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: “Dangerous... to take shelter under a tree, during a thunder-gust. It has been fatal to many, both men and beasts.”
more quiz questions >>
Home > Category Index for Science Quotations > Category Index S > Category: Shuffle

Shuffle Quotes (7 quotes)

[Vestiges begins] from principles which are at variance with all sober inductive truth. The sober facts of geology shuffled, so as to play a rogue’s game; phrenology (that sinkhole of human folly and prating coxcombry); spontaneous generation; transmutation of species; and I know not what; all to be swallowed, without tasting and trying, like so much horse-physic!! Gross credulity and rank infidelity joined in unlawful marriage, and breeding a deformed progeny of unnatural conclusions!
Letter to Charles Lyell (9 Apr 1845). In John Willis Clark and Thomas McKenny Hughes (eds.), The Life and Letters of the Reverend Adam Sedgwick (1890), Vol. 2, 83.
Science quotes on:  |  Begin (275)  |  Breeding (21)  |  Conclusion (266)  |  Credulity (16)  |  Deformation (3)  |  Fact (1257)  |  Facts (553)  |  Folly (44)  |  Game (104)  |  Generation (256)  |  Geology (240)  |  Horse (78)  |  Human (1512)  |  Induction (81)  |  Inductive (20)  |  Infidelity (3)  |  Know (1538)  |  Marriage (39)  |  Phrenology (5)  |  Physic (515)  |  Principle (530)  |  Progeny (16)  |  Rank (69)  |  Rogue (2)  |  Sober (10)  |  Species (435)  |  Spontaneous (29)  |  Spontaneous Generation (9)  |  Swallow (32)  |  Taste (93)  |  Transmutation (24)  |  Truth (1109)  |  Try (296)  |  Trying (144)  |  Unlawful (2)  |  Unnatural (15)  |  Variance (12)  |  Vestige (11)  |  Vestiges (2)

A provision of endless apparatus, a bustle of infinite enquiry and research, or even the mere mechanical labour of copying, may be employed, to evade and shuffle off real labour, — the real labour of thinking.
In Discourse XII, Discourses on Painting and the Fine Arts: Delivered at the Royal Academy (1826), 226
Science quotes on:  |  Apparatus (70)  |  Copy (34)  |  Employ (115)  |  Endless (60)  |  Enquiry (89)  |  Evade (4)  |  Idleness (15)  |  Infinite (243)  |  Labor (200)  |  Mechanical (145)  |  Provision (17)  |  Real (159)  |  Research (753)  |  Think (1122)

I had at one time a very bad fever of which I almost died. In my fever I had a long consistent delirium. I dreamt that I was in Hell, and that Hell is a place full of all those happenings that are improbable but not impossible. The effects of this are curious. Some of the damned, when they first arrive below, imagine that they will beguile the tedium of eternity by games of cards. But they find this impossible, because, whenever a pack is shuffled, it comes out in perfect order, beginning with the Ace of Spades and ending with the King of Hearts. There is a special department of Hell for students of probability. In this department there are many typewriters and many monkeys. Every time that a monkey walks on a typewriter, it types by chance one of Shakespeare's sonnets. There is another place of torment for physicists. In this there are kettles and fires, but when the kettles are put on the fires, the water in them freezes. There are also stuffy rooms. But experience has taught the physicists never to open a window because, when they do, all the air rushes out and leaves the room a vacuum.
'The Metaphysician's Nightmare', Nightmares of Eminent Persons and Other Stories (1954), 38-9.
Science quotes on:  |  Air (366)  |  Arrival (15)  |  Bad (185)  |  Beginning (312)  |  Chance (244)  |  Consistent (50)  |  Curiosity (138)  |  Curious (95)  |  Damned (4)  |  Death (406)  |  Delirium (3)  |  Department (93)  |  Do (1905)  |  Dream (222)  |  Effect (414)  |  Eternity (64)  |  Experience (494)  |  Fever (34)  |  Find (1014)  |  Fire (203)  |  First (1302)  |  Freeze (6)  |  Game (104)  |  Happening (59)  |  Heart (243)  |  Hell (32)  |  Imagination (349)  |  Imagine (176)  |  Impossibility (60)  |  Impossible (263)  |  Improbable (15)  |  Kettle (3)  |  Long (778)  |  Monkey (57)  |  Never (1089)  |  Open (277)  |  Opening (15)  |  Order (638)  |  Perfect (223)  |  Perfection (131)  |  Physicist (270)  |  Possibility (172)  |  Probability (135)  |  Room (42)  |  Rush (18)  |  William Shakespeare (109)  |  Sonnet (5)  |  Special (188)  |  Student (317)  |  Tedium (3)  |  Time (1911)  |  Torment (18)  |  Type (171)  |  Typewriter (6)  |  Vacuum (41)  |  Walk (138)  |  Water (503)  |  Whenever (81)  |  Will (2350)  |  Window (59)

The geologist strides across the landscape to get the big picture, but the paleontologist stays at one spot or shuffles along looking at the ground for his pet objects.
'Fossils—The How and Why of Collecting and Storing', Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington (1969), 82, 590.
Science quotes on:  |  Geologist (82)  |  Ground (222)  |  Landscape (46)  |  Look (584)  |  Looking (191)  |  Object (438)  |  Paleontologist (19)  |  Pet (10)  |  Picture (148)  |  Spot (19)  |  Stride (15)

The Moon by us to you her greeting sends,
But bids us say that she’s an ill-used moon,
And takes it much amiss that you should still
Shuffle her days, and turn them topsy-turvy;
And that the gods (who know their feast-days well),
By your false count are sent home supperless,
And scold and storm at her for your neglect.
From poem, 'The Clouds', quoted in William Whewell, History of the Inductive Sciences (1837), 126. Concerning the imperfect calendar used in ancient Greece in which multiples of the lunar cycles did not exactly correspond to the solar year.
Science quotes on:  |  Count (107)  |  Day (43)  |  False (105)  |  Feast (5)  |  God (776)  |  Greet (7)  |  Greeting (10)  |  Home (184)  |  Know (1538)  |  Moon (252)  |  Neglect (63)  |  Say (989)  |  Scold (6)  |  Still (614)  |  Storm (56)  |  Supper (10)  |  Turn (454)

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)  |  Shape (77)  |  Solution (282)  |  Spectrum (35)  |  Statement (148)  |  Theme (17)  |  Thoughtful (16)  |  Through (846)  |  Totality (17)  |  Two (936)

When debts are not paid because they cannot be paid, the best thing to do is not to talk about them, and shuffle the cards again.
In Journey to the Alcarria: Travels Through the Spanish Countryside (1948, 1990), 5.
Science quotes on:  |  Card (5)  |  Debt (15)  |  Pay (45)  |  Talk (108)


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.