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: “Genius is two percent inspiration, ninety-eight percent perspiration.”
more quiz questions >>
Home > Category Index for Science Quotations > Category Index S > Category: Shape

Shape Quotes (77 quotes)

...the scientific cast of mind examines the world critically, as if many alternative worlds might exist, as if other things might be here which are not. Then we are forced to ask why what we see is present and not something else. Why are the Sun and moon and the planets spheres? Why not pyramids, or cubes, or dodecahedra? Why not irregular, jumbly shapes? Why so symmetrical, worlds? If you spend any time spinning hypotheses, checking to see whether they make sense, whether they conform to what else we know. Thinking of tests you can pose to substantiate or deflate hypotheses, you will find yourself doing science.
…...
Science quotes on:  |  Alternative (32)  |  Ask (420)  |  Cast (69)  |  Check (26)  |  Conform (15)  |  Critical (73)  |  Cube (14)  |  Deflate (2)  |  Doing (277)  |  Examine (84)  |  Exist (458)  |  Find (1014)  |  Force (497)  |  Hypothesis (314)  |  Irregular (7)  |  Jumble (10)  |  Know (1538)  |  Mind (1377)  |  Moon (252)  |  Other (2233)  |  Planet (402)  |  Pose (9)  |  Present (630)  |  Pyramid (9)  |  Scientific (955)  |  See (1094)  |  Sense (785)  |  Something (718)  |  Spend (97)  |  Sphere (118)  |  Spin (26)  |  Spinning (18)  |  Substantiate (4)  |  Sun (407)  |  Symmetrical (3)  |  Test (221)  |  Thing (1914)  |  Think (1122)  |  Thinking (425)  |  Time (1911)  |  Why (491)  |  Will (2350)  |  World (1850)

[Am I vegetarian?] No. If you understand about the natural world, we’re a part of the system and you can’t feed lions grass. But because we have the intelligence to choose… But we haven’t got the gut to allow us to be totally vegetarian for a start. You can tell by the shape of our guts and the shape of our teeth that we evolved to be omnivores. We aren’t carnivores like lions but neither are we elephants.
Interview by Simon Gage in 'David Attenborough: I’m not an animal lover', Metro newspaper (29 Jan 2013, London).
Science quotes on:  |  Carnivore (2)  |  Choose (116)  |  Digest (10)  |  Elephant (35)  |  Evolution (635)  |  Feed (31)  |  Grass (49)  |  Intelligence (218)  |  Lion (23)  |  Natural (810)  |  Natural World (33)  |  Start (237)  |  System (545)  |  Teeth (43)  |  Tell (344)  |  Tooth (32)  |  Understand (648)  |  Vegetarian (13)  |  World (1850)

Thomasina: Every week I plot your equations dot for dot, x’s against y’s in all manner of algebraical relation, and every week they draw themselves as commonplace geometry, as if the world of forms were nothing but arcs and angles. God’s truth, Septimus, if there is an equation for a curve like a bell, there must be an equation for one like a bluebell, and if a bluebell, why not a rose? Do we believe nature is written in numbers?
Septimus: We do.
Thomasina: Then why do your shapes describe only the shapes of manufacture?
Septimus: I do not know.
Thomasina: Armed thus, God could only make a cabinet.
In the play, Acadia (1993), Scene 3, 37.
Science quotes on:  |  Against (332)  |  Algebra (117)  |  Angle (25)  |  Arc (14)  |  Arm (82)  |  Armed (2)  |  Belief (615)  |  Bell (35)  |  Cabinet (5)  |  Commonplace (24)  |  Curve (49)  |  Describe (132)  |  Do (1905)  |  Dot (18)  |  Draw (140)  |  Equation (138)  |  Form (976)  |  Geometry (271)  |  God (776)  |  Know (1538)  |  Manufacture (30)  |  Must (1525)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Nothing (1000)  |  Number (710)  |  Plot (11)  |  Relation (166)  |  Rose (36)  |  Themselves (433)  |  Truth (1109)  |  Week (73)  |  Why (491)  |  World (1850)  |  Written (6)

A good ornithologist should be able to distinguish birds by their air as well as by their colors and shape; on the ground as well as on the wing, and in the bush as well as in the hand. For, though it must not be said that every species of birds has a manner peculiar to itself, yet there is somewhat, in most genera at least, that at first sight discriminates them and enables a judicious observer to pronounce upon them with some certainty.
Letter (7 Aug 1778) to Daines Barrington, collected in The Natural History of Selborne (1829), 274.
Science quotes on:  |  Air (366)  |  Bird (163)  |  Bush (11)  |  Certainty (180)  |  Color (155)  |  Discriminate (4)  |  Distinguish (168)  |  Enable (122)  |  First (1302)  |  First Sight (6)  |  Genus (27)  |  Good (906)  |  Ground (222)  |  Hand (149)  |  Judicious (3)  |  Least (75)  |  Manner (62)  |  Most (1728)  |  Must (1525)  |  Observer (48)  |  Ornithology (21)  |  Peculiar (115)  |  Pronounce (11)  |  Sight (135)  |  Species (435)  |  Wing (79)

A nose which varies from the ideal of straightness to a hook or snub may still be of good shape and agreeable to the eye.
Aristotle
In Politics.
Science quotes on:  |  Agreeable (20)  |  Eye (440)  |  Hook (7)  |  Ideal (110)  |  Nose (14)  |  Snub (2)

A painter makes patterns with shapes and colours, a poet with words. A painting may embody an “idea,” but the idea is usually commonplace and unimportant. In poetry, ideas count for a good deal more; but, as Housman insisted, the importance of ideas in poetry is habitually exaggerated. … The poverty of ideas seems hardly to affect the beauty of the verbal pattern. A mathematician, on the other hand, has no material to work with but ideas, and so his patterns are likely to last longer, since ideas wear less with time than words.
In A Mathematician’s Apology (1940, 2012), 84-85.
Science quotes on:  |  Affect (19)  |  Beauty (313)  |  Color (155)  |  Commonplace (24)  |  Count (107)  |  Deal (192)  |  Embody (18)  |  Exaggerate (7)  |  Good (906)  |  Habitually (2)  |  A. E. Housman (2)  |  Idea (881)  |  Importance (299)  |  Insist (22)  |  Last (425)  |  Less (105)  |  Material (366)  |  Mathematician (407)  |  More (2558)  |  On The Other Hand (40)  |  Other (2233)  |  Painter (30)  |  Painting (46)  |  Pattern (116)  |  Poet (97)  |  Poetry (150)  |  Poverty (40)  |  Time (1911)  |  Unimportant (6)  |  Usually (176)  |  Verbal (10)  |  Wear (20)  |  Word (650)  |  Work (1402)

A work of morality, politics, criticism will be more elegant, other things being equal, if it is shaped by the hand of geometry.
From Préface sur l'Utilité des Mathématiques et de la Physique (1729), as translated in Florian Cajori, Mathematics in Liberal Education (1928), 61.
Science quotes on:  |  Being (1276)  |  Criticism (85)  |  Elegant (37)  |  Equal (88)  |  Geometry (271)  |  Hand (149)  |  Morality (55)  |  More (2558)  |  Other (2233)  |  Politics (122)  |  Thing (1914)  |  Will (2350)  |  Work (1402)

According to the theory of aerodynamics, as may be readily demonstrated through wind tunnel experiments, the bumblebee is unable to fly. This is because the size, weight and shape of his body in relation to the total wingspread make flying impossible. But the bumblebee, being ignorant of these scientific truths, goes ahead and flies anyway—and makes a little honey every day.
Anonymous
Sign in a General Motors Corporation factory. As quoted in Ralph L. Woods, The Businessman's Book of Quotations (1951), 249-50. Cited in Suzy Platt (ed)., Respectfully Quoted: A Dictionary of Quotations (1989), 118.
Science quotes on:  |  According (236)  |  Being (1276)  |  Body (557)  |  Bumblebee (4)  |  Demonstrate (79)  |  Experiment (736)  |  Fly (153)  |  Flying (74)  |  Honey (15)  |  Ignorant (91)  |  Impossible (263)  |  Little (717)  |  Scientific (955)  |  Scientific Truth (23)  |  Size (62)  |  Theory (1015)  |  Through (846)  |  Total (95)  |  Truth (1109)  |  Tunnel (13)  |  Unable (25)  |  Weight (140)  |  Wind (141)

Also the earth is not spherical, as some have said, although it tends toward sphericity, for the shape of the universe is limited in its parts as well as its movement… . The movement which is more perfect than others is, therefore, circular, and the corporeal form which is the most perfect is the sphere.
Science quotes on:  |  Circular (19)  |  Corporeal (5)  |  Earth (1076)  |  Form (976)  |  Limit (294)  |  Limited (102)  |  More (2558)  |  Most (1728)  |  Movement (162)  |  Other (2233)  |  Part (235)  |  Perfect (223)  |  Sphere (118)  |  Sphericity (2)  |  Tend (124)  |  Universe (900)

Art, it is said, is not a mirror, but a hammer: it does not reflect, it shapes.
In Literature and Revolution, (1924).
Science quotes on:  |  Art (680)  |  Hammer (26)  |  It Is Said (2)  |  Mirror (43)  |  Reflect (39)

As the birth of living creatures are ill shapen; so are all innovations, which are the births of time.
From essay, 'Of Innovations'. As collected and translated in The Works of Francis Bacon (1765), Vol. 1, 479.
Science quotes on:  |  Birth (154)  |  Creature (242)  |  Innovation (49)  |  Invention (400)  |  Live (650)  |  Living (492)  |  Time (1911)

