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

Today in Science History - Quickie Quiz
Who said: “Science without religion is lame; religion without science is blind.”
more quiz questions >>
Home > Category Index for Science Quotations > Category Index F > Category: Forever

Forever Quotes (111 quotes)
For All Time Quotes

“Cradle to Cradle” is in counterpoint to “Cradle to Grave.” It basically says that if we look at everything as a take, make and waste system, then it’s a one-way system. Whereas If we think about things having multiple lives, cradle to cradle, we could design things that can go back to either nature or back to industry forever.
In audio segment, 'William McDonough: Godfather of Green', WNYC, Studio 360 broadcast on NPR radio (18 Mar 2008) and archived on the station website.
Science quotes on:  |  Back (395)  |  Cradle (19)  |  Cradle To Cradle (2)  |  Cradle To Grave (2)  |  Design (203)  |  Everything (489)  |  Grave (52)  |  Industry (159)  |  Life (1870)  |  Live (650)  |  Look (584)  |  Multiple (19)  |  Nature (2017)  |  One-Way (2)  |  Recycle (2)  |  Say (989)  |  System (545)  |  Thing (1914)  |  Think (1122)  |  Waste (109)  |  Way (1214)

[J.J.] Sylvester’s methods! He had none. “Three lectures will be delivered on a New Universal Algebra,” he would say; then, “The course must be extended to twelve.” It did last all the rest of that year. The following year the course was to be Substitutions-Théorie, by Netto. We all got the text. He lectured about three times, following the text closely and stopping sharp at the end of the hour. Then he began to think about matrices again. “I must give one lecture a week on those,” he said. He could not confine himself to the hour, nor to the one lecture a week. Two weeks were passed, and Netto was forgotten entirely and never mentioned again. Statements like the following were not unfrequent in his lectures: “I haven’t proved this, but I am as sure as I can be of anything that it must be so. From this it will follow, etc.” At the next lecture it turned out that what he was so sure of was false. Never mind, he kept on forever guessing and trying, and presently a wonderful discovery followed, then another and another. Afterward he would go back and work it all over again, and surprise us with all sorts of side lights. He then made another leap in the dark, more treasures were discovered, and so on forever.
As quoted by Florian Cajori, in Teaching and History of Mathematics in the United States (1890), 265-266.
Science quotes on:  |  Algebra (117)  |  Back (395)  |  Confine (26)  |  Course (413)  |  Dark (145)  |  Deliver (30)  |  Discover (571)  |  Discovery (837)  |  End (603)  |  Extend (129)  |  False (105)  |  Follow (389)  |  Forget (125)  |  Forgotten (53)  |  Frequent (26)  |  Go Back (4)  |  Guess (67)  |  Himself (461)  |  Hour (192)  |  Keep (104)  |  Last (425)  |  Leap (57)  |  Lecture (111)  |  Light (635)  |  Mathematicians and Anecdotes (141)  |  Matrix (14)  |  Mention (84)  |  Mentioned (3)  |  Method (531)  |  Mind (1377)  |  More (2558)  |  Must (1525)  |  Never (1089)  |  New (1273)  |  Next (238)  |  Pass (241)  |  Prove (261)  |  Rest (287)  |  Say (989)  |  Side (236)  |  Statement (148)  |  Surprise (91)  |  James Joseph Sylvester (58)  |  Think (1122)  |  Time (1911)  |  Treasure (59)  |  Trying (144)  |  Turn (454)  |  Turn Out (9)  |  Two (936)  |  Universal (198)  |  Week (73)  |  Will (2350)  |  Wonderful (155)  |  Work (1402)  |  Year (963)

[Newton is the] British physicist linked forever in the schoolboy mind with an apple that fell and bore fruit throughout physics.
Anonymous
As given in Patricia Fara, Newton: The Making of Genius (2004), 192.
Science quotes on:  |  Apple (46)  |  Bearing (10)  |  Britain (26)  |  British (42)  |  Fall (243)  |  Fruit (108)  |  Link (48)  |  Mind (1377)  |  Myth (58)  |  Sir Isaac Newton (363)  |  Physic (515)  |  Physicist (270)  |  Physics (564)  |  Schoolboy (9)  |  Throughout (98)

[Some] philosophers have been of opinion that our immortal part acquires during this life certain habits of action or of sentiment, which become forever indissoluble, continuing after death in a future state of existence ... I would apply this ingenious idea to the generation, or production of the embryon, or new animal, which partakes so much of the form and propensities of the parent.
Zoonomia (1794), Vol. 1, 483-4.
Science quotes on:  |  Action (342)  |  Animal (651)  |  Apply (170)  |  Become (821)  |  Certain (557)  |  Death (406)  |  Evolution (635)  |  Existence (481)  |  Form (976)  |  Future (467)  |  Generation (256)  |  Habit (174)  |  Idea (881)  |  Immortal (35)  |  Ingenious (55)  |  Life (1870)  |  New (1273)  |  Opinion (291)  |  Parent (80)  |  Philosopher (269)  |  Production (190)  |  State (505)

[The aim of science is] to explain what so far has taken to be an explicans, such as a law of nature. The task of empirical science constantly renews itself. We may go on forever, proceeding to explanations of a higher and higher universality…
"The Aim of Science', Ratio 1 (1958), 26. Quoted in Erhard Scheibe and Brigitte Falkenburg (ed), Between Rationalism and Empiricism: Selected Papers in the Philosophy of Physics (2001), 238
Science quotes on:  |  Aim (175)  |  Empirical (58)  |  Empirical Science (9)  |  Explain (334)  |  Explanation (246)  |  Law (913)  |  Law Of Nature (80)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Proceeding (38)  |  Renew (20)  |  Scientific Method (200)  |  Task (152)  |  Universality (22)

Ode to The Amoeba
Recall from Time's abysmal chasm
That piece of primal protoplasm
The First Amoeba, strangely splendid,
From whom we're all of us descended.
That First Amoeba, weirdly clever,
Exists today and shall forever,
Because he reproduced by fission;
He split himself, and each division
And subdivision deemed it fitting
To keep on splitting, splitting, splitting;
So, whatsoe'er their billions be,
All, all amoebas still are he.
Zoologists discern his features
In every sort of breathing creatures,
Since all of every living species,
No matter how their breed increases
Or how their ranks have been recruited,
From him alone were evoluted.
King Solomon, the Queen of Sheba
And Hoover sprang from that amoeba;
Columbus, Shakespeare, Darwin, Shelley
Derived from that same bit of jelly.
So famed is he and well-connected,
His statue ought to be erected,
For you and I and William Beebe
Are undeniably amoebae!
(1922). Collected in Gaily the Troubadour (1936), 18.
Science quotes on:  |  Abyss (30)  |  Alone (324)  |  Amoeba (21)  |  William Beebe (5)  |  Billion (104)  |  Breathing (23)  |  Breed (26)  |  Chasm (9)  |  Clever (41)  |  Christopher Columbus (16)  |  Connect (126)  |  Creature (242)  |  Charles Darwin (322)  |  Descend (49)  |  Discern (35)  |  Division (67)  |  Evolution (635)  |  Exist (458)  |  First (1302)  |  Fission (10)  |  Himself (461)  |  Herbert Hoover (13)  |  Increase (225)  |  Jelly (6)  |  Life (1870)  |  Living (492)  |  Matter (821)  |  Ode (3)  |  Poem (104)  |  Primal (5)  |  Protoplasm (13)  |  Rank (69)  |  Reproduction (74)  |  William Shakespeare (109)  |   Mary Shelley (9)  |  Species (435)  |  Splendid (23)  |  Split (15)  |  Statue (17)  |  Still (614)  |  Time (1911)  |  Today (321)  |  Zoologist (12)

A chemical compound once formed would persist for ever, if no alteration took place in surrounding conditions. But to the student of Life the aspect of nature is reversed. Here, incessant, and, so far as we know, spontaneous change is the rule, rest the exception—the anomaly to be accounted for. Living things have no inertia and tend to no equilibrium.
From Address (22 Jul 1854) delivered at St. Martin’s Hall, published as a pamphlet (1854), 7, and collected in 'Educational Value of Natural History Sciences', Lay Sermons, Addresses, and Reviews (1870), 75.
Science quotes on:  |  Account (195)  |  Alteration (31)  |  Anomaly (11)  |  Aspect (129)  |  Biology (232)  |  Change (639)  |  Chemical (303)  |  Chemistry (376)  |  Compound (117)  |  Condition (362)  |  Equilibrium (34)  |  Exception (74)  |  Form (976)  |  Inertia (17)  |  Know (1538)  |  Life (1870)  |  Living (492)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Persist (13)  |  Rest (287)  |  Rule (307)  |  Spontaneous (29)  |  Student (317)  |  Tend (124)  |  Thing (1914)

Across the road from my cabin was a huge clear-cut—hundreds of acres of massive spruce stumps interspersed with tiny Douglas firs—products of what they call “Reforestation,” which I guess makes the spindly firs en masse a “Reforest,” which makes an individual spindly fir a “Refir,” which means you could say that Weyerhauser, who owns the joint, has Refir Madness, since they think that sawing down 200-foot-tall spruces and replacing them with puling 2-foot Refirs is no different from farming beans or corn or alfalfa. They even call the towering spires they wipe from the Earth’s face forever a “crop”--as if they’d planted the virgin forest! But I'm just a fisherman and may be missing some deeper significance in their nomenclature and stranger treatment of primordial trees.
In David James Duncan, The River Why (1983), 71.
Science quotes on:  |  Acre (13)  |  Bean (3)  |  Cabin (5)  |  Call (781)  |  Clear-Cut (10)  |  Corn (20)  |  Crop (26)  |  Cut (116)  |  Deeper (4)  |  Difference (355)  |  Different (595)  |  Douglas Fir (2)  |  Down (455)  |  Earth (1076)  |  Face (214)  |  Farming (8)  |  Fisherman (9)  |  Forest (161)  |  Guess (67)  |  Hundred (240)  |  Individual (420)  |  Joint (31)  |  Madness (33)  |  Massive (9)  |  Mean (810)  |  Means (587)  |  Miss (51)  |  Missing (21)  |  Nomenclature (159)  |  Plant (320)  |  Primordial (14)  |  Product (166)  |  Reforestation (6)  |  Replacement (13)  |  Road (71)  |  Sawing (3)  |  Say (989)  |  Significance (114)  |  Spire (5)  |  Stranger (16)  |  Stump (3)  |  Think (1122)  |  Thinking (425)  |  Tiny (74)  |  Towering (11)  |  Treatment (135)  |  Tree (269)  |  Virgin (11)

All interpretations made by a scientist are hypotheses, and all hypotheses are tentative. They must forever be tested and they must be revised if found to be unsatisfactory. Hence, a change of mind in a scientist, and particularly in a great scientist, is not only not a sign of weakness but rather evidence for continuing attention to the respective problem and an ability to test the hypothesis again and again.
The Growth of Biological Thought: Diversity, Evolution and Inheritance (1982), 831.
Science quotes on:  |  Ability (162)  |  Attention (196)  |  Change (639)  |  Evidence (267)  |  Great (1610)  |  Hypothesis (314)  |  Interpretation (89)  |  Mind (1377)  |  Must (1525)  |  Problem (731)  |  Repetition (29)  |  Revise (6)  |  Scientist (881)  |  Sign (63)  |  Tentative (18)  |  Test (221)  |  Thinking (425)  |  Unsatisfactory (4)  |  Weakness (50)

All the human culture, all the results of art, science and technology that we see before us today, are almost exclusively the creative product of the Aryan. This very fact admits of the not unfounded inference that he alone was the founder of all higher humanity, therefore representing the prototype of all that we understand by the word 'man.' He is the Prometheus of mankind from whose shining brow the divine spark of genius has sprung at all times, forever kindling anew that fire of knowledge which illuminated the night of silent mysteries and thus caused man to climb the path to mastery over the other beings of the earth ... It was he who laid the foundations and erected the walls of every great structure in human culture.
Mein Kampf (1925-26), American Edition (1943), 290. In William Lawrence Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich (1990), 86-87.
Science quotes on:  |  Alone (324)  |  Anew (19)  |  Art (680)  |  Being (1276)  |  Creative (144)  |  Culture (157)  |  Divine (112)  |  Earth (1076)  |  Fact (1257)  |  Fire (203)  |  Foundation (177)  |  Founder (26)  |  Genius (301)  |  Great (1610)  |  Human (1512)  |  Human Culture (10)  |  Humanity (186)  |  Inference (45)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Man (2252)  |  Mankind (356)  |  Mastery (36)  |  Mystery (188)  |  Other (2233)  |  Path (159)  |  Product (166)  |  Prototype (9)  |  Result (700)  |  Science And Technology (46)  |  See (1094)  |  Shining (35)  |  Spark (32)  |  Structure (365)  |  Technology (281)  |  Time (1911)  |  Today (321)  |  Understand (648)  |  Wall (71)  |  Word (650)

And the squirrel, Adjidaumo,…
Take the thanks of Hiawatha,
And the name which now he gives you;
For hereafter and forever
Boys shall call you Adjidaumo,
Tail-in-air the boys shall call you!
From 'Hiawatha’s Fishing', in The Song of Hiawatha (1855), 105-106.
Science quotes on:  |  Name (359)  |  Squirrel (11)  |  Tail (21)  |  Thank (48)

As Herschel ruminated long ago, particles moving in mutual gravitational interaction are, as we human investigators see it forever solving differential equations which, if written out in full, might circle the earth.
In Forbidden Knowledge: And Other Essays on the Philosophy of Cognition (2012), 55.John Herschel. Rescher was not quoting, but restating from John Herschel, 'On Atoms', Familiar Lectures on Scientific Subjects (1867, 1872), 458. (Previously published in Fortnightly Review)
Science quotes on:  |  Circle (117)  |  Differential Equation (18)  |  Earth (1076)  |  Equation (138)  |  Gravitation (72)  |  Sir John Herschel (24)  |  Human (1512)  |  Interaction (47)  |  Investigator (71)  |  Long (778)  |  Mutual (54)  |  Particle (200)  |  See (1094)  |  Solve (145)

