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: “Environmental extremists ... wouldn�t let you build a house unless it looked like a bird�s nest.”
more quiz questions >>
Home > Category Index for Science Quotations > Category Index S > Category: Sight

Sight Quotes (135 quotes)

… our “Physick” and “Anatomy” have embraced such infinite varieties of being, have laid open such new worlds in time and space, have grappled, not unsuccessfully, with such complex problems, that the eyes of Vesalius and of Harvey might be dazzled by the sight of the tree that has grown out of their grain of mustard seed.
A Lay Sermon, delivered at St. Martin's Hall (7 Jan 1866), 'On the Advisableness of Improving Natural Knowledge', published in The Fortnightly Review (1866), Vol. 3, 629.
Science quotes on:  |  Anatomy (75)  |  Being (1276)  |  Complex (202)  |  Complexity (121)  |  Dazzling (13)  |  Eye (440)  |  Grain (50)  |  Grappling (2)  |  William Harvey (30)  |  Infinite (243)  |  Mustard (2)  |  New (1273)  |  Open (277)  |  Problem (731)  |  Seed (97)  |  Space (523)  |  Time (1911)  |  Time And Space (39)  |  Tree (269)  |  Variety (138)  |  Andreas Vesalius (15)  |  World (1850)

...travel is more than the seeing of sights; it is a change that goes on, deep and permanent, in the ideas of living.
…...
Science quotes on:  |  Change (639)  |  Deep (241)  |  Idea (881)  |  Live (650)  |  Living (492)  |  More (2558)  |  Permanent (67)  |  See (1094)  |  Seeing (143)  |  Travel (125)

’Tis a short sight to limit our faith in laws to those of gravity, of chemistry, of botany, and so forth. Those laws do not stop where our eyes lose them, but push the same geometry and chemistry up into the invisible plane of social and rational life, so that, look where we will, in a boy's game, or in the strifes of races, a perfect reaction, a perpetual judgment keeps watch and ward.
From 'Worship', The Conduct of Life (1860) collected in The Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (1866), Vol.2, 401.
Science quotes on:  |  Botany (63)  |  Boy (100)  |  Chemistry (376)  |  Do (1905)  |  Eye (440)  |  Faith (209)  |  Game (104)  |  Geometry (271)  |  Gravity (140)  |  Invisible (66)  |  Judgment (140)  |  Law (913)  |  Life (1870)  |  Limit (294)  |  Look (584)  |  Lose (165)  |  Perfect (223)  |  Perpetual (59)  |  Plane (22)  |  Push (66)  |  Race (278)  |  Rational (95)  |  Reaction (106)  |  Short (200)  |  Social (261)  |  Social Life (8)  |  Stop (89)  |  Strife (9)  |  Ward (7)  |  Watch (118)  |  Will (2350)

“If there are two theories, one simpler man the other, the simpler one is to be preferred.” At first sight this does not seem quite so bad, but a little thought shows that our tendency to prefer the simpler possibility is psychological rather than scientific. It is less trouble to think that way. Experience invariably shows that the more correct a theory becomes, the more complex does it seem. … So this … interpretation of [Ockham’s Razor] is … worthless.
With co-author Nalin Chandra Wickramasinghe, Evolution from Space (1981), 135.
Science quotes on:  |  Bad (185)  |  Become (821)  |  Complex (202)  |  Complexity (121)  |  Correct (95)  |  Experience (494)  |  First (1302)  |  Interpretation (89)  |  Invariably (35)  |  Little (717)  |  Man (2252)  |  More (2558)  |  Ockham�s Razor (2)  |  Other (2233)  |  Possibility (172)  |  Prefer (27)  |  Psychological (42)  |  Scientific (955)  |  Show (353)  |  Simple (426)  |  Tendency (110)  |  Theory (1015)  |  Think (1122)  |  Thought (995)  |  Trouble (117)  |  Two (936)  |  Way (1214)

[1665-06-07] ...This day, much against my will, I did in Drury Lane see two or three houses marked with a red cross upon the doors, and 'Lord have mercy upon us' writ there - which was a sad sight to me, being the first of that kind that to my remembrance I ever saw. It put me into an ill conception of myself and my smell, so that I was forced to buy some roll-tobacco to smell to and chaw - which took away the apprehension.
Diary of Samuel Pepys (7 Jun 1665)
Science quotes on:  |  Against (332)  |  Apprehension (26)  |  Being (1276)  |  Conception (160)  |  Door (94)  |  First (1302)  |  House (143)  |  Kind (564)  |  Lord (97)  |  Marked (55)  |  Myself (211)  |  Plague (42)  |  Remembrance (5)  |  Roll (41)  |  Saw (160)  |  See (1094)  |  Smell (29)  |  Tobacco (19)  |  Two (936)  |  Will (2350)

[1665-08-16] ...Hence to the Exchange, which I have not been a great while. But Lord, how sad a sight it is to see the streets empty of people, and very few upon the Change - jealous of every door that one sees shut up, lest it should be the plague - and about us, two shops in three, if not more, generally shut up. ... It was dark before I could get home; and so land at church-yard stairs, where to my great trouble I met a dead Corps, of the plague, in the narrow ally, just bringing down a little pair of stairs - but I thank God I was not much disturbed at it. However, I shall beware of being late abroad again.
Diary of Samuel Pepys (16 Aug 1665)
Science quotes on:  |  Abroad (19)  |  Being (1276)  |  Beware (16)  |  Change (639)  |  Church (64)  |  Dark (145)  |  Disturb (31)  |  Disturbed (15)  |  Door (94)  |  Down (455)  |  Empty (82)  |  Exchange (38)  |  God (776)  |  Great (1610)  |  Home (184)  |  Late (119)  |  Little (717)  |  Lord (97)  |  More (2558)  |  Narrow (85)  |  People (1031)  |  Plague (42)  |  See (1094)  |  Shut (41)  |  Thank (48)  |  Trouble (117)  |  Two (936)

[On the 11th day of November 1572], in the evening, after sunset, when, according to my habit, I was contemplating the stars in a clear sky, I noticed that a new and unusual star, surpassing all others in brilliancy, was shining almost directly over my head; and since I had, almost from boyhood, known all the stars of the heavens perfectly (there is no great difficulty in gaining that knowledge), it was quite evident to me that there had never before been any star in that place in the sky, even the smallest, to say nothing of a star so conspicuously bright as this. I was so astonished at this sight that I was not ashamed to doubt the trustworthiness of my own eyes. But when I observed that others, too, on having the place pointed out to them, could see that there was a star there, I had no further doubts. A miracle indeed, either the greatest of all that have occurred in the whole range of nature since the beginning of the world, or one certainly that is to be classed with those attested by the Holy Oracles.
De Stello. Nova (On the New Star) (1573). Quoted in H. Shapley and A. E. Howarth (eds.), Source Book in Astronomy (1929), 13.
Science quotes on:  |  According (236)  |  Astonish (39)  |  Beginning (312)  |  Bright (81)  |  Certainly (185)  |  Class (168)  |  Contemplate (29)  |  Difficulty (201)  |  Doubt (314)  |  Evident (92)  |  Eye (440)  |  Great (1610)  |  Greatest (330)  |  Habit (174)  |  Heaven (266)  |  Heavens (125)  |  Holy (35)  |  Indeed (323)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Known (453)  |  Miracle (85)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Never (1089)  |  New (1273)  |  Nothing (1000)  |  Nova (7)  |  Observed (149)  |  Other (2233)  |  Point (584)  |  Range (104)  |  Say (989)  |  See (1094)  |  Shining (35)  |  Sky (174)  |  Star (460)  |  Stars (304)  |  Sunset (27)  |  Surpassing (12)  |  Unusual (37)  |  Whole (756)  |  World (1850)

Les mathématiciens parviennent à la solution d’un problême par le simple arrangement des données, & en réduisant le raisonnement à des opérations si simples, à des jugemens si courts, qu’ils ne perdent jamais de vue l’évidence qui leur sert de guide.
Mathematicians come to the solution of a problem by the simple arrangement of the data, and reducing the reasoning to such simple operations, to judgments so brief, that they never lose sight of the evidence that serves as their guide.
From a paper read to the Académie Royales des Sciences (18 Apr 1787), printed in Méthode de Nomenclature Chimique (1787), 12. Translation from the French by Webmaster.
Science quotes on:  |  Arrangement (93)  |  Brief (37)  |  Court (35)  |  Data (162)  |  Evidence (267)  |  Guide (107)  |  Judgment (140)  |  Lose (165)  |  Mathematician (407)  |  Never (1089)  |  Operation (221)  |  Operations (107)  |  Problem (731)  |  Reasoning (212)  |  Reduction (52)  |  Simple (426)  |  Solution (282)

Prospero: Hast thou, spirit,
Performed, to point, the tempest that I bade thee?
Ariel: To every article.
I boarded the king’s ship. Now on the beak,
Now in the waist, the deck, in every cabin,
I flamed amazement.
Sometime I’d divide
And burn in many places; on the topmast,
The yards, and bowsprit would I flame distinctly,
Then meet and join. Jove’s lightnings, the precursors
O’ th’ dreadful thunderclaps, more momentary
And sight-outrunning were not. The fire and cracks
Of sulphurous roaring the most mighty Neptune
Seem to besiege, and make his bold waves tremble;
Yea, his dread trident shake.
In The Tempest (1611), Act 1, Scene 2, line 193-206.
Science quotes on:  |  Amazement (19)  |  Bold (22)  |  Burn (99)  |  Divide (77)  |  Dreadful (16)  |  Fire (203)  |  Flame (44)  |  Lightning (49)  |  Meteorology (36)  |  More (2558)  |  Most (1728)  |  Neptune (13)  |  Perform (123)  |  Point (584)  |  Precursor (5)  |  Shake (43)  |  Ship (69)  |  Spirit (278)  |  Sulphur (19)  |  Tempest (7)  |  Thunder (21)  |  Wave (112)