But here it may be objected, that the present Earth looks like a heap of Rubbish and Ruines; And that there are no greater examples of confusion in Nature than Mountains singly or jointly considered; and that there appear not the least footsteps of any Art or Counsel either in the Figure and Shape, or Order and Disposition of Mountains and Rocks. Wherefore it is not likely they came so out of God's hands ... To which I answer, That the present face of the Earth with all its Mountains and Hills, its Promontaries and Rocks, as rude and deformed as they appear, seems to me a very beautiful and pleasant object, and with all the variety of Hills, and Valleys, and Inequalities far more grateful to behold, than a perfectly level Countrey without any rising or protuberancy, to terminate the sight: As anyone that hath but seen the Isle of Ely, or any the like Countrey must need acknowledge.
John Ray
Miscellaneous Discourses Concerning the Dissolution and Changes of the World (1692), 165-6.
Science quotes on:  |  Acknowledge (33)  |  Acknowledgment (13)  |  Answer (389)  |  Appearance (145)  |  Art (680)  |  Beautiful (271)  |  Beauty (313)  |  Confusion (61)  |  Consider (428)  |  Consideration (143)  |  Counsel (11)  |  Country (269)  |  Deformation (3)  |  Disposition (44)  |  Earth (1076)  |  Example (98)  |  Face (214)  |  Figure (162)  |  Footstep (5)  |  God (776)  |  Gratitude (14)  |  Greater (288)  |  Hand (149)  |  Heap (15)  |  Hill (23)  |  Inequality (9)  |  Isle (6)  |  Look (584)  |  More (2558)  |  Mountain (202)  |  Must (1525)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Object (438)  |  Objection (34)  |  Order (638)  |  Pleasantness (3)  |  Present (630)  |  Promontory (3)  |  Protuberance (3)  |  Rise (169)  |  Rising (44)  |  Rock (176)  |  Rubbish (12)  |  Rudeness (5)  |  Ruin (44)  |  Sight (135)  |  Termination (4)  |  Valley (37)  |  Variety (138)

Conformity-enforcing packs of vicious children and adults gradually shape the social complexes we know as religion, science, corporations, ethnic groups, and even nations. The tools of our cohesion include ridicule, rejection, snobbery, self-righteousness, assault, torture, and death by stoning, lethal injection, or the noose. A collective brain may sound warm and fuzzily New Age, but one force lashing it together is abuse.
In 'The Conformity Police', Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind from the Big Bang to the 21st Century (2000), 89.
Science quotes on:  |  Abuse (25)  |  Adult (24)  |  Age (509)  |  Assault (12)  |  Brain (281)  |  Child (333)  |  Children (201)  |  Cohesion (7)  |  Collective (24)  |  Complex (202)  |  Conform (15)  |  Corporation (6)  |  Death (406)  |  Enforce (11)  |  Ethnic (2)  |  Force (497)  |  Fuzzy (5)  |  Gradual (30)  |  Gradually (102)  |  Group (83)  |  Include (93)  |  Injection (9)  |  Know (1538)  |  Lash (3)  |  Lethal (4)  |  Nation (208)  |  New (1273)  |  New Age (6)  |  Noose (2)  |  Pack (6)  |  Psychology (166)  |  Rejection (36)  |  Religion (369)  |  Ridicule (23)  |  Righteousness (6)  |  Self (268)  |  Self-Righteous (2)  |  Social (261)  |  Sociology (46)  |  Sound (187)  |  Stone (168)  |  Together (392)  |  Tool (129)  |  Torture (30)  |  Vicious (5)  |  Warm (74)

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)  |  Forever (111)  |  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)  |  Species (435)  |  Tension (24)

Could Hamlet have been written by a committee, or the “Mona Lisa” painted by a club? Could the New Testament have been composed as a conference report? Creative ideas do not spring from groups. They spring from individuals. The divine spark leaps from the finger of God to the finger of Adam, whether it takes ultimate shape in a law of physics or a law of the land, a poem or a policy, a sonata or a mechanical computer.
Baccalaureate address (9 Jun 1957), Yale University. In In the University Tradition (1957), 156.
Science quotes on:  |  Adam (7)  |  Club (8)  |  Committee (16)  |  Composition (86)  |  Computer (131)  |  Conference (18)  |  Creative (144)  |  Creativity (84)  |  Divine (112)  |  Divinity (23)  |  Do (1905)  |  Finger (48)  |  God (776)  |  Group (83)  |  Hamlet (10)  |  Idea (881)  |  Individual (420)  |  Land (131)  |  Law (913)  |  Leap (57)  |  Mechanical (145)  |  Mechanics (137)  |  New (1273)  |  New Testament (3)  |  Painting (46)  |  Physic (515)  |  Physics (564)  |  Poem (104)  |  Poetry (150)  |  Report (42)  |  Sonata (2)  |  Spark (32)  |  Spring (140)  |  Ultimate (152)  |  Writing (192)

Create a vision and never let the environment, other people’s beliefs, or the limits of what has been done in the past shape your decisions. Ignore conventional wisdom.
…...
Science quotes on:  |  Belief (615)  |  Conventional (31)  |  Conventional Wisdom (3)  |  Create (245)  |  Decision (98)  |  Environment (239)  |  Ignore (52)  |  Let (64)  |  Limit (294)  |  Never (1089)  |  Other (2233)  |  Past (355)  |  People (1031)  |  Vision (127)  |  Wisdom (235)

Darwin grasped the philosophical bleakness with his characteristic courage. He argued that hope and morality cannot, and should not, be passively read in the construction of nature. Aesthetic and moral truths, as human concepts, must be shaped in human terms, not ‘discovered’ in nature. We must formulate these answers for ourselves and then approach nature as a partner who can answer other kinds of questions for us–questions about the factual state of the universe, not about the meaning of human life. If we grant nature the independence of her own domain–her answers unframed in human terms–then we can grasp her exquisite beauty in a free and humble way. For then we become liberated to approach nature without the burden of an inappropriate and impossible quest for moral messages to assuage our hopes and fears. We can pay our proper respect to nature’s independence and read her own ways as beauty or inspiration in our different terms.
…...
Science quotes on:  |  Aesthetic (48)  |  Answer (389)  |  Approach (112)  |  Argue (25)  |  Beauty (313)  |  Become (821)  |  Bleakness (2)  |  Burden (30)  |  Characteristic (154)  |  Concept (242)  |  Construction (114)  |  Courage (82)  |  Darwin (14)  |  Different (595)  |  Discover (571)  |  Domain (72)  |  Exquisite (27)  |  Factual (8)  |  Fear (212)  |  Formulate (16)  |  Free (239)  |  Grant (76)  |  Grasp (65)  |  Hope (321)  |  Human (1512)  |  Human Life (32)  |  Humble (54)  |  Impossible (263)  |  Inappropriate (5)  |  Independence (37)  |  Inspiration (80)  |  Kind (564)  |  Liberate (10)  |  Life (1870)  |  Mean (810)  |  Meaning (244)  |  Message (53)  |  Moral (203)  |  Morality (55)  |  Must (1525)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Other (2233)  |  Ourselves (247)  |  Partner (5)  |  Passively (3)  |  Pay (45)  |  Philosophical (24)  |  Proper (150)  |  Quest (39)  |  Question (649)  |  Read (308)  |  Respect (212)  |  State (505)  |  Term (357)  |  Terms (184)  |  Truth (1109)  |  Universe (900)  |  Way (1214)

Discoveries are always accidental; and the great use of science is by investigating the nature of the effects produced by any process or contrivance, and of the causes by which they are brought about, to explain the operation and determine the precise value of every new invention. This fixes as it were the latitude and longitude of each discovery, and enables us to place it in that part of the map of human knowledge which it ought to occupy. It likewise enables us to use it in taking bearings and distances, and in shaping our course when we go in search of new discoveries.
In The Complete Works of Count Rumford (1876), Vol. 4, 270.
Science quotes on:  |  Accidental (31)  |  Bearing (10)  |  Bring (95)  |  Cause (561)  |  Contrivance (12)  |  Course (413)  |  Determine (152)  |  Discovery (837)  |  Distance (171)  |  Effect (414)  |  Enable (122)  |  Explain (334)  |  Fix (34)  |  Human Knowledge (2)  |  Invention (400)  |  Investigate (106)  |  Latitude (6)  |  Longitude (8)  |  Map (50)  |  Nature (2017)  |  New (1273)  |  Operation (221)  |  Part (235)  |  Place (192)  |  Precise (71)  |  Process (439)  |  Produce (117)  |  Search (175)  |  Serendipity (17)  |  Value (393)

Euclid alone has looked on Beauty bare.
Let all who prate of Beauty hold their peace,
And lay them prone upon the earth and cease
To ponder on themselves, the while they stare
At nothing, intricately drawn nowhere
In shapes of shifting lineage; let geese
Gabble and hiss, but heroes seek release
From dusty bondage into luminous air.
O blinding hour, O holy, terrible day,
When first the shaft into his vision shone
Of light anatomized! Euclid alone
Has looked on Beauty bare. Fortunate they
Who, though once only and then but far away,
Have heard her massive sandal set on stone.
Poem, 'Euclid Alone Has Looked on Beauty Bare", collected in Wallace Warner Douglas and Hallett Darius Smith (eds.), The Critical Reader: Poems, Stories, Essays (1949), 110.
Science quotes on:  |  Air (366)  |  Alone (324)  |  Bare (33)  |  Beauty (313)  |  Blind (98)  |  Bondage (6)  |  Cease (81)  |  Draw (140)  |  Dusty (8)  |  Earth (1076)  |  Euclid (60)  |  First (1302)  |  Fortunate (31)  |  Goose (13)  |  Hear (144)  |  Hero (45)  |  Hold (96)  |  Holy (35)  |  Hour (192)  |  Intricate (29)  |  Let (64)  |  Light (635)  |  Lineage (3)  |  Look (584)  |  Luminous (19)  |  Massive (9)  |  Nothing (1000)  |  Nowhere (28)  |  Peace (116)  |  Ponder (15)  |  Prone (7)  |  Release (31)  |  Sandal (3)  |  Seek (218)  |  Set (400)  |  Shaft (5)  |  Shift (45)  |  Shine (49)  |  Stare (9)  |  Stone (168)  |  Terrible (41)  |  Themselves (433)  |  Vision (127)