As our cities and suburbs relentlessly expand, those priceless open spaces needed for recreation areas accessible to their people are swallowed up—often forever. Unless we preserve these spaces while they are still available, we will have none to preserve. Therefore, I shall propose new financing methods for purchasing open space and parklands now, before they are lost to us.
In State of the Union Address (22 Jan 1970).
Science quotes on:  |  Accessible (27)  |  City (87)  |  Expand (56)  |  Finance (4)  |  Loss (117)  |  Park (10)  |  People (1031)  |  Preserve (91)  |  Priceless (9)  |  Purchase (8)  |  Recreation (23)  |  Relentless (9)  |  Suburb (7)  |  Swallow (32)

At a distance in the meadow I hear still, at long intervals, the hurried commencement of the bobolink s strain, the bird just dashing into song, which is as suddenly checked, as it were, by the warder of the seasons, and the strain is left incomplete forever. Like human beings they are inspired to sing only for a short season.
(29 Jun 1851). In Henry David Thoreau and Bradford Torrey (ed.), The Writings of Henry Thoreau: Journal: II: 1850-September 15, 1851 (1906), 275.
Science quotes on:  |  Being (1276)  |  Bird (163)  |  Commencement (14)  |  Distance (171)  |  Hear (144)  |  Human (1512)  |  Human Being (185)  |  Incomplete (31)  |  Inspire (58)  |  Long (778)  |  Meadow (21)  |  Ornithology (21)  |  Season (47)  |  Short (200)  |  Sing (29)  |  Song (41)  |  Still (614)  |  Strain (13)  |  Suddenly (91)  |  Warder (2)

Bernard Bolzano dispelled the clouds that throughout all the foregone centuries had enveloped the notion of Infinitude in darkness, completely sheared the great term of its vagueness without shearing it of its strength, and thus rendered it forever available for the purposes of logical discourse.
In Lectures on Science, Philosophy and Art (1908), 42.
Science quotes on:  |  Available (80)  |  Century (319)  |  Cloud (111)  |  Completely (137)  |  Darkness (72)  |  Discourse (19)  |  Dispel (5)  |  Envelop (5)  |  Forego (4)  |  Great (1610)  |  Infinitude (3)  |  Logical (57)  |  Mathematicians and Anecdotes (141)  |  Notion (120)  |  Purpose (336)  |  Render (96)  |  Shear (2)  |  Strength (139)  |  Term (357)  |  Throughout (98)  |  Vagueness (15)

Biological evolution is a system of constant divergence without subsequent joining of branches. Lineages, once distinct, are separate forever. In human history, transmission across lineages is, perhaps, the major source of cultural change. Europeans learned about corn and potatoes from Native Americans and gave them smallpox in return.
…...
Science quotes on:  |  Across (32)  |  Biological (137)  |  Branch (155)  |  Change (639)  |  Constant (148)  |  Corn (20)  |  Cultural (26)  |  Distinct (98)  |  Divergence (6)  |  European (5)  |  Evolution (635)  |  Give (208)  |  History (716)  |  Human (1512)  |  Join (32)  |  Joining (11)  |  Learn (672)  |  Learned (235)  |  Lineage (3)  |  Major (88)  |  Native (41)  |  Native American (4)  |  Potato (11)  |  Return (133)  |  Separate (151)  |  Smallpox (14)  |  Source (101)  |  Subsequent (34)  |  System (545)  |  Transmission (34)

But we shall not satisfy ourselves simply with improving steam and explosive engines or inventing new batteries; we have something much better to work for, a greater task to fulfill. We have to evolve means for obtaining energy from stores which are forever inexhaustible, to perfect methods which do not imply consumption and waste of any material whatever.
Speech (12 Jan 1897) at a gala inaugurating power service from Niagara Falls to Buffalo, NY. Printed in 'Tesla on Electricity', The Electrical Review (27 Jan 1897), 30, No. 3, 47.
Science quotes on:  |  Battery (12)  |  Better (493)  |  Energy (373)  |  Engine (99)  |  Evolution (635)  |  Explosive (24)  |  Fulfill (19)  |  Great (1610)  |  Greater (288)  |  Improve (64)  |  Invent (57)  |  Mean (810)  |  Means (587)  |  New (1273)  |  Obtain (164)  |  Ourselves (247)  |  Satisfy (29)  |  Simply (53)  |  Something (718)  |  Steam (81)  |  Store (49)  |  Task (152)  |  Work (1402)

By the 18th century science had been so successful in laying bare the laws of nature that many thought there was nothing left to discover. Immutable laws prescribed the motion of every particle in the universe, exactly and forever: the task of the scientist was to elucidate the implications of those laws for any particular phenomenon of interest. Chaos gave way to a clockwork world. But the world moved on ...Today even our clocks are not made of clockwork. ... With the advent of quantum mechanics, the clockwork world has become a lottery. Fundamental events, such as the decay of a radioactive atom, are held to be determined by chance, not law.
Does God Play Dice?: The New Mathematics of Chaos (2002). xi.
Science quotes on:  |  18th Century (21)  |  Atom (381)  |  Bare (33)  |  Become (821)  |  Century (319)  |  Chance (244)  |  Chaos (99)  |  Clock (51)  |  Decay (59)  |  Discover (571)  |  Event (222)  |  Fundamental (264)  |  Immutable (26)  |  Interest (416)  |  Law (913)  |  Mechanic (120)  |  Mechanics (137)  |  Motion (320)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Nothing (1000)  |  Particle (200)  |  Phenomenon (334)  |  Predictability (7)  |  Quantum (118)  |  Quantum Mechanics (47)  |  Radioactive (24)  |  Scientist (881)  |  Successful (134)  |  Task (152)  |  Thought (995)  |  Today (321)  |  Universe (900)  |  Way (1214)  |  World (1850)

Computers and rocket ships are examples of invention, not of understanding. … All that is needed to build machines is the knowledge that when one thing happens, another thing happens as a result. It’s an accumulation of simple patterns. A dog can learn patterns. There is no “why” in those examples. We don’t understand why electricity travels. We don’t know why light travels at a constant speed forever. All we can do is observe and record patterns.
In God's Debris: A Thought Experiment (2004), 22.
Science quotes on:  |  Accumulation (51)  |  Build (211)  |  Building (158)  |  Computer (131)  |  Constant (148)  |  Do (1905)  |  Dog (70)  |  Electricity (168)  |  Example (98)  |  Happen (282)  |  Happening (59)  |  Invention (400)  |  Know (1538)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Learn (672)  |  Learning (291)  |  Light (635)  |  Machine (271)  |  Need (320)  |  Observation (593)  |  Observe (179)  |  Pattern (116)  |  Record (161)  |  Result (700)  |  Rocket (52)  |  Ship (69)  |  Simple (426)  |  Simplicity (175)  |  Speed (66)  |  Thing (1914)  |  Travel (125)  |  Understand (648)  |  Understanding (527)  |  Why (491)

Contingency is rich and fascinating; it embodies an exquisite tension between the power of individuals to modify history and the intelligible limits set by laws of nature. The details of individual and species’s lives are not mere frills, without power to shape the large-scale course of events, but particulars that can alter entire futures, profoundly and forever.
Reprinted from column, 'This View of Life',Natural History magazine, in Eight Little Piggies (1993), 77.
Science quotes on:  |  Alter (64)  |  Contingency (11)  |  Course (413)  |  Detail (150)  |  Embody (18)  |  Entire (50)  |  Event (222)  |  Exquisite (27)  |  Fascinating (38)  |  Future (467)  |  History (716)  |  Individual (420)  |  Intelligible (35)  |  Large (398)  |  Law (913)  |  Limit (294)  |  Live (650)  |  Mere (86)  |  Modify (15)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Power (771)  |  Profoundly (13)  |  Rich (66)  |  Scale (122)  |  Set (400)  |  Shape (77)  |  Species (435)  |  Tension (24)

Despite the continuing expansion or even explosion of information, there will forever be limits beyond which the devices of science cannot lead a man.
In Boundaries of the Soul (1972, 1994), 378.
Science quotes on:  |  Beyond (316)  |  Device (71)  |  Expansion (43)  |  Explosion (51)  |  Information (173)  |  Lead (391)  |  Limit (294)  |  Man (2252)  |  Will (2350)

Dream as if you’ll live forever... live as if you’ll die today.
…...
Science quotes on:  |  Die (94)  |  Dream (222)  |  Live (650)  |  Today (321)

Dreams are wishes cast upon stars, so catch a shining one ~ take your friend’s hand~ and hold on forever.
…...
Science quotes on:  |  Cast (69)  |  Catch (34)  |  Dream (222)  |  Friend (180)  |  Hand (149)  |  Hold (96)  |  Shine (49)  |  Shining (35)  |  Star (460)  |  Stars (304)  |  Wish (216)

Each discovery of science … adds a rung to a ladder of knowledge whose end is not in sight because we are building the ladder as we go along. As far as I can tell, as we assemble and ascend this ladder, we will forever uncover the secrets of the universe—one by one.
In magazine article, 'The Beginning of Science', Natural History (Mar 2001). Collected in Death by Black Hole: And Other Cosmic Quandaries (2007), 20.
Science quotes on:  |  Add (42)  |  Ascend (30)  |  Assemble (14)  |  Build (211)  |  Building (158)  |  Discovery (837)  |  End (603)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Ladder (18)  |  Secret (216)  |  Sight (135)  |  Tell (344)  |  Uncover (20)  |  Universe (900)  |  Will (2350)

For nothing is fixed, forever and forever and forever, it is not fixed; the earth is always shifting, the light is always changing, the sea does not cease to grind down rock. Generations do not cease to be born, and we are responsible to them because we are the only witnesses they have. The sea rises, the light fails, lovers cling to each other, and children cling to us. The moment we cease to hold each other, the sea engulfs us and the light goes out.
…...
Science quotes on:  |  Bear (162)  |  Cease (81)  |  Change (639)  |  Child (333)  |  Children (201)  |  Cling (6)  |  Do (1905)  |  Down (455)  |  Earth (1076)  |  Fail (191)  |  Fix (34)  |  Generation (256)  |  Grind (11)  |  Hold (96)  |  Light (635)  |  Lover (11)  |  Moment (260)  |  Nothing (1000)  |  Other (2233)  |  Responsible (19)  |  Rise (169)  |  Rock (176)  |  Sea (326)  |  Shift (45)  |  Witness (57)

Hold fast to dreams,
Let them stay with you forever.
Don’t let them die.
You might fly up in the sky
On a silver unicorn’s back,
Dreaming of the ocean,
Listening to the dolphins sing.
Dreams, hold on to them forever.
…...
Science quotes on:  |  Back (395)  |  Die (94)  |  Dolphin (9)  |  Dream (222)  |  Fast (49)  |  Fly (153)  |  Hold (96)  |  Let (64)  |  Listen (81)  |  Listening (26)  |  Ocean (216)  |  Silver (49)  |  Sing (29)  |  Sky (174)  |  Stay (26)  |  Unicorn (4)

I believe that life can go on forever. It takes a million years to evolve a new species, ten million for a new genus, one hundred million for a class, a billion for a phylum—and that’s usually as far as your imagination goes. In a billion years, it seems, intelligent life might be as different from humans as humans are from insects. But what would happen in another ten billion years? It’s utterly impossible to conceive of ourselves changing as drastically as that, over and over again. All you can say is, on that kind of time scale the material form that life would take is completely open. To change from a human being to a cloud may seem a big order, but it’s the kind of change you’d expect over billions of years.
Quoted in Omni (1986), 8, 38.
Science quotes on:  |  Being (1276)  |  Billion (104)  |  Change (639)  |  Class (168)  |  Cloud (111)  |  Completely (137)  |  Conceive (100)  |  Different (595)  |  Evolution (635)  |  Expect (203)  |  Form (976)  |  Genus (27)  |  Happen (282)  |  Human (1512)  |  Human Being (185)  |  Hundred (240)  |  Imagination (349)  |  Impossible (263)  |  Insect (89)  |  Intelligent (108)  |  Kind (564)  |  Life (1870)  |  Material (366)  |  New (1273)  |  Open (277)  |  Order (638)  |  Ourselves (247)  |  Say (989)  |  Scale (122)  |  Species (435)  |  Time (1911)  |  Usually (176)  |  Year (963)

I believe that the Dayton trial marked the beginning of the decline of fundamentalism. … I feel that restrictive legislation on academic freedom is forever a thing of the past, that religion and science may now address one another in an atmosphere of mutual respect and of a common quest for truth. I like to think that the Dayton trial had some part in bringing to birth this new era.
From 'Reflections—Forty Years After', in Jerry R. Tompkins (ed.), D-Days at Dayton: Reflections on the Scopes Trial(1965), 31. As quoted in Stephen Jay Gould, Hen’s Teeth and Horse’s Toes: Further Reflections in Natural History (1983), 274.
Science quotes on:  |  Academic (20)  |  Atmosphere (117)  |  Beginning (312)  |  Birth (154)  |  Common (447)  |  Decline (28)  |  Era (51)  |  Feel (371)  |  Freedom (145)  |  Fundamentalism (4)  |  Legislation (10)  |  Marked (55)  |  Mutual (54)  |  New (1273)  |  Past (355)  |  Quest (39)  |  Religion (369)  |  Respect (212)  |  Restrictive (4)  |  Science And Religion (337)  |  Scopes Monkey Trial (9)  |  Thing (1914)  |  Think (1122)  |  Trial (59)  |  Truth (1109)

