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

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

Impulse Quotes (52 quotes)

“One must go further, one must go further.” This impulse to go further is an ancient thing in the world.
Quoted in Kim Lim (ed.), 1,001 Pearls of Spiritual Wisdom: Words to Enrich, Inspire, and Guide Your Life (2014), 5
Science quotes on:  |  Ancient (198)  |  Far (158)  |  Must (1525)  |  Thing (1914)  |  World (1850)

[When recording electrical impulses from a frog nerve-muscle preparation seemed to show a tiresomely oscillating electrical artefact—but only when the muscle was hanging unsupported.] The explanation suddenly dawned on me ... a muscle hanging under its own weight ought, if you come to think of it, to be sending sensory impulses up the nerves coming from the muscle spindles ... That particular day’s work, I think, had all the elements that one could wish for. The new apparatus seemed to be misbehaving very badly indeed, and I suddenly found it was behaving so well that it was opening up an entire new range of data ... it didn’t involve any particular hard work, or any particular intelligence on my part. It was just one of those things which sometimes happens in a laboratory if you stick apparatus together and see what results you get.
From 'Memorable experiences in research', Diabetes (1954), 3, 17-18. As cited in Alan McComa, Galvani's Spark: The Story of the Nerve Impulse (2011), 102-103.
Science quotes on:  |  Apparatus (70)  |  Artefact (2)  |  Badly (32)  |  Behave (18)  |  Coming (114)  |  Data (162)  |  Dawn (31)  |  Electrical (57)  |  Element (322)  |  Entire (50)  |  Explanation (246)  |  Found (11)  |  Frog (44)  |  Hang (46)  |  Happen (282)  |  Hard (246)  |  Hard Work (25)  |  Indeed (323)  |  Insight (107)  |  Intelligence (218)  |  Involve (93)  |  Laboratory (214)  |  Muscle (47)  |  Nerve (82)  |  New (1273)  |  Physiology (101)  |  Preparation (60)  |  Range (104)  |  Recording (13)  |  Research (753)  |  Result (700)  |  See (1094)  |  Send (23)  |  Sensory (16)  |  Serendipity (17)  |  Show (353)  |  Suddenly (91)  |  Thing (1914)  |  Think (1122)  |  Together (392)  |  Unsupported (3)  |  Weight (140)  |  Wish (216)  |  Work (1402)

Adrenalin does not excite sympathetic ganglia when applied to them directly, as does nicotine. Its effective action is localised at the periphery. The existence upon plain muscle of a peripheral nervous network, that degenerates only after section of both the constrictor and inhibitory nerves entering it, and not after section of either alone, has been described. I find that even after such complete denervation, whether of three days' or ten months' duration, the plain muscle of the dilatator pupillae will respond to adrenalin, and that with greater rapidity and longer persistence than does the iris whose nervous relations are uninjured. Therefore it cannot be that adrenalin excites any structure derived from, and dependent for its persistence on, the peripheral neurone. But since adrenalin does not evoke any reaction from muscle that has at no time of its life been innervated by the sympathetic, the point at which the stimulus of the chemical excitant is received, and transformed into what may cause the change of tension of the muscle fibre, is perhaps a mechanism developed out of the muscle cell in response to its union with the synapsing sympathetic fibre, the function of which is to receive and transform the nervous impulse. Adrenalin might then be the chemical stimulant liberated on each occasion when the impulse arrives at the periphery.
'On the Action of Adrenalin', Proceedings of the Physiological Society, 21 May 1904, in The Journal of Physiology 1904, 31, xxi.
Science quotes on:  |  Action (342)  |  Adrenaline (5)  |  Alone (324)  |  Applied (176)  |  Both (496)  |  Cause (561)  |  Change (639)  |  Chemical (303)  |  Complete (209)  |  Develop (278)  |  Effective (68)  |  Evoke (13)  |  Existence (481)  |  Find (1014)  |  Function (235)  |  Greater (288)  |  Life (1870)  |  Mechanism (102)  |  Month (91)  |  Muscle (47)  |  Nerve (82)  |  Network (21)  |  Occasion (87)  |  Persistence (25)  |  Point (584)  |  Rapidity (29)  |  Reaction (106)  |  Receive (117)  |  Response (56)  |  Stimulus (30)  |  Structure (365)  |  Sympathetic (10)  |  Tension (24)  |  Time (1911)  |  Transform (74)  |  Union (52)  |  Will (2350)

All the events which occur upon the earth result from Law: even those actions which are entirely dependent on the caprices of the memory, or the impulse of the passions, are shown by statistics to be, when taken in the gross, entirely independent of the human will. As a single atom, man is an enigma; as a whole, he is a mathematical problem. As an individual, he is a free agent; as a species, the offspring of necessity.
In The Martyrdom of Man (1876), 185-186.
Science quotes on:  |  Action (342)  |  Agent (73)  |  Atom (381)  |  Caprice (10)  |  Dependent (26)  |  Earth (1076)  |  Enigma (16)  |  Entirely (36)  |  Event (222)  |  Free (239)  |  Gross (7)  |  Human (1512)  |  Independent (74)  |  Individual (420)  |  Law (913)  |  Man (2252)  |  Mathematics (1395)  |  Memory (144)  |  Necessity (197)  |  Occur (151)  |  Offspring (27)  |  Passion (121)  |  Problem (731)  |  Result (700)  |  Single (365)  |  Species (435)  |  Statistics (170)  |  Whole (756)  |  Will (2350)

Among people I have met, the few whom I would term “great” all share a kind of unquestioned, fierce dedication; an utter lack of doubt about the value of their activities (or at least an internal impulse that drives through any such angst); and above all, a capacity to work (or at least to be mentally alert for unexpected insights) at every available moment of every day of their lives.
From The Lying Stones of Marrakech: Penultimate Reflections in Natural History (2000), 76.
Science quotes on:  |  Activity (218)  |  Alert (13)  |  Angst (2)  |  Available (80)  |  Capacity (105)  |  Dedication (12)  |  Doubt (314)  |  Drive (61)  |  Fierce (8)  |  Great (1610)  |  Insight (107)  |  Internal (69)  |  Kind (564)  |  Lack (127)  |  Least (75)  |  Life (1870)  |  Live (650)  |  Mentally (3)  |  Met (2)  |  Moment (260)  |  People (1031)  |  Person (366)  |  Share (82)  |  Term (357)  |  Through (846)  |  Unexpected (55)  |  Unquestioned (7)  |  Utter (8)  |  Value (393)  |  Work (1402)

As each bit of information is added to the sum of human knowledge it is evident that it is the little things that count; that give all the fertility and character; that give all the hope and happiness to human affairs. The concept of bigness is apt to be a delusion, and standardizing processes must not supplant creative impulses.
In Nobel Banquet speech (10 Dec 1934). Collected in Gustaf Santesson (ed.) Les Prix Nobel en 1934 (1935).
Science quotes on:  |  Add (42)  |  Character (259)  |  Concept (242)  |  Creative (144)  |  Delusion (26)  |  Fertility (23)  |  Happiness (126)  |  Hope (321)  |  Human (1512)  |  Human Affairs (6)  |  Information (173)  |  It Is Evident (6)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Little (717)  |  Process (439)  |  Sum (103)  |  Supplant (4)