Experiments on ornamental plants undertaken in previous years had proven that, as a rule, hybrids do not represent the form exactly intermediate between the parental strains. Although the intermediate form of some of the more striking traits, such as those relating to shape and size of leaves, pubescence of individual parts, and so forth, is indeed nearly always seen, in other cases one of the two parental traits is so preponderant that it is difficult or quite impossible, to detect the other in the hybrid. The same is true for Pisum hybrids. Each of the seven hybrid traits either resembles so closely one of the two parental traits that the other escapes detection, or is so similar to it that no certain distinction can be made. This is of great importance to the definition and classification of the forms in which the offspring of hybrids appear. In the following discussion those traits that pass into hybrid association entirely or almost entirely unchanged, thus themselves representing the traits of the hybrid, are termed dominating and those that become latent in the association, recessive. The word 'recessive' was chosen because the traits so designated recede or disappear entirely in the hybrids, but reappear unchanged in their progeny, as will be demonstrated later.
'Experiments on Plant Hybrids' (1865). In Curt Stern and Eva R. Sherwood (eds.), The Origin of Genetics: A Mendel Source Book (1966), 9.
Science quotes on:  |  Association (49)  |  Become (821)  |  Certain (557)  |  Chosen (48)  |  Classification (102)  |  Definition (238)  |  Demonstration (120)  |  Detect (45)  |  Detection (19)  |  Difficult (263)  |  Disappear (84)  |  Discussion (78)  |  Distinction (72)  |  Do (1905)  |  Dominant (26)  |  Escape (85)  |  Experiment (736)  |  Form (976)  |  Genetics (105)  |  Great (1610)  |  Hybrid (14)  |  Importance (299)  |  Impossible (263)  |  Indeed (323)  |  Individual (420)  |  Intermediate (38)  |  Latent (13)  |  Leaf (73)  |  More (2558)  |  Nearly (137)  |  Offspring (27)  |  Other (2233)  |  Parent (80)  |  Pass (241)  |  Plant (320)  |  Progeny (16)  |  Recede (11)  |  Recessive (6)  |  Represent (157)  |  Resemble (65)  |  Rule (307)  |  Size (62)  |  Strain (13)  |  Striking (48)  |  Term (357)  |  Themselves (433)  |  Trait (23)  |  Two (936)  |  Will (2350)  |  Word (650)  |  Year (963)

Fractals are patterns which occur on many levels. This concept can be applied to any musical parameter. I make melodic fractals, where the pitches of a theme I dream up are used to determine a melodic shape on several levels, in space and time. I make rhythmic fractals, where a set of durations associated with a motive get stretched and compressed and maybe layered on top of each other. I make loudness fractals, where the characteristic loudness of a sound, its envelope shape, is found on several time scales. I even make fractals with the form of a piece, its instrumentation, density, range, and so on. Here I’ve separated the parameters of music, but in a real piece, all of these things are combined, so you might call it a fractal of fractals.
Interview (1999) on The Discovery Channel. As quoted by Benoit B. Manelbrot and Richard Hudson in The (Mis)Behaviour of Markets: A Fractal View of Risk, Ruin and Reward (2010), 133.
Science quotes on:  |  Applied (176)  |  Associated (2)  |  Call (781)  |  Characteristic (154)  |  Combined (3)  |  Compressed (3)  |  Concept (242)  |  Density (25)  |  Determine (152)  |  Dream (222)  |  Duration (12)  |  Envelope (6)  |  Form (976)  |  Fractal (11)  |  Instrumentation (4)  |  Layer (41)  |  Layered (2)  |  Level (69)  |  Loudness (3)  |  Motive (62)  |  Music (133)  |  Musical (10)  |  Occur (151)  |  Other (2233)  |  Parameter (4)  |  Pattern (116)  |  Piece (39)  |  Pitch (17)  |  Range (104)  |  Real (159)  |  Rhythmic (2)  |  Scale (122)  |  Science And Art (195)  |  Separate (151)  |  Set (400)  |  Sound (187)  |  Space (523)  |  Space And Time (38)  |  Stretch (39)  |  Stretched (2)  |  Theme (17)  |  Thing (1914)  |  Time (1911)  |  Time And Space (39)  |  Top (100)

He saw virus particles shaped like snakes, in negative images. They were white cobras tangled among themselves, like the hair of Medusa. They were the face of nature herself, the obscene goddess revealed naked. This life form thing was breathtakingly beautiful. As he stared at it, he found himself being pulled out of the human world into a world where moral boundaries blur and finally dissolve completely. He was lost in wonder and admiration, even though he knew that he was the prey.
The Hot Zone
Science quotes on:  |  Admiration (61)  |  Beautiful (271)  |  Being (1276)  |  Blur (8)  |  Boundary (55)  |  Cobra (2)  |  Completely (137)  |  Dissolve (22)  |  Face (214)  |  Finally (26)  |  Find (1014)  |  Form (976)  |  Goddess (9)  |  Hair (25)  |  Himself (461)  |  Human (1512)  |  Image (97)  |  Know (1538)  |  Life (1870)  |  Life Form (6)  |  Lose (165)  |  Moral (203)  |  Naked (10)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Negative (66)  |  Obscene (3)  |  Particle (200)  |  Prey (13)  |  Pull (43)  |  Reveal (152)  |  Revealed (59)  |  Saw (160)  |  See (1094)  |  Snake (29)  |  Star (460)  |  Stare (9)  |  Tangle (8)  |  Themselves (433)  |  Thing (1914)  |  Virus (32)  |  White (132)  |  Wonder (251)  |  World (1850)

Heavy dependence on direct observation is essential to biology not only because of the complexity of biological phenomena, but because of the intervention of natural selection with its criterion of adequacy rather than perfection. In a system shaped by natural selection it is inevitable that logic will lose its way.
In 'Scientific innovation and creativity: a zoologist’s point of view', American Zoologist (1982), 22, 229.
Science quotes on:  |  Adequacy (10)  |  Biological (137)  |  Biology (232)  |  Complexity (121)  |  Criterion (28)  |  Dependence (46)  |  Direct (228)  |  Essential (210)  |  Heavy (24)  |  Inevitable (53)  |  Intervention (18)  |  Logic (311)  |  Lose (165)  |  Natural (810)  |  Natural Selection (98)  |  Observation (593)  |  Perfection (131)  |  Phenomenon (334)  |  Selection (130)  |  System (545)  |  Way (1214)  |  Will (2350)

I asked Fermi whether he was not impressed by the agreement between our calculated numbers and his measured numbers. He replied, “How many arbitrary parameters did you use for your calculations?" I thought for a moment about our cut-off procedures and said, “Four." He said, “I remember my friend Johnny von Neumann used to say, with four parameters I can fit an elephant, and with five I can make him wiggle his trunk.” With that, the conversation was over.
As given in 'A Meeting with Enrico Fermi', Nature (22 Jan 2004), 427, 297. As quoted in Steven A. Frank, Dynamics of Cancer: Incidence, Inheritance, and Evolution (2007), 87. Von Neumann meant nobody need be impressed when a complex model fits a data set well, because if manipulated with enough flexible parameters, any data set can be fitted to an incorrect model, even one that plots a curve on a graph shaped like an elephant!
Science quotes on:  |  Agreement (55)  |  Arbitrary (27)  |  Ask (420)  |  Calculate (58)  |  Calculation (134)  |  Conversation (46)  |  Curve (49)  |  Cut (116)  |  Data (162)  |  Elephant (35)  |  Enrico Fermi (20)  |  Fit (139)  |  Friend (180)  |  Graph (8)  |  Impress (66)  |  Impressed (39)  |  Moment (260)  |  Number (710)  |  Parameter (4)  |  Procedure (48)  |  Remember (189)  |  Say (989)  |  Theory (1015)  |  Thought (995)  |  Trunk (23)  |  Use (771)  |  John von Neumann (29)

I cannot separate land and sea: to me they interfinger like a pattern in a moss agate, positive and negative shapes irrevocably interlocked. My knowledge of this peninsula depends on that understanding: of underwater canyons that are continuations of the land, of the shell fossils far inland that measure continuations of the sea in eons past.
…...
Science quotes on:  |  Agate (2)  |  Canyon (9)  |  Continuation (20)  |  Depend (238)  |  Eon (12)  |  Far (158)  |  Fossil (143)  |  Inland (3)  |  Interlock (4)  |  Irrevocably (2)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Land (131)  |  Measure (241)  |  Moss (14)  |  Negative (66)  |  Past (355)  |  Pattern (116)  |  Peninsula (2)  |  Positive (98)  |  Sea (326)  |  Separate (151)  |  Shell (69)  |  Understand (648)  |  Understanding (527)  |  Underwater (5)

I conceived and developed a new geometry of nature and implemented its use in a number of diverse fields. It describes many of the irregular and fragmented patterns around us, and leads to full-fledged theories, by identifying a family of shapes I call fractals.
The Fractal Geometry of Nature (1977, 1983), Introduction, xiii.
Science quotes on:  |  Call (781)  |  Describe (132)  |  Develop (278)  |  Family (101)  |  Field (378)  |  Fractal (11)  |  Fragment (58)  |  Geometry (271)  |  Implement (13)  |  Lead (391)  |  Nature (2017)  |  New (1273)  |  Nomenclature (159)  |  Number (710)  |  Pattern (116)  |  Theory (1015)  |  Use (771)