I can hear the sizzle of newborn stars, and know anything of meaning, of the fierce magic emerging here. I am witness to flexible eternity, the evolving past, and I know we will live forever, as dust or breathe in the face of stars, in the shifting pattern of winds.
In Secrets from the Center of the World (1989), 56.
Science quotes on:  |  Breathe (49)  |  Dust (68)  |  Emerge (24)  |  Eternity (64)  |  Evolution (635)  |  Face (214)  |  Fierce (8)  |  Flexible (7)  |  Hear (144)  |  Know (1538)  |  Live (650)  |  Magic (92)  |  Mean (810)  |  Meaning (244)  |  Newborn (5)  |  Past (355)  |  Pattern (116)  |  Shift (45)  |  Star (460)  |  Stars (304)  |  Will (2350)  |  Wind (141)  |  Witness (57)

I chatter over stony ways,
In little sharps and trebles,
I bubble into eddying bays,
I babble on the pebbles.…
And out again I curve and flow
To join the brimming river;
For men may come and men may go,
But I go on forever.
From 'Song of the Brook' (1842), collected in The Poetical Works of Alfred Tennyson (1873), 142.
Science quotes on:  |  Babble (2)  |  Bay (6)  |  Brimming (4)  |  Bubble (23)  |  Chatter (3)  |  Curve (49)  |  Eddy (4)  |  Flow (89)  |  Hydrology (10)  |  Join (32)  |  Little (717)  |  Pebble (27)  |  River (140)  |  Sharp (17)  |  Stone (168)  |  Way (1214)

I could have gone on flying through space forever.
As quoted in The New York Times (14 Apr 1958). Given and cited in Dave English, Slipping The Surly Bonds: Great Quotations on Flight (1998), 11.
Science quotes on:  |  Fly (153)  |  Flying (74)  |  Space (523)  |  Through (846)

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

I have enjoyed the trees and scenery of Kentucky exceedingly. How shall I ever tell of the miles and miles of beauty that have been flowing into me in such measure? These lofty curving ranks of lobing, swelling hills, these concealed valleys of fathomless verdure, and these lordly trees with the nursing sunlight glancing in their leaves upon the outlines of the magnificent masses of shade embosomed among their wide branches—these are cut into my memory to go with me forever.
John Muir
Letter, written “among the hills of Bear Creek, seven miles southeast of Burkesville, Kentucky” (Sep 1867). In John Muir and William Frederick Badé (Ed.), A Thousand-Mile Walk to the Gulf (1916), xix. This was by far Muir's longest botanical excursion made in his earlier years.
Science quotes on:  |  Beauty (313)  |  Branch (155)  |  Concealed (25)  |  Cut (116)  |  Exceedingly (28)  |  Excursion (12)  |  Fathomless (3)  |  Hill (23)  |  Kentucky (4)  |  Lofty (16)  |  Magnificent (46)  |  Measure (241)  |  Memory (144)  |  Mile (43)  |  Nursing (9)  |  Rank (69)  |  Scenery (9)  |  Shade (35)  |  Sunlight (29)  |  Tell (344)  |  Tree (269)  |  Valley (37)  |  Wide (97)

I ought to say that one of our first joint researches, so far as publication was concerned, had the peculiar effect of freeing me forever from the wiles of college football, and if that is a defect, make the most of it! Dr. Noyes and I conceived an idea on sodium aluminate solutions on the morning of the day of a Princeton-Harvard game (as I recall it) that we had planned to attend. It looked as though a few days' work on freezing-point determinations and electrical conductivities would answer the question. We could not wait, so we gave up the game and stayed in the laboratory. Our experiments were successful. I think that this was the last game I have ever cared about seeing. I mention this as a warning, because this immunity might attack anyone. I find that I still complainingly wonder at the present position of football in American education.
Address upon receiving the Perkin Medal Award, 'The Big Things in Chemistry', The Journal of Industrial and Engineering Chemistry (Feb 1921), 13, No. 2, 162-163.
Science quotes on:  |  America (143)  |  Answer (389)  |  Attack (86)  |  Attend (67)  |  Car (75)  |  Care (203)  |  College (71)  |  Complaint (13)  |  Concern (239)  |  Conductivity (4)  |  Defect (31)  |  Determination (80)  |  Education (423)  |  Effect (414)  |  Electrical (57)  |  Experiment (736)  |  Find (1014)  |  First (1302)  |  Football (11)  |  Freeing (6)  |  Freezing (16)  |  Freezing Point (3)  |  Game (104)  |  Idea (881)  |  Immunity (8)  |  Joint (31)  |  Laboratory (214)  |  Last (425)  |  Look (584)  |  Mention (84)  |  Morning (98)  |  Most (1728)  |  Peculiar (115)  |  Point (584)  |  Position (83)  |  Present (630)  |  Publication (102)  |  Question (649)  |  Research (753)  |  Say (989)  |  Seeing (143)  |  Sodium (15)  |  Solution (282)  |  Solution. (53)  |  Still (614)  |  Success (327)  |  Successful (134)  |  Think (1122)  |  Wait (66)  |  Warning (18)  |  Wonder (251)  |  Work (1402)

I think that each town should have a park, or rather a primitive forest, of five hundred or a thousand acres, either in one body or several, where a stick should never be cut for fuel, nor for the navy, nor to make wagons, but stand and decay for higher uses—a common possession forever, for instruction and recreation. All Walden Wood might have been reserved, with Walden in the midst of it.
In Wild Fruits: Thoreau’s Rediscovered Last Manuscript (2000), 238. Also appears as an epigraph after the title page.
Science quotes on:  |  Acre (13)  |  Common (447)  |  Cut (116)  |  Decay (59)  |  Forest (161)  |  Fuel (39)  |  Instruction (101)  |  Navy (10)  |  Park (10)  |  Possession (68)  |  Primitive (79)  |  Recreation (23)  |  Reserve (26)  |  Stand (284)  |  Stick (27)  |  Town (30)  |  Use (771)  |  Wagon (10)

If at this moment I am not a worn-out, debauched, useless carcass of a man, if it has been or will be my fate to advance the cause of science, if I feel that I have a shadow of a claim on the love of those about me, if in the supreme moment when I looked down into my boy’s grave my sorrow was full of submission and without bitterness, it is because these agencies have worked upon me, and not because I have ever cared whether my poor personality shall remain distinct forever from the All from whence it came and whither it goes.
And thus, my dear Kingsley, you will understand what my position is. I may be quite wrong, and in that case I know I shall have to pay the penalty for being wrong. But I can only say with Luther, “Gott helfe mir, ich kann nichts anders [God help me, I cannot do otherwise].”
In Letter (23 Sep 1860) to Charles Kingsley, Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley (1901), 237.
Science quotes on:  |  Advance (298)  |  Being (1276)  |  Boy (100)  |  Car (75)  |  Carcass (2)  |  Cause (561)  |  Claim (154)  |  Debauched (2)  |  Distinct (98)  |  Do (1905)  |  Down (455)  |  Fate (76)  |  Feel (371)  |  God (776)  |  Grave (52)  |  Know (1538)  |  Look (584)  |  Love (328)  |  Man (2252)  |  Moment (260)  |  Personality (66)  |  Poor (139)  |  Remain (355)  |  Say (989)  |  Shadow (73)  |  Sorrow (21)  |  Supreme (73)  |  Understand (648)  |  Whither (11)  |  Will (2350)  |  Work (1402)  |  Wrong (246)

If logical training is to consist, not in repeating barbarous scholastic formulas or mechanically tacking together empty majors and minors, but in acquiring dexterity in the use of trustworthy methods of advancing from the known to the unknown, then mathematical investigation must ever remain one of its most indispensable instruments. Once inured to the habit of accurately imagining abstract relations, recognizing the true value of symbolic conceptions, and familiarized with a fixed standard of proof, the mind is equipped for the consideration of quite other objects than lines and angles. The twin treatises of Adam Smith on social science, wherein, by deducing all human phenomena first from the unchecked action of selfishness and then from the unchecked action of sympathy, he arrives at mutually-limiting conclusions of transcendent practical importance, furnish for all time a brilliant illustration of the value of mathematical methods and mathematical discipline.
In 'University Reform', Darwinism and Other Essays (1893), 297-298.
Science quotes on:  |  Abstract (141)  |  Accuracy (81)  |  Acquire (46)  |  Action (342)  |  Advance (298)  |  Angle (25)  |  Arrive (40)  |  Barbarous (4)  |  Brilliant (57)  |  Conception (160)  |  Conclusion (266)  |  Consideration (143)  |  Deduce (27)  |  Dexterity (8)  |  Discipline (85)  |  Empty (82)  |  Equip (6)  |  Familiarize (5)  |  Fix (34)  |  Formula (102)  |  Habit (174)  |  Human (1512)  |  Illustration (51)  |  Imagine (176)  |  Importance (299)  |  Indispensable (31)  |  Instrument (158)  |  Investigation (250)  |  Known (453)  |  Limit (294)  |  Line (100)  |  Logic (311)  |  Major (88)  |  Mathematics (1395)  |  Mathematics And Logic (27)  |  Method (531)  |  Mind (1377)  |  Minor (12)  |  Mutual (54)  |  Phenomenon (334)  |  Practical (225)  |  Proof (304)  |  Recognize (136)  |  Relation (166)  |  Repeat (44)  |  Scholastic (2)  |  Selfishness (9)  |  Adam Smith (8)  |  Social Science (37)  |  Standard (64)  |  Symbolic (16)  |  Sympathy (35)  |  Training (92)  |  Transcendent (3)  |  Treatise (46)  |  True (239)  |  Trustworthy (14)  |  Twin (16)  |  Unchecked (4)  |  Unknown (195)  |  Value (393)

If we were bees, ants, or Lacedaemonian warriors, to whom personal fear does not exist and cowardice is the most shameful thing in the world, warring would go on forever. But luckily we are only men—and cowards.
In first Tarner Lecture, at Trinity College, Cambridge (Oct 1956), 'The Physical Basis of Consciousness', printed in Mind and Matter (1958), 14. Also collected in What is Life?: With Mind and Matter and Autobiographical Sketches (1992, 2012), 102.
Science quotes on:  |  Ant (34)  |  Bee (44)  |  Coward (5)  |  Exist (458)  |  Fear (212)  |  Men (20)  |  Most (1728)  |  Shame (15)  |  Thing (1914)  |  War (233)  |  Warrior (6)  |  World (1850)

If you free yourself from the conventional reaction to a quantity like a million years, you free yourself a bit from the boundaries of human time. And then in a way you do not live at all, but in another way you live forever.
In Basin and Range (1981), 135.
Science quotes on:  |  Bit (21)  |  Boundary (55)  |  Conventional (31)  |  Do (1905)  |  Free (239)  |  Human (1512)  |  Live (650)  |  Million (124)  |  Quantity (136)  |  Reaction (106)  |  Time (1911)  |  Way (1214)  |  Year (963)

In formal logic a contradiction is the signal of a defeat, but in the evolution of real knowledge it marks the first step in progress toward a victory. This is one great reason for the utmost toleration of variety of opinion. Once and forever, this duty of toleration has been summed up in the words, “Let both grow together until the harvest.”
In 'Religion and Science', The Atlantic (Aug 1925).
Science quotes on:  |  Both (496)  |  Contradiction (69)  |  Defeat (31)  |  Evolution (635)  |  First (1302)  |  Great (1610)  |  Grow (247)  |  Harvest (28)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Logic (311)  |  Opinion (291)  |  Progress (492)  |  Reason (766)  |  Signal (29)  |  Step (234)  |  Together (392)  |  Variety (138)  |  Victory (40)  |  Word (650)

In teaching man, experimental science results in lessening his pride more and more by proving to him every day that primary causes, like the objective reality of things, will be hidden from him forever and that he can only know relations.
…...
Science quotes on:  |  Cause (561)  |  Experimental (193)  |  Hide (70)  |  Know (1538)  |  Lessen (6)  |  Lessening (3)  |  Man (2252)  |  More (2558)  |  Objective (96)  |  Pride (84)  |  Primary (82)  |  Prove (261)  |  Reality (274)  |  Relation (166)  |  Result (700)  |  Teach (299)  |  Teaching (190)  |  Thing (1914)  |  Will (2350)

In the alternation between inhaling and exhaling, between heaven and earth, between Yin and Yang, holiness is forever being created.
From Das Glasperlemspeil (1943) translated as The Glass Bead Game (1969, 1990), 119.
Science quotes on:  |  Alternation (5)  |  Being (1276)  |  Create (245)  |  Earth (1076)  |  Exhale (2)  |  Heaven (266)  |  Holiness (7)  |  Inhale (3)

In the nature of life and in the principles of evolution we have had our answer. Of men elsewhere, and beyond, there will be none, forever.
In 'Little Men and Flying Sources', The Immense Journey (1957), 162.
Science quotes on:  |  Answer (389)  |  Beyond (316)  |  Elsewhere (10)  |  Evolution (635)  |  Life (1870)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Principle (530)  |  Will (2350)

It is characteristic of the unlearned that they are forever proposing something which is old, and because it has recently come to their own attention, supposing it to be new.
Address at Holy Cross College (25 Jun 1919), collected in Have Faith In Massachusetts: A Collection of Speeches and Messages (1919, 2nd Ed.), 231. (This speech was not included in the period covered by the first edition.)
Science quotes on:  |  Attention (196)  |  Characteristic (154)  |  New (1273)  |  Old (499)  |  Recent (78)  |  Something (718)  |  Supposing (3)  |  Unlearn (11)  |  Unlearned (2)