Ay, driven no more by passion's gale,
Nor impulse unforeseen,
Humanity shall faint and fail,
And on her ruins will prevail
The Conquering Machine!
Responsibility begone!
Let Freedom's flag be furled;
Oh, coming ages, hasten on,
And bring the true Automaton,
The monarch of the world.
'The Conquering Machine', Dreams to Sell (1887), 29-30.
Science quotes on:  |  Age (509)  |  Automaton (12)  |  Coming (114)  |  Fail (191)  |  Freedom (145)  |  Hasten (13)  |  Humanity (186)  |  Machine (271)  |  More (2558)  |  Passion (121)  |  Prevail (47)  |  Responsibility (71)  |  Ruin (44)  |  Unforeseen (11)  |  Will (2350)  |  World (1850)

Being in love with the one parent and hating the other are among the essential constituents of the stock of psychical impulses which is formed at that time and which is of such importance in determining the symptoms of the later neurosis... This discovery is confirmed by a legend that has come down to us from classical antiquity: a legend whose profound and universal power to move can only be understood if the hypothesis I have put forward in regard to the psychology of children has an equally universal validity. What I have in mind is the legend of King Oedipus and Sophocles' drama which bears his name.
The Interpretation of Dreams (1900), In James Strachey (ed.) The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud (1953), Vol. 4, 260-1.
Science quotes on:  |  Antiquity (34)  |  Bear (162)  |  Being (1276)  |  Children (201)  |  Classical (49)  |  Confirm (58)  |  Constituent (47)  |  Discovery (837)  |  Down (455)  |  Drama (24)  |  Equally (129)  |  Essential (210)  |  Form (976)  |  Forward (104)  |  Hypothesis (314)  |  Importance (299)  |  Legend (18)  |  Love (328)  |  Mind (1377)  |  Move (223)  |  Name (359)  |  Neurosis (9)  |  Oedipus (2)  |  Other (2233)  |  Parent (80)  |  Power (771)  |  Profound (105)  |  Psychoanalysis (37)  |  Psychology (166)  |  Regard (312)  |  Symptom (38)  |  Time (1911)  |  Understood (155)  |  Universal (198)  |  Validity (50)

But why, it has been asked, did you go there [the Antarctic]? Of what use to civilization can this lifeless continent be? ... [Earlier] expeditions contributed something to the accumulating knowledge of the Antarctic ... that helps us thrust back further the physical and spiritual shadows enfolding our terrestrial existence. Is it not true that one of the strongest and most continuously sustained impulses working in civilization is that which leads to discovery? As long as any part of the world remains obscure, the curiosity of man must draw him there, as the lodestone draws the mariner's needle, until he comprehends its secret.
In 'Hoover Presents Special Medal to Byrd...', New York Times (21 Jun 1930), 1.
Science quotes on:  |  Accumulation (51)  |  Antarctic (7)  |  Ask (420)  |  Asking (74)  |  Back (395)  |  Civilization (220)  |  Comprehension (69)  |  Continent (79)  |  Contribution (93)  |  Curiosity (138)  |  Discovery (837)  |  Draw (140)  |  Existence (481)  |  Expedition (9)  |  Going (6)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Lead (391)  |  Lifeless (15)  |  Lodestone (7)  |  Long (778)  |  Man (2252)  |  Mariner (12)  |  Most (1728)  |  Must (1525)  |  Obscure (66)  |  Obscurity (28)  |  Physical (518)  |  Remain (355)  |  Secret (216)  |  Shadow (73)  |  Something (718)  |  Spiritual (94)  |  Strongest (38)  |  Sustain (52)  |  Terrestrial (62)  |  Thrust (13)  |  Use (771)  |  Why (491)  |  World (1850)

Come forth into the light of things,
Let Nature be your teacher. …
One impulse from a vernal wood
May teach you more of man,
Of moral evil and of good,
Than all the sages can.
From poem, 'The Tables Turned', collected in Lyrical Ballads, With a Few Other Poems (1798), 187.
Science quotes on:  |  Evil (122)  |  Forestry (17)  |  Good (906)  |  Light (635)  |  Man (2252)  |  Moral (203)  |  More (2558)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Sage (25)  |  Teach (299)  |  Teacher (154)  |  Thing (1914)  |  Wood (97)

Death is a release from the impressions of sense, and from impulses that make us their puppets, from the vagaries of the mind, and the hard service of the flesh.
Meditations, VI, 28.
Science quotes on:  |  Death (406)  |  Hard (246)  |  Impression (118)  |  Mind (1377)  |  Release (31)  |  Sense (785)  |  Service (110)

England was nothing, compared to continental nations until she had become commercial … until about the middle of the last century, when a number of ingenious and inventive men, without apparent relation to each other, arose in various parts of the kingdom, succeeded in giving an immense impulse to all the branches of the national industry; the result of which has been a harvest of wealth and prosperity, perhaps without a parallel in the history of the world.
In Lives of the Engineers (1862, 1874), xvii.
Science quotes on:  |  Apparent (85)  |  Become (821)  |  Branch (155)  |  Century (319)  |  Commercial (28)  |  Continent (79)  |  England (43)  |  Harvest (28)  |  History (716)  |  Immense (89)  |  Industry (159)  |  Ingenious (55)  |  Inventive (10)  |  Kingdom (80)  |  Last (425)  |  Nation (208)  |  National (29)  |  Nothing (1000)  |  Number (710)  |  Other (2233)  |  Parallel (46)  |  Prosperity (31)  |  Result (700)  |  Succeed (114)  |  Various (205)  |  Wealth (100)  |  World (1850)

Grant us a brief delay; impulse in everything is but a worthless servant.
From the original Latin, “Da spatium tenuemque moram; male cuncta ministrat Impetus,” in Thebais, X, 704. As translated in Thomas Benfield Harbottle, Dictionary of Quotations (Classical) (1897), 40.
Science quotes on:  |  Brief (37)  |  Delay (21)  |  Everything (489)  |  Grant (76)  |  Servant (40)  |  Worthless (22)