Steckt keine Poesie in der Lokomotive, die brausend durch die Nacht zieht und über die zitternde Erde hintobt, als wollte sie Raum und Zeit zermalmen, in dem hastigen, aber wohl geregelten Zucken und Zerren ihrer gewaltigen Glieder, in dem stieren, nur auf ein Ziel losstürmenden Blick ihrer roten Augen, in dem emsigen, willenlosen Gefolge der Wagen, die kreischend und klappernd, aber mit unfehlbarer Sicherheit dem verkörperten Willen aus Eisen und Stahl folge leisten?
Is there no poetry in the locomotive roaring through the night and charging over the quivering earth as if it wanted to crush time and space? Is there no poetry in the hasty but regular jerking and tugging of its powerful limbs, in the stare of its red eyes that never lose sight of their goal? Is there no poetry in the bustling, will-less retinue of cars that follow, screeching and clattering with unmistakable surety, the steel and iron embodiment of will?
Max Eyth
From 'Poesie und Technik' (1904) (Poetry and Technology), in Schweizerische Techniker-Zeitung (1907), Vol 4, 306, as translated in Paul A. Youngman, Black Devil and Iron Angel: The Railway in Nineteenth-Century German Realism (2005), 128.
Science quotes on:  |  Car (75)  |  Crush (19)  |  Earth (1076)  |  Embodiment (9)  |  Eye (440)  |  Follow (389)  |  Goal (155)  |  Hasty (7)  |  Iron (99)  |  Limb (9)  |  Locomotive (8)  |  Lose (165)  |  Never (1089)  |  Night (133)  |  Poetry (150)  |  Powerful (145)  |  Quivering (2)  |  Red (38)  |  Regular (48)  |  Retinue (3)  |  Space (523)  |  Stare (9)  |  Steel (23)  |  Through (846)  |  Time (1911)  |  Time And Space (39)  |  Unmistakable (6)  |  Want (504)  |  Wanted (4)  |  Will (2350)

A fake fortuneteller can be tolerated. But an authentic soothsayer should be shot on sight. Cassandra did not get half the kicking around she deserved.
In 'From the Notebooks of Lazarus Long', Time Enough for Love: The Lives of Lazarus Long (1973), 257.
Science quotes on:  |  Authentic (9)  |  Deserve (65)  |  Fake (3)  |  Half (63)  |  Kick (11)  |  Shoot (21)  |  Soothsayer (4)  |  Tolerate (8)

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)  |  Shape (77)  |  Species (435)  |  Wing (79)

A man’s value to the community depends primarily on how far his feelings, thoughts, and actions are directed towards promoting the good of his fellows. We call him good or bad according to how he stands in this matter. It looks at first sight as if our estimate of a man depended entirely on his social qualities.
…...
Science quotes on:  |  Accord (36)  |  According (236)  |  Action (342)  |  Bad (185)  |  Call (781)  |  Community (111)  |  Depend (238)  |  Direct (228)  |  Entirely (36)  |  Estimate (59)  |  Far (158)  |  Feeling (259)  |  Feelings (52)  |  Fellow (88)  |  First (1302)  |  First Sight (6)  |  Good (906)  |  Look (584)  |  Man (2252)  |  Matter (821)  |  Primarily (12)  |  Promote (32)  |  Quality (139)  |  Social (261)  |  Stand (284)  |  Thought (995)  |  Value (393)

After … the general experimental knowledge has been acquired, accompanied with just a sufficient amount of theory to connect it together…, it becomes possible to consider the theory by itself, as theory. The experimental facts then go out of sight, in a great measure, not because they are unimportant, but because … they are fundamental, and the foundations are always hidden from view in well-constructed buildings.
In Electromagnetic Theory (1892), Vol. 2, 1.
Science quotes on:  |  Acquired (77)  |  Amount (153)  |  Become (821)  |  Building (158)  |  Connect (126)  |  Consider (428)  |  Construct (129)  |  Construction (114)  |  Experiment (736)  |  Experimental (193)  |  Fact (1257)  |  Facts (553)  |  Foundation (177)  |  Fundamental (264)  |  General (521)  |  Great (1610)  |  Hidden (43)  |  Important (229)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Measure (241)  |  Possible (560)  |  Sufficient (133)  |  Theory (1015)  |  Together (392)  |  View (496)

All appearances to the contrary, the only watchmaker in nature is the blind forces of physics, albeit deployed in very special way. A true watchmaker has foresight: he designs his cogs springs, and plans their interconnections, with a future purpose in his mind's eye. Natural selection, the blind, unconscious, automatic process which Darwin discovered, and which we now know is the explanation for the existence and apparently purposeful form of all life, has no purpose in mind. It has no mind and no mind's eye. It does not plan for the future. It has no vision, no foresight, no sight at all. If it can be said to play the role of watchmaker in nature, it is the blind watchmaker.
The Blind Watchmaker (1986), 5.
Science quotes on:  |  Appearance (145)  |  Blind (98)  |  Cog (7)  |  Contrary (143)  |  Charles Darwin (322)  |  Design (203)  |  Discover (571)  |  Evolution (635)  |  Existence (481)  |  Explanation (246)  |  Eye (440)  |  Force (497)  |  Form (976)  |  Future (467)  |  Interconnection (12)  |  Know (1538)  |  Life (1870)  |  Mind (1377)  |  Natural (810)  |  Natural Selection (98)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Physic (515)  |  Physics (564)  |  Plan (122)  |  Process (439)  |  Purpose (336)  |  Role (86)  |  Selection (130)  |  Special (188)  |  Spring (140)  |  Vision (127)  |  Watchmaker (3)  |  Way (1214)

All my life through, the new sights of Nature made me rejoice like a child.
In Pierre Curie (1923), 162.
Science quotes on:  |  Child (333)  |  Life (1870)  |  Nature (2017)  |  New (1273)  |  Rejoice (11)  |  Through (846)

All that Anatomie can doe is only to shew us the gross and sensible parts of the body, or the vapid and dead juices all which, after the most diligent search, will be noe more able to direct a physician how to cure a disease than how to make a man; for to remedy the defects of a part whose organicall constitution and that texture whereby it operates, he cannot possibly know, is alike hard, as to make a part which he knows not how is made. Now it is certaine and beyond controversy that nature performs all her operations on the body by parts so minute and insensible that I thinke noe body will ever hope or pretend, even by the assistance of glasses or any other intervention, to come to a sight of them, and to tell us what organicall texture or what kinde offerment (for whether it be done by one or both of these ways is yet a question and like to be soe always notwithstanding all the endeavours of the most accurate dissections) separate any part of the juices in any of the viscera, or tell us of what liquors the particles of these juices are, or if this could be donne (which it is never like to be) would it at all contribute to the cure of the diseases of those very parts which we so perfectly knew.
'Anatomie' (1668). Quoted in Kenneth Dewhurst (ed.), Dr. Thomas Sydenham (1624-1689): His Life and Original Writings (1966), 85-6.
Science quotes on:  |  Accurate (88)  |  Alike (60)  |  Anatomy (75)  |  Assistance (23)  |  Beyond (316)  |  Body (557)  |  Both (496)  |  Constitution (78)  |  Controversy (30)  |  Cure (124)  |  Defect (31)  |  Diligence (22)  |  Diligent (19)  |  Direct (228)  |  Disease (340)  |  Dissection (35)  |  Endeavour (63)  |  Hard (246)  |  Hope (321)  |  Intervention (18)  |  Juice (7)  |  Know (1538)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Liquor (6)  |  Man (2252)  |  Minute (129)  |  More (2558)  |  Most (1728)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Never (1089)  |  Operation (221)  |  Operations (107)  |  Other (2233)  |  Particle (200)  |  Perform (123)  |  Physician (284)  |  Possibly (111)  |  Question (649)  |  Remedy (63)  |  Search (175)  |  Separate (151)  |  Tell (344)  |  Viscera (2)  |  Way (1214)  |  Will (2350)

Anaximenes ... said that infinite air was the principle, from which the things that are becoming, and that are, and that shall be, and gods and things divine, all come into being, and the rest from its products. The form of air is of this kind: whenever it is most equable it is invisible to sight, but is revealed by the cold and the hot and the damp and by movement. It is always in motion; for things that change do not change unless there be movement. Through becoming denser or finer it has different appearances; for when it is dissolved into what is finer it becomes fire, while winds, again, are air that is becoming condensed, and cloud is produced from air by felting. When it is condensed still more, water is produced; with a further degree of condensation earth is produced, and when condensed as far as possible, stones. The result is that the most influential components of the generation are opposites, hot and cold.
Hippolytus, Refutation, 1.7.1. In G. S. Kirk, J. E. Raven and M. Schofield (eds.), The Presocratic Philosophers: A Critical History with a Selection of Texts (1983), p. 145.
Science quotes on:  |  Air (366)  |  Anaximander (5)  |  Appearance (145)  |  Become (821)  |  Becoming (96)  |  Being (1276)  |  Change (639)  |  Cloud (111)  |  Cold (115)  |  Component (51)  |  Condensation (12)  |  Degree (277)  |  Different (595)  |  Divine (112)  |  Do (1905)  |  Earth (1076)  |  Fire (203)  |  Form (976)  |  Generation (256)  |  God (776)  |  Hot (63)  |  Infinite (243)  |  Invisible (66)  |  Kind (564)  |  Matter (821)  |  More (2558)  |  Most (1728)  |  Motion (320)  |  Movement (162)  |  Opposite (110)  |  Possible (560)  |  Principle (530)  |  Produced (187)  |  Product (166)  |  Rest (287)  |  Result (700)  |  Reveal (152)  |  Revealed (59)  |  Still (614)  |  Stone (168)  |  Thing (1914)  |  Through (846)  |  Water (503)  |  Whenever (81)  |  Wind (141)

