, called Mamugnano. … He is reported to be able to turn base metal into gold… . He literally throws gold about in shovelfuls. This is his recipe: he takes ten ounces of quicksilver, puts it into the fire, and mixes it with a drop of liquid, which he carries in an ampulla. Thus it promptly turns into good gold. He has no other wish but to be of good use to his country, the Republic. The day before yesterday he presented to the Secret Council of Ten two ampullas with this liquid, which have been tested in his absence. The first test was found to be successful and it is said to have resulted in six million ducats. I doubt not but that this will appear mighty strange to your Grace.
Anonymous
'The Famous Alchemist Bragadini. From Vienna on the 1st day of November 1589'. As quoted in George Tennyson Matthews (ed.) News and Rumor in Renaissance Europe: The Fugger Newsletters (1959), 173. A handwritten collection of news reports (1568-1604) by the powerful banking and merchant house of Fugger in Ausburg.
Science quotes on:  |  Base (120)  |  Call (781)  |  Council (9)  |  Country (269)  |  Doubt (314)  |  Fire (203)  |  First (1302)  |  Gold (101)  |  Good (906)  |  Grace (31)  |  Liquid (50)  |  Literally (30)  |  Mamugnano (2)  |  Mercury (54)  |  Metal (88)  |  Other (2233)  |  Present (630)  |  Quicksilver (8)  |  Recipe (8)  |  Republic (16)  |  Result (700)  |  Secret (216)  |  Strange (160)  |  Successful (134)  |  Test (221)  |  Turn (454)  |  Two (936)  |  Use (771)  |  Will (2350)  |  Wish (216)  |  Yesterday (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.