I am of the decided opinion, that mathematical instruction must have for its first aim a deep penetration and complete command of abstract mathematical theory together with a clear insight into the structure of the system, and doubt not that the instruction which accomplishes this is valuable and interesting even if it neglects practical applications. If the instruction sharpens the understanding, if it arouses the scientific interest, whether mathematical or philosophical, if finally it calls into life an esthetic feeling for the beauty of a scientific edifice, the instruction will take on an ethical value as well, provided that with the interest it awakens also the impulse toward scientific activity. I contend, therefore, that even without reference to its applications mathematics in the high schools has a value equal to that of the other subjects of instruction.
In 'Ueber das Lehrziel im mathemalischen Unterricht der höheren Realanstalten', Jahresbericht der Deutschen Mathematiker Vereinigung, 2, 192. (The Annual Report of the German Mathematical Association. As translated in Robert Édouard Moritz, Memorabilia Mathematica; Or, The Philomath’s Quotation-Book (1914), 73.
Science quotes on:  |  Abstract (141)  |  Abstract Mathematics (9)  |  Accomplishment (102)  |  Activity (218)  |  Aesthetics (12)  |  Aim (175)  |  Application (257)  |  Arouse (13)  |  Awaken (17)  |  Beauty (313)  |  Call (781)  |  Clear (111)  |  Command (60)  |  Complete (209)  |  Contend (8)  |  Decide (50)  |  Deep (241)  |  Doubt (314)  |  Edifice (26)  |  Equal (88)  |  Ethical (34)  |  Feel (371)  |  Feeling (259)  |  Finally (26)  |  First (1302)  |  High (370)  |  High School (15)  |  Insight (107)  |  Instruction (101)  |  Interest (416)  |  Interesting (153)  |  Life (1870)  |  Mathematics (1395)  |  Must (1525)  |  Neglect (63)  |  Opinion (291)  |  Other (2233)  |  Penetration (18)  |  Philosophical (24)  |  Practical (225)  |  Provide (79)  |  Reference (33)  |  School (227)  |  Scientific (955)  |  Sharpen (22)  |  Structure (365)  |  Subject (543)  |  System (545)  |  Teaching of Mathematics (39)  |  Theory (1015)  |  Together (392)  |  Toward (45)  |  Understand (648)  |  Understanding (527)  |  Value (393)  |  Will (2350)

I do believe that a scientist is a freelance personality. We’re driven by an impulse which is one of curiosity, which is one of the basic instincts that a man has. So we are … driven … not by success, but by a sort of passion, namely the desire of understanding better, to possess, if you like, a bigger part of the truth. I do believe that science, for me, is very close to art.
From 'Asking Nature', collected in Lewis Wolpert and Alison Richards (eds.), Passionate Minds: The Inner World of Scientists (1997), 197.
Science quotes on:  |  Art (680)  |  Basic (144)  |  Belief (615)  |  Better (493)  |  Bigger (5)  |  Close (77)  |  Curiosity (138)  |  Desire (212)  |  Do (1905)  |  Instinct (91)  |  Man (2252)  |  Part (235)  |  Passion (121)  |  Personality (66)  |  Possess (157)  |  Research (753)  |  Science And Art (195)  |  Scientist (881)  |  Success (327)  |  Truth (1109)  |  Understand (648)  |  Understanding (527)

I have always played with the fancy that some contagion from outer space had been the seed of man. Our passionate preoccupation with the sky, the stars, and a God somewhere in outer space is a homing impulse. We are drawn back to where we came from.
Commenting on the first moon landing. In 'Reactions to Man’s Landing on the Moon Show Broad Variations in Opinions', The New York Times (21 Jul 1969), 6.
Science quotes on:  |  Back (395)  |  Contagion (9)  |  Fancy (50)  |  God (776)  |  Home (184)  |  Man (2252)  |  Outer Space (6)  |  Passion (121)  |  Passionate (22)  |  Preoccupation (7)  |  Seed (97)  |  Sky (174)  |  Space (523)  |  Star (460)  |  Stars (304)

I know no study which is so unutterably saddening as that of the evolution of humanity, as it is set forth in the annals of history. Out of the darkness of prehistoric ages man emerges with the marks of his lowly origin strong upon him. He is a brute, only more intelligent than the other brutes, a blind prey to impulses, which as often as not led him to destruction; a victim to endless illusions, which make his mental existence a terror and a burden, and fill his physical life with barren toil and battle.
'Agnosticism' (1889). In Collected Essays (1894), Vol. 5, 256.
Science quotes on:  |  Age (509)  |  Barren (33)  |  Blind (98)  |  Brute (30)  |  Darkness (72)  |  Destruction (135)  |  Endless (60)  |  Evolution (635)  |  Existence (481)  |  History (716)  |  Humanity (186)  |  Illusion (68)  |  Intelligent (108)  |  Know (1538)  |  Life (1870)  |  Man (2252)  |  Mental (179)  |  More (2558)  |  Origin (250)  |  Other (2233)  |  Physical (518)  |  Prehistoric (12)  |  Prehistoric Man (2)  |  Set (400)  |  Strong (182)  |  Study (701)  |  Terror (32)  |  Toil (29)  |  Victim (37)

I use the word “attraction” here in a general sense for any endeavor whatever of bodies to approach one another, whether that endeavor occurs as a result of the action of the bodies either drawn toward one other or acting on one another by means of spirits emitted or whether it arises from the action of aether or of air or of any medium whatsoever—whether corporeal or incorporeal—in any way impelling toward one another the bodies floating therein. I use the word “impulse” in the same general sense, considering in this treatise not the species of forces and their physical qualities but their quantities and mathematical proportions, as I have explained in the definitions.
The Principia: Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy (1687), 3rd edition (1726), trans. I. Bernard Cohen and Anne Whitman (1999), Book I, Section II, Scholium, 588.
Science quotes on:  |  Action (342)  |  Aether (13)  |  Air (366)  |  Approach (112)  |  Arise (162)  |  Attraction (61)  |  Definition (238)  |  Endeavor (74)  |  Explain (334)  |  Force (497)  |  General (521)  |  Mean (810)  |  Means (587)  |  Occur (151)  |  Other (2233)  |  Physical (518)  |  Proportion (140)  |  Result (700)  |  Sense (785)  |  Species (435)  |  Spirit (278)  |  Treatise (46)  |  Use (771)  |  Way (1214)  |  Whatever (234)  |  Whatsoever (41)  |  Word (650)

If we are to define science, ... it does not consist so much in knowing, nor even in “organized knowledge,” as it does in diligent inquiry into truth for truth’s sake, without any sort of axe to grind, nor for the sake of the delight of contemplating it, but from an impulse to penetrate into the reason of things.
From 'Lessons from the History of Science: The Scientific Attitude' (c.1896), in Collected Papers (1931), Vol. 1, 19.
Science quotes on:  |  Axe (16)  |  Consist (223)  |  Contemplate (29)  |  Define (53)  |  Delight (111)  |  Diligent (19)  |  Grind (11)  |  Inquiry (88)  |  Knowing (137)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Organized (9)  |  Penetrate (68)  |  Reason (766)  |  Sake (61)  |  Thing (1914)  |  Truth (1109)

It is easy to overlook this thought that life just is. As humans we are inclined to feel that life must have a point. We have plans and aspirations and desires. We want to take constant advantage of the intoxicating existence we’ve been endowed with. But what’s life to a lichen? Yet its impulse to exist, to be, is every bit as strong as ours-arguably even stronger. If I were told that I had to spend decades being a furry growth on a rock in the woods, I believe I would lose the will to go on. Lichens don’t. Like virtually all living things, they will suffer any hardship; endure any insult, for a moment’s additions existence. Life, in short just wants to be.
…...
Science quotes on:  |  Addition (70)  |  Advantage (144)  |  Aspiration (35)  |  Being (1276)  |  Belief (615)  |  Bit (21)  |  Constant (148)  |  Decade (66)  |  Desire (212)  |  Easy (213)  |  Endow (17)  |  Endowed (52)  |  Endure (21)  |  Exist (458)  |  Existence (481)  |  Feel (371)  |  Growth (200)  |  Hardship (4)  |  Human (1512)  |  Inclined (41)  |  Insult (16)  |  Intoxicating (2)  |  Lichen (2)  |  Life (1870)  |  Living (492)  |  Living Things (8)  |  Lose (165)  |  Moment (260)  |  Must (1525)  |  Overlook (33)  |  Plan (122)  |  Point (584)  |  Rock (176)  |  Short (200)  |  Spend (97)  |  Strong (182)  |  Stronger (36)  |  Suffer (43)  |  Tell (344)  |  Thing (1914)  |  Thought (995)  |  Virtually (6)  |  Want (504)  |  Will (2350)  |  Wood (97)