It is good to realize that if love and peace can prevail on Earth, and if we can teach our children to honor nature’s gifts, the joys and beauties of the outdoors will be here forever.
…...
Science quotes on:  |  Beauty (313)  |  Child (333)  |  Children (201)  |  Earth (1076)  |  Gift (105)  |  Good (906)  |  Honor (57)  |  Joy (117)  |  Love (328)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Outdoors (3)  |  Peace (116)  |  Prevail (47)  |  Realize (157)  |  Teach (299)  |  Will (2350)

It is inaccurate to say I hate everything. I am strongly in favor of common sense, common honesty, and common decency. This makes me forever ineligible for any public office.
…...
Science quotes on:  |  Common (447)  |  Common Sense (136)  |  Decency (5)  |  Everything (489)  |  Favor (69)  |  Hate (68)  |  Honesty (29)  |  Inaccurate (4)  |  Office (71)  |  Public (100)  |  Say (989)  |  Sense (785)  |  Strongly (9)

It is odd to think that there is a word for something which, strictly speaking, does not exist, namely, “rest.” We distinguish between living and dead matter; between moving bodies and bodies at rest. This is a primitive point of view. What seems dead, a stone or the proverbial “door-nail,” say, is actually forever in motion. We have merely become accustomed to judge by outward appearances; by the deceptive impressions we get through our senses.
Max Born
The Restless Universe (1935), I.
Science quotes on:  |  Accustom (52)  |  Accustomed (46)  |  Appearance (145)  |  Become (821)  |  Distinguish (168)  |  Door (94)  |  Exist (458)  |  Impression (118)  |  Judge (114)  |  Living (492)  |  Matter (821)  |  Merely (315)  |  Motion (320)  |  Point (584)  |  Point Of View (85)  |  Primitive (79)  |  Proverbial (8)  |  Reference Frame (2)  |  Rest (287)  |  Say (989)  |  Sense (785)  |  Something (718)  |  Speaking (118)  |  Stone (168)  |  Think (1122)  |  Through (846)  |  View (496)  |  Word (650)

It is very remarkable that while the words Eternal, Eternity, Forever, are constantly in our mouths, and applied without hesitation, we yet experience considerable difficulty in contemplating any definite term which bears a very large proportion to the brief cycles of our petty chronicles. There are many minds that would not for an instant doubt the God of Nature to have existed from all Eternity, and would yet reject as preposterous the idea of going back a million of years in the History of His Works. Yet what is a million, or a million million, of solar revolutions to an Eternity?
Memoir on the Geology of Central France (1827), 165.
Science quotes on:  |  Application (257)  |  Applied (176)  |  Back (395)  |  Bear (162)  |  Brief (37)  |  Chronicle (6)  |  Considerable (75)  |  Constant (148)  |  Contemplate (29)  |  Contemplation (75)  |  Cycle (42)  |  Definite (114)  |  Difficulty (201)  |  Doubt (314)  |  Eternal (113)  |  Eternity (64)  |  Exist (458)  |  Experience (494)  |  God (776)  |  Hesitation (19)  |  History (716)  |  Idea (881)  |  Instant (46)  |  Large (398)  |  Million (124)  |  Mind (1377)  |  Mouth (54)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Petty (9)  |  Preposterous (8)  |  Proportion (140)  |  Reject (67)  |  Remarkable (50)  |  Revolution (133)  |  Sun (407)  |  Term (357)  |  Word (650)  |  Work (1402)  |  Year (963)

It may be said of some very old places, as of some very old books, that they are destined to be forever new. The nearer we approach them, the more remote they seem: the more we study them, the more we have yet to learn. Time augments rather than diminishes their everlasting novelty; and to our descendants of a thousand years hence it may safely be predicted that they will be even more fascinating than to ourselves. This is true of many ancient lands, but of no place is it so true as of Egypt.
Opening remark in Pharaohs, Fellahs and Explorers (1891), 3.
Science quotes on:  |  Ancient (198)  |  Approach (112)  |  Augment (12)  |  Book (413)  |  Descendant (18)  |  Destined (42)  |  Diminish (17)  |  Egypt (31)  |  Everlasting (11)  |  Fascinating (38)  |  Land (131)  |  Learn (672)  |  More (2558)  |  Nearer (45)  |  New (1273)  |  Novelty (31)  |  Old (499)  |  Ourselves (247)  |  Place (192)  |  Predict (86)  |  Remote (86)  |  Seem (150)  |  Study (701)  |  Thousand (340)  |  Time (1911)  |  Will (2350)  |  Year (963)

Its [mathematical analysis] chief attribute is clearness; it has no means for expressing confused ideas. It compares the most diverse phenomena and discovers the secret analogies which unite them. If matter escapes us, as that of air and light because of its extreme tenuity, if bodies are placed far from us in the immensity of space, if man wishes to know the aspect of the heavens at successive periods separated by many centuries, if gravity and heat act in the interior of the solid earth at depths which will forever be inaccessible, mathematical analysis is still able to trace the laws of these phenomena. It renders them present and measurable, and appears to be the faculty of the human mind destined to supplement the brevity of life and the imperfection of the senses, and what is even more remarkable, it follows the same course in the study of all phenomena; it explains them in the same language, as if in witness to the unity and simplicity of the plan of the universe, and to make more manifest the unchangeable order which presides over all natural causes.
From Théorie Analytique de la Chaleur (1822), Discours Préliminaire, xiv, (Theory of Heat, Introduction), as translated by Alexander Freeman in The Analytical Theory of Heat (1878), 7.
Science quotes on:  |  Act (278)  |  Air (366)  |  Analogy (76)  |  Analysis (244)  |  Appear (122)  |  Aspect (129)  |  Attribute (65)  |  Body (557)  |  Brevity (8)  |  Cause (561)  |  Century (319)  |  Chief (99)  |  Clearness (11)  |  Compare (76)  |  Confused (13)  |  Course (413)  |  Depth (97)  |  Destined (42)  |  Discover (571)  |  Diverse (20)  |  Earth (1076)  |  Escape (85)  |  Explain (334)  |  Express (192)  |  Extreme (78)  |  Faculty (76)  |  Far (158)  |  Follow (389)  |  Gravity (140)  |  Heat (180)  |  Heaven (266)  |  Heavens (125)  |  Human (1512)  |  Human Mind (133)  |  Idea (881)  |  Immensity (30)  |  Imperfection (32)  |  Inaccessible (18)  |  Interior (35)  |  Know (1538)  |  Language (308)  |  Law (913)  |  Life (1870)  |  Light (635)  |  Man (2252)  |  Manifest (21)  |  Mathematical Analysis (23)  |  Matter (821)  |  Mean (810)  |  Means (587)  |  Measurable (3)  |  Mind (1377)  |  More (2558)  |  Most (1728)  |  Natural (810)  |  Nature Of Mathematics (80)  |  Order (638)  |  Period (200)  |  Phenomenon (334)  |  Place (192)  |  Plan (122)  |  Present (630)  |  Preside (3)  |  Remarkable (50)  |  Render (96)  |  Same (166)  |  Secret (216)  |  Sense (785)  |  Separate (151)  |  Simplicity (175)  |  Solid (119)  |  Space (523)  |  Still (614)  |  Study (701)  |  Successive (73)  |  Supplement (7)  |  Tenuity (2)  |  Trace (109)  |  Unchangeable (11)  |  Unite (43)  |  Unity (81)  |  Universe (900)  |  Will (2350)  |  Wish (216)  |  Witness (57)

James Watt patented his steam engine on the eve of the American Revolution, consummating a relationship between coal and the new Promethean spirit of the age, and humanity made its first tentative steps into an industrial way of life that would, over the next two centuries, forever change the world.
In The Hydrogen Economy: The Creation of the Worldwide Energy Web and the Redistribution of Power on Earth (2002), 2.
Science quotes on:  |  Age (509)  |  Century (319)  |  Change (639)  |  Coal (64)  |  Consummation (7)  |  Engine (99)  |  Eve (4)  |  First (1302)  |  Humanity (186)  |  Industrial Revolution (10)  |  Life (1870)  |  New (1273)  |  Next (238)  |  Patent (34)  |  Prometheus (7)  |  Relationship (114)  |  Revolution (133)  |  Spirit (278)  |  Steam (81)  |  Steam Engine (47)  |  Step (234)  |  Tentative (18)  |  Two (936)  |  James Watt (11)  |  Way (1214)  |  Way Of Life (15)  |  World (1850)

Let him [the author] be permitted also in all humility to add … that in consequence of the large arrears of algebraical and arithmetical speculations waiting in his mind their turn to be called into outward existence, he is driven to the alternative of leaving the fruits of his meditations to perish (as has been the fate of too many foregone theories, the still-born progeny of his brain, now forever resolved back again into the primordial matter of thought), or venturing to produce from time to time such imperfect sketches as the present, calculated to evoke the mental co-operation of his readers, in whom the algebraical instinct has been to some extent developed, rather than to satisfy the strict demands of rigorously systematic exposition.
In Philosophic Magazine (1863), 460.
Science quotes on:  |  Add (42)  |  Algebra (117)  |  Alternative (32)  |  Arithmetical (11)  |  Arrears (2)  |  Author (175)  |  Back (395)  |  Brain (281)  |  Calculate (58)  |  Call (781)  |  Consequence (220)  |  Cooperation (38)  |  Demand (131)  |  Develop (278)  |  Drive (61)  |  Evoke (13)  |  Existence (481)  |  Exposition (16)  |  Extent (142)  |  Fate (76)  |  Forego (4)  |  Fruit (108)  |  Humility (31)  |  Imperfect (46)  |  Instinct (91)  |  Large (398)  |  Leave (138)  |  Let (64)  |  Matter (821)  |  Meditation (19)  |  Mental (179)  |  Mind (1377)  |  Operation (221)  |  Outward (7)  |  Perish (56)  |  Permit (61)  |  Present (630)  |  Primordial (14)  |  Produce (117)  |  Progeny (16)  |  Reader (42)  |  Resolve (43)  |  Rigorous (50)  |  Satisfy (29)  |  Sketch (8)  |  Speculation (137)  |  Still (614)  |  Stillborn (2)  |  Strict (20)  |  Study And Research In Mathematics (61)  |  Systematic (58)  |  Theory (1015)  |  Thought (995)  |  Time (1911)  |  Turn (454)  |  Venture (19)  |  Wait (66)  |  Waiting (42)

Life does not consist mainly—or even largely—of facts and happenings. It consists mainly of the storm of thoughts that is forever blowing through one’s head.
In Autobiography of Mark Twain (1929), Vol. 1, 283.
Science quotes on:  |  Blowing (22)  |  Consist (223)  |  Fact (1257)  |  Facts (553)  |  Happening (59)  |  Head (87)  |  Life (1870)  |  Storm (56)  |  Thought (995)  |  Through (846)

Life, forever dying to be born afresh, forever young and eager, will presently stand upon this Earth as upon a footstool, and stretch out its realm amidst the stars.
…...
Science quotes on:  |  Afresh (4)  |  Amidst (2)  |  Bear (162)  |  Die (94)  |  Eager (17)  |  Earth (1076)  |  Footstool (2)  |  Life (1870)  |  Realm (87)  |  Stand (284)  |  Star (460)  |  Stars (304)  |  Stretch (39)  |  Will (2350)  |  Young (253)

Listen now for the sound that forevermore separates the old from the new.
[Introducing the beep-beep chirp transmitted by the Sputnik satellite.]
NBC Radio
NBC radio announcer on the night of 4 Oct 1957. In 'The Nation: Red Moon Over the U.S.', Time (14 Oct 1957), 70, 27.
Science quotes on:  |  Listen (81)  |  New (1273)  |  Old (499)  |  Satellite (30)  |  Separate (151)  |  Separation (60)  |  Sound (187)  |  Sputnik (5)

Malthus argued a century and a half ago that man, by using up all his available resources, would forever press on the limits of subsistence, thus condemning humanity to an indefinite future of misery and poverty. We can now begin to hope and, I believe, know that Malthus was expressing not a law of nature, but merely the limitation then of scientific and social wisdom. The truth or falsity of his prediction will depend now, with the tools we have, on our own actions, now and in the years to come.
From Address to the Centennial Convocation of the National Academy of Sciences (22 Oct 1963), 'A Century of Scientific Conquest'. Online at The American Presidency Project.
Science quotes on:  |  Action (342)  |  Available (80)  |  Begin (275)  |  Century (319)  |  Condemn (44)  |  Depend (238)  |  Falsity (16)  |  Future (467)  |  Hope (321)  |  Humanity (186)  |  Indefinite (21)  |  Know (1538)  |  Law (913)  |  Law Of Nature (80)  |  Limit (294)  |  Limitation (52)  |  Thomas Robert Malthus (13)  |  Man (2252)  |  Merely (315)  |  Misery (31)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Poverty (40)  |  Prediction (89)  |  Press (21)  |  Resource (74)  |  Scientific (955)  |  Social (261)  |  Subsistence (9)  |  Tool (129)  |  Truth (1109)  |  Use Up (2)  |  Will (2350)  |  Wisdom (235)  |  Year (963)

Man could not stay there forever. He was bound to spread to new regions, partly because of his innate migratory tendency and partly because of Nature's stern urgency.
The Red Man's Continent: A Chronicle of Aboriginal America (1919), 12.
Science quotes on:  |  Bound (120)  |  Human Race (104)  |  Innate (14)  |  Man (2252)  |  Migration (12)  |  Nature (2017)  |  New (1273)  |  Spread (86)  |  Tendency (110)  |  Urgency (13)

Mankind will not remain on Earth forever, but in its quest for light and space will at first timidly penetrate beyond the confines of the atmosphere, and later will conquer for itself all the space near the Sun.
…...
Science quotes on:  |  Atmosphere (117)  |  Beyond (316)  |  Confine (26)  |  Conquer (39)  |  Earth (1076)  |  First (1302)  |  Late (119)  |  Light (635)  |  Mankind (356)  |  Penetrate (68)  |  Quest (39)  |  Remain (355)  |  Space (523)  |  Sun (407)  |  Timid (6)  |  Will (2350)

