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: “Nature does nothing in vain when less will serve; for Nature is pleased with simplicity and affects not the pomp of superfluous causes.”
more quiz questions >>
Home > Category Index for Science Quotations > Category Index I > Category: Interval

Interval Quotes (14 quotes)

An apple falls in front of Newton, a pot boils before Papin, a flaming sheet of paper floats before the eyes of Montgolfier. At intervals a discovery bursts forth like a mine explosion in the deeps of science, and a whole ledge of prejudice crumbles, and the living rock of truth is suddenly laid bare.
In Victor Hugo and Lorenzo O'Rourke (trans.) Victor Hugo’s Intellectual Autobiography: (Postscriptum de ma vie) (1907), 323-324.
Science quotes on:  |  Apple (46)  |  Boil (24)  |  Burst (41)  |  Crumble (5)  |  Discovery (837)  |  Explosion (51)  |  Eye (440)  |  Fall (243)  |  Flame (44)  |  Float (31)  |  Sir Isaac Newton (363)  |  Paper (192)  |  Pot (4)  |  Prejudice (96)  |  Rock (176)  |  Sheet (8)  |  Suddenly (91)  |  Truth (1109)

Geometry may sometimes appear to take the lead of analysis, but in fact precedes it only as a servant goes before his master to clear the path and light him on his way. The interval between the two is as wide as between empiricism and science, as between the understanding and the reason, or as between the finite and the infinite.
From 'Astronomical Prolusions', Philosophical Magazine (Jan 1866), 31, No. 206, 54, collected in Collected Mathematical Papers of James Joseph Sylvester (1908), Vol. 2, 521.
Science quotes on:  |  Analysis (244)  |  Empiricism (21)  |  Fact (1257)  |  Finite (60)  |  Geometry (271)  |  Infinite (243)  |  Lead (391)  |  Light (635)  |  Master (182)  |  Path (159)  |  Precede (23)  |  Reason (766)  |  Servant (40)  |  Two (936)  |  Understand (648)  |  Understanding (527)  |  Way (1214)  |  Wide (97)

Have you ever observed a humming-bird moving about in an aerial dance among the flowers—a living prismatic gem that changes its colour with every change of position— … its exquisite form, its changeful splendour, its swift motions and intervals of aërial suspension, it is a creature of such fairy-like loveliness as to mock all description.
In Green Mansions: A Romance of the Tropical Forest (1916),
Science quotes on:  |  Aerial (11)  |  Bird (163)  |  Change (639)  |  Color (155)  |  Creature (242)  |  Dance (35)  |  Description (89)  |  Exquisite (27)  |  Fairy (10)  |  Flower (112)  |  Form (976)  |  Gem (17)  |  Humming (5)  |  Hummingbird (4)  |  Living (492)  |  Loveliness (6)  |  Mock (7)  |  Motion (320)  |  Observe (179)  |  Observed (149)  |  Position (83)  |  Prismatic (2)  |  Splendor (20)  |  Splendour (8)  |  Suspension (7)  |  Swift (16)

I hope you enjoy the absence of pupils … the total oblivion of them for definite intervals is a necessary condition for doing them justice at the proper time.
Letter to Lewis Campbell (21 Apr 1862). In P.M. Harman (ed.), The Scientific Letters and Papers of James Clerk Maxwell (1990), Vol. 1, 712.
Science quotes on:  |  Condition (362)  |  Definite (114)  |  Doing (277)  |  Hope (321)  |  Justice (40)  |  Necessary (370)  |  Oblivion (10)  |  Proper (150)  |  Pupil (62)  |  Time (1911)  |  Total (95)

If you enquire about him [J.J. Sylvester], you will hear his genius universally recognized but his power of teaching will probably be said to be quite deficient. Now there is no man living who is more luminary in his language, to those who have the capacity to comprehend him than Sylvester, provided the hearer is in a lucid interval. But as the barn yard fowl cannot understand the flight of the eagle, so it is the eaglet only who will be nourished by his instruction.
Letter (18 Sep 1875) to Daniel C. Gilman. In Daniel C. Gilman Papers, Ms. 1, Special Collections Division, Milton S. Eisenhower Library, Johns Hopkins University. As quoted in Karen Hunger Parshall, 'America’s First School of Mathematical Research: James Joseph Sylvester at The Johns Hopkins University 1876—1883', Archive for History of Exact Sciences (1988), 38, No. 2, 167.
Science quotes on:  |  Capacity (105)  |  Comprehend (44)  |  Deficient (3)  |  Eagle (20)  |  Flight (101)  |  Fowl (6)  |  Genius (301)  |  Hear (144)  |  Instruction (101)  |  Language (308)  |  Living (492)  |  Lucid (9)  |  Luminary (4)  |  Man (2252)  |  More (2558)  |  Nourish (18)  |  Power (771)  |  Recognize (136)  |  James Joseph Sylvester (58)  |  Teaching (190)  |  Understand (648)  |  Will (2350)