It is important to be clear about the different situations. Today the arms race is a long-range problem. The second world war was a short-range problem, and in the short range I think it was essential to make the atomic bomb. However, not much thought was given to the time “after the bomb”. At first, the work was too absorbing, and we wanted to get the job done. But I think that once it was made it had its own impulse—its own motion that could not be stopped.
In William J. Broad, 'Hans Bethe Confronts The Legacy Of His Bomb: Physicist, at 77, Now Works Against Atomic Weapons', The New York Times (12 Jun 1984), C2.
Science quotes on:  |  Arms Race (3)  |  Atom Bomb (4)

Let us ... consider the ovum [egg] as a physical system. Its potentialities are prodigious and one's first impulse is to expect that such vast potentialities would find expression in complexity of structure. But what do we find? The substance is clouded with particles, but these can be centrifuged away leaving it optically structureless but still capable of development.... On the surface of the egg there is a fine membrane, below it fluid of high viscosity, next fluid of relatively low viscosity, and within this the nucleus, which in the resting stage is simply a bag of fluid enclosed in a delicate membrane.... The egg's simplicity is not that of a machine or a crystal, but that of a nebula. Gathered into it are units relatively simple but capable by their combinations of forming a vast number of dynamical systems...
As guest of honour, closing day address (Jun 1928), Sixth Colloid Symposium, Toronto, Canada, 'Living Matter', printed in Harry Boyer Weiser (ed.), Colloid Symposium Monograph (1928), Vol. 6, 15. Quoted in Joseph Needham, Chemical Embryology (1931), Vol. 1, 612-613.
Science quotes on:  |  Capable (174)  |  Cloud (111)  |  Combination (150)  |  Complexity (121)  |  Consider (428)  |  Crystal (71)  |  Delicate (45)  |  Development (441)  |  Do (1905)  |  Dynamic (16)  |  Dynamical (15)  |  Egg (71)  |  Expect (203)  |  Expression (181)  |  Find (1014)  |  First (1302)  |  Fluid (54)  |  Forming (42)  |  Gather (76)  |  High (370)  |  Low (86)  |  Machine (271)  |  Membrane (21)  |  Nebula (16)  |  Next (238)  |  Nucleus (54)  |  Number (710)  |  Ovum (4)  |  Particle (200)  |  Physical (518)  |  Potential (75)  |  Prodigious (20)  |  Simple (426)  |  Simplicity (175)  |  Stage (152)  |  Still (614)  |  Structure (365)  |  Substance (253)  |  Surface (223)  |  System (545)  |  Vast (188)  |  Viscosity (3)

Natural knowledge has not forgone emotion. It has simply taken for itself new ground of emotion, under impulsion from and in sacrifice to that one of its 'values', Truth.
Man on His Nature (1940), 404.
Science quotes on:  |  Emotion (106)  |  Forgo (4)  |  Ground (222)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Natural (810)  |  New (1273)  |  Sacrifice (58)  |  Truth (1109)  |  Value (393)

Nature may reach the same result in many ways. Like a wave in the physical world, in the infinite ocean of the medium which pervades all, so in the world of organisms, in life, an impulse started proceeds onward, at times, may be, with the speed of light, at times, again, so slowly that for ages and ages it seems to stay, passing through processes of a complexity inconceivable to men, but in all its forms, in all its stages, its energy ever and ever integrally present.
Lecture (Feb 1893) delivered before the Franklin Institute, Philadelphia, 'On Light and Other High Frequency Phenomena,' collected in Thomas Commerford Martin and Nikola Tesla, The Inventions, Researches and Writings of Nikola Tesla (1894), 298.
Science quotes on:  |  Complexity (121)  |  Energy (373)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Organism (231)  |  Result (700)  |  Speed Of Light (18)  |  Wave (112)

On coming down the stairs at dinner Tris [Trismegistus = Frankland] who walked before me seemed impressed by a mechanical impulse which impelled him along the corridor with a fervid velocity. On reaching the stair bottom I discovered the cause of the attraction. Miss Edmondson, like a pure planet, had checked his gravitating tendencies and lo! He stood radiant with smiles dropping joysparkes from his eyes as he clasped her hand. His countenance became a transparency through which the full proportions of his soul shone manifest; his blood tingled from his eyebrows to his finger ends, and wealthy with rich emotions his face became the avenue of what he felt.
Journals of John Tyndall, 18 Jan 1848. Royal Institution Archives.
Science quotes on:  |  Attraction (61)  |  Avenue (14)  |  Biography (254)  |  Blood (144)  |  Cause (561)  |  Coming (114)  |  Countenance (9)  |  Discover (571)  |  Down (455)  |  Dropping (8)  |  Emotion (106)  |  End (603)  |  Eye (440)  |  Face (214)  |  Fervid (2)  |  Sir Edward Frankland (2)  |  Impress (66)  |  Impressed (39)  |  Mechanical (145)  |  Miss (51)  |  Planet (402)  |  Proportion (140)  |  Pure (299)  |  Radiant (15)  |  Smile (34)  |  Soul (235)  |  Through (846)  |  Transparency (7)  |  Velocity (51)  |  Walk (138)

One can never consent to creep when one feels an impulse to soar.
The Story of My Life (1921), 393.
Science quotes on:  |  Consent (14)  |  Creep (15)  |  Feel (371)  |  Motivation (28)  |  Never (1089)  |  Soar (23)

One cannot consent to creep when one has an impulse to soar.
…...
Science quotes on:  |  Consent (14)  |  Creep (15)  |  Soar (23)

Our first endeavors are purely instinctive prompting of an imagination vivid and undisciplined. As we grow older reason asserts itself and we become more and more systematic and designing. But those early impulses, though not immediately productive, are of the greatest moment and may shape our very destinies. Indeed, I feel now that had I understood and cultivated instead of suppressing them, I would have added substantial value to my bequest to the world. But not until I had attained manhood did I realize that I was an inventor.
In 'My Early Life', My Inventions: And Other Writings (2016), 1. Originally published in serial form in Part 1, 'My Inventions', Electrical Experimenter magazine (1919).
Science quotes on:  |  Assert (69)  |  Become (821)  |  Design (203)  |  Early (196)  |  Endeavor (74)  |  First (1302)  |  Grow (247)  |  Imagination (349)  |  Immediately (115)  |  Instinctive (5)  |  More (2558)  |  Old (499)  |  Productive (37)  |  Prompt (14)  |  Purely (111)  |  Reason (766)  |  Systematic (58)  |  Undisciplined (2)  |  Vivid (25)