Mathematics is not a book confined within a cover and bound between brazen clasps, whose contents it needs only patience to ransack; it is not a mine, whose treasures may take long to reduce into possession, but which fill only a limited number of veins and lodes; it is not a soil, whose fertility can be exhausted by the yield of successive harvests; it is not a continent or an ocean, whose area can be mapped out and its contour defined: it is limitless as that space which it finds too narrow for its aspirations; its possibilities are as infinite as the worlds which are forever crowding in and multiplying upon the astronomer’s gaze; it is as incapable of being restricted within assigned boundaries or being reduced to definitions of permanent validity, as the consciousness of life, which seems to slumber in each monad, in every atom of matter, in each leaf and bud cell, and is forever ready to burst forth into new forms of vegetable and animal existence.
From Commemoration Day Address (22 Feb 1877) at Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, collected in The Collected Mathematical Papers: (1870-1883) (1909), 77-78.
Science quotes on:  |  Animal (651)  |  Area (33)  |  Aspiration (35)  |  Assign (15)  |  Astronomer (97)  |  Atom (381)  |  Being (1276)  |  Bind (26)  |  Book (413)  |  Bound (120)  |  Boundary (55)  |  Brass (5)  |  Bud (6)  |  Burst (41)  |  Cell (146)  |  Confine (26)  |  Consciousness (132)  |  Content (75)  |  Continent (79)  |  Contour (3)  |  Cover (40)  |  Crowd (25)  |  Define (53)  |  Definition (238)  |  Exhaust (22)  |  Existence (481)  |  Fertility (23)  |  Fill (67)  |  Find (1014)  |  Form (976)  |  Forth (14)  |  Gaze (23)  |  Harvest (28)  |  Incapable (41)  |  Infinite (243)  |  Leaf (73)  |  Life (1870)  |  Limit (294)  |  Limited (102)  |  Limitless (14)  |  Lode (2)  |  Long (778)  |  Map (50)  |  Mathematics (1395)  |  Matter (821)  |  Mine (78)  |  Monad (2)  |  Multiply (40)  |  Narrow (85)  |  Need (320)  |  New (1273)  |  Number (710)  |  Ocean (216)  |  Patience (58)  |  Permanent (67)  |  Possession (68)  |  Possibility (172)  |  Ransack (2)  |  Ready (43)  |  Reduce (100)  |  Restrict (13)  |  Seem (150)  |  Slumber (6)  |  Soil (98)  |  Space (523)  |  Successive (73)  |  Treasure (59)  |  Validity (50)  |  Vegetable (49)  |  Vein (27)  |  World (1850)  |  Yield (86)

Mathematics vindicates the right … to stand in the front rank of the pioneers that search the real truth and find it crystallized forever in brilliant gems.
In Lectures on the Philosophy of Mathematics (1918), 194.
Science quotes on:  |  Brilliant (57)  |  Crystallize (12)  |  Find (1014)  |  Front (16)  |  Gem (17)  |  Mathematics (1395)  |  Pioneer (37)  |  Rank (69)  |  Real (159)  |  Right (473)  |  Search (175)  |  Stand (284)  |  Truth (1109)  |  Vindicate (4)

Memories are not recycled like atoms and particles in quantum physics. They can be lost forever.
Lady Gaga
From music video, Marry The Night: The Prelude Pathétique (2011). Quoted in Richard J. Gray II, The Performance Identities of Lady Gaga: Critical Essays (2011), 137.
Science quotes on:  |  Atom (381)  |  Lost (34)  |  Memory (144)  |  Particle (200)  |  Physic (515)  |  Physics (564)  |  Quantum (118)  |  Quantum Physics (19)  |  Quantum Theory (67)  |  Recycle (2)

My child you may search forever the depths of this science [metaphysics] and you will never find a bottom. The secrets of eternal wisdom are not to be fathomed by our narrow understandings.
Letter to George Washington Adams (grandson) (10 Feb 1822). Quoted in James H. Hutson (ed.), The Founders on Religion: A Book of Quotations (2009), 49; citing Adams Papers (microfilm), reel 454, Library of Congress. Hutson provided "metaphysics" as the meaning of "science" in this context.
Science quotes on:  |  Bottom (36)  |  Depth (97)  |  Eternal (113)  |  Find (1014)  |  Metaphysics (53)  |  Search (175)  |  Secret (216)  |  Understanding (527)  |  Wisdom (235)

My kingdom is vast as the universe; and my desire knows no limits. I go on forever,—freeing minds, weighing worlds,—without hatred, without fear, without pity, without love, and without God. Men call me Science!
From La Tentation de Saint-Antoine (1874), as translated by Lafcadio Hearn, The Temptation of Saint Anthony (1911), 218-219.
Science quotes on:  |  Call (781)  |  Desire (212)  |  Fear (212)  |  Free (239)  |  Freeing (6)  |  God (776)  |  Hatred (21)  |  Kingdom (80)  |  Know (1538)  |  Limit (294)  |  Love (328)  |  Mind (1377)  |  Pity (16)  |  Universe (900)  |  Vast (188)  |  Weigh (51)  |  World (1850)

Ninety-nine and nine-tenths of the earth’s volume must forever remain invisible and untouchable. Because more than 97 per cent of it is too hot to crystallize, its body is extremely weak. The crust, being so thin, must bend, if, over wide areas, it becomes loaded with glacial ice, ocean water or deposits of sand and mud. It must bend in the opposite sense if widely extended loads of such material be removed. This accounts for … the origin of chains of high mountains … and the rise of lava to the earth’s surface.
Presidential speech to the Geological Society of America at Cambridge, Mass. (1932). As quoted in New York Times (20 Sep 1957), 23. Also summarized in Popular Mechanics (Apr 1933), 513.
Science quotes on:  |  Account (195)  |  Become (821)  |  Being (1276)  |  Bend (13)  |  Body (557)  |  Chain (51)  |  Crust (43)  |  Crystal (71)  |  Crystallize (12)  |  Deposit (12)  |  Earth (1076)  |  Extend (129)  |  Glacier (17)  |  High (370)  |  Hot (63)  |  Ice (58)  |  Invisible (66)  |  Lava (12)  |  Load (12)  |  Material (366)  |  More (2558)  |  Mountain (202)  |  Mud (26)  |  Must (1525)  |  Ocean (216)  |  Opposite (110)  |  Origin (250)  |  Remain (355)  |  Removal (12)  |  Rise (169)  |  Sand (63)  |  Sense (785)  |  Surface (223)  |  Water (503)  |  Weak (73)  |  Wide (97)

Observation is so wide awake, and facts are being so rapidly added to the sum of human experience, that it appears as if the theorizer would always be in arrears, and were doomed forever to arrive at imperfect conclusion; but the power to perceive a law is equally rare in all ages of the world, and depends but little on the number of facts observed.
In A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers (1862), 383.
Science quotes on:  |  Age (509)  |  Awake (19)  |  Being (1276)  |  Conclusion (266)  |  Depend (238)  |  Doom (34)  |  Equally (129)  |  Experience (494)  |  Fact (1257)  |  Facts (553)  |  Human (1512)  |  Imperfect (46)  |  Law (913)  |  Little (717)  |  Number (710)  |  Observation (593)  |  Observed (149)  |  Power (771)  |  Rapidly (67)  |  Rare (94)  |  Sum (103)  |  Theory (1015)  |  Wide (97)  |  World (1850)

Our earth is very old, an old warrior that has lived through many battles. Nevertheless, the face of it is still changing, and science sees no certain limit of time for its stately evolution. Our solid earth, apparently so stable, inert, and finished, is changing, mobile, and still evolving. Its major quakings are largely the echoes of that divine far-off event, the building of our noble mountains. The lava floods and intriguing volcanoes tell us of the plasticity, mobility, of the deep interior of the globe. The slow coming and going of ancient shallow seas on the continental plateaus tell us of the rhythmic distortion of the deep interior-deep-seated flow and changes of volume. Mountain chains prove the earth’s solid crust itself to be mobile in high degree. And the secret of it all—the secret of the earthquake, the secret of the “temple of fire,” the secret of the ocean basin, the secret of the highland—is in the heart of the earth, forever invisible to human eyes.
In Our Mobile Earth (1926), 320.
Science quotes on:  |  Ancient (198)  |  Building (158)  |  Certain (557)  |  Change (639)  |  Coming (114)  |  Crust (43)  |  Deep (241)  |  Degree (277)  |  Distortion (13)  |  Divine (112)  |  Earth (1076)  |  Earthquake (37)  |  Event (222)  |  Evolution (635)  |  Eye (440)  |  Face (214)  |  Finish (62)  |  Fire (203)  |  Flood (52)  |  Flow (89)  |  Heart (243)  |  High (370)  |  Human (1512)  |  Inert (14)  |  Interior (35)  |  Invisible (66)  |  Lava (12)  |  Limit (294)  |  Lithosphere (2)  |  Magma (4)  |  Major (88)  |  Mobility (11)  |  Mountain (202)  |  Nevertheless (90)  |  Noble (93)  |  Ocean (216)  |  Old (499)  |  Plasticity (7)  |  Prove (261)  |  Sea (326)  |  Secret (216)  |  See (1094)  |  Slow (108)  |  Solid (119)  |  Stable (32)  |  Stately (12)  |  Still (614)  |  Tell (344)  |  Temple (45)  |  Through (846)  |  Time (1911)  |  Volcano (46)

Our Professor, which doth have tenure,
Feared be thy name.
Thy sets partition,
Thy maps commute,
In groups as in vector spaces.
Give us this day our daily notation,
And forgive us our obtuseness,
As we forgive tutors who cannot help us.
Lead us not into Lye rings,
But deliver us from eigenvalues,
For thine is the logic, the notation, and the accent,
That confuses us forever.
Amen.
Anonymous
'Algebra Prayer' by an unnamed University of Toronto mathematics student. On the Department of Mathematics, University of Toronto web site.
Science quotes on:  |  Accent (5)  |  Amen (4)  |  Confuse (22)  |  Daily (91)  |  Deliver (30)  |  Fear (212)  |  Forgive (12)  |  Give (208)  |  Group (83)  |  Help (116)  |  Lead (391)  |  Logic (311)  |  Map (50)  |  Name (359)  |  Notation (28)  |  Parody (4)  |  Prayer (30)  |  Professor (133)  |  Set (400)  |  Space (523)  |  Tenure (8)  |  Tutor (3)  |  Vector (6)

Science has a simple faith, which transcends utility. Nearly all men of science, all men of learning for that matter, and men of simple ways too, have it in some form and in some degree. It is the faith that it is the privilege of man to learn to understand, and that this is his mission. If we abandon that mission under stress we shall abandon it forever, for stress will not cease. Knowledge for the sake of understanding, not merely to prevail, that is the essence of our being. None can define its limits, or set its ultimate boundaries.
Science is Not Enough (1967), 191.
Science quotes on:  |  Abandon (73)  |  Being (1276)  |  Boundary (55)  |  Cease (81)  |  Definition (238)  |  Degree (277)  |  Essence (85)  |  Faith (209)  |  Form (976)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Learn (672)  |  Learning (291)  |  Limit (294)  |  Man (2252)  |  Matter (821)  |  Men Of Science (147)  |  Merely (315)  |  Mission (23)  |  Nearly (137)  |  Prevail (47)  |  Privilege (41)  |  Sake (61)  |  Set (400)  |  Simple (426)  |  Stress (22)  |  Transcend (27)  |  Transcendence (2)  |  Ultimate (152)  |  Understand (648)  |  Understanding (527)  |  Utility (52)  |  Way (1214)  |  Will (2350)

Science is dangerous. There is no question but that poison gas, genetic engineering, and nuclear weapons and power stations are terrifying. It may be that civilization is falling apart and the world we know is coming to an end. In that case, why no turn to religion and look forward to the Day of Judgment, ... [being] lifted into eternal bliss ... [and] watching the scoffers and disbelievers writhe forever in torment.
The 'Threat' of Creationism. In Ashley Montagu (ed.), Science and Creationism (1984), 192.
Science quotes on:  |  Being (1276)  |  Civilization (220)  |  Coming (114)  |  Creationist (16)  |  Dangerous (108)  |  End (603)  |  Engineering (188)  |  Eternal (113)  |  Fear (212)  |  Forward (104)  |  Gas (89)  |  Genetic (110)  |  Genetic Engineering (16)  |  Judgment (140)  |  Know (1538)  |  Lift (57)  |  Look (584)  |  Nuclear (110)  |  Nuclear Power (16)  |  Nuclear Weapon (17)  |  Nuclear Weapons (2)  |  Poison (46)  |  Power (771)  |  Question (649)  |  Religion (369)  |  Station (30)  |  Torment (18)  |  Turn (454)  |  Weapon (98)  |  Weapons (57)  |  Why (491)  |  World (1850)

Science is forever rewriting itself.
Anonymous
In Leonard and Thelma Spinrad, Speaker's Lifetime Library (1979), 220.
Science quotes on:  |  Quip (81)

Science is not about control. It is about cultivating a perpetual sense of wonder in the face of something that forever grows one step richer and subtler than our latest theory about it. It is about reverence, not mastery.
…...
Science quotes on:  |  Control (182)  |  Cultivate (24)  |  Face (214)  |  Grow (247)  |  Late (119)  |  Mastery (36)  |  Perpetual (59)  |  Reverence (29)  |  Rich (66)  |  Sense (785)  |  Something (718)  |  Step (234)  |  Subtl (2)  |  Theory (1015)  |  Wonder (251)