In long intervals I have expressed an opinion on public issues whenever they appeared to be so bad and unfortunate that silence would have made me feel guilty of complicity.
…...
Science quotes on:  |  Appear (122)  |  Bad (185)  |  Express (192)  |  Feel (371)  |  Guilty (8)  |  Issue (46)  |  Long (778)  |  Opinion (291)  |  Public (100)  |  Silence (62)  |  Unfortunate (19)  |  Whenever (81)

In the experimental sciences, the epochs of the most brilliant progress are almost always separated by long intervals of almost absolute repose.
In François Arago, trans. by William Henry Smyth, Baden Powell and Robert Grant, 'Fourier', Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men (1859), Vol. 1, 411.
Science quotes on:  |  Absolute (153)  |  Brilliant (57)  |  Epoch (46)  |  Experiment (736)  |  Experimental (193)  |  Long (778)  |  Most (1728)  |  Progress (492)  |  Repose (9)  |  Separation (60)

It is the individual only who is timeless. Societies, cultures, and civilizations - past and present - are often incomprehensible to outsiders, but the individual’s hunger, anxieties, dreams, and preoccupations have remained unchanged through the millennia. Thus, we are up against the paradox that the individual who is more complex, unpredictable, and mysterious than any communal entity is the one nearest to our understanding; so near that even the interval of millennia cannot weaken our feeling of kinshiIf in some manner the voice of an individual reaches us from the remotest distance of time, it is a timeless voice speaking about ourselves.
In Reflections on the Human Condition (1973), 97.
Science quotes on:  |  Against (332)  |  Anxiety (30)  |  Civilization (220)  |  Communal (7)  |  Complex (202)  |  Culture (157)  |  Distance (171)  |  Dream (222)  |  Entity (37)  |  Feel (371)  |  Feeling (259)  |  Hunger (23)  |  Incomprehensible (31)  |  Individual (420)  |  Manner (62)  |  Millennia (4)  |  More (2558)  |  Mysterious (83)  |  Often (109)  |  Ourselves (247)  |  Outsider (7)  |  Paradox (54)  |  Past (355)  |  Preoccupation (7)  |  Present (630)  |  Reach (286)  |  Remain (355)  |  Remote (86)  |  Society (350)  |  Speak (240)  |  Speaking (118)  |  Through (846)  |  Time (1911)  |  Timeless (8)  |  Unchanged (4)  |  Understand (648)  |  Understanding (527)  |  Unpredictable (18)  |  Voice (54)  |  Weaken (5)

Our federal income tax law defines the tax y to be paid in terms of the income x; it does so in a clumsy enough way by pasting several linear functions together, each valid in another interval or bracket of income. An archaeologist who, five thousand years from now, shall unearth some of our income tax returns together with relics of engineering works and mathematical books, will probably date them a couple of centuries earlier, certainly before Galileo and Vieta.
From Address (1940), given at the Bicentennial Conference at the University of Pennsylvania, 'The Mathematical Way of Thinking'. Collected in Hermann Weyl and Peter Pesic (ed.), Levels of Infinity: Selected Writings on Mathematics and Philosophy (2012), 67.
Science quotes on:  |  Archaeologist (18)  |  Book (413)  |  Bracket (2)  |  Century (319)  |  Certainly (185)  |  Clumsy (7)  |  Couple (9)  |  Date (14)  |  Define (53)  |  Earlier (9)  |  Engineering (188)  |  Enough (341)  |  Federal (6)  |  Function (235)  |  Galileo Galilei (134)  |  Income (18)  |  Law (913)  |  Linear (13)  |  Mathematics (1395)  |  Paste (4)  |  Pay (45)  |  Probably (50)  |  Relic (8)  |  Return (133)  |  Several (33)  |  Tax (27)  |  Term (357)  |  Terms (184)  |  Thousand (340)  |  Together (392)  |  Unearth (2)  |  Valid (12)  |  Way (1214)  |  Will (2350)  |  Work (1402)  |  Year (963)

Remember this, the rule for giving an extempore lecture is—let the the mind rest from the subject entirely for an interval preceding the lecture, after the notes are prepared; the thoughts will ferment without your knowing it, and enter into new combinations; but if you keep the mind active upon the subject up to the moment, the subject will not ferment but stupefy.
In Letter (10 Jul 1854) to William Rowan Hamilton, collected in Robert Perceval Graves, Life of Sir William Rowan Hamilton (1882-89), Vol. 3, 487.
Science quotes on:  |  Active (80)  |  Combination (150)  |  Enter (145)  |  Entirely (36)  |  Ferment (6)  |  Give (208)  |  Keep (104)  |  Know (1538)  |  Knowing (137)  |  Lecture (111)  |  Let (64)  |  Mind (1377)  |  Moment (260)  |  New (1273)  |  Note (39)  |  Precede (23)  |  Prepare (44)  |  Remember (189)  |  Rest (287)  |  Rule (307)  |  Subject (543)  |  Teaching of Mathematics (39)  |  Thought (995)  |  Will (2350)