As he [Clifford] spoke he appeared not to be working out a question, but simply telling what he saw. Without any diagram or symbolic aid he described the geometrical conditions on which the solution depended, and they seemed to stand out visibly in space. There were no longer consequences to be deduced, but real and evident facts which only required to be seen. … So whole and complete was his vision that for the time the only strange thing was that anybody should fail to see it in the same way. When one endeavored to call it up again, and not till then, it became clear that the magic of genius had been at work, and that the common sight had been raised to that higher perception by the power that makes and transforms ideas, the conquering and masterful quality of the human mind which Goethe called in one word das Dämonische.
In Leslie Stephen and Frederick Pollock (eds.), Lectures and Essays by William Kingdon Clifford(1879), Vol. 1, Introduction, 4-5.
Science quotes on:  |  Aid (101)  |  Anybody (42)  |  Appear (122)  |  Call (781)  |  William Kingdon Clifford (23)  |  Common (447)  |  Complete (209)  |  Condition (362)  |  Conquer (39)  |  Consequence (220)  |  Deduce (27)  |  Depend (238)  |  Describe (132)  |  Diagram (20)  |  Endeavor (74)  |  Evident (92)  |  Fact (1257)  |  Facts (553)  |  Fail (191)  |  Genius (301)  |  Geometry (271)  |  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (150)  |  Higher (37)  |  Human (1512)  |  Human Mind (133)  |  Idea (881)  |  Magic (92)  |  Masterful (2)  |  Mathematicians and Anecdotes (141)  |  Mind (1377)  |  Perception (97)  |  Power (771)  |  Quality (139)  |  Question (649)  |  Raise (38)  |  Real (159)  |  Require (229)  |  Required (108)  |  Saw (160)  |  See (1094)  |  Seem (150)  |  Solution (282)  |  Space (523)  |  Speak (240)  |  Stand (284)  |  Stand Out (5)  |  Strange (160)  |  Symbol (100)  |  Tell (344)  |  Thing (1914)  |  Time (1911)  |  Transform (74)  |  Visible (87)  |  Vision (127)  |  Way (1214)  |  Whole (756)  |  Word (650)  |  Work (1402)

As I show you this liquid, I too could tell you, 'I took my drop of water from the immensity of creation, and I took it filled with that fecund jelly, that is, to use the language of science, full of the elements needed for the development of lower creatures. And then I waited, and I observed, and I asked questions of it, and I asked it to repeat the original act of creation for me; what a sight it would be! But it is silent! It has been silent for several years, ever since I began these experiments. Yes! And it is because I have kept away from it, and am keeping away from it to this moment, the only thing that it has not been given to man to produce, I have kept away from it the germs that are floating in the air, I have kept away from it life, for life is the germ, and the germ is life.'
Quoted in Patrice Debré, Louis Pasteur, trans. Elborg Forster (1994), 169.
Science quotes on:  |  Act (278)  |  Air (366)  |  Ask (420)  |  Creation (350)  |  Creature (242)  |  Development (441)  |  Drop (77)  |  Element (322)  |  Experiment (736)  |  Fecund (2)  |  Float (31)  |  Germ (54)  |  Gift (105)  |  Immensity (30)  |  Jelly (6)  |  Language (308)  |  Life (1870)  |  Liquid (50)  |  Low (86)  |  Man (2252)  |  Moment (260)  |  Observation (593)  |  Observed (149)  |  Origin Of Life (37)  |  Production (190)  |  Question (649)  |  Repetition (29)  |  Show (353)  |  Tell (344)  |  Thing (1914)  |  Use (771)  |  Wait (66)  |  Water (503)  |  Year (963)

At first men try with magic charms
To fertilize the earth,
To keep their flocks and herds from harm
And bring new young to birth.

Then to capricious gods they turn
To save from fire or flood;
Their smoking sacrifices burn
On altars red with blood.

Next bold philosopher and sage
A settled plan decree
And prove by thought or sacred page
What Nature ought to be.

But Nature smiles—a Sphinx-like smile
Watching their little day
She waits in patience for a while—
Their plans dissolve away.

Then come those humbler men of heart
With no completed scheme,
Content to play a modest part,
To test, observe, and dream.

Till out of chaos come in sight
Clear fragments of a Whole;
Man, learning Nature’s ways aright
Obeying, can control.
Epigraph in A History of Science and Its Relation with Philosophy & Religion (1968), vi.
Science quotes on:  |  Altar (11)  |  Birth (154)  |  Blood (144)  |  Burn (99)  |  Capricious (9)  |  Chaos (99)  |  Clear (111)  |  Complete (209)  |  Content (75)  |  Control (182)  |  Decree (9)  |  Dissolve (22)  |  Dream (222)  |  Earth (1076)  |  Fertilize (4)  |  Fire (203)  |  Flock (4)  |  Flood (52)  |  Fragment (58)  |  God (776)  |  Harm (43)  |  Heart (243)  |  Humble (54)  |  Learn (672)  |  Magic (92)  |  Modest (19)  |  Nature (2017)  |  New (1273)  |  Obey (46)  |  Observe (179)  |  Page (35)  |  Patience (58)  |  Philosopher (269)  |  Plan (122)  |  Poem (104)  |  Prove (261)  |  Red (38)  |  Sacred (48)  |  Sacrifice (58)  |  Sage (25)  |  Save (126)  |  Scheme (62)  |  Settle (23)  |  Smile (34)  |  Smoke (32)  |  Sphinx (2)  |  Test (221)  |  Thought (995)  |  Turn (454)  |  Wait (66)  |  Watch (118)  |  Whole (756)  |  Young (253)

At first sight nothing seems more obvious than that everything has a beginning and an end, and that everything can be subdivided into smaller parts. Nevertheless, for entirely speculative reasons the philosophers of Antiquity, especially the Stoics, concluded this concept to be quite unnecessary. The prodigious development of physics has now reached the same conclusion as those philosophers, Empedocles and Democritus in particular, who lived around 500 B.C. and for whom even ancient man had a lively admiration.
'Development of the Theory of Electrolytic Dissociation', Nobel Lecture, 11 December 1903. In Nobel Lectures: Chemistry 1901-1921 (1966), 45.
Science quotes on:  |  Admiration (61)  |  Ancient (198)  |  Antiquity (34)  |  Beginning (312)  |  Concept (242)  |  Conclusion (266)  |  Democritus of Abdera (17)  |  Development (441)  |  Empedocles (10)  |  End (603)  |  Everything (489)  |  First (1302)  |  Lively (17)  |  Man (2252)  |  More (2558)  |  Nevertheless (90)  |  Nothing (1000)  |  Obvious (128)  |  Philosopher (269)  |  Physic (515)  |  Physics (564)  |  Prodigious (20)  |  Reach (286)  |  Reason (766)  |  Unnecessary (23)

At the sight of a single bone, of a single piece of bone, I recognize and reconstruct the portion of the whole from which it would have been taken. The whole being to which this fragment belonged appears in my mind's eye.
Cited by Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, Comptes-Rendus de l’Académie des Sciences. 1837, 7, 116. Trans. Franck Bourdier, 'Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire versus Cuvier: The Campaign for Paleontological Evolution (1825- 1838)', Cecil J. Schneer (ed.), Toward a History of Geology (1969), 44.
Science quotes on:  |  Appearance (145)  |  Being (1276)  |  Belong (168)  |  Belonging (36)  |  Bone (101)  |  Eye (440)  |  Fragment (58)  |  Mind (1377)  |  Mind�s Eye (3)  |  Morphology (22)  |  Piece (39)  |  Portion (86)  |  Recognition (93)  |  Recognize (136)  |  Reconstruction (16)  |  Single (365)  |  Whole (756)

Babylon in all its desolation is a sight not so awful as that of the human mind in ruins.
In Francis Crick, The Astonishing Hypothesis: the Scientific Search for the Soul (1995), 161.
Science quotes on:  |  Awful (9)  |  Babylon (7)  |  Desolation (3)  |  Human (1512)  |  Human Mind (133)  |  Mind (1377)  |  Ruin (44)

Biological disciplines tend to guide research into certain channels. One consequence is that disciplines are apt to become parochial, or at least to develop blind spots, for example, to treat some questions as “interesting” and to dismiss others as “uninteresting.” As a consequence, readily accessible but unworked areas of genuine biological interest often lie in plain sight but untouched within one discipline while being heavily worked in another. For example, historically insect physiologists have paid relatively little attention to the behavioral and physiological control of body temperature and its energetic and ecological consequences, whereas many students of the comparative physiology of terrestrial vertebrates have been virtually fixated on that topic. For the past 10 years, several of my students and I have exploited this situation by taking the standard questions and techniques from comparative vertebrate physiology and applying them to insects. It is surprising that this pattern of innovation is not more deliberately employed.
In 'Scientific innovation and creativity: a zoologist’s point of view', American Zoologist (1982), 22, 233.
Science quotes on:  |  Accessible (27)  |  Apply (170)  |  Apt (9)  |  Area (33)  |  Attention (196)  |  Become (821)  |  Behavioral (6)  |  Being (1276)  |  Biological (137)  |  Blind (98)  |  Blind Spot (2)  |  Body (557)  |  Certain (557)  |  Channel (23)  |  Comparative (14)  |  Consequence (220)  |  Control (182)  |  Deliberately (6)  |  Develop (278)  |  Discipline (85)  |  Dismiss (12)  |  Ecological (7)  |  Employ (115)  |  Energetic (6)  |  Example (98)  |  Exploit (19)  |  Genuine (54)  |  Guide (107)  |  Heavily (14)  |  Historically (3)  |  Innovation (49)  |  Insect (89)  |  Interest (416)  |  Interesting (153)  |  Least (75)  |  Lie (370)  |  Little (717)  |  More (2558)  |  Often (109)  |  Other (2233)  |  Past (355)  |  Pattern (116)  |  Pay (45)  |  Physiological (64)  |  Physiologist (31)  |  Physiology (101)  |  Plain (34)  |  Question (649)  |  Readily (10)  |  Relatively (8)  |  Research (753)  |  Several (33)  |  Situation (117)  |  Standard (64)  |  Student (317)  |  Surprise (91)  |  Technique (84)  |  Temperature (82)  |  Tend (124)  |  Terrestrial (62)  |  Topic (23)  |  Treat (38)  |  Uninteresting (9)  |  Untouched (5)  |  Unworked (2)  |  Vertebrate (22)  |  Virtually (6)  |  Work (1402)  |  Year (963)