I have always been very fond of mathematics—for one short period, I even toyed with the possibility of abandoning chemistry in its favour. I enjoyed immensely both its conceptual and formal beauties, and the precision and elegance of its relationships and transformations. Why then did I not succumb to its charms? … because by and large, mathematics lacks the sensuous elements which play so large a role in my attraction to chemistry.I love crystals, the beauty of their forms and formation; liquids, dormant, distilling, sloshing! The fumes, the odors—good or bad, the rainbow of colors; the gleaming vessels of every size, shape and purpose.
In Arthur Clay Cope Address, Chicago (28 Aug 1973). In O. T. Benfey and P. J. T. Morris (eds.), Robert Burns Woodward. Architect and Artist in the World of Molecules (2001), 427.
Science quotes on:  |  Attraction (61)  |  Bad (185)  |  Beauty (313)  |  Both (496)  |  Charm (54)  |  Chemistry (376)  |  Color (155)  |  Crystal (71)  |  Distillation (11)  |  Dormant (4)  |  Elegance (40)  |  Element (322)  |  Form (976)  |  Formation (100)  |  Fume (7)  |  Gleam (13)  |  Good (906)  |  Lack (127)  |  Large (398)  |  Liquid (50)  |  Love (328)  |  Mathematics (1395)  |  Odor (11)  |  Period (200)  |  Possibility (172)  |  Precision (72)  |  Purpose (336)  |  Rainbow (17)  |  Relationship (114)  |  Role (86)  |  Short (200)  |  Size (62)  |  Toy (22)  |  Transformation (72)  |  Vessel (63)  |  Why (491)

I suppose that I tend to be optimistic about the future of physics. And nothing makes me more optimistic than the discovery of broken symmetries. In the seventh book of the Republic, Plato describes prisoners who are chained in a cave and can see only shadows that things outside cast on the cave wall. When released from the cave at first their eyes hurt, and for a while they think that the shadows they saw in the cave are more real than the objects they now see. But eventually their vision clears, and they can understand how beautiful the real world is. We are in such a cave, imprisoned by the limitations on the sorts of experiments we can do. In particular, we can study matter only at relatively low temperatures, where symmetries are likely to be spontaneously broken, so that nature does not appear very simple or unified. We have not been able to get out of this cave, but by looking long and hard at the shadows on the cave wall, we can at least make out the shapes of symmetries, which though broken, are exact principles governing all phenomena, expressions of the beauty of the world outside.
In Nobel Lecture (8 Dec 1989), 'Conceptual Foundations of the Unified Theory of Weak and Electromagnetic Interactions.' Nobel Lectures: Physics 1971-1980 (1992), 556.
Science quotes on:  |  Beautiful (271)  |  Beauty (313)  |  Book (413)  |  Broken (56)  |  Cast (69)  |  Cave (17)  |  Describe (132)  |  Discovery (837)  |  Do (1905)  |  Eventually (64)  |  Experiment (736)  |  Expression (181)  |  Eye (440)  |  First (1302)  |  Future (467)  |  Governing (20)  |  Hard (246)  |  Limitation (52)  |  Long (778)  |  Looking (191)  |  Low (86)  |  Matter (821)  |  More (2558)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Nothing (1000)  |  Object (438)  |  Outside (141)  |  Phenomenon (334)  |  Physic (515)  |  Physics (564)  |  Plato (80)  |  Principle (530)  |  Prisoner (8)  |  Reality (274)  |  Republic (16)  |  Saw (160)  |  See (1094)  |  Shadow (73)  |  Simple (426)  |  Study (701)  |  Suppose (158)  |  Symmetry (44)  |  Temperature (82)  |  Tend (124)  |  Thing (1914)  |  Think (1122)  |  Understand (648)  |  Understanding (527)  |  Vision (127)  |  Wall (71)  |  World (1850)

I would trade all the advantages of humanity to be a fly on the wall when Franklin and Jefferson discussed liberty, Lenin and Trotsky revolution, Newton and Halley the shape of the universe, or when Darwin entertained Huxley and Lyell at Down.
…...
Science quotes on:  |  Advantage (144)  |  Darwin (14)  |  Discuss (26)  |  Down (455)  |  Entertain (27)  |  Fly (153)  |  Humanity (186)  |  Huxley (2)  |  Lenin (2)  |  Liberty (29)  |  Sir Isaac Newton (363)  |  Revolution (133)  |  Trade (34)  |  Universe (900)  |  Wall (71)

If atoms do, by chance, happen to combine themselves into so many shapes, why have they never combined together to form a house or a slipper? By the same token, why do we not believe that if innumerable letters of the Greek alphabet were poured all over the market-place they would eventually happen to form the text of the Iliad?
The Essays of Michel de Montaigne, Book 2, Chapter 12, 'Apology for Raymond Sebond', trans. M. A. Screech (1991), 612.
Science quotes on:  |  Alphabet (14)  |  Atom (381)  |  Belief (615)  |  Chance (244)  |  Combination (150)  |  Combine (58)  |  Do (1905)  |  Eventually (64)  |  Form (976)  |  Formation (100)  |  Greek (109)  |  Happen (282)  |  House (143)  |  Innumerable (56)  |  Letter (117)  |  Market (23)  |  Never (1089)  |  Pour (9)  |  Text (16)  |  Themselves (433)  |  Together (392)  |  Token (10)  |  Why (491)

If Bacon erred here [in valuing mathematics only for its uses], we must acknowledge that we greatly prefer his error to the opposite error of Plato. We have no patience with a philosophy which, like those Roman matrons who swallowed abortives in order to preserve their shapes, takes pains to be barren for fear of being homely.
In 'Lord Bacon', Edinburgh Review (Jul 1837). Collected in Critical and Miscellaneous Essays: Contributed to the Edinburgh Review (1857), Vol. 1, 396.
Science quotes on:  |  Abortive (2)  |  Acknowledge (33)  |  Sir Francis Bacon (188)  |  Barren (33)  |  Being (1276)  |  Error (339)  |  Fear (212)  |  Homely (2)  |  Mathematicians and Anecdotes (141)  |  Mathematics (1395)  |  Must (1525)  |  Opposite (110)  |  Order (638)  |  Pain (144)  |  Patience (58)  |  Philosophy (409)  |  Plato (80)  |  Preserve (91)  |  Roman (39)  |  Swallow (32)  |  Use (771)  |  Value (393)

In order to turn natural history into a true science, one would have to devote oneself to investigations capable of telling us not the particular shape of such and such an animal, but the general procedures of nature in the animal's production and preservation.
'Lettre sur le progress des sciences' in Oeuvres de Mr. De Maupertuis (1756), Vol. 2, 386. Quoted in Jacques Roger, The Life Sciences in Eighteenth-Century French Thought, ed. Keith R. Benson and trans. Robert Ellrich (1997), 392.
Science quotes on:  |  Animal (651)  |  Capable (174)  |  General (521)  |  History (716)  |  Investigation (250)  |  Natural (810)  |  Natural History (77)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Oneself (33)  |  Order (638)  |  Preservation (39)  |  Procedure (48)  |  Production (190)  |  True Science (25)  |  Turn (454)

In shape, it is perfectly elliptical. In texture, it is smooth and lustrous. In color, it ranges from pale alabaster to warm terra cotta. And in taste, it outstrips all the lush pomegranates that Swinburne was so fond of sinking his lyrical teeth into.
From 'Tribute to an Egg', Majority of One (1957), 77.
Science quotes on:  |  Color (155)  |  Fond (13)  |  Lush (5)  |  Outstrip (4)  |  Sink (38)  |  Smooth (34)  |  Taste (93)  |  Texture (8)  |  Tooth (32)

In the beginning was the myth. God, in his search for self-expression, invested the souls of Hindus, Greeks, and Germans with poetic shapes and continues to invest each child’s soul with poetry every day.
Quoted in Kim Lim (ed.), 1,001 Pearls of Spiritual Wisdom: Words to Enrich, Inspire, and Guide Your Life (2014), 8
Science quotes on:  |  Begin (275)  |  Beginning (312)  |  Child (333)  |  Continue (179)  |  Expression (181)  |  German (37)  |  God (776)  |  Greek (109)  |  Hindu (4)  |  Invest (20)  |  Myth (58)  |  Poetic (7)  |  Poetry (150)  |  Search (175)  |  Self (268)  |  Self-Expression (2)  |  Soul (235)

It is not by his mixing and choosing, but by the shapes of his colors, and the combination of those shapes, that we recognize the colorist. Color becomes significant only when it becomes form.
In Art (1958), 156.
Science quotes on:  |  Become (821)  |  Choose (116)  |  Color (155)  |  Combination (150)  |  Form (976)  |  Mix (24)  |  Recognize (136)  |  Significant (78)

It would indeed be a great delusion, if we stated that those sports of Nature [we find] enclosed in rocks are there by chance or by some vague creative power. Ah, that would be superficial indeed! In reality, those shells, which once were alive in water and are now dead and decomposed, were made thus by time not Nature; and what we now find as very hard, figured stone, was once soft mud and which received the impression of the shape of a shell, as I have frequently demonstrated.
La vana speculazione disingannata del senso (1670), trans. Ezio Vaccari, 83-4.
Science quotes on:  |  Alive (97)  |  Chance (244)  |  Creation (350)  |  Creative (144)  |  Dead (65)  |  Decomposition (19)  |  Delusion (26)  |  Demonstration (120)  |  Figure (162)  |  Find (1014)  |  Great (1610)  |  Hard (246)  |  Impression (118)  |  Indeed (323)  |  Life (1870)  |  Mud (26)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Power (771)  |  Reality (274)  |  Rock (176)  |  Shell (69)  |  Soft (30)  |  Sport (23)  |  Stone (168)  |  Superficial (12)  |  Time (1911)  |  Vague (50)  |  Water (503)