Plants are extraordinary. For instance ... if you pinch a leaf of a plant you set off electrical impulse. You can't touch a plant without setting off an electrical impulse ... There is no question that plants have all kinds of sensitivities. They do a lot of responding to an environment. They can do almost anything you can think of.
Quoted in George Ritzer and Barry Smart, Handbook of Social Theory, 532.
Science quotes on:  |  Do (1905)  |  Electrical (57)  |  Environment (239)  |  Extraordinary (83)  |  Kind (564)  |  Leaf (73)  |  Lot (151)  |  Pinch (6)  |  Plant (320)  |  Question (649)  |  Reflex (14)  |  Set (400)  |  Setting (44)  |  Think (1122)  |  Touch (146)

Psychology … tells us that we rarely work through reasons and evidence in a systematic way; weighing information carefully and suspending the impulse to draw conclusions. Instead, much of the time we use mental shortcuts or rules of thumb that save us mental effort. These habits often work reasonably well, but they also can lead us to conclusions we might dismiss if we applied more thought.
As co-author with Kathleen Hall Jamieson, in unSpun: Finding Facts in a World of Disinformation (2007), 70.
Science quotes on:  |  Applied (176)  |  Careful (28)  |  Carefully (65)  |  Conclusion (266)  |  Dismiss (12)  |  Draw (140)  |  Effort (243)  |  Evidence (267)  |  Habit (174)  |  Information (173)  |  Lead (391)  |  Mental (179)  |  More (2558)  |  Psychology (166)  |  Reason (766)  |  Rule (307)  |  Rule Of Thumb (3)  |  Save (126)  |  Shortcut (3)  |  Systematic (58)  |  Tell (344)  |  Thought (995)  |  Through (846)  |  Thumb (18)  |  Time (1911)  |  Use (771)  |  Way (1214)  |  Work (1402)

Samoa culture demonstrates how much the tragic or the easy solution of the Oedipus situation depends upon the inter-relationship between parents and children, and is not created out of whole cloth by the young child’s biological impulses.
Male and Female: A Study of the Sexes in a Changing World (1949), 119.
Science quotes on:  |  Biological (137)  |  Child (333)  |  Children (201)  |  Culture (157)  |  Demonstrate (79)  |  Demonstration (120)  |  Depend (238)  |  Easy (213)  |  Inter (12)  |  Inter-Relationship (2)  |  Oedipus (2)  |  Parent (80)  |  Relationship (114)  |  Situation (117)  |  Solution (282)  |  Tragic (19)  |  Whole (756)  |  Young (253)

Science not only purifies the religious impulse of the dross of its anthropomorphism but also contributes to a religious spiritualization of our understanding of life.
…...
Science quotes on:  |  Contribute (30)  |  Life (1870)  |  Purify (9)  |  Religious (134)  |  Spiritualization (2)  |  Understand (648)  |  Understanding (527)

Scientific training gives its votaries freedom from the impositions of modern quackery. Those who know nothing of the laws and processes of Nature fall an easy prey to quacks and impostors. Perfectionism in the realm of religion; a score of frauds in the realm of medicine, as electric shoe soles, hair brushes and belts, electropises, oxydonors, insulating bed casters, and the like; Christian science, in the presence of whose unspeakable stillness and self-stultifying idealism a wise man knows not whether to laugh or cry; Prof. Weltmer’s magnetic treatment of disease; divine healing and miracle working by long-haired peripatetics—these and a score of other contagious fads and rank impostures find their followers among those who have no scientific training. Among their deluded victims are thousands of men and women of high character, undoubted piety, good intentions, charitable impulses and literary culture, but none trained to scientific research. Vaccinate the general public with scientific training and these epidemics will become a thing of the past.
As quoted by S.D. Van Meter, Chairman, closing remarks for 'Report of Committee on Public Policy and Legislation', to the Colorado State Medical Society in Denver, printed in Colorado Medicine (Oct 1904), 1, No. 12, 363. Van Meter used the quote following his statement, “In conclusion, allow me to urge once more the necessity of education of the public as well as the profession if we ever expect to correct the evils we are striving to reach by State and Society legislation. Much can be accomplished toward this end by the publication of well edited articles in the secular press upon medical subjects the public is eager to know about.” Prof. Weltmer is presumably Sidney A. Weltmer, founder of The Weltmer Institute of Suggestive Therapeutics, who offered a Course in Magnetic Healing by mail order correspondence (1899). [The word printed as “electropises” in the article is presumably a typo for “electropoises”. —Webmaster]
Science quotes on:  |  Become (821)  |  Bed (25)  |  Belt (4)  |  Brush (5)  |  Character (259)  |  Charity (13)  |  Christian (44)  |  Christian Science (3)  |  Contagious (5)  |  Cry (30)  |  Culture (157)  |  Deluded (7)  |  Disease (340)  |  Divine (112)  |  Eager (17)  |  Easy (213)  |  Education (423)  |  Electric (76)  |  Electricity (168)  |  Epidemic (8)  |  Fad (10)  |  Fall (243)  |  Find (1014)  |  Follower (11)  |  Fraud (15)  |  Freedom (145)  |  General (521)  |  General Public (7)  |  Good (906)  |  Good Intention (2)  |  Hair (25)  |  Healing (28)  |  High (370)  |  Idealism (4)  |  Ignorance (254)  |  Imposition (5)  |  Impostor (4)  |  Imposture (6)  |  Insulating (3)  |  Intelligent Design (5)  |  Intention (46)  |  Know (1538)  |  Laugh (50)  |  Law (913)  |  Literary (15)  |  Long (778)  |  Magnetic (44)  |  Man (2252)  |  Medicine (392)  |  Miracle (85)  |  Modern (402)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Nothing (1000)  |  Other (2233)  |  Past (355)  |  Perfectionism (2)  |  Peripatetic (3)  |  Piety (5)  |  Presence (63)  |  Prey (13)  |  Process (439)  |  Quack (18)  |  Quackery (4)  |  Rank (69)  |  Realm (87)  |  Religion (369)  |  Research (753)  |  Scientific (955)  |  Scientific Method (200)  |  Self (268)  |  Shoe (12)  |  Sole (50)  |  Stillness (5)  |  Stultify (5)  |  Thing (1914)  |  Thousand (340)  |  Train (118)  |  Trained (5)  |  Training (92)  |  Treatment (135)  |  Victim (37)  |  Votary (3)  |  Will (2350)  |  Wise (143)  |  Wise Man (17)  |  Woman (160)  |  Work (1402)

Sexual instinct—as emotion, idea, and impulse—is a function of the cerebral cortex. Thus far no definite region of the cortex has been proved to be exclusively the seat of sexual sensations and impulses.
Psychopathia Sexualis: With Special Reference to Contrary Sexual Instinct: A Medico-Legal Study (1886), trans. Charles Gilbert Chaddock (1892), 24.
Science quotes on:  |  Brain (281)  |  Cortex (3)  |  Definite (114)  |  Emotion (106)  |  Function (235)  |  Idea (881)  |  Instinct (91)  |  Sensation (60)  |  Sex (68)  |  Sexual (27)