But beyond the bright searchlights of science,
Out of sight of the windows of sense,
Old riddles still bid us defiance,
Old questions of Why and of Whence.
from Recent Development of Physical Science (p. 10)
Science quotes on:  |  Beyond (316)  |  Bright (81)  |  Old (499)  |  Poem (104)  |  Question (649)  |  Riddle (28)  |  Searchlight (5)  |  Sense (785)  |  Still (614)  |  Why (491)  |  Window (59)

But by far the greatest hindrance and aberration of the human understanding proceeds from the dullness, incompetency, and deceptions of the senses; in that things which strike the sense outweigh things which do not immediately strike it, though they be more important. Hence it is that speculation commonly ceases where sight ceases; insomuch that of things invisible there is little or no observation.
From Aphorism 50, Novum Organum, Book I (1620). Collected in James Spedding (ed.), The Works of Francis Bacon (1858), Vol. 4, 58.
Science quotes on:  |  Aberration (10)  |  Cease (81)  |  Deception (9)  |  Do (1905)  |  Greatest (330)  |  Human (1512)  |  Immediately (115)  |  Invisible (66)  |  Little (717)  |  More (2558)  |  Observation (593)  |  Proceed (134)  |  Sense (785)  |  Speculation (137)  |  Strike (72)  |  Thing (1914)  |  Understanding (527)

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)  |  Shape (77)  |  Termination (4)  |  Valley (37)  |  Variety (138)

Civilized people can talk about anything. For them no subject is taboo…. In civilized societies there will be no intellectual bogeys at sight of which great grown-up babies are expected to hide their eyes
In Civilization: An Essay (1928), 138.
Science quotes on:  |  Baby (29)  |  Civilized (20)  |  Expect (203)  |  Eye (440)  |  Great (1610)  |  Hide (70)  |  Intellectual (258)  |  People (1031)  |  Society (350)  |  Subject (543)  |  Taboo (5)  |  Talk (108)  |  Will (2350)

Considered as a mere question of physics, (and keeping all moral considerations entirely out of sight,) the appearance of man is a geological phenomenon of vast importance, indirectly modifying the whole surface of the earth, breaking in upon any supposition of zoological continuity, and utterly unaccounted for by what we have any right to call the laws of nature.
'Address to the Geological Society, delivered on the Evening of the 18th of February 1831', Proceedings of the Geological Society (1834), 1, 306.
Science quotes on:  |  Appearance (145)  |  Call (781)  |  Consider (428)  |  Consideration (143)  |  Continuation (20)  |  Continuity (39)  |  Earth (1076)  |  Geology (240)  |  Importance (299)  |  Law (913)  |  Law Of Nature (80)  |  Man (2252)  |  Mankind (356)  |  Modification (57)  |  Moral (203)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Phenomenon (334)  |  Physic (515)  |  Physics (564)  |  Question (649)  |  Right (473)  |  Supposition (50)  |  Surface (223)  |  Surface Of The Earth (36)  |  Unaccounted (2)  |  Vast (188)  |  Whole (756)  |  Zoology (38)

Defenders of the short-sighted men who in their greed and selfishness will, if permitted, rob our country of half its charm by their reckless extermination of all useful and beautiful wild things sometimes seek to champion them by saying the “the game belongs to the people.” So it does; and not merely to the people now alive, but to the unborn people. The “greatest good for the greatest number” applies to the number within the womb of time, compared to which those now alive form but an insignificant fraction. Our duty to the whole, including the unborn generations, bids us restrain an unprincipled present-day minority from wasting the heritage of these unborn generations. The movement for the conservation of wild life and the larger movement for the conservation of all our natural resources are essentially democratic in spirit, purpose, and method.
'Bird Reserves at the Mouth of the Mississippi', A Book-Lover's Holidays in the Open (1920), 300-301.
Science quotes on:  |  Alive (97)  |  Beautiful (271)  |  Belong (168)  |  Charm (54)  |  Conservation (187)  |  Country (269)  |  Defender (5)  |  Democratic (12)  |  Extermination (14)  |  Form (976)  |  Game (104)  |  Generation (256)  |  Good (906)  |  Greatest (330)  |  Greed (17)  |  Heritage (22)  |  Insignificant (33)  |  Life (1870)  |  Merely (315)  |  Method (531)  |  Minority (24)  |  Movement (162)  |  Natural (810)  |  Natural Resource (23)  |  Number (710)  |  People (1031)  |  Present (630)  |  Purpose (336)  |  Seek (218)  |  Short (200)  |  Short-Sighted (5)  |  Spirit (278)  |  Thing (1914)  |  Time (1911)  |  Useful (260)  |  Whole (756)  |  Wild (96)  |  Will (2350)  |  Womb (25)

Each discovery of science … adds a rung to a ladder of knowledge whose end is not in sight because we are building the ladder as we go along. As far as I can tell, as we assemble and ascend this ladder, we will forever uncover the secrets of the universe—one by one.
In magazine article, 'The Beginning of Science', Natural History (Mar 2001). Collected in Death by Black Hole: And Other Cosmic Quandaries (2007), 20.
Science quotes on:  |  Add (42)  |  Ascend (30)  |  Assemble (14)  |  Build (211)  |  Building (158)  |  Discovery (837)  |  End (603)  |  Forever (111)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Ladder (18)  |  Secret (216)  |  Tell (344)  |  Uncover (20)  |  Universe (900)  |  Will (2350)

Ethnologists regard man as the primitive element of tribes, races, and peoples. The anthropologist looks at him as a member of the fauna of the globe, belonging to a zoölogical classification, and subject to the same laws as the rest of the animal kingdom. To study him from the last point of view only would be to lose sight of some of his most interesting and practical relations; but to be confined to the ethnologist’s views is to set aside the scientific rule which requires us to proceed from the simple to the compound, from the known to the unknown, from the material and organic fact to the functional phenomenon.
'Paul Broca and the French School of Anthropology'. Lecture delivered in the National Museum, Washington, D.C., 15 April 1882, by Dr. Robert Fletcher. In The Saturday Lectures (1882), 118.
Science quotes on:  |  Animal (651)  |  Animal Kingdom (21)  |  Belonging (36)  |  Classification (102)  |  Compound (117)  |  Element (322)  |  Ethnology (9)  |  Fact (1257)  |  Interesting (153)  |  Kingdom (80)  |  Known (453)  |  Last (425)  |  Law (913)  |  Look (584)  |  Lose (165)  |  Man (2252)  |  Material (366)  |  Most (1728)  |  Organic (161)  |  People (1031)  |  Phenomenon (334)  |  Point (584)  |  Point Of View (85)  |  Practical (225)  |  Primitive (79)  |  Proceed (134)  |  Race (278)  |  Regard (312)  |  Require (229)  |  Rest (287)  |  Rule (307)  |  Scientific (955)  |  Scientific Method (200)  |  Set (400)  |  Simple (426)  |  Study (701)  |  Subject (543)  |  Tribe (26)  |  Unknown (195)  |  View (496)

For many planet hunters, though, the ultimate goal is still greater (or actually, smaller) prey: terrestrial planets, like Earth, circling a star like the Sun. Astronomers already know that three such planets orbit at least one pulsar. But planet hunters will not rest until they are in sight of a small blue world, warm and wet, in whose azure skies and upon whose wind-whipped oceans shines a bright yellow star like our own.
…...
Science quotes on:  |  Actually (27)  |  Already (226)  |  Astronomer (97)  |  Azure (2)  |  Blue (63)  |  Bright (81)  |  Circle (117)  |  Earth (1076)  |  Goal (155)  |  Great (1610)  |  Greater (288)  |  Hunter (28)  |  Know (1538)  |  Least (75)  |  Ocean (216)  |  Orbit (85)  |  Planet (402)  |  Prey (13)  |  Pulsar (3)  |  Rest (287)  |  Shine (49)  |  Sky (174)  |  Small (489)  |  Star (460)  |  Still (614)  |  Sun (407)  |  Terrestrial (62)  |  Ultimate (152)  |  Warm (74)  |  Wet (6)  |  Will (2350)  |  Wind (141)  |  World (1850)  |  Yellow (31)