Know then thyself, presume not God to scan;
The proper study of Mankind is Man.
Plac'd on this isthmus of a middle state,
A being darkly wise, and rudely great:
With too much knowledge for the Sceptic side,
With too much weakness for the Stoic's pride,
He hangs between; in doubt to act, or rest;
In doubt to deem himself a God, or Beast;
In doubt his Mind or Body to prefer,
Born but to die, and reas'ning but to err;
Alike in ignorance, his reason such,
Whether he thinks too little, or too much:
Chaos of Thought and Passion, all confus'd;
Still by himself abus'd, or disabus'd;
Created half to rise, and half to fall;
Great lord of all things, yet a prey to all;
Sole judge of Truth, in endless Error hurl'd:
The glory, jest, and riddle of the world!
... Superior beings, when of late they saw
A mortal Man unfold all Nature's law,
Admir'd such wisdom in an earthly shape,
And shew'd a NEWTON as we shew an Ape.
'An Essay on Man' (1733-4), Epistle II. In John Butt (ed.), The Poems of Alexander Pope (1965), 516-7.
Science quotes on:  |  Abuse (25)  |  Act (278)  |  Admiration (61)  |  Alike (60)  |  Ape (54)  |  Beast (58)  |  Being (1276)  |  Birth (154)  |  Body (557)  |  Chaos (99)  |  Confusion (61)  |  Creation (350)  |  Death (406)  |  Doubt (314)  |  Endless (60)  |  Error (339)  |  Fall (243)  |  Glory (66)  |  God (776)  |  Great (1610)  |  Hang (46)  |  Himself (461)  |  Hurling (2)  |  Ignorance (254)  |  Isthmus (2)  |  Jest (5)  |  Judge (114)  |  Know (1538)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Late (119)  |  Law (913)  |  Little (717)  |  Lord (97)  |  Man (2252)  |  Mankind (356)  |  Mind (1377)  |  Mortal (55)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Sir Isaac Newton (363)  |  Passion (121)  |  Preference (28)  |  Prey (13)  |  Pride (84)  |  Proper (150)  |  Reason (766)  |  Rest (287)  |  Riddle (28)  |  Rise (169)  |  Saw (160)  |  Sceptic (5)  |  Show (353)  |  Side (236)  |  Sole (50)  |  State (505)  |  Still (614)  |  Stoic (3)  |  Study (701)  |  Superior (88)  |  Superiority (19)  |  Thing (1914)  |  Think (1122)  |  Thinking (425)  |  Thought (995)  |  Truth (1109)  |  Weakness (50)  |  Wisdom (235)  |  Wise (143)  |  World (1850)

London will soon assume the shape of a great starfish. The old town, extending from Poplar to Hammersmith, will be the nucleus, and the various railway lines will be the projecting rays.
In The Three Clerks (1857, 1904), 31.
Science quotes on:  |  Fine (37)  |  London (15)  |  Railway (19)  |  Ray (115)  |  Starfish (2)

Man is a singular creature. He has a set of gifts which make him unique among the animals: so that, unlike them, he is not a figure in the landscape—he is a shaper of the landscape.
In The Ascent of Man (1973, 2011), 19.
Science quotes on:  |  Animal (651)  |  Creature (242)  |  Figure (162)  |  Gift (105)  |  Landscape (46)  |  Man (2252)  |  Set (400)  |  Singular (24)  |  Unique (72)  |  Unlike (9)

Man not only survives and functions in his environment, he shapes it and he is shaped by it.
In Barbara Ward and René Jules Dubos, Only One Earth: the Care and Maintenance of a Small Planet: an unofficial report commissioned by the Secretary-General of the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment (1972), 30. This is similar to the quote, “Man shapes himself through decisions that shape his environment,” which is commonly seen attributed to Dubos, but without citation. If you know the primary source of this wording of that quote, please contact webmaster.
Science quotes on:  |  Decision (98)  |  Environment (239)  |  Function (235)  |  Himself (461)  |  Man (2252)  |  Survival (105)  |  Survive (87)

Mathematics … belongs to every inquiry, moral as well as physical. Even the rules of logic, by which it is rigidly bound, could not be deduced without its aid. The laws of argument admit of simple statement, but they must be curiously transposed before they can be applied to the living speech and verified by observation. In its pure and simple form the syllogism cannot be directly compared with all experience, or it would not have required an Aristotle to discover it. It must be transmuted into all the possible shapes in which reasoning loves to clothe itself. The transmutation is the mathematical process in the establishment of the law.
From Memoir (1870) read before the National Academy of Sciences, Washington, printed in 'Linear Associative Algebra', American Journal of Mathematics (1881), 4, 97-98.
Science quotes on:  |  Aid (101)  |  Applied (176)  |  Apply (170)  |  Argument (145)  |  Aristotle (179)  |  Belong (168)  |  Bound (120)  |  Compare (76)  |  Curious (95)  |  Deduce (27)  |  Direct (228)  |  Discover (571)  |  Establishment (47)  |  Experience (494)  |  Form (976)  |  Inquiry (88)  |  Law (913)  |  Live (650)  |  Living (492)  |  Logic (311)  |  Love (328)  |  Mathematics (1395)  |  Mathematics And Logic (27)  |  Moral (203)  |  Must (1525)  |  Observation (593)  |  Physical (518)  |  Possible (560)  |  Process (439)  |  Pure (299)  |  Reasoning (212)  |  Require (229)  |  Required (108)  |  Rigid (24)  |  Rule (307)  |  Simple (426)  |  Speech (66)  |  Statement (148)  |  Syllogism (8)  |  Transmutation (24)  |  Transmute (6)  |  Transpose (2)  |  Verify (24)

Mathematics will not be properly esteemed in wider circles until more than the a b c of it is taught in the schools, and until the unfortunate impression is gotten rid of that mathematics serves no other purpose in instruction than the formal training of the mind. The aim of mathematics is its content, its form is a secondary consideration and need not necessarily be that historic form which is due to the circumstance that mathematics took permanent shape under the influence of Greek logic.
In Die Entivickelung der Mathematik in den letzten Jahrhunderten (1884), 6.
Science quotes on:  |  Aim (175)  |  Circle (117)  |  Circumstance (139)  |  Consideration (143)  |  Content (75)  |  Due (143)  |  Esteem (18)  |  Form (976)  |  Formal (37)  |  Greek (109)  |  Historic (7)  |  Impression (118)  |  Influence (231)  |  Instruction (101)  |  Logic (311)  |  Mathematics (1395)  |  Mind (1377)  |  More (2558)  |  Necessarily (137)  |  Need (320)  |  Other (2233)  |  Permanent (67)  |  Properly (21)  |  Purpose (336)  |  Rid (14)  |  School (227)  |  Secondary (15)  |  Serve (64)  |  Teach (299)  |  Teaching of Mathematics (39)  |  Training (92)  |  Unfortunate (19)  |  Wide (97)  |  Will (2350)

Nature, … in order to carry out the marvelous operations [that occur] in animals and plants has been pleased to construct their organized bodies with a very large number of machines, which are of necessity made up of extremely minute parts so shaped and situated as to form a marvelous organ, the structure and composition of which are usually invisible to the naked eye without the aid of a microscope. … Just as Nature deserves praise and admiration for making machines so small, so too the physician who observes them to the best of his ability is worthy of praise, not blame, for he must also correct and repair these machines as well as he can every time they get out of order.
'Reply to Doctor Sbaraglia' in Opera Posthuma (1697), in H. B. Adelmann (ed.), Marcello Malpighi and the Evolution of Embryology (1966), Vol. 1, 568.
Science quotes on:  |  Ability (162)  |  Admiration (61)  |  Aid (101)  |  Animal (651)  |  Best (467)  |  Blame (31)  |  Body (557)  |  Carry (130)  |  Composition (86)  |  Construct (129)  |  Construction (114)  |  Correction (42)  |  Deserve (65)  |  Extreme (78)  |  Eye (440)  |  Form (976)  |  Formation (100)  |  Invisibility (5)  |  Invisible (66)  |  Large (398)  |  Machine (271)  |  Making (300)  |  Marvel (37)  |  Marvelous (31)  |  Microscope (85)  |  Minute (129)  |  Minuteness (8)  |  Must (1525)  |  Naked Eye (12)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Necessity (197)  |  Number (710)  |  Observation (593)  |  Observe (179)  |  Occur (151)  |  Operation (221)  |  Operations (107)  |  Order (638)  |  Organ (118)  |  Organization (120)  |  Out Of Order (2)  |  Part (235)  |  Physician (284)  |  Plant (320)  |  Pleasure (191)  |  Praise (28)  |  Repair (11)  |  Small (489)  |  Structure (365)  |  Time (1911)  |  Usually (176)

Nature! … She is ever shaping new forms: what is, has never yet been; what has been, comes not again. Everything is new, and yet nought but the old.
As quoted by T.H. Huxley, in Norman Lockyer (ed.), 'Nature: Aphorisms by Goethe', Nature (1870), 1, 9.
Science quotes on:  |  Everything (489)  |  Form (976)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Never (1089)  |  New (1273)  |  Old (499)

Never say there is nothing beautiful in the world anymore. There is always something to make you wonder in the shape of a tree, the trembling of a leaf.
In The Schweitzer Album: A Portrait in Words and Pictures (1965), 39.
Science quotes on:  |  Beautiful (271)  |  Leaf (73)  |  Never (1089)  |  Nothing (1000)  |  Say (989)  |  Something (718)  |  Tree (269)  |  Trembling (4)  |  Wonder (251)  |  Wondering (3)  |  World (1850)

Of beasts, it is confess’d, the ape
Comes nearest us in human shape;
Like man he imitates each fashion,
And malice is his ruling passion.
In Poetical Essay, 'The Logicians Refuted', The Scots Magazine (1759),-21, 525.
Science quotes on:  |  Animal Behavior (10)  |  Ape (54)  |  Beast (58)  |  Confess (42)  |  Fashion (34)  |  Human (1512)  |  Imitate (18)  |  Malice (6)  |  Man (2252)  |  Passion (121)  |  Rule (307)