Science would have us believe that such accuracy, leading to certainty, is the only criterion of knowledge, would make the trial of Galileo the paradigm of the two points of view which aspire to truth, would suggest, that is, that the cardinals represent only superstition and repression, while Galileo represents freedom. But there is another criterion which is systematically neglected in this elevation of science. Man does not now—and will not ever—live by the bread of scientific method alone. He must deal with life and death, with love and cruelty and despair, and so must make conjectures of great importance which may or may not be true and which do not lend themselves to experimentation: It is better to give than to receive; Love thy neighbor as thyself; Better to risk slavery through non-violence than to defend freedom with murder. We must deal with such propositions, must decide whether they are true, whether to believe them, whether to act on them—and scientific method is no help for by their nature these matters lie forever beyond the realm of science.
In The End of the Modern Age (1973), 89.
Science quotes on:  |  Accuracy (81)  |  Act (278)  |  Alone (324)  |  Aspire (15)  |  Belief (615)  |  Better (493)  |  Beyond (316)  |  Bread (42)  |  Cardinal (9)  |  Certainty (180)  |  Conjecture (51)  |  Criterion (28)  |  Cruelty (24)  |  Deal (192)  |  Death (406)  |  Decide (50)  |  Despair (40)  |  Do (1905)  |  Elevation (13)  |  Experimentation (7)  |  Freedom (145)  |  Galileo Galilei (134)  |  Great (1610)  |  Importance (299)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Lie (370)  |  Life (1870)  |  Live (650)  |  Love (328)  |  Man (2252)  |  Matter (821)  |  Method (531)  |  Must (1525)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Neglect (63)  |  Neglected (23)  |  Paradigm (16)  |  Point (584)  |  Proposition (126)  |  Realm (87)  |  Receive (117)  |  Represent (157)  |  Repression (3)  |  Risk (68)  |  Scientific (955)  |  Scientific Method (200)  |  Slavery (13)  |  Superstition (70)  |  Themselves (433)  |  Through (846)  |  Trial (59)  |  Truth (1109)  |  Two (936)  |  View (496)  |  Violence (37)  |  Will (2350)

So is not mathematical analysis then not just a vain game of the mind? To the physicist it can only give a convenient language; but isn’t that a mediocre service, which after all we could have done without; and, it is not even to be feared that this artificial language be a veil, interposed between reality and the physicist’s eye? Far from that, without this language most of the intimate analogies of things would forever have remained unknown to us; and we would never have had knowledge of the internal harmony of the world, which is, as we shall see, the only true objective reality.
From La valeur de la science. In Anton Bovier, Statistical Mechanics of Disordered Systems (2006), 3, giving translation "approximately" in the footnote of the opening epigraph in the original French: “L’analyse mathématique, n’est elle donc qu’un vain jeu d’esprit? Elle ne peut pas donner au physicien qu’un langage commode; n’est-ce pa là un médiocre service, dont on aurait pu se passer à la rigueur; et même n’est il pas à craindre que ce langage artificiel ne soit pas un voile interposé entre la réalité at l’oeil du physicien? Loin de là, sans ce langage, la pluspart des anaologies intimes des choses nous seraient demeurées à jamais inconnues; et nous aurions toujours ignoré l’harmonie interne du monde, qui est, nous le verrons, la seule véritable réalité objective.” Another translation, with a longer quote, beginning “Without this language…”, is on the Henri Poincaré Quotes" page of this website.
Science quotes on:  |  Analysis (244)  |  Eye (440)  |  Fear (212)  |  Game (104)  |  Harmony (105)  |  Internal (69)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Language (308)  |  Mathematical Analysis (23)  |  Mathematics (1395)  |  Mathematics As A Language (20)  |  Mediocre (14)  |  Mind (1377)  |  Most (1728)  |  Never (1089)  |  Objective (96)  |  Physicist (270)  |  Reality (274)  |  Remain (355)  |  See (1094)  |  Service (110)  |  Thing (1914)  |  Unknown (195)  |  Vain (86)  |  Veil (27)  |  World (1850)

So the universe will continue to expand forever, and the galaxies will get farther and farther apart, and things will just die. That’s the way it is. It doesn't matter whether I feel lonely about it or not.
As quoted in Obituary, 'Allan Sandage, 84, Astronomer, Dies; Charted Cosmos’s Age and Expansion', New York Times (17 Nov 2010), B19.
Science quotes on:  |  Continue (179)  |  Die (94)  |  Expand (56)  |  Farther (51)  |  Feel (371)  |  Galaxies (29)  |  Galaxy (53)  |  Lonely (24)  |  Matter (821)  |  Thing (1914)  |  Universe (900)  |  Way (1214)  |  Will (2350)

Some paintings become famous because, being durable, they are viewed by successive generations, in each of which are likely to be found a few appreciative eyes. I know a painting so evanescent that it is seldom viewed at all, except by some wandering deer. It is a river who wields the brush, and it is the same river who, before I can bring my friends to view his work, erases it forever from human view. After that it exists only in my mind's eye. Like other artists, my river is temperamental; there is no predicting when the mood to paint will come upon him, or how long it will last. But in midsummer, when the great white fleets cruise the sky for day after flawless day, it is worth strolling down to the sandbars just to see whether he has been at work.
In 'The Green Pasture', A Sand County Almanac, and Sketches Here and There (1949, 1987), 51.
Science quotes on:  |  Appreciation (37)  |  Artist (97)  |  Deer (11)  |  Erase (7)  |  Fleeting (3)  |  Know (1538)  |  Midsummer (3)  |  Mind�s Eye (3)  |  Mood (15)  |  Painting (46)  |  River (140)  |  Seldom (68)  |  Stroll (4)

Suddenly, there was an enormous flash of light, the brightest light I have ever seen or that I think anyone has ever seen. It blasted; it pounced; it bored its way into you. It was a vision which was seen with more than the eye. It was seen to last forever. You would wish it would stop; altogether it lasted about two seconds.
[Witnessing the first atomic bomb test explosion.]
Science: the Center of Culture (1970), 139.
Science quotes on:  |  Atomic Bomb (115)  |  Blast (13)  |  Bore (3)  |  Brightest (12)  |  Explosion (51)  |  Eye (440)  |  First (1302)  |  Flash (49)  |  Last (425)  |  Light (635)  |  More (2558)  |  Pounce (4)  |  Suddenly (91)  |  Test (221)  |  Think (1122)  |  Two (936)  |  Vision (127)  |  Way (1214)  |  Wish (216)

Thales thought that water was the primordial substance of all things. Heraclitus of Ephesus… thought that it was fire. Democritus and his follower Epicurus thought that it was the atoms, termed by our writers “bodies that cannot be cut up” or, by some “indivisibles.” The school of the Pythagoreans added air and the earthy to the water and fire. Hence, although Democritus did not in a strict sense name them, but spoke only of indivisible bodies, yet he seems to have meant these same elements, because when taken by themselves they cannot be harmed, nor are they susceptible of dissolution, nor can they be cut up into parts, but throughout time eternal they forever retain an infinite solidity.
Vitruvius
In De Architectura, Book 2, Chap 2, Sec. 1. As translated in Morris Hicky Morgan (trans.), Vitruvius: The Ten Books on Architecture (1914), 42.
Science quotes on:  |  Air (366)  |  Atom (381)  |  Cut (116)  |  Democritus of Abdera (17)  |  Dissolution (11)  |  Earth (1076)  |  Element (322)  |  Epicurus (6)  |  Eternal (113)  |  Fire (203)  |  Heraclitus (15)  |  Indivisible (22)  |  Infinite (243)  |  Name (359)  |  Primordial (14)  |  Pythagoras (38)  |  Retain (57)  |  School (227)  |  Sense (785)  |  Solid (119)  |  Substance (253)  |  Term (357)  |  Thales (9)  |  Themselves (433)  |  Thing (1914)  |  Thought (995)  |  Throughout (98)  |  Time (1911)  |  Water (503)  |  Writer (90)

The blood, the fountain whence the spirits flow,
The generous stream that waters every part,
And motion, vigour, and warm life conveys
To every Particle that moves or lives;
This vital fluid, thro' unnumber'd tubes
Pour'd by the heart, and to the heart again
Refunded; scourg'd forever round and round;
Enrag'd with heat and toil, at last forgets
Its balmy nature; virulent and thin
It grows; and now, but that a thousand gates
Are open to its flight, it would destroy
The parts it cherish' d and repair'd before.
Besides, the flexible and tender tubes
Melt in the mildest, most nectareous tide
That ripening Nature rolls; as in the stream
Its crumbling banks; but what the vital force
Of plastic fluids hourly batters down,
That very force, those plastic particles
Rebuild: so mutable the state of man.
For this the watchful appetite was given,
Daily with fresh materials to repair
This unavoidable expense of life,
This necessary waste of flesh and blood.
Hence the concoctive powers, with various art,
Subdue the cruder aliments to chyle;
The chyle to blood; the foamy purple tide
To liquors, which through finer arteries
To different parts their winding course pursue;
To try new changes, and new forms put on,
Or for the public, or some private use.
The Art of Preserving Health (1744), book 2, I. 12-23, p.15-16.
Science quotes on:  |  Appetite (20)  |  Art (680)  |  Bank (31)  |  Blood (144)  |  Change (639)  |  Cherish (25)  |  Course (413)  |  Daily (91)  |  Destroy (189)  |  Different (595)  |  Down (455)  |  Flight (101)  |  Flow (89)  |  Fluid (54)  |  Force (497)  |  Forget (125)  |  Form (976)  |  Fresh (69)  |  Gate (33)  |  Generous (17)  |  Grow (247)  |  Heart (243)  |  Heat (180)  |  Human Body (34)  |  Last (425)  |  Life (1870)  |  Live (650)  |  Man (2252)  |  Material (366)  |  Most (1728)  |  Motion (320)  |  Move (223)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Necessary (370)  |  New (1273)  |  Open (277)  |  Particle (200)  |  Plastic (30)  |  Power (771)  |  Pursue (63)  |  Roll (41)  |  Spirit (278)  |  State (505)  |  Stream (83)  |  Subdue (7)  |  Thousand (340)  |  Through (846)  |  Tide (37)  |  Toil (29)  |  Try (296)  |  Use (771)  |  Various (205)  |  Vigour (18)  |  Vital (89)  |  Vital Force (7)  |  Warm (74)  |  Waste (109)  |  Water (503)  |  Winding (8)

The books of the great scientists are gathering dust on the shelves of learned libraries. ... While the artist's communication is linked forever with its original form, that of the scientist is modified, amplified, fused with the ideas and results of others and melts into the stream of knowledge and ideas which forms our culture. The scientist has in common with the artist only this: that he can find no better retreat from the world than his work and also no stronger link with the world than his work.
From Nobel Lecture (10 Dec 1969), 'A Physicist's Renewed Look at Biology – Twenty Years Later.' in Nobel Lectures, Physiology or Medicine 1963-1970 (1972), 409.
Science quotes on:  |  Amplified (6)  |  Artist (97)  |  Better (493)  |  Book (413)  |  Common (447)  |  Communication (101)  |  Culture (157)  |  Dust (68)  |  Find (1014)  |  Form (976)  |  Fuse (5)  |  Gathering (23)  |  Great (1610)  |  Idea (881)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Learn (672)  |  Learned (235)  |  Library (53)  |  Link (48)  |  Melt (16)  |  Modify (15)  |  Original (61)  |  Other (2233)  |  Result (700)  |  Retreat (13)  |  Scientist (881)  |  Shelf (8)  |  Stream (83)  |  Stronger (36)  |  Work (1402)  |  World (1850)

The earth holds a silver treasure, cupped between ocean bed and tenting sky. Forever the heavens spend it, in the showers that refresh our temperate lands, the torrents that sluice the tropics. Every suckling root absorbs it, the very soil drains it down; the rivers run unceasing to the sea, the mountains yield it endlessly… Yet none is lost; in vast convection our water is returned, from soil to sky, and sky to soil, and back gain, to fall as pure as blessing. There was never less; there could never be more. A mighty mercy on which life depends, for all its glittering shifts, water is constant.
In A Cup of Sky (1950), 41.
Science quotes on:  |  Absorb (54)  |  Back (395)  |  Bed (25)  |  Blessing (26)  |  Constant (148)  |  Convection (3)  |  Cup (7)  |  Depend (238)  |  Down (455)  |  Drain (12)  |  Earth (1076)  |  Endlessly (4)  |  Fall (243)  |  Gain (146)  |  Glittering (2)  |  Heaven (266)  |  Heavens (125)  |  Hold (96)  |  Land (131)  |  Less (105)  |  Life (1870)  |  Lost (34)  |  Mercy (12)  |  Mighty (13)  |  More (2558)  |  Mountain (202)  |  Never (1089)  |  Ocean (216)  |  Pure (299)  |  Refresh (5)  |  Return (133)  |  River (140)  |  Root (121)  |  Run (158)  |  Sea (326)  |  Shift (45)  |  Shower (7)  |  Silver (49)  |  Sky (174)  |  Sluice (2)  |  Soil (98)  |  Spend (97)  |  Suckling (3)  |  Torrent (5)  |  Treasure (59)  |  Tropic (2)  |  Unceasing (3)  |  Vast (188)  |  Water (503)  |  Water Cycle (5)  |  Yield (86)

The Earth is the cradle of humanity, but we cannot live forever in a cradle.
In a Letter (1911) from Kaluga. A more direct translation from the letter is, “A planet is the cradle of mind, but one cannot live in a cradle forever.”
Science quotes on:  |  Cradle (19)  |  Earth (1076)  |  Humanity (186)  |  Live (650)