Geology is part of that remarkable dynamic process of the human mind which is generally called science and to which man is driven by an inquisitive urge. By noticing relationships in the results of his observations, he attempts to order and to explain the infinite variety of phenomena that at first sight may appear to be chaotic. In the history of civilization this type of progressive scientist has been characterized by Prometheus stealing the heavenly fire, by Adam eating from the tree of knowledge, by the Faustian ache for wisdom.
In 'The Scientific Character of Geology', The Journal of Geology (Jul 1961), 69, No. 4, 454.
Science quotes on:  |  Ache (7)  |  Adam (7)  |  Appear (122)  |  Attempt (266)  |  Call (781)  |  Called Science (14)  |  Chaotic (2)  |  Characterize (22)  |  Civilization (220)  |  Dynamic (16)  |  Eating (46)  |  Explain (334)  |  Faustian (2)  |  Fire (203)  |  First (1302)  |  First Sight (6)  |  Geology (240)  |  Heavenly (8)  |  History (716)  |  Human (1512)  |  Human Mind (133)  |  Infinite (243)  |  Inquisitive (5)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Man (2252)  |  Mind (1377)  |  Observation (593)  |  Order (638)  |  Phenomenon (334)  |  Process (439)  |  Progressive (21)  |  Prometheus (7)  |  Relationship (114)  |  Remarkable (50)  |  Result (700)  |  Scientist (881)  |  Tree (269)  |  Tree Of Knowledge (8)  |  Type (171)  |  Urge (17)  |  Variety (138)  |  Wisdom (235)

God forbid that Truth should be confined to Mathematical Demonstration! He who does not know truth at sight is unworthy of Her Notice.
Marginal note (c. 1808) written in his copy of 'Discourse VII', The Works of Sir Joshua Reynolds (1798), beside “…as true as mathematical demonstration…”. As given in William Blake, Edwin John Ellis (ed.) and William Butler Yeats (ed.), The Works of William Blake (1893), Vol. 2, 340.
Science quotes on:  |  Confine (26)  |  Demonstration (120)  |  Forbid (14)  |  God (776)  |  Know (1538)  |  Mathematics (1395)  |  Notice (81)  |  Truth (1109)  |  Unworthy (18)

Here I most violently want you to
Avoid one fearful error, a vicious flaw.
Don’t think that our bright eyes were made that we
Might look ahead; that hips and knees and ankles
So intricately bend that we might take
Big strides, and the arms are strapped to the sturdy shoulders
And hands are given for servants to each side
That we might use them to support our lives.
All other explanations of this sort
Are twisted, topsy-turvy logic, for
Nothing what is born produces its own use.
Sight was not born before the light of the eyes,
Nor were words and pleas created before the tongue
Rather the tongue's appearance long preceded
Speech, and the ears were formed far earlier than
The sound first heard. To sum up, all the members Existed, I should think, before their use, So use has not caused them to have grown.
On the Nature of Things, trans. Anthony M. Esolen (1995), Book 4, lines 820-8, 145.
Science quotes on:  |  Appearance (145)  |  Arm (82)  |  Arms (37)  |  Avoid (123)  |  Bright (81)  |  Ear (69)  |  Error (339)  |  Exist (458)  |  Existence (481)  |  Explanation (246)  |  Eye (440)  |  First (1302)  |  Flaw (18)  |  Form (976)  |  Light (635)  |  Live (650)  |  Logic (311)  |  Long (778)  |  Look (584)  |  Most (1728)  |  Nothing (1000)  |  Other (2233)  |  Servant (40)  |  Shoulder (33)  |  Side (236)  |  Sound (187)  |  Speech (66)  |  Stride (15)  |  Sum (103)  |  Support (151)  |  Think (1122)  |  Tongue (44)  |  Twist (10)  |  Use (771)  |  Want (504)  |  Word (650)

How can you shorten the subject? That stern struggle with the multiplication table, for many people not yet ended in victory, how can you make it less? Square root, as obdurate as a hardwood stump in a pasture nothing but years of effort can extract it. You can’t hurry the process. Or pass from arithmetic to algebra; you can’t shoulder your way past quadratic equations or ripple through the binomial theorem. Instead, the other way; your feet are impeded in the tangled growth, your pace slackens, you sink and fall somewhere near the binomial theorem with the calculus in sight on the horizon. So died, for each of us, still bravely fighting, our mathematical training; except for a set of people called “mathematicians”—born so, like crooks.
In Too Much College: Or, Education Eating up Life, with Kindred Essays in Education and Humour (1939), 8.
Science quotes on:  |  Algebra (117)  |  Arithmetic (144)  |  Binomial (6)  |  Binomial Theorem (5)  |  Brave (16)  |  Calculus (65)  |  Call (781)  |  Crook (2)  |  Die (94)  |  Effort (243)  |  End (603)  |  Equation (138)  |  Extract (40)  |  Fall (243)  |  Fight (49)  |  Foot (65)  |  Growth (200)  |  Horizon (47)  |  Hurry (16)  |  Impede (4)  |  Mathematician (407)  |  Mathematics (1395)  |  Multiplication (46)  |  Multiplication Table (16)  |  Nothing (1000)  |  Other (2233)  |  Pace (18)  |  Pass (241)  |  Past (355)  |  Pasture (15)  |  People (1031)  |  Process (439)  |  Ripple (12)  |  Root (121)  |  Set (400)  |  Shorten (5)  |  Shoulder (33)  |  Sink (38)  |  Square (73)  |  Square Root (12)  |  Stern (6)  |  Still (614)  |  Struggle (111)  |  Stump (3)  |  Subject (543)  |  Table (105)  |  Tangle (8)  |  Theorem (116)  |  Through (846)  |  Training (92)  |  Victory (40)  |  Way (1214)  |  Year (963)

How peacefully he sleep!
Yet may his ever-questing spirit, freed at length
from all the frettings of this little world,
Wander at will among the uncharted stars.
Fairfield his name. Perchance celestial fields
disclosing long sought secrets of the past
Spread 'neath his enraptured gaze
And beasts and men that to his earthly sight
were merely bits of stone shall live again to
gladden those eager eyes.
o let us picture him—enthusiast—scientist—friend—
Seeker of truth and light through all eternity!
New York Sun (13 Nov 1935). Reprinted in 'Henry Fairfield Osborn', Supplement to Natural History (Feb 1936), 37:2, 135. Bound in Kofoid Collection of Pamphlets on Biography, University of California.
Science quotes on:  |  Beast (58)  |  Celestial (53)  |  Enthusiast (9)  |  Eternity (64)  |  Eulogy (2)  |  Eye (440)  |  Field (378)  |  Fossil (143)  |  Friend (180)  |  Gaze (23)  |  Gladness (5)  |  Life (1870)  |  Light (635)  |  Little (717)  |  Live (650)  |  Long (778)  |  Merely (315)  |  Name (359)  |  Henry Fairfield Osborn (16)  |  Past (355)  |  Picture (148)  |  Scientist (881)  |  Secret (216)  |  Sleep (81)  |  Spirit (278)  |  Spread (86)  |  Star (460)  |  Stars (304)  |  Stone (168)  |  Through (846)  |  Truth (1109)  |  Uncharted (10)  |  Wander (44)  |  Will (2350)  |  World (1850)

How quickly do we grow accustomed to wonders. I am reminded of the Isaac Asimov story “Nightfall,” about the planet where the stars were visible only once in a thousand years. So awesome was the sight that it drove men mad. We who can see the stars every night glance up casually at the cosmos and then quickly down again, searching for a Dairy Queen.
…...
Science quotes on:  |  Accustom (52)  |  Accustomed (46)  |  Isaac Asimov (267)  |  Awesome (15)  |  Casually (2)  |  Cosmos (64)  |  Dairy (2)  |  Do (1905)  |  Down (455)  |  Drive (61)  |  Glance (36)  |  Grow (247)  |  Mad (54)  |  Night (133)  |  Planet (402)  |  Queen (14)  |  Quickly (21)  |  Remind (16)  |  Search (175)  |  See (1094)  |  Star (460)  |  Stars (304)  |  Story (122)  |  Thousand (340)  |  Visible (87)  |  Wonder (251)  |  Year (963)

I can assure you, reader, that in a very few hours, even during the first day, you will learn more natural philosophy about things contained in this book, than you could learn in fifty years by reading the theories and opinions of the ancient philosophers. Enemies of science will scoff at the astrologers: saying, where is the ladder on which they have climbed to heaven, to know the foundation of the stars? But in this respect I am exempt from such scoffing; for in proving my written reason, I satisfy sight, hearing, and touch: for this reason, defamers will have no power over me: as you will see when you come to see me in my little Academy.
The Admirable Discourses (1580), trans. Aurele La Rocque (1957), 27.
Science quotes on:  |  Academy (37)  |  Ancient (198)  |  Assurance (17)  |  Astrologer (10)  |  Book (413)  |  Climb (39)  |  Contain (68)  |  Day (43)  |  Enemy (86)  |  Exemption (3)  |  Fifty (17)  |  First (1302)  |  Foundation (177)  |  Hearing (50)  |  Heaven (266)  |  Hour (192)  |  Know (1538)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Ladder (18)  |  Learn (672)  |  Learning (291)  |  Little (717)  |  More (2558)  |  Natural (810)  |  Natural Philosophy (52)  |  Opinion (291)  |  Philosopher (269)  |  Philosophy (409)  |  Power (771)  |  Proof (304)  |  Reader (42)  |  Reading (136)  |  Reason (766)  |  Respect (212)  |  Satisfaction (76)  |  Scoff (8)  |  See (1094)  |  Star (460)  |  Stars (304)  |  Theory (1015)  |  Thing (1914)  |  Touch (146)  |  Will (2350)  |  Writing (192)  |  Year (963)

I could clearly see that the blood is divided and flows through tortuous vessels and that it is not poured out into spaces, but is always driven through tubules and distributed by the manifold bendings of the vessels... [F]rom the simplicity Nature employs in all her works, we may conclude... that the network I once believed to be nervous [that is, sinewy] is really a vessel intermingled with the vesicles and sinuses and carrying the mass of blood to them or away from them... though these elude even the keenest sight because of their small size... From these considerations it is highly probable that the question about the mutual union and anastomosis of the vessels can be solved; for if Nature once circulates the blood within vessels and combines their ends in a network, it is probable that they are joined by anastomosis at other times too.
'The Return to Bologna 1659-1662', in H. B. Adelmann (ed.), Marcello Malpighi and the Evolution of Embryology (1966), Vol. 1, 194-5.
Science quotes on:  |  Blood (144)  |  Capillary (4)  |  Circulation (27)  |  Combine (58)  |  Conclude (66)  |  Consideration (143)  |  Divided (50)  |  Elude (11)  |  Employ (115)  |  End (603)  |  Flow (89)  |  Manifold (23)  |  Mass (160)  |  Mutual (54)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Network (21)  |  Other (2233)  |  Question (649)  |  See (1094)  |  Simplicity (175)  |  Small (489)  |  Space (523)  |  Through (846)  |  Time (1911)  |  Tissue (51)  |  Union (52)  |  Vessel (63)  |  Work (1402)