Of what use are the great number of petrifactions, of different species, shape and form which are dug up by naturalists? Perhaps the collection of such specimens is sheer vanity and inquisitiveness. I do not presume to say; but we find in our mountains the rarest animals, shells, mussels, and corals embalmed in stone, as it were, living specimens of which are now being sought in vain throughout Europe. These stones alone whisper in the midst of general silence.
Philosophia Botanica (1751), aphorism 132. Trans. Frans A. Stafleu, Linnaeus and the Linnaeans: The Spreading of their Ideas in Systematic Botany, 1735-1789 (1971), 56.
Science quotes on:  |  Alone (324)  |  Animal (651)  |  Being (1276)  |  Collection (68)  |  Coral (10)  |  Different (595)  |  Do (1905)  |  Existence (481)  |  Extinction (80)  |  Find (1014)  |  Form (976)  |  Fossil (143)  |  General (521)  |  Great (1610)  |  Inquisitiveness (6)  |  Living (492)  |  Mountain (202)  |  Mussel (2)  |  Naturalist (79)  |  Number (710)  |  Petrification (5)  |  Rare (94)  |  Say (989)  |  Shell (69)  |  Silence (62)  |  Species (435)  |  Specimen (32)  |  Stone (168)  |  Throughout (98)  |  Use (771)  |  Usefulness (92)  |  Vain (86)  |  Vanity (20)  |  Whisper (11)

Quietly, like a night bird, floating, soaring, wingless.
We glide from shore to shore, curving and falling
but not quite touching;
Earth: a distant memory seen in an instant of repose,
crescent shaped, ethereal, beautiful,
I wonder which part is home, but I know it doesn’t matter . . .
the bond is there in my mind and memory;
Earth: a small, bubbly balloon hanging delicately
in the nothingness of space.
…...
Science quotes on:  |  Balloon (16)  |  Beautiful (271)  |  Bird (163)  |  Bond (46)  |  Crescent (4)  |  Curve (49)  |  Distant (33)  |  Earth (1076)  |  Ethereal (9)  |  Fall (243)  |  Float (31)  |  Glide (4)  |  Hang (46)  |  Home (184)  |  Instant (46)  |  Know (1538)  |  Matter (821)  |  Memory (144)  |  Mind (1377)  |  Night (133)  |  Nothingness (12)  |  Part (235)  |  Quietly (5)  |  Repose (9)  |  See (1094)  |  Shore (25)  |  Small (489)  |  Soar (23)  |  Soaring (9)  |  Space (523)  |  Touch (146)  |  Touching (16)  |  Wonder (251)

Science has blown to atoms, as she can rend and rive in the rocks themselves; but in those rocks she has found, and read aloud, the great stone book which is the history of the earth, even when darkness sat upon the face of the deep. Along their craggy sides she has traced the footprints of birds and beasts, whose shapes were never seen by man. From within them she has brought the bones, and pieced together the skeletons, of monsters that would have crushed the noted dragons of the fables at a blow.
Book review of Robert Hunt, Poetry of Science (1848), in the London Examiner (1848). Although uncredited in print, biographers identified his authorship from his original handwritten work. Collected in Charles Dickens and Frederic George Kitton (ed.) Old Lamps for New Ones: And Other Sketches and Essays (1897), 87.
Science quotes on:  |  Atom (381)  |  Beast (58)  |  Bird (163)  |  Blow (45)  |  Bone (101)  |  Book (413)  |  Crag (6)  |  Crush (19)  |  Darkness (72)  |  Deep (241)  |  Dragon (6)  |  Earth (1076)  |  Fable (12)  |  Face (214)  |  Footprint (16)  |  Great (1610)  |  History (716)  |  Man (2252)  |  Monster (33)  |  Never (1089)  |  Piece (39)  |  Read (308)  |  Reading (136)  |  Rock (176)  |  Side (236)  |  Skeleton (25)  |  Stone (168)  |  Themselves (433)  |  Together (392)  |  Tracing (3)

Science is the art of the appropriate approximation. While the flat earth model is usually spoken of with derision it is still widely used. Flat maps, either in atlases or road maps, use the flat earth model as an approximation to the more complicated shape.
In 'On the Nature of Science', Physics in Canada (Jan/Feb 2007), 63, No. 1, 13.
Science quotes on:  |  Appropriate (61)  |  Approximation (32)  |  Art (680)  |  Atlas (3)  |  Complicated (117)  |  Derision (8)  |  Earth (1076)  |  Flat (34)  |  Flat Earth (3)  |  Map (50)  |  Model (106)  |  More (2558)  |  Still (614)  |  Use (771)  |  Usually (176)

Scientific discovery, or the formulation of scientific theory, starts in with the unvarnished and unembroidered evidence of the senses. It starts with simple observation—simple, unbiased, unprejudiced, naive, or innocent observation—and out of this sensory evidence, embodied in the form of simple propositions or declarations of fact, generalizations will grow up and take shape, almost as if some process of crystallization or condensation were taking place. Out of a disorderly array of facts, an orderly theory, an orderly general statement, will somehow emerge.
In 'Is the Scientific Paper Fraudulent?', The Saturday Review (1 Aug 1964), 42.
Science quotes on:  |  Array (5)  |  Condensation (12)  |  Crystallization (2)  |  Declaration (10)  |  Discovery (837)  |  Embody (18)  |  Emerge (24)  |  Evidence (267)  |  Fact (1257)  |  Facts (553)  |  Form (976)  |  Formulation (37)  |  General (521)  |  Generalization (61)  |  Grow (247)  |  Innocent (13)  |  Naive (13)  |  Observation (593)  |  Order (638)  |  Orderly (38)  |  Process (439)  |  Proposition (126)  |  Scientific (955)  |  Scientific Theory (24)  |  Sense (785)  |  Sensory (16)  |  Simple (426)  |  Somehow (48)  |  Start (237)  |  Statement (148)  |  Theory (1015)  |  Unbiased (7)  |  Unprejudiced (3)  |  Unvarnished (2)  |  Will (2350)

Technology shapes society and society shapes technology.
Environmental Science and Technology (1990).
Science quotes on:  |  Society (350)  |  Technology (281)

Telescopes are in some ways like time machines. They reveal galaxies so far away that their light has taken billions of years to reach us. We in astronomy have an advantage in studying the universe, in that we can actually see the past.
We owe our existence to stars, because they make the atoms of which we are formed. So if you are romantic you can say we are literally starstuff. If you’re less romantic you can say we’re the nuclear waste from the fuel that makes stars shine.
We’ve made so many advances in our understanding. A few centuries ago, the pioneer navigators learnt the size and shape of our Earth, and the layout of the continents. We are now just learning the dimensions and ingredients of our entire cosmos, and can at last make some sense of our cosmic habitat.
…...
Science quotes on:  |  Actually (27)  |  Advance (298)  |  Advantage (144)  |  Astronomy (251)  |  Atom (381)  |  Billion (104)  |  Billions (7)  |  Century (319)  |  Continent (79)  |  Cosmic (74)  |  Cosmos (64)  |  Dimension (64)  |  Earth (1076)  |  Entire (50)  |  Existence (481)  |  Far (158)  |  Form (976)  |  Fuel (39)  |  Galaxies (29)  |  Galaxy (53)  |  Habitat (17)  |  Ingredient (16)  |  Last (425)  |  Layout (2)  |  Learn (672)  |  Learning (291)  |  Less (105)  |  Light (635)  |  Literally (30)  |  Machine (271)  |  Navigator (8)  |  Nuclear (110)  |  Nuclear Waste (4)  |  Owe (71)  |  Past (355)  |  Pioneer (37)  |  Reach (286)  |  Reveal (152)  |  Romantic (13)  |  Say (989)  |  See (1094)  |  Sense (785)  |  Shine (49)  |  Size (62)  |  Star (460)  |  Stars (304)  |  Starstuff (5)  |  Study (701)  |  Studying (70)  |  Telescope (106)  |  Time (1911)  |  Time Machine (4)  |  Understand (648)  |  Understanding (527)  |  Universe (900)  |  Waste (109)  |  Way (1214)  |  Year (963)

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)  |  Impulse (52)  |  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)  |  Still (614)  |  Talent (99)  |  Toward (45)  |  Transmute (6)  |  True (239)  |  Unfit (13)  |  Uniqueness (11)  |  Want (504)  |  Will (2350)  |  Withdraw (11)

The great obstacle to discovering the shape of the earth, the continents, and the oceans was not ignorance, but the illusion of knowledge.
The Discoverers (1985), 86.
Science quotes on:  |  Continent (79)  |  Discovery (837)  |  Earth (1076)  |  Great (1610)  |  Ignorance (254)  |  Illusion (68)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Obstacle (42)  |  Ocean (216)