Take away these instinctive dispositions with their powerful impulses, and the organism would become incapable of activity of any kind; it would lie inert and motionless like a wonderful clockwork whose mainspring had been removed or a steam-engine whose fires had been withdrawn.
An Introduction to Social Psychology (1928), 38.
Science quotes on:  |  Activity (218)  |  Become (821)  |  Disposition (44)  |  Engine (99)  |  Fire (203)  |  Incapable (41)  |  Inert (14)  |  Instinct (91)  |  Kind (564)  |  Lie (370)  |  Mainspring (2)  |  Organism (231)  |  Powerful (145)  |  Steam (81)  |  Wonderful (155)

The astronomers said, ‘Give us matter and a little motion and we will construct the universe. It is not enough that we should have matter, we must also have a single impulse, one shove to launch the mass and generate the harmony of the centrifugal and centripetal forces.’ ... There is no end to the consequences of the act. That famous aboriginal push propagates itself through all the balls of the system, and through every atom of every ball.
From essay, 'Nature', collected in Ralph Waldo Emerson and J.E. Cabot (ed.), Emerson's Complete Works: Essays, Second Series (1884), Vol. 3, 176-177.
Science quotes on:  |  Aboriginal (3)  |  Act (278)  |  Astronomer (97)  |  Atom (381)  |  Ball (64)  |  Big Bang (45)  |  Centrifugal (3)  |  Centripetal (3)  |  Centripetal Force (2)  |  Consequence (220)  |  Construct (129)  |  End (603)  |  Enough (341)  |  Force (497)  |  Generate (16)  |  Give (208)  |  Harmony (105)  |  Launch (21)  |  Little (717)  |  Mass (160)  |  Matter (821)  |  Motion (320)  |  Must (1525)  |  Push (66)  |  Shove (2)  |  Single (365)  |  System (545)  |  Through (846)  |  Universe (900)  |  Will (2350)

The attitude of the intellectual community toward America is shaped not by the creative few but by the many who for one reason or another cannot transmute their dissatisfaction into a creative impulse, and cannot acquire a sense of uniqueness and of growth by developing and expressing their capacities and talents. There is nothing in contemporary America that can cure or alleviate their chronic frustration. They want power, lordship, and opportunities for imposing action. Even if we should banish poverty from the land, lift up the Negro to true equality, withdraw from Vietnam, and give half of the national income as foreign aid, they will still see America as an air-conditioned nightmare unfit for them to live in.
In 'Some Thoughts on the Present', The Temper of Our Time (1967), 107.
Science quotes on:  |  Acquire (46)  |  Action (342)  |  Aid (101)  |  Air (366)  |  Alleviate (4)  |  America (143)  |  Attitude (84)  |  Banish (11)  |  Capacity (105)  |  Chronic (5)  |  Community (111)  |  Condition (362)  |  Contemporary (33)  |  Creative (144)  |  Cure (124)  |  Develop (278)  |  Dissatisfaction (13)  |  Equality (34)  |  Express (192)  |  Foreign (45)  |  Frustration (14)  |  Give (208)  |  Growth (200)  |  Half (63)  |  Impose (22)  |  Income (18)  |  Intellectual (258)  |  Land (131)  |  Lift (57)  |  Live (650)  |  National (29)  |  Negro (8)  |  Nightmare (4)  |  Nothing (1000)  |  Opportunity (95)  |  Poverty (40)  |  Power (771)  |  Reason (766)  |  See (1094)  |  Sense (785)  |  Shape (77)  |  Still (614)  |  Talent (99)  |  Toward (45)  |  Transmute (6)  |  True (239)  |  Unfit (13)  |  Uniqueness (11)  |  Want (504)  |  Will (2350)  |  Withdraw (11)

The chemists are a strange class of mortals, impelled by an almost insane impulse to seek their pleasures amid smoke and vapour, soot and flame, poisons and poverty; yet among all these evils I seem to live so sweetly that may I die if I were to change places with the Persian king.
Physica subterranea (1667). Quoted in The Chemistry Leaflet (1935), 9, 490, which also comments that it was hanging as an inscription “on the walls of the library of the Chemists’ Club in New York City.”
Science quotes on:  |  Change (639)  |  Chemist (169)  |  Class (168)  |  Evil (122)  |  Flame (44)  |  Live (650)  |  Mortal (55)  |  Persian (4)  |  Pleasure (191)  |  Poison (46)  |  Poverty (40)  |  Seek (218)  |  Smoke (32)  |  Soot (11)  |  Strange (160)  |  Vapour (16)

The design of a book is the pattern of reality controlled and shaped by the mind of the writer. This is completely understood about poetry or fiction, but it is too seldom realized about books of fact. And yet the impulse which drives a man to poetry will send a man into the tide pools and force him to report what he finds there. Why is an expedition to Tibet undertaken, or a sea bottom dredged? Why do men, sitting at the microscope, examine the calcareous plates of a sea cucumber and give the new species a name, and write about it possessively? It would be good to know the impulse truly, not to be confused by the “services to science” platitudes or the other little mazes into which we entice our minds so that they will not know what we are doing.
In John Steinbeck and Edward Flanders Ricketts, Introduction to Sea of Cortez: a Leisurely Journal of Travel and Research (1941), opening paragraph. John Steinbeck had an interest in marine science before he met Ricketts. This book is an account of their trip in the Gulf of California, once called the Sea of Cortez, and recording the marine life to be found there.
Science quotes on:  |  Book (413)  |  Completely (137)  |  Cucumber (4)  |  Design (203)  |  Do (1905)  |  Doing (277)  |  Examine (84)  |  Expedition (9)  |  Fact (1257)  |  Fiction (23)  |  Find (1014)  |  Force (497)  |  Good (906)  |  Know (1538)  |  Little (717)  |  Man (2252)  |  Marine Biology (24)  |  Maze (11)  |  Microscope (85)  |  Mind (1377)  |  Name (359)  |  New (1273)  |  Other (2233)  |  Pattern (116)  |  Platitude (2)  |  Poetry (150)  |  Pool (16)  |  Reality (274)  |  Report (42)  |  Sea (326)  |  Seldom (68)  |  Service (110)  |  Sitting (44)  |  Species (435)  |  Tibet (4)  |  Tide (37)  |  Truly (118)  |  Understood (155)  |  Why (491)  |  Will (2350)  |  Write (250)  |  Writer (90)

The history of Europe is the history of Rome curbing the Hebrew and the Greek, with their various impulses of religion, and of science, and of art, and of quest for material comfort, and of lust of domination, which are all at daggers drawn with each other. The vision of Rome is the vision of the unity of civilisation.
In 'The Place of Classics in Education', The Aims of Education and Other Essays (1929), 79.
Science quotes on:  |  Art (680)  |  Civilization (220)  |  Comfort (64)  |  Dagger (3)  |  Domination (12)  |  Education (423)  |  Europe (50)  |  Greek (109)  |  Hebrew (10)  |  History (716)  |  Lust (7)  |  Material (366)  |  Other (2233)  |  Quest (39)  |  Religion (369)  |  Rome (19)  |  Science And Art (195)  |  Unity (81)  |  Various (205)  |  Vision (127)