The first question which you will ask and which I must try to answer is this, “What is the use of climbing Mount Everest ?” and my answer must at once be, “It is no use.” There is not the slightest prospect of any gain whatsoever. Oh, we may learn a little about the behavior of the human body at high altitudes, and possibly medical men may turn our observation to some account for the purposes of aviation. But otherwise nothing will come of it. We shall not bring back a single bit of gold or silver, not a gem, nor any coal or iron. We shall not find a single foot of earth that can be planted with crops to raise food. It’s no use. So, if you cannot understand that there is something in man which responds to the challenge of this mountain and goes out to meet it, that the struggle is the struggle of life itself upward and forever upward, then you won’t see why we go. What we get from this adventure is just sheer joy. And joy is, after all, the end of life. We do not live to eat and make money. We eat and make money to be able to enjoy life. That is what life means and what life is for.
…...
Science quotes on:  |  Account (195)  |  Adventure (69)  |  Altitude (5)  |  Answer (389)  |  Ask (420)  |  Aviation (8)  |  Back (395)  |  Behavior (95)  |  Bit (21)  |  Body (557)  |  Bring (95)  |  Challenge (91)  |  Climb (39)  |  Coal (64)  |  Crop (26)  |  Do (1905)  |  Earth (1076)  |  Eat (108)  |  End (603)  |  Enjoy (48)  |  Find (1014)  |  First (1302)  |  Food (213)  |  Foot (65)  |  Gain (146)  |  Gem (17)  |  Gold (101)  |  High (370)  |  Human (1512)  |  Human Body (34)  |  Iron (99)  |  Joy (117)  |  Learn (672)  |  Life (1870)  |  Little (717)  |  Live (650)  |  Man (2252)  |  Mean (810)  |  Means (587)  |  Medical (31)  |  Meet (36)  |  Money (178)  |  Mount (43)  |  Mount Everest (6)  |  Mountain (202)  |  Must (1525)  |  Nothing (1000)  |  Observation (593)  |  Otherwise (26)  |  Plant (320)  |  Possibly (111)  |  Prospect (31)  |  Purpose (336)  |  Question (649)  |  Raise (38)  |  Respond (14)  |  See (1094)  |  Sheer (9)  |  Silver (49)  |  Single (365)  |  Slight (32)  |  Something (718)  |  Struggle (111)  |  Try (296)  |  Turn (454)  |  Understand (648)  |  Upward (44)  |  Use (771)  |  Whatsoever (41)  |  Why (491)  |  Will (2350)

The great heroes and heroines of our society are of course the teachers, and in particular the teachers of kids in their first years. Once a child has been shown what the natural world is, it will live with them forever.
As quoted in Alexandra Pope, 'Attenborough Awarded RCGS Gold', Canadian Geographic, (May 2017), 137, No. 3, 73.
Science quotes on:  |  Child (333)  |  Course (413)  |  First (1302)  |  Great (1610)  |  Hero (45)  |  Heroine (2)  |  Live (650)  |  Natural (810)  |  Natural World (33)  |  Show (353)  |  Society (350)  |  Teacher (154)  |  Will (2350)  |  World (1850)  |  Year (963)

The last few meters up to the summit no longer seem so hard. On reaching the top, I sit down and let my legs dangle into space. I don’t have to climb anymore. I pull my camera from my rucksack and, in my down mittens, fumble a long time with the batteries before I have it working properly. Then I film Peter. Now, after the hours of torment, which indeed I didn’t recognize as torment, now, when the monotonous motion of plodding upwards is at an end, and I have nothing more to do than breathe, a great peace floods my whole being. I breathe like someone who has run the race of his life and knows that he may now rest forever. I keep looking all around, because the first time I didn’t see anything of the panorama I had expected from Everest, neither indeed did I notice how the wind was continually chasing snow across the summit. In my state of spiritual abstraction, I no longer belong to myself and to my eyesight. I am nothing more than a single, narrow, gasping lung, floating over the mists and the summits.
In Everest: Expedition to the Ultimate (1979), 180.
Science quotes on:  |  Abstraction (48)  |  Across (32)  |  Anymore (5)  |  Battery (12)  |  Being (1276)  |  Belong (168)  |  Breathe (49)  |  Camera (7)  |  Chase (14)  |  Climb (39)  |  Continually (17)  |  Dangle (2)  |  Do (1905)  |  Down (455)  |  End (603)  |  Everest (10)  |  Expect (203)  |  Eyesight (5)  |  Film (12)  |  First (1302)  |  First Time (14)  |  Float (31)  |  Flood (52)  |  Gasp (6)  |  Great (1610)  |  Hard (246)  |  Hour (192)  |  Indeed (323)  |  Keep (104)  |  Know (1538)  |  Last (425)  |  Leg (35)  |  Let (64)  |  Life (1870)  |  Long (778)  |  Looking (191)  |  Lung (37)  |  Meter (9)  |  Mist (17)  |  Monotonous (3)  |  More (2558)  |  Motion (320)  |  Myself (211)  |  Narrow (85)  |  Nothing (1000)  |  Notice (81)  |  Panorama (5)  |  Peace (116)  |  Plod (3)  |  Properly (21)  |  Pull (43)  |  Race (278)  |  Reach (286)  |  Recognize (136)  |  Rest (287)  |  Rucksack (3)  |  Run (158)  |  See (1094)  |  Seem (150)  |  Single (365)  |  Sit (51)  |  Snow (39)  |  Someone (24)  |  Space (523)  |  Spiritual (94)  |  State (505)  |  Summit (27)  |  Time (1911)  |  Top (100)  |  Torment (18)  |  Upward (44)  |  Upwards (6)  |  Whole (756)  |  Wind (141)  |  Work (1402)

The mind God is looking for in man is a doubting, questioning mind, not a dogmatic mind; dogmatic reasoning is wrong reasoning. Dogmatic reason ties a huge rock to a man’s foot and stops him forever from advancing.
From the play Galileo Galilei (2001) .
Science quotes on:  |  Advance (298)  |  Dogma (49)  |  Doubt (314)  |  Foot (65)  |  God (776)  |  Looking (191)  |  Man (2252)  |  Mind (1377)  |  Progress (492)  |  Question (649)  |  Reason (766)  |  Reasoning (212)  |  Rock (176)  |  Tie (42)  |  Wrong (246)

The One remains, the many change and pass;
Heaven's light forever shines, Earth's shadows fly;
Life, like a dome of many-coloured glass,
Stains the white radiance of Eternity,
Until Death tramples it to fragments.
Adonais (1821), St. 52. In K. Raine (ed.), Shelley (1974), 209.
Science quotes on:  |  Change (639)  |  Color (155)  |  Death (406)  |  Dome (9)  |  Earth (1076)  |  Eternity (64)  |  Fly (153)  |  Fragment (58)  |  Glass (94)  |  Heaven (266)  |  Life (1870)  |  Light (635)  |  Pass (241)  |  Radiance (7)  |  Remain (355)  |  Shadow (73)  |  Shine (49)  |  Stain (10)  |  Trample (3)  |  White (132)

The prohibition of science would be contrary to the Bible, which in hundreds of places teaches us how the greatness and the glory of God shine forth marvelously in all His works, and is to be read above all in the open book of the heavens. And let no one believe that the reading of the most exalted thoughts which are inscribed upon these pages is to be accomplished through merely staring up at the radiance of the stars. There are such profound secrets and such lofty conceptions that the night labors and the researches of hundreds and yet hundreds of the keenest minds, in investigations extending over thousands of years would not penetrate them, and the delight of the searching and finding endures forever.
As stated by William H. Hobbs, 'The Making of Scientific Theories,' Address of the president of Michigan Academy of Science at the Annual Meeting, Ann Arbor (28 Mar 1917) in Science (11 May 1917), N.S. 45, No. 1167, 443.
Science quotes on:  |  Book (413)  |  Conception (160)  |  Contrary (143)  |  Delight (111)  |  Exalt (29)  |  Exalted (22)  |  God (776)  |  Greatness (55)  |  Heaven (266)  |  Heavens (125)  |  Hundred (240)  |  Investigation (250)  |  Labor (200)  |  Merely (315)  |  Mind (1377)  |  Most (1728)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Open (277)  |  Penetrate (68)  |  Profound (105)  |  Prohibition (3)  |  Radiance (7)  |  Read (308)  |  Reading (136)  |  Secret (216)  |  Star (460)  |  Stars (304)  |  Thought (995)  |  Thousand (340)  |  Through (846)  |  Work (1402)  |  Year (963)

The sea, once it casts its spell, holds one in its net of wonder forever.
In Life and Death in a Coral Sea (1971), 13.
Science quotes on:  |  Cast (69)  |  Hold (96)  |  Net (12)  |  Sea (326)  |  Spell (9)  |  Wonder (251)

The violence in the world comes about because we human beings are forever creating barriers between men who are like us and men who are not like us.
From transcript of BBC radio Reith Lecture (12 Nov 1967), 'A Runaway World', on the bbc.co.uk website.
Science quotes on:  |  Barrier (34)  |  Being (1276)  |  Create (245)  |  Human (1512)  |  Human Being (185)  |  Violence (37)  |  World (1850)

The year that Rutherford died (1938 [sic]) there disappeared forever the happy days of free scientific work which gave us such delight in our youth. Science has lost her freedom. Science has become a productive force. She has become rich but she has become enslaved and part of her is veiled in secrecy. I do not know whether Rutherford would continue to joke and laugh as he used to.
'Notes from Here and There', Science Policy News (1969), 1, No 2, 33.
Science quotes on:  |  Become (821)  |  Continue (179)  |  Delight (111)  |  Disappear (84)  |  Do (1905)  |  Force (497)  |  Free (239)  |  Freedom (145)  |  Happiness (126)  |  Happy (108)  |  Joke (90)  |  Know (1538)  |  Laugh (50)  |  Money (178)  |  Productive (37)  |  Sir Ernest Rutherford (55)  |  Scientific (955)  |  Secret (216)  |  Slave (40)  |  Veil (27)  |  Work (1402)  |  Year (963)  |  Youth (109)

There are three reasons why, quite apart from scientific considerations, mankind needs to travel in space. The first reason is garbage disposal; we need to transfer industrial processes into space so that the earth may remain a green and pleasant place for our grandchildren to live in. The second reason is to escape material impoverishment; the resources of this planet are finite, and we shall not forgo forever the abundance of solar energy and minerals and living space that are spread out all around us. The third reason is our spiritual need for an open frontier. The ultimate purpose of space travel is to bring to humanity, not only scientific discoveries and an occasional spectacular show on television, but a real expansion of our spirit.
In Disturbing the Universe (1979).
Science quotes on:  |  Abundance (26)  |  Consideration (143)  |  Earth (1076)  |  Energy (373)  |  Escape (85)  |  Expansion (43)  |  Finite (60)  |  First (1302)  |  Forgo (4)  |  Frontier (41)  |  Garbage (10)  |  Green (65)  |  Humanity (186)  |  Live (650)  |  Living (492)  |  Mankind (356)  |  Material (366)  |  Mineral (66)  |  Occasional (23)  |  Open (277)  |  Planet (402)  |  Purpose (336)  |  Reason (766)  |  Remain (355)  |  Scientific (955)  |  Show (353)  |  Solar Energy (21)  |  Space (523)  |  Space Travel (23)  |  Spectacular (22)  |  Spirit (278)  |  Spiritual (94)  |  Spread (86)  |  Television (33)  |  Transfer (21)  |  Travel (125)  |  Ultimate (152)  |  Why (491)

There cannot always be fresh fields of conquest by the knife; there must be portions of the human frame that will ever remain sacred from its intrusions, at least in the surgeon's hands. That we have already, if not quite, reached these final limits, there can be little question. The abdomen, the chest, and the brain will be forever shut from the intrusion of the wise and humane surgeon.
Quoted in C. Cerf and V. Navasky (eds.), I Wish I hadn't Said That: The Experts Speak and Get it Wrong! (2000), 31.
Science quotes on:  |  Abdomen (6)  |  Already (226)  |  Brain (281)  |  Conquest (31)  |  Error (339)  |  Field (378)  |  Final (121)  |  Fresh (69)  |  Human (1512)  |  Humane (19)  |  Knife (24)  |  Limit (294)  |  Little (717)  |  Must (1525)  |  Portion (86)  |  Question (649)  |  Reach (286)  |  Remain (355)  |  Sacred (48)  |  Shut (41)  |  Surgeon (64)  |  Surgery (54)  |  Will (2350)  |  Wise (143)

There will one day spring from the brain of science a machine or force so fearful in its potentialities, so absolutely terrifying, that even man, the fighter, who will dare torture and death in order to inflict torture and death, will be appalled, and so abandon war forever.
…...
Science quotes on:  |  Abandon (73)  |  Absolutely (41)  |  Appalled (3)  |  Brain (281)  |  Dare (55)  |  Death (406)  |  Fearful (7)  |  Fighter (3)  |  Force (497)  |  Inflict (4)  |  Machine (271)  |  Man (2252)  |  Order (638)  |  Potentiality (9)  |  Spring (140)  |  Terrify (12)  |  Torture (30)  |  War (233)  |  Will (2350)

These were moments of exhilaration and ecstasy! A glimpse of this wonder can be the reward of a lifetime. Could it be that excitement and ennobling feelings like these have kept us scientists marching forward forever?
Referring to her landmark parity conservation experiment. As quoted in Benjamin F. Shearer, Barbara Smith Shearer, Notable Women in the Physical Sciences: A Biographical Dictionary (1997), 428.
Science quotes on:  |  Ecstasy (9)  |  Ennoble (8)  |  Excitement (61)  |  Exhilaration (7)  |  Experiment (736)  |  Feeling (259)  |  Feelings (52)  |  Forward (104)  |  Glimpse (16)  |  Lifetime (40)  |  March (48)  |  Moment (260)  |  Parity (2)  |  Reward (72)  |  Scientist (881)  |  Wonder (251)