The inherent unpredictability of future scientific developments—the fact that no secure inference can be drawn from one state of science to another—has important implications for the issue of the limits of science. It means that present-day science cannot speak for future science: it is in principle impossible to make any secure inferences from the substance of science at one time about its substance at a significantly different time. The prospect of future scientific revolutions can never be precluded. We cannot say with unblinking confidence what sorts of resources and conceptions the science of the future will or will not use. Given that it is effectively impossible to predict the details of what future science will accomplish, it is no less impossible to predict in detail what future science will not accomplish. We can never confidently put this or that range of issues outside “the limits of science”, because we cannot discern the shape and substance of future science with sufficient clarity to be able to say with any assurance what it can and cannot do. Any attempt to set “limits” to science—any advance specification of what science can and cannot do by way of handling problems and solving questions—is destined to come to grief.
The Limits of Science (1984), 102-3.
Science quotes on:  |  Accomplishment (102)  |  Advance (298)  |  Assurance (17)  |  Attempt (266)  |  Clarity (49)  |  Conception (160)  |  Confidence (75)  |  Destined (42)  |  Detail (150)  |  Development (441)  |  Different (595)  |  Discern (35)  |  Discerning (16)  |  Do (1905)  |  Effectiveness (13)  |  Fact (1257)  |  Future (467)  |  Grief (20)  |  Handling (7)  |  Implication (25)  |  Importance (299)  |  Impossibility (60)  |  Impossible (263)  |  Inference (45)  |  Inherent (43)  |  Issue (46)  |  Limit (294)  |  Mean (810)  |  Means (587)  |  Never (1089)  |  Outside (141)  |  Predict (86)  |  Prediction (89)  |  Present (630)  |  Principle (530)  |  Problem (731)  |  Prospect (31)  |  Question (649)  |  Range (104)  |  Revolution (133)  |  Say (989)  |  Scientific (955)  |  Scientific Revolution (13)  |  Security (51)  |  Set (400)  |  Speak (240)  |  Speaking (118)  |  Specification (7)  |  State (505)  |  Substance (253)  |  Sufficient (133)  |  Time (1911)  |  Unpredictability (7)  |  Use (771)  |  Way (1214)  |  Will (2350)

The life history of the individual is first and foremost an accommodation to the patterns and standards traditionally handed down in his community. From the moment of birth the customs into which he is born shape his experience and behavior.
In 'The Science of Custom', Patterns of Culture (1934, 2005), 2-3.
Science quotes on:  |  Accommodation (9)  |  Behavior (95)  |  Birth (154)  |  Community (111)  |  Custom (44)  |  Down (455)  |  Experience (494)  |  First (1302)  |  Foremost (11)  |  History (716)  |  Individual (420)  |  Life (1870)  |  Life History (2)  |  Moment (260)  |  Pattern (116)  |  Standard (64)  |  Traditional (16)

The poet’s eye, in fine frenzy rolling,
Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven;
And as imagination bodies forth
The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen
Turns them into shapes, and gives to airy nothing
A local habitation and a name.
A Midsummer Night's Dream, Act 5, Scene 1. In Carl Sagan, Broca's Brain (1986), 162.
Science quotes on:  |  Earth (1076)  |  Eye (440)  |  Form (976)  |  Frenzy (6)  |  Glance (36)  |  Habitation (7)  |  Heaven (266)  |  Imagination (349)  |  Name (359)  |  Nomenclature (159)  |  Nothing (1000)  |  Pen (21)  |  Poet (97)  |  Thing (1914)  |  Turn (454)  |  Unknown (195)

The protean nature of the computer is such that it can act like a machine or like a language to be shaped and exploited.
…...
Science quotes on:  |  Act (278)  |  Computer (131)  |  Exploit (19)  |  Language (308)  |  Machine (271)  |  Nature (2017)

The real tragedy of human existence is not that we are nasty by nature, but that a cruel structural asymmetry grants to rare events of meanness such power to shape our history.
…...
Science quotes on:  |  Asymmetry (6)  |  Cruel (25)  |  Event (222)  |  Existence (481)  |  Grant (76)  |  History (716)  |  Human (1512)  |  Meanness (5)  |  Nasty (8)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Power (771)  |  Rare (94)  |  Real (159)  |  Structural (29)  |  Tragedy (31)

The sciences and arts are not cast in a mold, but formed and shaped little by little, by repeated handling and polishing, as bears lick their cubs into shape at leisure.
In Donald M. Frame (trans.), The Complete Essays of Montaigne (1958), 421.
Science quotes on:  |  Art (680)  |  Bear (162)  |  Cast (69)  |  Cub (2)  |  Form (976)  |  Handle (29)  |  Leisure (25)  |  Lick (4)  |  Little (717)  |  Mold (37)  |  Polish (17)  |  Repeat (44)  |  Science And Art (195)

The solution, as all thoughtful people recognize, must lie in properly melding the themes of inborn predisposition and shaping through life’s experiences. This fruitful joining cannot take the false form of percentages adding to 100–as in ‘intelligence is 80 percent nature and 20 percent nurture,’ or ‘homosexuality is 50 percent inborn and 50 percent learned,’ and a hundred other harmful statements in this foolish format. When two ends of such a spectrum are commingled, the result is not a separable amalgam (like shuffling two decks of cards with different backs), but an entirely new and higher entity that cannot be decomposed (just as adults cannot be separated into maternal and paternal contributions to their totality).
…...
Science quotes on:  |  Add (42)  |  Adult (24)  |  Back (395)  |  Card (5)  |  Contribution (93)  |  Deck (3)  |  Decompose (10)  |  Different (595)  |  End (603)  |  Entirely (36)  |  Entity (37)  |  Experience (494)  |  False (105)  |  Foolish (41)  |  Form (976)  |  Fruitful (61)  |  Harmful (13)  |  High (370)  |  Hundred (240)  |  Inborn (4)  |  Intelligence (218)  |  Join (32)  |  Joining (11)  |  Learn (672)  |  Learned (235)  |  Lie (370)  |  Life (1870)  |  Maternal (2)  |  Must (1525)  |  Nature (2017)  |  New (1273)  |  Nurture (17)  |  Other (2233)  |  Paternal (2)  |  People (1031)  |  Percent (5)  |  Percentage (9)  |  Predisposition (4)  |  Properly (21)  |  Recognize (136)  |  Result (700)  |  Separable (3)  |  Separate (151)  |  Shuffle (7)  |  Solution (282)  |  Spectrum (35)  |  Statement (148)  |  Theme (17)  |  Thoughtful (16)  |  Through (846)  |  Totality (17)  |  Two (936)

The United States is the most powerful technically advanced country in the world to-day. Its influence on the shaping of international relations is absolutely incalculable. But America is a large country and its people have so far not shown much interest in great international problems, among which the problem of disarmament occupies first place today. This must be changed, if only in the essential interests of the Americans. The last war has shown that there are no longer any barriers between the continents and that the destinies of all countries are closely interwoven. The people of this country must realize that they have a great responsibility in the sphere of international politics. The part of passive spectator is unworthy of this country and is bound in the end to lead to disaster all round.
…...
Science quotes on:  |  Absolutely (41)  |  Advance (298)  |  America (143)  |  American (56)  |  Barrier (34)  |  Bind (26)  |  Bound (120)  |  Change (639)  |  Closely (12)  |  Continent (79)  |  Country (269)  |  Destiny (54)  |  Disarmament (6)  |  Disaster (58)  |  End (603)  |  Essential (210)  |  Far (158)  |  First (1302)  |  Great (1610)  |  Incalculable (4)  |  Influence (231)  |  Interest (416)  |  International (40)  |  Interwoven (10)  |  Large (398)  |  Last (425)  |  Lead (391)  |  Long (778)  |  Most (1728)  |  Must (1525)  |  Occupy (27)  |  Part (235)  |  Passive (8)  |  People (1031)  |  Place (192)  |  Politics (122)  |  Powerful (145)  |  Problem (731)  |  Realize (157)  |  Relation (166)  |  Responsibility (71)  |  Round (26)  |  Show (353)  |  Spectator (11)  |  Sphere (118)  |  State (505)  |  Technically (5)  |  To-Day (6)  |  Today (321)  |  Unworthy (18)  |  United States (31)  |  War (233)  |  World (1850)

There are moments when very little truth would be enough to shape opinion. One might be hated at extremely low cost.
Pensées d'un Biologiste (1939). Translated in The Substance of Man (1962), 151.
Science quotes on:  |  Cost (94)  |  Enough (341)  |  Extreme (78)  |  Hatred (21)  |  Little (717)  |  Low (86)  |  Moment (260)  |  Opinion (291)  |  Truth (1109)

There rolls the deep where grew the tree.
O earth, what changes hast thou seen!
There where the long street roars, hath been
The stillness of the central sea.
The hills are shadows, and they flow
From form to form, and nothing stands;
They melt like mist, the solid lands,
Like clouds they shape themselves and go.
In Memoriam A. H. H. (1850), canto 123. Collected in Alfred Tennyson and William James Rolfe (ed.) The Poetic and Dramatic works of Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1898), 194.
Science quotes on:  |  Central (81)  |  Change (639)  |  Cloud (111)  |  Deep (241)  |  Earth (1076)  |  Flow (89)  |  Form (976)  |  Hill (23)  |  Land (131)  |  Long (778)  |  Melting (6)  |  Mist (17)  |  Nothing (1000)  |  Roar (6)  |  Roll (41)  |  Sea (326)  |  Seeing (143)  |  Shadow (73)  |  Solid (119)  |  Stand (284)  |  Stillness (5)  |  Street (25)  |  Themselves (433)  |  Tree (269)

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)  |  Forever (111)  |  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)  |  Skin (48)  |  Sleeping (2)  |  Soon (187)  |  Space (523)  |  Thought (995)  |  Time (1911)  |  Will (2350)  |  Work (1402)