The Indian mind needs to be familarised with the principles of modern progress, a universal impulse for enquiry and enterprise awakened, and earnest thinking and effort promoted. A new type of Indian citizenship purposeful, progressive and self-respecting should be created, and self-reliant nationhood developed.
In Reconstructing India (1920), Preface, v.
Science quotes on:  |  Awaken (17)  |  Citizenship (9)  |  Create (245)  |  Develop (278)  |  Enquiry (89)  |  Enterprise (56)  |  India (23)  |  Mind (1377)  |  Modern (402)  |  Nation (208)  |  Progress (492)  |  Progressive (21)  |  Purposeful (2)  |  Self-Reliant (2)  |  Self-Respect (3)  |  Universal (198)

The night before Easter Sunday of that year (1920) I awoke, turned on the light, and jotted down a few notes on a tiny slip of thin paper. Then I fell asleep again. It occurred to me at six o’clock in the morning that during the night I had written down something most important, but I was unable to decipher the scrawl. The next night, at three o’clock, the idea returned. It was the design of an experiment to determine whether the hypothesis of chemical transmission that I had uttered seventeen years ago was correct. I got up immediately, went to the laboratory, and performed a simple experiment on a frog heart according to the nocturnal design. I have to describe this experiment briefly since its results became the foundation of the theory of chemical transmission of the nervous impulse. The hearts of two frogs were isolated, the first with its nerves, the second without. Both hearts were attached to Straub cannulas filled with a little Ringer solution. The vagus nerve of the first heart was stimulated for a few minutes. Then the Ringer solution that had been in the first heart during the stimulation of the vagus was transferred to the second heart. It slowed and its beats diminished just as if its vagus had been stimulated. Similarly, when the accelerator nerve was stimulated and the Ringer from this period transferred, the second heart speeded up and its beats increased. These results unequivocally proved that the nerves do not influence the heart directly but liberate from their terminals specific chemical substances which, in their turn, cause the well-known modifications of the function of the heart characteristic of the stimulation of its nerves.
'An Autobiographic Sketch', Perspectives in Biology and Medicine (1960), 4, 17.
Science quotes on:  |  Accelerator (11)  |  According (236)  |  Attach (57)  |  Attached (36)  |  Autobiography (58)  |  Beat (42)  |  Both (496)  |  Cause (561)  |  Characteristic (154)  |  Chemical (303)  |  Clock (51)  |  Describe (132)  |  Design (203)  |  Determine (152)  |  Do (1905)  |  Down (455)  |  Easter (4)  |  Experiment (736)  |  First (1302)  |  Foundation (177)  |  Frog (44)  |  Function (235)  |  Heart (243)  |  Hypothesis (314)  |  Idea (881)  |  Immediately (115)  |  Influence (231)  |  Known (453)  |  Laboratory (214)  |  Light (635)  |  Little (717)  |  Minute (129)  |  Modification (57)  |  Morning (98)  |  Most (1728)  |  Nerve (82)  |  Next (238)  |  Paper (192)  |  Perform (123)  |  Period (200)  |  Result (700)  |  Return (133)  |  Scrawl (3)  |  Simple (426)  |  Sleep (81)  |  Slow (108)  |  Solution (282)  |  Something (718)  |  Specific (98)  |  Speed (66)  |  Stimulation (18)  |  Substance (253)  |  Theory (1015)  |  Tiny (74)  |  Transmission (34)  |  Turn (454)  |  Two (936)  |  Year (963)

The second great channel through which the impulse towards the control of procreation for the elevation of the race is entering into practical life is by the general adoption, by the educated—of methods for the prevention of conception except when conception is deliberately desired.
Studies in the Psychology of Sex (1913), Vol. 4, 588.
Science quotes on:  |  Conception (160)  |  Control (182)  |  Elevation (13)  |  General (521)  |  Great (1610)  |  Life (1870)  |  Method (531)  |  Practical (225)  |  Prevention (37)  |  Procreation (4)  |  Race (278)  |  Sex (68)  |  Through (846)

The teens are emotionally unstable and pathic. It is a natural impulse to experience hot and perfervid psychic states, and it is characterized by emotionalism. We see here the instability and fluctuations now so characteristic. The emotions develop by contrast and reaction into the opposite.
Hall, GS (1904b). Adolescence: Its psychology and its relations to physiology, anthropology, sociology, sex, crime, religion and education (1904), Vol. 2, 74-75.
Science quotes on:  |  Characteristic (154)  |  Child (333)  |  Contrast (45)  |  Develop (278)  |  Emotion (106)  |  Experience (494)  |  Fluctuation (15)  |  Hot (63)  |  Natural (810)  |  Opposite (110)  |  Psychic (15)  |  Reaction (106)  |  See (1094)  |  State (505)

The traditional method of confronting the student not with the problem but with the finished solution means depriving him of all excitement, to shut off the creative impulse, to reduce the adventure of mankind to a dusty heap of theorems.
In The Act of Creation (1964), 266.
Science quotes on:  |  Adventure (69)  |  Confront (18)  |  Creative (144)  |  Deprived (2)  |  Dusty (8)  |  Excitement (61)  |  Finish (62)  |  Heap (15)  |  Mankind (356)  |  Mean (810)  |  Means (587)  |  Method (531)  |  Problem (731)  |  Reduce (100)  |  Shut (41)  |  Solution (282)  |  Student (317)  |  Theorem (116)  |  Traditional (16)

The understanding must not however be allowed to jump and fly from particulars to axioms remote and of almost the highest generality (such as the first principles, as they are called, of arts and things), and taking stand upon them as truths that cannot be shaken, proceed to prove and frame the middle axioms by reference to them; which has been the practice hitherto, the understanding being not only carried that way by a natural impulse, but also by the use of syllogistic demonstration trained and inured to it. But then, and then only, may we hope well of the sciences when in a just scale of ascent, and by successive steps not interrupted or broken, we rise from particulars to lesser axioms; and then to middle axioms, one above the other; and last of all to the most general. For the lowest axioms differ but slightly from bare experience, while the highest and most general (which we now have) are notional and abstract and without solidity. But the middle are the true and solid and living axioms, on which depend the affairs and fortunes of men; and above them again, last of all, those which are indeed the most general; such, I mean, as are not abstract, but of which those intermediate axioms are really limitations.
The understanding must not therefore be supplied with wings, but rather hung with weights, to keep it from leaping and flying. Now this has never yet been done; when it is done, we may entertain better hopes of science.
From Novum Organum (1620), Book 1, Aphorism 104. Translated as The New Organon: Aphorisms Concerning the Interpretation of Nature and the Kingdom of Man), collected in James Spedding, Robert Ellis and Douglas Heath (eds.), The Works of Francis Bacon (1857), Vol. 4, 97.
Science quotes on:  |  Abstract (141)  |  Art (680)  |  Axiom (65)  |  Bare (33)  |  Being (1276)  |  Better (493)  |  Broken (56)  |  Call (781)  |  Demonstration (120)  |  Depend (238)  |  Differ (88)  |  Entertain (27)  |  Experience (494)  |  First (1302)  |  Fly (153)  |  Flying (74)  |  Fortune (50)  |  General (521)  |  Generality (45)  |  Hope (321)  |  Indeed (323)  |  Intermediate (38)  |  Jump (31)  |  Last (425)  |  Limitation (52)  |  Living (492)  |  Logic (311)  |  Mean (810)  |  Most (1728)  |  Must (1525)  |  Natural (810)  |  Never (1089)  |  Other (2233)  |  Practice (212)  |  Principle (530)  |  Proceed (134)  |  Prove (261)  |  Remote (86)  |  Rise (169)  |  Scale (122)  |  Solid (119)  |  Stand (284)  |  Step (234)  |  Successive (73)  |  Thing (1914)  |  Train (118)  |  Truth (1109)  |  Understanding (527)  |  Use (771)  |  Way (1214)  |  Weight (140)  |  Wing (79)