Thinking, after a while, becomes the most pleasurable thing in the world. Give me a satchel and a fishing rod, and I could hie myself off and keep busy at thinking forever. I don't need anybody to amuse me. It is the same way with my friends John Burroughs, the naturalist, and Henry Ford, who is a natural-born mechanic. We can derive the most satisfying kind of joy from thinking and thinking and thinking.
As quoted from an interview by B.C. Forbes in The American Magazine (Jan 1921), 86.
Science quotes on:  |  Amusement (37)  |  Anybody (42)  |  Become (821)  |  John Burroughs (17)  |  Derive (70)  |  Fishing (20)  |  Henry Ford (23)  |  Friend (180)  |  Joy (117)  |  Kind (564)  |  Mechanic (120)  |  Most (1728)  |  Myself (211)  |  Natural (810)  |  Naturalist (79)  |  Satisfaction (76)  |  Thing (1914)  |  Thinking (425)  |  Way (1214)  |  World (1850)

This [disaster] is a day we have managed to avoid for a quarter of a century. We’ve talked about it before and speculated about it, and it finally has occurred. We hoped we could push this day back forever.
Comment on the explosion of Space Shuttle Challenger and the loss of the lives of all seven crew. Reported in New York Times (29 Jan 1986), A7.
Science quotes on:  |  Avoid (123)  |  Back (395)  |  Century (319)  |  Disaster (58)  |  Exploration (161)  |  Push (66)  |  Space Shuttle (12)

Time will soon destroy the works of famous painters and sculptors, but the Indian arrowhead will balk his efforts and Eternity will have to come to his aid. They are not fossil bones, but, as it were, fossil thoughts, forever reminding me of the mind that shaped them… . Myriads of arrow-points lie sleeping in the skin of the revolving earth, while meteors revolve in space. The footprint, the mind-print of the oldest men.
(28 Mar 1859). In Henry David Thoreau and Bradford Torrey (ed.), The Writings of Henry Thoreau: Journal: XII: March, 2, 1859-November 30, 1859 (1906), 91.
Science quotes on:  |  Aid (101)  |  Arrow (22)  |  Arrowhead (4)  |  Bone (101)  |  Destroy (189)  |  Earth (1076)  |  Effort (243)  |  Eternity (64)  |  Famous (12)  |  Footprint (16)  |  Fossil (143)  |  Indian (32)  |  Lie (370)  |  Meteor (19)  |  Mind (1377)  |  Myriad (32)  |  Painter (30)  |  Point (584)  |  Print (20)  |  Remind (16)  |  Revolve (26)  |  Revolving (2)  |  Sculptor (10)  |  Shape (77)  |  Skin (48)  |  Sleeping (2)  |  Soon (187)  |  Space (523)  |  Thought (995)  |  Time (1911)  |  Will (2350)  |  Work (1402)

To inquisitive minds like yours and mine the reflection that the quantity of human knowledge bears no proportion to the quantity of human ignorance must be in one view rather pleasing, viz., that though we are to live forever we may be continually amused and delighted with learning something new.
In letter to Dr. Ingenhouz. Quoted in Theodore Diller, Franklin's Contribution to Medicine (1912), 65. The source gives no specific cite for the letter, and Webmaster has found the quote in no other book checked, so authenticity is in question.
Science quotes on:  |  Amusement (37)  |  Bear (162)  |  Continually (17)  |  Delight (111)  |  Human (1512)  |  Ignorance (254)  |  Inquisitiveness (6)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Learning (291)  |  Life (1870)  |  Live (650)  |  Mind (1377)  |  Mine (78)  |  Must (1525)  |  New (1273)  |  Proportion (140)  |  Quantity (136)  |  Reflection (93)  |  Something (718)  |  View (496)

Today when the public thinks of the products of science it is likely to think about environmental problems, an unproductive armament industry, careless or dishonest 'scientific' reports, Livermore cheers for 'nukes forever' and a huge amount of self-serving noise on every subject from global warming to 'the face of God'.
'Hard Times', Physics Today (Oct 1992), 45, 9.
Science quotes on:  |  Amount (153)  |  Atomic Bomb (115)  |  Climate Change (76)  |  Dishonest (7)  |  Dishonesty (9)  |  Environment (239)  |  Face (214)  |  Global (39)  |  Global Warming (29)  |  God (776)  |  Industry (159)  |  Noise (40)  |  Problem (731)  |  Product (166)  |  Publication (102)  |  Science And Society (25)  |  Scientific (955)  |  Self (268)  |  Serving (15)  |  Subject (543)  |  Think (1122)  |  Today (321)  |  Warming (24)

Truth forever on the scaffold, Wrong forever on the throne,—
Yet that scaffold sways the Future, and, behind the dim unknown,
Standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch above his own.
'The Present Crisis', The poetical works of James R. Lowell (1858), 161.
Science quotes on:  |  Behind (139)  |  Future (467)  |  God (776)  |  Shadow (73)  |  Truth (1109)  |  Unknown (195)  |  Watch (118)  |  Wrong (246)

Walking home at night, I shine my flashlight up at the sky. I send billions of ... photons toward space. What is their destination? A tiny fraction will be absorbed by the air. An even smaller fraction will be intercepted by the surface of planets and stars. The vast majority ... will plod on forever. After some thousands of years they will leave our galaxy; after some millions of years they will leave our supercluster. They will wander through an even emptier, even colder realm. The universe is transparent in the direction of the future.
Atoms of Silence
Science quotes on:  |  Absorb (54)  |  Air (366)  |  Billion (104)  |  Billions (7)  |  Cold (115)  |  Destination (16)  |  Direction (185)  |  Empty (82)  |  Fraction (16)  |  Future (467)  |  Galaxy (53)  |  Home (184)  |  Intercept (3)  |  Leave (138)  |  Majority (68)  |  Millions (17)  |  Night (133)  |  Photon (11)  |  Planet (402)  |  Plod (3)  |  Realm (87)  |  Send (23)  |  Shine (49)  |  Sky (174)  |  Small (489)  |  Space (523)  |  Star (460)  |  Stars (304)  |  Surface (223)  |  Thousand (340)  |  Through (846)  |  Tiny (74)  |  Toward (45)  |  Transparent (16)  |  Universe (900)  |  Vast (188)  |  Walk (138)  |  Wander (44)  |  Will (2350)  |  Year (963)

Watch the stars, and from them learn. To the Master’s honor all must turn, each in its track, without a sound, forever tracing Newton’s ground.
…...
Science quotes on:  |  Ground (222)  |  Honor (57)  |  Learn (672)  |  Master (182)  |  Must (1525)  |  Sir Isaac Newton (363)  |  Sound (187)  |  Star (460)  |  Stars (304)  |  Trace (109)  |  Track (42)  |  Turn (454)  |  Watch (118)

We cannot doubt the existence of an ultimate reality. It is the universe forever masked. We are a part of it, and the masks figured by us are the universe observing and understanding itself from a human point of view.
…...
Science quotes on:  |  Doubt (314)  |  Existence (481)  |  Figure (162)  |  Human (1512)  |  Mask (12)  |  Observe (179)  |  Part (235)  |  Point (584)  |  Point Of View (85)  |  Reality (274)  |  Ultimate (152)  |  Understand (648)  |  Understanding (527)  |  Universe (900)  |  View (496)

We forever have to walk the tightrope between what is seen to be the need and what is thought to be the demand … that’s all part of setting priorities and having a rational debate.
Anonymous
National Health Service Chief Executive Officer quoted in Timothy Milewa and Michael Calnan, 'Primary Care and Public Involvement, Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine (2000), 93, 3-5.
Science quotes on:  |  Debate (40)  |  Demand (131)  |  National Health Service (3)  |  Need (320)  |  Priority (11)  |  Rational (95)  |  Setting (44)  |  Thought (995)  |  Walk (138)

When we build, let us think that we build forever. Let it not be for present delight nor for present use alone. Let it be such work as our descendants will thank us for; and let us think, as we lay stone on stone, that a time is to come when those stones will be held sacred because our hands have touched them, and that men will say, as they look upon the labor and wrought substance of them, “See! This our father did for us.”
From Lectures on 'Architecture and Painting' (Nov 1853), delivered at Edinburgh, collected in The Seven Lamps of Architecture (May 1849, 1887), 172.
Science quotes on:  |  Alone (324)  |  Architecture (50)  |  Build (211)  |  Delight (111)  |  Descendant (18)  |  Engineering (188)  |  Father (113)  |  Labor (200)  |  Let (64)  |  Look (584)  |  Present (630)  |  Sacred (48)  |  Say (989)  |  See (1094)  |  Stone (168)  |  Substance (253)  |  Tank (7)  |  Thank (48)  |  Think (1122)  |  Time (1911)  |  Touch (146)  |  Use (771)  |  Will (2350)  |  Work (1402)

Whence we see spiders, flies, or ants entombed and preserved forever in amber, a more than royal tomb.
Historia Vitæ et Mortis. Translation in Francis Bacon, James Spedding (ed.) et al., Philosophical Works of Francis Bacon (1861) Vol. 2, 320.
Science quotes on:  |  Amber (3)  |  Ant (34)  |  Fossil (143)  |  More (2558)  |  Royal (56)  |  See (1094)  |  Spider (14)  |  Tomb (15)

Wherever we seek to find constancy we discover change. Having looked at the old woodlands in Hutcheson Forest, at Isle Royale, and in the wilderness of the boundary waters, in the land of the moose and the wolf, and having uncovered the histories hidden within the trees and within the muds, we find that nature undisturbed is not constant in form, structure, or proportion, but changes at every scale of time and space. The old idea of a static landscape, like a single musical chord sounded forever, must be abandoned, for such a landscape never existed except in our imagination. Nature undisturbed by human influence seems more like a symphony whose harmonies arise from variation and change over many scales of time and space, changing with individual births and deaths, local disruptions and recoveries, larger scale responses to climate from one glacial age to another, and to the slower alterations of soils, and yet larger variations between glacial ages.
Discordant Harmonies (1990), 62.
Science quotes on:  |  Abandon (73)  |  Age (509)  |  Alteration (31)  |  Arise (162)  |  Birth (154)  |  Boundary (55)  |  Change (639)  |  Climate (102)  |  Constancy (12)  |  Constant (148)  |  Death (406)  |  Discover (571)  |  Exist (458)  |  Find (1014)  |  Forest (161)  |  Form (976)  |  Glaciation (2)  |  Human (1512)  |  Idea (881)  |  Imagination (349)  |  Individual (420)  |  Influence (231)  |  Landscape (46)  |  Look (584)  |  Moose (4)  |  More (2558)  |  Mud (26)  |  Must (1525)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Never (1089)  |  Old (499)  |  Proportion (140)  |  Response (56)  |  Scale (122)  |  Seek (218)  |  Single (365)  |  Soil (98)  |  Sound (187)  |  Space (523)  |  Structure (365)  |  Succession (80)  |  Symphony (10)  |  Time (1911)  |  Time And Space (39)  |  Tree (269)  |  Uncover (20)  |  Variation (93)  |  Water (503)  |  Wherever (51)  |  Wilderness (57)  |  Wolf (11)

While the artist’s communication is linked forever with its original form, that of the scientist is modified, amplified, fused with the ideas and results of others.
In The Eighth Day of Creation by Horace Freeland Judson (1979).
Science quotes on:  |  Amplified (6)  |  Artist (97)  |  Communication (101)  |  Form (976)  |  Idea (881)  |  Other (2233)  |  Result (700)  |  Scientist (881)

Without this language [mathematics] most of the intimate analogies of things would have remained forever unknown to us; and we should forever have been ignorant of the internal harmony of the world, which is the only true objective reality. …
This harmony … is the sole objective reality, the only truth we can attain; and when I add that the universal harmony of the world is the source of all beauty, it will be understood what price we should attach to the slow and difficult progress which little by little enables us to know it better.
From La Valeur de la Science, as translated by George Bruce Halsted, in 'The Value of Science', Popular Science Monthly (Sep 1906), 69 195-196.
Science quotes on:  |  Analogy (76)  |  Attach (57)  |  Attain (126)  |  Beauty (313)  |  Better (493)  |  Difficult (263)  |  Enable (122)  |  Harmony (105)  |  Ignorant (91)  |  Internal (69)  |  Intimate (21)  |  Know (1538)  |  Language (308)  |  Little (717)  |  Mathematics (1395)  |  Mathematics As A Language (20)  |  Most (1728)  |  Objective (96)  |  Price (57)  |  Progress (492)  |  Reality (274)  |  Remain (355)  |  Slow (108)  |  Sole (50)  |  Source (101)  |  Thing (1914)  |  True (239)  |  Truth (1109)  |  Understand (648)  |  Understood (155)  |  Universal (198)  |  Unknown (195)  |  Will (2350)  |  World (1850)

Yes, Shakespeare foremost and forever (Darwin too). But also teach about the excellence of pygmy bushcraft and Fuegian survival in the world’s harshest climate. Dignity and inspiration come in many guises. Would anyone choose the tinhorn patriotism of George Armstrong Custer over the eloquence of Chief Joseph in defeat?
…...
Science quotes on:  |  Anyone (38)  |  Chief (99)  |  Choose (116)  |  Climate (102)  |  Darwin (14)  |  Defeat (31)  |  Dignity (44)  |  Eloquence (7)  |  Excellence (40)  |  Foremost (11)  |  Guise (6)  |  Harsh (9)  |  Inspiration (80)  |  Patriotism (9)  |  Shakespeare (6)  |  Survival (105)  |  Teach (299)  |  World (1850)

Yes, we have to divide up our time like that, between our politics and our equations. But to me our equations are far more important, for politics are only a matter of present concern. A mathematical equation stands forever.
…...
Science quotes on:  |  Concern (239)  |  Divide (77)  |  Equation (138)  |  Far (158)  |  Important (229)  |  Mathematics (1395)  |  Matter (821)  |  More (2558)  |  Politics (122)  |  Present (630)  |  Stand (284)  |  Time (1911)


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.