I find in Geology a never failing interest, as [it] has been remarked, it creates the same gran[d] ideas respecting this world, which Astronomy do[es] for the universe.—We have seen much fine scenery that of the Tropics in its glory & luxuriance, exceeds even the language of Humboldt to describe. A Persian writer could alone do justice to it, & if he succeeded he would in England, be called the 'grandfather of all liars'.— But I have seen nothing, which more completely astonished me, than the first sight of a Savage; It was a naked Fuegian his long hair blowing about, his face besmeared with paint. There is in their countenances, an expression, which I believe to those who have not seen it, must be inconceivably wild. Standing on a rock he uttered tones & made gesticulations than which, the cries of domestic animals are far more intelligible.
Letter to Charles Whitley, 23 July 1834. In F. Burkhardt and S. Smith (eds.), The Correspondence of Charles Darwin 1821-1836 (1985), Vol. I, 397.
Science quotes on:  |  Alone (324)  |  Animal (651)  |  Anthropology (61)  |  Astonish (39)  |  Astronomy (251)  |  Blowing (22)  |  Call (781)  |  Completely (137)  |  Countenance (9)  |  Create (245)  |  Describe (132)  |  Do (1905)  |  Domestic (27)  |  Expression (181)  |  Face (214)  |  Find (1014)  |  First (1302)  |  Geology (240)  |  Grandfather (14)  |  Baron Friedrich Wilhelm Christian Karl Ferdinan von Humboldt (5)  |  Idea (881)  |  Intelligible (35)  |  Interest (416)  |  Justice (40)  |  Language (308)  |  Long (778)  |  More (2558)  |  Must (1525)  |  Never (1089)  |  Nothing (1000)  |  Persian (4)  |  Rock (176)  |  Succeed (114)  |  Tone (22)  |  Universe (900)  |  Wild (96)  |  World (1850)  |  Writer (90)

I found the invention was applicable to painting, and would also contribute to facilitate the study of geography: for I have applied it to some maps, the rivers of which I represented in silver, and in the cities in gold. The rivers appearing, as it were, in silver streams, have a most pleasing effect on the sight, and relieve the eye of that painful search for the course, and origin, of rivers, the minutest branches of which can be splendidly represented this way.
Description of an outcome of her experiments originally investigating 'the possibility of making cloths of gold, silver and other metals by chemical processes.'
Preface to An Essay on Combustion with a View to a New Art of Dyeing and Painting (1794), iii-iv. In Marilyn Bailey Ogilvie and Joy Dorothy Harvey, The Biographical Dictionary of Women in Science (2000), 478.
Science quotes on:  |  Applicable (31)  |  Applied (176)  |  Chemical (303)  |  Course (413)  |  Effect (414)  |  Experiment (736)  |  Eye (440)  |  Geography (39)  |  Gold (101)  |  Invention (400)  |  Investigate (106)  |  Making (300)  |  Map (50)  |  Metal (88)  |  Most (1728)  |  Origin (250)  |  Other (2233)  |  Possibility (172)  |  Represent (157)  |  River (140)  |  Search (175)  |  Silver (49)  |  Stream (83)  |  Study (701)  |  Way (1214)

I had made up my mind to find that for which I was searching even if it required the remainder of my life. After innumerable failures I finally uncovered the principle for which I was searching, and I was astounded at its simplicity. I was still more astounded to discover the principle I had revealed not only beneficial in the construction of a mechanical hearing aid but it served as well as means of sending the sound of the voice over a wire. Another discovery which came out of my investigation was the fact that when a man gives his order to produce a definite result and stands by that order it seems to have the effect of giving him what might be termed a second sight which enables him to see right through ordinary problems. What this power is I cannot say; all I know is that it exists and it becomes available only when a man is in that state of mind in which he knows exactly what he wants and is fully determined not to quit until he finds it.
As quoted, without citation, in Mack R. Douglas, Making a Habit of Success: How to Make a Habit of Succeeding, How to Win With High Self-Esteem (1966, 1994), 38. Note: Webmaster is dubious of a quote which seems to appear in only one source, without a citation, decades after Bell’s death. If you know a primary source, please contact Webmaster.
Science quotes on:  |  Aid (101)  |  Astound (9)  |  Available (80)  |  Become (821)  |  Construction (114)  |  Definite (114)  |  Determined (9)  |  Discover (571)  |  Discovery (837)  |  Effect (414)  |  Enable (122)  |  Exist (458)  |  Fact (1257)  |  Failure (176)  |  Find (1014)  |  Hearing (50)  |  Innumerable (56)  |  Investigation (250)  |  Know (1538)  |  Life (1870)  |  Man (2252)  |  Mean (810)  |  Means (587)  |  Mechanical (145)  |  Mind (1377)  |  More (2558)  |  Order (638)  |  Ordinary (167)  |  Power (771)  |  Principle (530)  |  Problem (731)  |  Remainder (7)  |  Required (108)  |  Result (700)  |  Reveal (152)  |  Revealed (59)  |  Right (473)  |  Say (989)  |  See (1094)  |  Simplicity (175)  |  Sound (187)  |  Stand (284)  |  State (505)  |  Still (614)  |  Term (357)  |  Through (846)  |  Uncover (20)  |  Want (504)  |  Wire (36)

I have always liked horticulturists, people who make their living from orchards and gardens, whose hands are familiar with the feel of the bark, whose eyes are trained to distinguish the different varieties, who have a form memory. Their brains are not forever dealing with vague abstractions; they are satisfied with the romance which the seasons bring with them, and have the patience and fortitude to gamble their lives and fortunes in an industry which requires infinite patience, which raise hopes each spring and too often dashes them to pieces in fall. They are always conscious of sun and wind and rain; must always be alert lest they lose the chance of ploughing at the right moment, pruning at the right time, circumventing the attacks of insects and fungus diseases by quick decision and prompt action. They are manufacturers of a high order, whose business requires not only intelligence of a practical character, but necessitates an instinct for industry which is different from that required by the city dweller always within sight of other people and the sound of their voices. The successful horticulturist spends much time alone among his trees, away from the constant chatter of human beings.
Science quotes on:  |  Abstraction (48)  |  Action (342)  |  Alert (13)  |  Alone (324)  |  Attack (86)  |  Bark (19)  |  Being (1276)  |  Brain (281)  |  Business (156)  |  Chance (244)  |  Character (259)  |  City (87)  |  Constant (148)  |  Decision (98)  |  Different (595)  |  Disease (340)  |  Distinguish (168)  |  Eye (440)  |  Fall (243)  |  Feel (371)  |  Forever (111)  |  Form (976)  |  Fortune (50)  |  Fungus (8)  |  Garden (64)  |  High (370)  |  Hope (321)  |  Horticulture (10)  |  Human (1512)  |  Human Being (185)  |  Industry (159)  |  Infinite (243)  |  Insect (89)  |  Instinct (91)  |  Intelligence (218)  |  Live (650)  |  Living (492)  |  Lose (165)  |  Memory (144)  |  Moment (260)  |  Must (1525)  |  Order (638)  |  Other (2233)  |  Patience (58)  |  People (1031)  |  Practical (225)  |  Prompt (14)  |  Pruning (7)  |  Rain (70)  |  Require (229)  |  Required (108)  |  Right (473)  |  Romance (18)  |  Season (47)  |  Sound (187)  |  Spend (97)  |  Spring (140)  |  Successful (134)  |  Sun (407)  |  Time (1911)  |  Train (118)  |  Tree (269)  |  Vague (50)  |  Wind (141)

I have tried to show why I believe that the biologist is the most romantic figure on earth at the present day. At first sight he seems to be just a poor little scrubby underpaid man, groping blindly amid the mazes of the ultra-microscopic, engaging in bitter and lifelong quarrels over the nephridia of flatworms, waking perhaps one morning to find that someone whose name he has never heard has demolished by a few crucial experiments the work which he had hoped would render him immortal.
Daedalus or Science and the Future (1924), 77.
Science quotes on:  |  Biologist (70)  |  Bitter (30)  |  Demolish (8)  |  Earth (1076)  |  Experiment (736)  |  Figure (162)  |  Find (1014)  |  First (1302)  |  Immortal (35)  |  Lifelong (10)  |  Little (717)  |  Man (2252)  |  Microscope (85)  |  Microscopic (27)  |  Morning (98)  |  Most (1728)  |  Name (359)  |  Never (1089)  |  Poor (139)  |  Present (630)  |  Render (96)  |  Research (753)  |  Romantic (13)  |  Show (353)  |  Waking (17)  |  Why (491)  |  Work (1402)

I hear beyond the range of sound,
I see beyond the range of sight,
New earths and skies and seas around,
And in my day the sun doth pale his light.
…...
Science quotes on:  |  Beyond (316)  |  Earth (1076)  |  Hear (144)  |  Light (635)  |  New (1273)  |  Pale (9)  |  Range (104)  |  Sea (326)  |  See (1094)  |  Sky (174)  |  Sound (187)  |  Sun (407)