Vision - It reaches beyond the thing that is, into the conception of what can be. Imagination gives you the picture. Vision gives you the impulse to make the picture your own.
…...
Science quotes on:  |  Beyond (316)  |  Conception (160)  |  Give (208)  |  Imagination (349)  |  Picture (148)  |  Reach (286)  |  Thing (1914)  |  Vision (127)

We all know, from what we experience with and within ourselves, that our conscious acts spring from our desires and our fears. Intuition tells us that that is true also of our fellows and of the higher animals. We all try to escape pain and death, while we seek what is pleasant. We are all ruled in what we do by impulses; and these impulses are so organized that our actions in general serve for our self preservation and that of the race. Hunger, love, pain, fear are some of those inner forces which rule the individual’s instinct for self preservation. At the same time, as social beings, we are moved in the relations with our fellow beings by such feelings as sympathy, pride, hate, need for power, pity, and so on. All these primary impulses, not easily described in words, are the springs of man’s actions. All such action would cease if those powerful elemental forces were to cease stirring within us. Though our conduct seems so very different from that of the higher animals, the primary instincts are much alike in them and in us. The most evident difference springs from the important part which is played in man by a relatively strong power of imagination and by the capacity to think, aided as it is by language and other symbolical devices. Thought is the organizing factor in man, intersected between the causal primary instincts and the resulting actions. In that way imagination and intelligence enter into our existence in the part of servants of the primary instincts. But their intervention makes our acts to serve ever less merely the immediate claims of our instincts.
…...
Science quotes on:  |  Act (278)  |  Action (342)  |  Aid (101)  |  Alike (60)  |  Animal (651)  |  Being (1276)  |  Capacity (105)  |  Causal (7)  |  Cease (81)  |  Claim (154)  |  Conduct (70)  |  Conscious (46)  |  Death (406)  |  Describe (132)  |  Desire (212)  |  Device (71)  |  Difference (355)  |  Different (595)  |  Do (1905)  |  Easily (36)  |  Elemental (4)  |  Enter (145)  |  Escape (85)  |  Evident (92)  |  Existence (481)  |  Experience (494)  |  Factor (47)  |  Fear (212)  |  Feeling (259)  |  Feelings (52)  |  Fellow (88)  |  Force (497)  |  General (521)  |  Hate (68)  |  High (370)  |  Hunger (23)  |  Imagination (349)  |  Immediate (98)  |  Important (229)  |  Individual (420)  |  Inner (72)  |  Instinct (91)  |  Intelligence (218)  |  Intersect (5)  |  Intervention (18)  |  Intuition (82)  |  Know (1538)  |  Language (308)  |  Less (105)  |  Love (328)  |  Man (2252)  |  Merely (315)  |  Most (1728)  |  Move (223)  |  Need (320)  |  Organize (33)  |  Other (2233)  |  Ourselves (247)  |  Pain (144)  |  Part (235)  |  Pity (16)  |  Play (116)  |  Pleasant (22)  |  Power (771)  |  Powerful (145)  |  Preservation (39)  |  Pride (84)  |  Primary (82)  |  Race (278)  |  Relation (166)  |  Relatively (8)  |  Result (700)  |  Rule (307)  |  Same (166)  |  Seek (218)  |  Seem (150)  |  Self (268)  |  Servant (40)  |  Serve (64)  |  Social (261)  |  Spring (140)  |  Stir (23)  |  Strong (182)  |  Symbolic (16)  |  Sympathy (35)  |  Tell (344)  |  Think (1122)  |  Thought (995)  |  Time (1911)  |  True (239)  |  Try (296)  |  Way (1214)  |  Word (650)

We are accustomed to say that every human being displays both male and female instinctual impulses, needs, and attributes, but the characteristics of what is male and female can only be demonstrated in anatomy, and not in psychology.
In Sigmund Freud and Joan Riviere (trans.), Civilization and Its Discontents (1930, 1994), 35.
Science quotes on:  |  Accustom (52)  |  Accustomed (46)  |  Anatomy (75)  |  Attribute (65)  |  Being (1276)  |  Both (496)  |  Characteristic (154)  |  Demonstrate (79)  |  Display (59)  |  Female (50)  |  Human (1512)  |  Human Being (185)  |  Instinct (91)  |  Male (26)  |  Need (320)  |  Psychology (166)  |  Say (989)

We may fairly claim for the study of Physics the recognition that it answers to an impulse implanted by nature in the constitution of man.
From 'On the Study of Physics', a Lecture delivered in the Royal Institution of Great Britain in the Spring of 1854. Collected in Fragments of Science for Unscientific People: A Series of Detached Essays, Lectures, and Reviews (1892), Vol. 1, 284.
Science quotes on:  |  Answer (389)  |  Claim (154)  |  Constitution (78)  |  Implant (5)  |  Man (2252)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Physic (515)  |  Physics (564)  |  Recognition (93)  |  Study (701)

When the world is mad, a mathematician may find in mathematics an incomparable anodyne. For mathematics is, of all the arts and sciences, the most austere and the most remote, and a mathematician should be of all men the one who can most easily take refuge where, as Bertrand Russell says, “one at least of our nobler impulses can best escape from the dreary exile of the actual world.”
In A Mathematician's Apology (1940, 2012), 43.
Science quotes on:  |  Actual (118)  |  Art (680)  |  Austere (7)  |  Best (467)  |  Dreary (6)  |  Ease (40)  |  Escape (85)  |  Exile (6)  |  Find (1014)  |  Incomparable (14)  |  Least (75)  |  Mad (54)  |  Madness (33)  |  Mathematician (407)  |  Mathematics (1395)  |  Most (1728)  |  Nobler (3)  |  Refuge (15)  |  Remote (86)  |  Bertrand Russell (198)  |  Say (989)  |  Science And Art (195)  |  World (1850)

Why does man regret, even though he may endeavour to banish any such regret, that he has followed the one natural impulse, rather than the other; and why does he further feel that he ought to regret his conduct? Man in this respect differs profoundly from the lower animals.
Descent of Man
Science quotes on:  |  Animal (651)  |  Banish (11)  |  Conduct (70)  |  Differ (88)  |  Emotion (106)  |  Endeavour (63)  |  Feel (371)  |  Follow (389)  |  Man (2252)  |  Natural (810)  |  Other (2233)  |  Regret (31)  |  Respect (212)  |  Why (491)


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.