Two kinds of symbol must surely be distinguished. The algebraic symbol comes naked into the world of mathematics and is clothed with value by its masters. A poetic symbol—like the Rose, for Love, in Guillaume de Lorris—comes trailing clouds of glory from the real world, clouds whose shape and colour largely determine and explain its poetic use. In an equation, x and y will do as well as a and b; but the Romance of the Rose could not, without loss, be re-written as the Romance of the Onion, and if a man did not see why, we could only send him back to the real world to study roses, onions, and love, all of them still untouched by poetry, still raw.
C.S. Lewis and E.M. Tillyard, The Personal Heresy: A Controversy (1936), 97.
Science quotes on:  |  Algebra (117)  |  Back (395)  |  Clothes (11)  |  Cloud (111)  |  Color (155)  |  Determine (152)  |  Distinguish (168)  |  Distinguished (84)  |  Do (1905)  |  Equation (138)  |  Explain (334)  |  Explanation (246)  |  Glory (66)  |  Kind (564)  |  Loss (117)  |  Love (328)  |  Man (2252)  |  Master (182)  |  Mathematics (1395)  |  Must (1525)  |  Naked (10)  |  Onion (9)  |  Poetry (150)  |  Raw (28)  |  Rewriting (2)  |  Romance (18)  |  Rose (36)  |  See (1094)  |  Still (614)  |  Study (701)  |  Surely (101)  |  Symbol (100)  |  Two (936)  |  Untouched (5)  |  Use (771)  |  Value (393)  |  Why (491)  |  Will (2350)  |  World (1850)

We expect that the study of lunar geology will help to answer some longstanding questions about the early evolution of the earth. The moon and the earth are essentially a two-planet system, and the two bodies are probably closely related in origin. In this connection the moon is of special interest because its surface has not been subjected to the erosion by running water that has helped to shape the earth’s surface.
In Scientific American (Sep 1964). As cited in '50, 100 & 150 Years Ago', Scientific American (Dec 2014), 311, No. 6, 98.
Science quotes on:  |  Answer (389)  |  Body (557)  |  Connection (171)  |  Early (196)  |  Earth (1076)  |  Erosion (20)  |  Evolution (635)  |  Expect (203)  |  Expectation (67)  |  Geology (240)  |  Help (116)  |  Interest (416)  |  Lunar (9)  |  Moon (252)  |  Origin (250)  |  Planet (402)  |  Question (649)  |  Relation (166)  |  Running (61)  |  Special (188)  |  Study (701)  |  Subject (543)  |  Surface (223)  |  System (545)  |  Two (936)  |  Water (503)  |  Will (2350)

We knew that DNA was important. We knew it was an important molecule. And we knew that its shape was likely to be important. But we didn’t realise I think just how important it would be. Put in other words, we didn’t realise that the shape would give us a clue to the replication mechanism. And this turned out to be really an unexpected dividend from finding out what the shape was.
From Transcript of BBC TV program, The Prizewinners (1962).
Science quotes on:  |  Clue (20)  |  Discovery (837)  |  Dividend (3)  |  DNA (81)  |  Important (229)  |  Mechanism (102)  |  Molecule (185)  |  Other (2233)  |  Realize (157)  |  Replication (10)  |  Think (1122)  |  Turn (454)  |  Unexpected (55)  |  Word (650)

We live in a capitalist economy, and I have no particular objection to honorable self-interest. We cannot hope to make the needed, drastic improvement in primary and secondary education without a dramatic restructuring of salaries. In my opinion, you cannot pay a good teacher enough money to recompense the value of talent applied to the education of young children. I teach an hour or two a day to tolerably well-behaved near-adults–and I come home exhausted. By what possible argument are my services worth more in salary than those of a secondary-school teacher with six classes a day, little prestige, less support, massive problems of discipline, and a fundamental role in shaping minds. (In comparison, I only tinker with intellects already largely formed.)
…...
Science quotes on:  |  Already (226)  |  Applied (176)  |  Apply (170)  |  Argument (145)  |  Capitalist (6)  |  Child (333)  |  Children (201)  |  Class (168)  |  Comparison (108)  |  Discipline (85)  |  Dramatic (19)  |  Drastic (3)  |  Economy (59)  |  Education (423)  |  Enough (341)  |  Exhaust (22)  |  Form (976)  |  Fundamental (264)  |  Good (906)  |  Home (184)  |  Honorable (14)  |  Hope (321)  |  Hour (192)  |  Improvement (117)  |  Intellect (251)  |  Interest (416)  |  Largely (14)  |  Less (105)  |  Little (717)  |  Live (650)  |  Massive (9)  |  Mind (1377)  |  Money (178)  |  More (2558)  |  Need (320)  |  Objection (34)  |  Opinion (291)  |  Particular (80)  |  Pay (45)  |  Possible (560)  |  Prestige (16)  |  Primary (82)  |  Problem (731)  |  Recompense (2)  |  Restructuring (2)  |  Role (86)  |  Salary (8)  |  School (227)  |  Secondary (15)  |  Secondary School (4)  |  Self (268)  |  Self-Interest (3)  |  Service (110)  |  Support (151)  |  Talent (99)  |  Teach (299)  |  Teacher (154)  |  Tinker (6)  |  Two (936)  |  Value (393)  |  Worth (172)  |  Young (253)

We’ll get to the details of what’s around here, but it looks like a collection of just about every variety of shape - angularity, granularity, about every variety of rock. The colors - well, there doesn’t appear to be too much of a general color at all; however, it looks as though some of the rocks and boulders [are] going to have some interesting colors to them. Over.
…...
Science quotes on:  |  Appear (122)  |  Boulder (8)  |  Collection (68)  |  Color (155)  |  Detail (150)  |  General (521)  |  Interest (416)  |  Interesting (153)  |  Look (584)  |  Rock (176)  |  Variety (138)

What else, when chaos draws all forces inward
To shape a single leaf.
From poem, 'The Room'. Collected in Louis Untermeyer (ed.), Modern American Poetry: A Critical Anthology (1930), 600.
Science quotes on:  |  Chaos (99)  |  Leaf (73)

What is the shape of space? Is it flat, or is it bent? Is it nicely laid out, or is it warped and shrunken? Is it finite, or is it infinite? Which of the following does space resemble more: (a) a sheet of paper, (b) an endless desert, (c) a soap bubble, (d) a doughnut, (e) an Escher drawing, (f) an ice cream cone, (g) the branches of a tree, or (h) a human body?
The Fourth Dimension: And How to Get There (1985), 91.
Science quotes on:  |  Bent (2)  |  Body (557)  |  Branch (155)  |  Bubble (23)  |  Cone (8)  |  Desert (59)  |  Doughnut (3)  |  Drawing (56)  |  Endless (60)  |  Finite (60)  |  Flat (34)  |  Human (1512)  |  Ice (58)  |  Ice Cream (2)  |  Infinite (243)  |  More (2558)  |  Paper (192)  |  Resemblance (39)  |  Resemble (65)  |  Sheet (8)  |  Shrink (23)  |  Soap (11)  |  Space (523)  |  Tree (269)  |  Warp (7)

Why is geometry often described as “cold” and “dry?” One reason lies in its inability to describe the shape of a cloud, a mountain, a coastline, or a tree. Clouds are not spheres, mountains are not cones, coastlines are not circles, and bark is not smooth, nor does lightning travel in a straight line… Nature exhibits not simply a higher degree but an altogether different level of complexity.
From The Fractal Geometry of Nature (1977, 1983), Introduction, xiii.
Science quotes on:  |  Bark (19)  |  Circle (117)  |  Cloud (111)  |  Coast (13)  |  Cold (115)  |  Complexity (121)  |  Cone (8)  |  Degree (277)  |  Describe (132)  |  Different (595)  |  Dry (65)  |  Fractal (11)  |  Geometry (271)  |  Inability (11)  |  Lie (370)  |  Lightning (49)  |  Line (100)  |  Mountain (202)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Reason (766)  |  Smooth (34)  |  Sphere (118)  |  Straight (75)  |  Straight Line (34)  |  Travel (125)  |  Tree (269)  |  Why (491)

Why the dinosaurs died out is not known, but it is supposed to be because they had minute brains and devoted themselves to the growth of weapons of offense in the shape of numerous horns. However that may be, it was not through their line that life developed.
In 'Men versus. Insects' (1933), collected in In Praise of Idleness and Other Essays (1935), 199.
Science quotes on:  |  Brain (281)  |  Develop (278)  |  Developed (11)  |  Devoted (59)  |  Dinosaur (26)  |  Extinction (80)  |  Growth (200)  |  Horn (18)  |  Known (453)  |  Life (1870)  |  Line (100)  |  Minute (129)  |  Numerous (70)  |  Offense (4)  |  Paleontology (32)  |  Themselves (433)  |  Through (846)  |  Weapon (98)  |  Weapons (57)  |  Why (491)

Within the nucleus [of a cell] is a network of fibers, a sap fills the interstices of the network. The network resolves itself into a definite number of threads at each division of the cell. These threads we call chromosomes. Each species of animals and plants possesses a characteristic number of these threads which have definite size and sometimes a specific shape and even characteristic granules at different levels. Beyond this point our strongest microscopes fail to penetrate.
In A Critique of the Theory of Evolution (1916), 91.
Science quotes on:  |  Animal (651)  |  Beyond (316)  |  Call (781)  |  Cell (146)  |  Characteristic (154)  |  Chromosome (23)  |  Chromosomes (17)  |  Definite (114)  |  Different (595)  |  Division (67)  |  Fail (191)  |  Fiber (16)  |  Fibers (2)  |  Genetics (105)  |  Granule (3)  |  Interstice (3)  |  Microscope (85)  |  Network (21)  |  Nucleus (54)  |  Number (710)  |  Penetrate (68)  |  Plant (320)  |  Point (584)  |  Resolve (43)  |  Sap (5)  |  Size (62)  |  Species (435)  |  Specific (98)  |  Strongest (38)  |  Thread (36)

You boil it in sawdust: you salt it in glue:
You condense it with locusts and tape:
Still keeping one principal object in view—
To preserve its symmetrical shape.
In 'The Beaver’s Lesson', The Hunting of the Snark: An Agony in Eight Fits (1876), 56.
Science quotes on:  |  Boil (24)  |  Condense (15)  |  Glue (2)  |  Locust (2)  |  Object (438)  |  Preserve (91)  |  Principal (69)  |  Salt (48)  |  Still (614)  |  Symmetry (44)  |  Tape (5)  |  View (496)


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.