I learnt to distrust all physical concepts as the basis for a theory. Instead one should put one's trust in a mathematical scheme, even if the scheme does not appear at first sight to be connected with physics. One should concentrate on getting interesting mathematics.
From a 1977 lecture. Quoted in Pesi Rustom Masani, Norbert Wiener, 1894-1964 (1990), 6.
Science quotes on:  |  Basis (180)  |  Concentrate (28)  |  Concept (242)  |  Connect (126)  |  Distrust (11)  |  First (1302)  |  Interesting (153)  |  Mathematics (1395)  |  Physic (515)  |  Physical (518)  |  Physics (564)  |  Scheme (62)  |  Theory (1015)  |  Trust (72)

I now saw very distinctly that these were little eels or worms... Lying huddled together and wriggling, just as if you saw with your naked eye a whole tubful of very little eels and water, the eels moving about in swarms; and the whole water seemed to be alive with the multitudinous animalcules. For me this was among all the marvels that I have discovered in nature the most marvellous of all, and I must say that, for my part, no more pleasant sight has yet met my eye than this of so many thousands of living creatures in one small drop of water, all huddling and moving, but each creature having its own motion.
Letter to H. Oldenburg, 9 Oct 1676. In The Collected Letters of Antoni van Leeuwenhoek (l957), Vol. 2, 115.
Science quotes on:  |  Alive (97)  |  Animalcule (12)  |  Creature (242)  |  Discover (571)  |  Drop (77)  |  Eye (440)  |  Little (717)  |  Living (492)  |  Lying (55)  |  Marvel (37)  |  Marvellous (25)  |  Microorganism (29)  |  Microscope (85)  |  More (2558)  |  Most (1728)  |  Motion (320)  |  Multitudinous (4)  |  Must (1525)  |  Naked Eye (12)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Saw (160)  |  Say (989)  |  Small (489)  |  Thousand (340)  |  Together (392)  |  Water (503)  |  Whole (756)  |  Worm (47)

I shall never forget my first encounter with gorillas. Sound preceded sight. Odor preceded sound in the form of an overwhelming, musky-barnyard, humanlike scent. The air was suddenly rent by a high-pitched series of screams followed by the rhythmic rondo of sharp pok-pok chestbeats from a great silverbacked male obscured behind what seemed an impenetrable wall of vegetation.
Describing her 1963 trip to Kabara in Gorillas in the Mist (1983), 3. (The screams and chest-beating were of alarm, not ferocity.)
Science quotes on:  |  Air (366)  |  Barnyard (2)  |  Behind (139)  |  Encounter (23)  |  First (1302)  |  Follow (389)  |  Forget (125)  |  Form (976)  |  Gorilla (19)  |  Great (1610)  |  High (370)  |  Impenetrable (7)  |  Musk (2)  |  Never (1089)  |  Obscure (66)  |  Odor (11)  |  Overwhelming (30)  |  Pitch (17)  |  Rhythm (21)  |  Scent (7)  |  Scream (7)  |  Series (153)  |  Sharp (17)  |  Silverback (2)  |  Sound (187)  |  Suddenly (91)  |  Vegetation (24)  |  Wall (71)

I shall never forget the sight. The vessel of crystallization was three quarters full of slightly muddy water—that is, dilute water-glass—and from the sandy bottom there strove upwards a grotesque little landscape of variously colored growths: a confused vegetation of blue, green, and brown shoots which reminded one of algae, mushrooms, attached polyps, also moss, then mussels, fruit pods, little trees or twigs from trees, here, and there of limbs. It was the most remarkable sight I ever saw, and remarkable not so much for its profoundly melancholy nature. For when Father Leverkühn asked us what we thought of it and we timidly answered him that they might be plants: “No,” he replied, “they are not, they only act that way. But do not think the less of them. Precisely because they do, because they try as hard as they can, they are worthy of all respect.”
It turned out that these growths were entirely unorganic in their origin; they existed by virtue of chemicals from the apothecary's shop.
Description of a “chemical garden” in Doktor Faustus: The Life of the German Composer Adrian Leverkühn, as Told by a Friend, (1947), 19.
Science quotes on:  |  Act (278)  |  Algae (7)  |  Answer (389)  |  Apothecary (10)  |  Ask (420)  |  Attach (57)  |  Attached (36)  |  Brown (23)  |  Chemical (303)  |  Color (155)  |  Crystal (71)  |  Do (1905)  |  Exist (458)  |  Father (113)  |  Forget (125)  |  Fruit (108)  |  Glass (94)  |  Green (65)  |  Growth (200)  |  Hard (246)  |  Inorganic (14)  |  Landscape (46)  |  Little (717)  |  Melancholy (17)  |  Moss (14)  |  Most (1728)  |  Mushroom (4)  |  Mussel (2)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Never (1089)  |  Origin (250)  |  Plant (320)  |  Pod (2)  |  Polyp (4)  |  Precisely (93)  |  Respect (212)  |  Saw (160)  |  Think (1122)  |  Thought (995)  |  Tree (269)  |  Try (296)  |  Turn (454)  |  Twig (15)  |  Upward (44)  |  Vegetation (24)  |  Vessel (63)  |  Virtue (117)  |  Water (503)  |  Way (1214)

If in a community of the blind one man suddenly received the gift of sight, he would have much to tell which would not be at all scientific.
Swarthmore Lecture (1929) at Friends’ House, London, printed in Science and the Unseen World (1929), 79.
Science quotes on:  |  Blind (98)  |  Community (111)  |  Gift (105)  |  Man (2252)  |  Scientific (955)  |  Suddenly (91)  |  Tell (344)

If the Humours of the Eye by old Age decay, so as by shrinking to make the Cornea and Coat of the Crystalline Humour grow flatter than before, the Light will not be refracted enough, and for want of a sufficient Refraction will not converge to the bottom of the Eye but to some place beyond it, and by consequence paint in the bottom of the Eye a confused Picture, and according to the Indistinctuess of this Picture the Object will appear confused. This is the reason of the decay of sight in old Men, and shews why their Sight is mended by Spectacles. For those Convex glasses supply the defect of plumpness in the Eye, and by increasing the Refraction make the rays converge sooner, so as to convene distinctly at the bottom of the Eye if the Glass have a due degree of convexity. And the contrary happens in short-sighted Men whose Eyes are too plump. For the Refraction being now too great, the Rays converge and convene in the Eyes before they come at the bottom; and therefore the Picture made in the bottom and the Vision caused thereby will not be distinct, unless the Object be brought so near the Eye as that the place where the converging Rays convene may be removed to the bottom, or that the plumpness of the Eye be taken off and the Refractions diminished by a Concave-glass of a due degree of Concavity, or lastly that by Age the Eye grow flatter till it come to a due Figure: For short-sighted Men see remote Objects best in Old Age, and therefore they are accounted to have the most lasting Eyes.
Opticks (1704), Book 1, Part 1, Axiom VII, 10-11.
Science quotes on:  |  According (236)  |  Account (195)  |  Age (509)  |  Being (1276)  |  Best (467)  |  Beyond (316)  |  Concave (6)  |  Consequence (220)  |  Contrary (143)  |  Converge (10)  |  Convergence (4)  |  Convex (6)  |  Decay (59)  |  Defect (31)  |  Degree (277)  |  Distinct (98)  |  Due (143)  |  Enough (341)  |  Eye (440)  |  Figure (162)  |  Glass (94)  |  Great (1610)  |  Grow (247)  |  Happen (282)  |  Humour (116)  |  Lens (15)  |  Light (635)  |  Most (1728)  |  Object (438)  |  Old (499)  |  Old Age (35)  |  Picture (148)  |  Ray (115)  |  Reason (766)  |  Refraction (13)  |  Remote (86)  |  See (1094)  |  Short (200)  |  Short-Sighted (5)  |  Spectacle (35)  |  Spectacles (10)  |  Sufficient (133)  |  Supply (100)  |  Vision (127)  |  Want (504)  |  Why (491)  |  Will (2350)

In presenting a mathematical argument the great thing is to give the educated reader the chance to catch on at once to the momentary point and take details for granted: his successive mouthfuls should be such as can be swallowed at sight; in case of accidents, or in case he wishes for once to check in detail, he should have only a clearly circumscribed little problem to solve (e.g. to check an identity: two trivialities omitted can add up to an impasse). The unpractised writer, even after the dawn of a conscience, gives him no such chance; before he can spot the point he has to tease his way through a maze of symbols of which not the tiniest suffix can be skipped.
In A Mathematician's Miscellany (1953). Reissued as Béla Bollobás (ed.), Littlewood’s Miscellany (1986), 49.
Science quotes on:  |  Accident (92)  |  Argument (145)  |  Chance (244)  |  Conscience (52)  |  Dawn (31)  |  Detail (150)  |  Educated (12)  |  Grant (76)  |  Great (1610)  |  Identity (19)  |  Impasse (2)  |  Little (717)  |  Mathematics (1395)  |  Point (584)  |  Present (630)  |  Problem (731)  |  Reader (42)  |  Solve (145)  |  Successive (73)  |  Suffix (2)  |  Swallow (32)  |  Symbol (100)  |  Thing (1914)  |  Through (846)  |  Two (936)  |  Way (1214)  |  Writer (90)

In structure these little animals were fashioned like a bell, and at the round opening they made such a stir, that the particles in the water thereabout were set in motion thereby. … And though I must have seen quite 20 of these little animals on their long tails alongside one another very gently moving, with outstretcht bodies and straitened-out tails; yet in an instant, as it were, they pulled their bodies and their tails together, and no sooner had they contracted their bodies and tails, than they began to stick their tails out again very leisurely, and stayed thus some time continuing their gentle motion: which sight I found mightily diverting.
[Describing the ciliate Vorticella.]
Letter to the Royal Society, London (25 Dec 1702). In Clifford Dobell (ed.), Anthony van Leewenhoek and his “Little Animals” (1932), 277.
Science quotes on:  |  Animal (651)  |  Animalcule (12)  |  Bell (35)  |  Contract (11)  |  Diversion (10)  |  Instant (46)  |  Little (717)  |  Long (778)  |  Motion (320)  |  Must (1525)  |  Particle (200)  |  Protist (3)  |  Pull (43)  |  Set (400)  |  Stir (23)  |  Structure (365)  |  Tail (21)  |  Time (1911)  |  Together (392)  |  Water (503)