Saturated with that speculative spirit then pervading the Greek mind, he [Pythagoras] endeavoured to discover some principle of homogeneity in the universe. Before him, the philosophers of the Ionic school had sought it in the matter of things; Pythagoras looked for it in the structure of things. He observed the various numerical relations or analogies between numbers and the phenomena of the universe. Being convinced that it was in numbers and their relations that he was to find the foundation to true philosophy, he proceeded to trace the origin of all things to numbers. Thus he observed that musical strings of equal lengths stretched by weights having the proportion of 1/2, 2/3, 3/4, produced intervals which were an octave, a fifth and a fourth. Harmony, therefore, depends on musical proportion; it is nothing but a mysterious numerical relation. Where harmony is, there are numbers. Hence the order and beauty of the universe have their origin in numbers. There are seven intervals in the musical scale, and also seven planets crossing the heavens. The same numerical relations which underlie the former must underlie the latter. But where number is, there is harmony. Hence his spiritual ear discerned in the planetary motions a wonderful “Harmony of spheres.”
In History of Mathematics (1893), 67.
Science quotes on:  |  Analogy (76)  |  Beauty (313)  |  Being (1276)  |  Convinced (23)  |  Cross (20)  |  Depend (238)  |  Discern (35)  |  Discover (571)  |  Ear (69)  |  Endeavor (74)  |  Endeavour (63)  |  Equal (88)  |  Fifth (3)  |  Find (1014)  |  Former (138)  |  Foundation (177)  |  Fourth (8)  |  Greek (109)  |  Harmony (105)  |  Heaven (266)  |  Heavens (125)  |  Homogeneity (9)  |  Homogeneous (17)  |  Length (24)  |  Look (584)  |  Mathematics As A Fine Art (23)  |  Matter (821)  |  Mind (1377)  |  Motion (320)  |  Musical (10)  |  Must (1525)  |  Mysterious (83)  |  Nothing (1000)  |  Number (710)  |  Numerical (39)  |  Observe (179)  |  Observed (149)  |  Octave (3)  |  Order (638)  |  Origin (250)  |  Pervade (10)  |  Pervading (7)  |  Phenomenon (334)  |  Philosopher (269)  |  Philosophy (409)  |  Planet (402)  |  Planetary (29)  |  Principle (530)  |  Proceed (134)  |  Produce (117)  |  Produced (187)  |  Proportion (140)  |  Pythagoras (38)  |  Relation (166)  |  Scale (122)  |  School (227)  |  Seek (218)  |  Speculative (12)  |  Sphere (118)  |  Spirit (278)  |  Spiritual (94)  |  Stretch (39)  |  String (22)  |  Structure (365)  |  Thing (1914)  |  Trace (109)  |  True (239)  |  Underlie (19)  |  Universe (900)  |  Various (205)  |  Weight (140)  |  Wonderful (155)

The noble science of Geology loses glory from the extreme imperfection of the record. The crust of the earth with its embedded remains must not be looked at as a well-filled museum, but as a poor collection made at hazard and at rare intervals.
From On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection; or, The Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life (1861), 423.
Science quotes on:  |  Collection (68)  |  Crust (43)  |  Earth (1076)  |  Embed (7)  |  Extreme (78)  |  Geology (240)  |  Glory (66)  |  Hazard (21)  |  Imperfection (32)  |  Look (584)  |  Lose (165)  |  Loss (117)  |  Museum (40)  |  Must (1525)  |  Noble (93)  |  Poor (139)  |  Rare (94)  |  Record (161)  |  Remain (355)

What clearer evidence could we have had of the different formation of these rocks, and of the long interval which separated their formation, had we actually seen them emerging from the bosom of the deep? … The mind seemed to grow giddy by looking so far into the abyss of time.
As quoted in Dennis R. Dean, James Hutton and the History of Geology (1992), 122.
Science quotes on:  |  Abyss (30)  |  Bosom (14)  |  Clear (111)  |  Deep (241)  |  Different (595)  |  Emerge (24)  |  Evidence (267)  |  Far (158)  |  Formation (100)  |  Geology (240)  |  Giddy (3)  |  Grow (247)  |  Long (778)  |  Looking (191)  |  Mind (1377)  |  Rock (176)  |  Seem (150)  |  Separate (151)  |  Time (1911)

When the interval between the intellectual classes and the practical classes is too great, the former will possess no influence, the latter will reap no benefit.
In History of Civilization (1857), Vol. 1, 244. As quoted and cited in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine (1858), 84, No. 517, 532.
Science quotes on:  |  Benefit (123)  |  Class (168)  |  Former (138)  |  Great (1610)  |  Influence (231)  |  Intellectual (258)  |  Possess (157)  |  Practical (225)  |  Reap (19)  |  Will (2350)


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.