In the modern interpretation of Mendelism, facts are being transformed into factors at a rapid rate. If one factor will not explain the facts, then two are involved; if two prove insufficient, three will sometimes work out. The superior jugglery sometimes necessary to account for the results may blind us, if taken too naively, to the common-place that the results are often so excellently 'explained' because the explanation was invented to explain them. We work backwards from the facts to the factors, and then, presto! explain the facts by the very factors that we invented to account for them. I am not unappreciative of the distinct advantages that this method has in handling the facts. I realize how valuable it has been to us to be able to marshal our results under a few simple assumptions, yet I cannot but fear that we are rapidly developing a sort of Mendelian ritual by which to explain the extraordinary facts of alternative inheritance. So long as we do not lose sight of the purely arbitrary and formal nature of our formulae, little harm will be done; and it is only fair to state that those who are doing the actual work of progress along Mendelian lines are aware of the hypothetical nature of the factor-assumption.
'What are 'Factors' in Mendelian Explanations?', American Breeders Association (1909), 5, 365.
Science quotes on:  |  Account (195)  |  Actual (118)  |  Advantage (144)  |  Arbitrary (27)  |  Assumption (96)  |  Backwards (18)  |  Being (1276)  |  Blind (98)  |  Common (447)  |  Distinct (98)  |  Do (1905)  |  Doing (277)  |  Explain (334)  |  Explanation (246)  |  Extraordinary (83)  |  Fact (1257)  |  Factor (47)  |  Facts (553)  |  Fear (212)  |  Hypothesis (314)  |  Inheritance (35)  |  Interpretation (89)  |  Involved (90)  |  Little (717)  |  Long (778)  |  Lose (165)  |  Gregor Mendel (22)  |  Method (531)  |  Modern (402)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Necessary (370)  |  Progress (492)  |  Prove (261)  |  Purely (111)  |  Rapidly (67)  |  Realize (157)  |  Result (700)  |  Ritual (9)  |  Simple (426)  |  State (505)  |  Superior (88)  |  Transform (74)  |  Transformation (72)  |  Two (936)  |  Will (2350)  |  Work (1402)

It gets you nowhere if the other person’s tail is only just in sight for the second half of the conversation.
…...
Science quotes on:  |  Conversation (46)  |  Half (63)  |  Nowhere (28)  |  Other (2233)  |  Person (366)  |  Second (66)  |  Tail (21)

It is a most beautiful and delightful sight to behold the body of the moon.
In pamphlet, The Sidereal Messenger (1610), reprinted in The Sidereal Messenger of Galileo Galilei: And a Part of the Preface to the Preface to Kepler's Dioptrics Containing the Original Account of Galileo's Astronomical Discoveries (1880), 8.
Science quotes on:  |  Astronomy (251)  |  Beautiful (271)  |  Behold (19)  |  Body (557)  |  Delightful (18)  |  Moon (252)  |  Most (1728)

It is a wrong business when the younger cultivators of science put out of sight and deprecate what their predecessors have done; but obviously that is the tendency of Huxley and his friends … It is very true that Huxley was bitter against the Bishop of Oxford, but I was not present at the debate. Perhaps the Bishop was not prudent to venture into a field where no eloquence can supersede the need for precise knowledge. The young naturalists declared themselves in favour of Darwin’s views which tendency I saw already at Leeds two years ago. I am sorry for it, for I reckon Darwin’s book to be an utterly unphilosophical one.
Letter to James D, Forbes (24 Jul 1860). Trinity College Cambridge, Whewell Manuscripts.
Science quotes on:  |  Against (332)  |  Already (226)  |  Bishop (3)  |  Bitter (30)  |  Bitterness (4)  |  Book (413)  |  Business (156)  |  Charles Darwin (322)  |  Debate (40)  |  Declared (24)  |  Deprecate (2)  |  Eloquence (7)  |  Field (378)  |  Friend (180)  |  Thomas Henry Huxley (132)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Naturalist (79)  |  Oxford (16)  |  Philosophy (409)  |  Precise (71)  |  Predecessor (29)  |  Present (630)  |  Reckon (31)  |  Saw (160)  |  Sorry (31)  |  Superseding (2)  |  Tendency (110)  |  Themselves (433)  |  Truth (1109)  |  Two (936)  |  View (496)  |  Wrong (246)  |  Year (963)  |  Young (253)  |  Younger (21)

It is like the man who became short-sighted and refused to wear glasses, saying there was nothing wrong with him, but that the trouble was that the recent papers were so badly printed.
In Psychological Commentaries on the Teaching of Gurdjieff (1972), 98.
Science quotes on:  |  Bad (185)  |  Badly (32)  |  Glasses (2)  |  Man (2252)  |  Nothing (1000)  |  Paper (192)  |  Printed (3)  |  Recent (78)  |  Refusal (23)  |  French Saying (67)  |  Short (200)  |  Short-Sighted (5)  |  Trouble (117)  |  Wrong (246)

It takes a trained and discerning researcher to keep the goal in sight, and to detect evidence of the creeping progress toward it.
'A Scientist and the World He Lives In', Speech to the Empire Club of Canada (27 Nov 1986) in C. Frank Turner and Tim Dickson (eds.), The Empire Club of Canada Speeches 1986-1987 (1987), 149-161.
Science quotes on:  |  Detect (45)  |  Discerning (16)  |  Evidence (267)  |  Goal (155)  |  Progress (492)  |  Research (753)  |  Researcher (36)  |  Train (118)

It would seem at first sight as if the rapid expansion of the region of mathematics must be a source of danger to its future progress. Not only does the area widen but the subjects of study increase rapidly in number, and the work of the mathematician tends to become more and more specialized. It is, of course, merely a brilliant exaggeration to say that no mathematician is able to understand the work of any other mathematician, but it is certainly true that it is daily becoming more and more difficult for a mathematician to keep himself acquainted, even in a general way, with the progress of any of the branches of mathematics except those which form the field of his own labours. I believe, however, that the increasing extent of the territory of mathematics will always be counteracted by increased facilities in the means of communication. Additional knowledge opens to us new principles and methods which may conduct us with the greatest ease to results which previously were most difficult of access; and improvements in notation may exercise the most powerful effects both in the simplification and accessibility of a subject. It rests with the worker in mathematics not only to explore new truths, but to devise the language by which they may be discovered and expressed; and the genius of a great mathematician displays itself no less in the notation he invents for deciphering his subject than in the results attained. … I have great faith in the power of well-chosen notation to simplify complicated theories and to bring remote ones near and I think it is safe to predict that the increased knowledge of principles and the resulting improvements in the symbolic language of mathematics will always enable us to grapple satisfactorily with the difficulties arising from the mere extent of the subject.
In Presidential Address British Association for the Advancement of Science, Section A., (1890), Nature, 42, 466.
Science quotes on:  |  Access (21)  |  Accessibility (3)  |  Acquaint (11)  |  Additional (6)  |  Area (33)  |  Arise (162)  |  Arising (22)  |  Attain (126)  |  Become (821)  |  Becoming (96)  |  Belief (615)  |  Both (496)  |  Branch (155)  |  Brilliant (57)  |  Bring (95)  |  Certainly (185)  |  Chosen (48)  |  Communication (101)  |  Complicated (117)  |  Conduct (70)  |  Counteract (5)  |  Course (413)  |  Daily (91)  |  Danger (127)  |  Decipher (7)  |  Devise (16)  |  Difficult (263)  |  Difficulty (201)  |  Discover (571)  |  Display (59)  |  Ease (40)  |  Effect (414)  |  Enable (122)  |  Exaggeration (16)  |  Exercise (113)  |  Expansion (43)  |  Exploration (161)  |  Express (192)  |  Extent (142)  |  Facility (14)  |  Faith (209)  |  Field (378)  |  First (1302)  |  First Sight (6)  |  Form (976)  |  Future (467)  |  General (521)  |  Genius (301)  |  Grapple (11)  |  Great (1610)  |  Greatest (330)  |  Himself (461)  |  Improvement (117)  |  Increase (225)  |  Invent (57)  |  Keep (104)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Labor (200)  |  Language (308)  |  Less (105)  |  Mathematician (407)  |  Mathematics (1395)  |  Mean (810)  |  Means (587)  |  Mere (86)  |  Merely (315)  |  Method (531)  |  More (2558)  |  Most (1728)  |  Must (1525)  |  New (1273)  |  Notation (28)  |  Number (710)  |  Of Course (22)  |  Open (277)  |  Other (2233)  |  Power (771)  |  Powerful (145)  |  Predict (86)  |  Previously (12)  |  Principle (530)  |  Progress (492)  |  Rapid (37)  |  Rapidly (67)  |  Region (40)  |  Remote (86)  |  Rest (287)  |  Result (700)  |  Safe (61)  |  Satisfactory (19)  |  Say (989)  |  Seem (150)  |  Simplification (20)  |  Simplify (14)  |  Source (101)  |  Specialized (9)  |  Study (701)  |  Study And Research In Mathematics (61)  |  Subject (543)  |  Symbolic (16)  |  Tend (124)  |  Territory (25)  |  Theory (1015)  |  Think (1122)  |  True (239)  |  Truth (1109)  |  Understand (648)  |  Way (1214)  |  Well-Chosen (2)  |  Widen (10)  |  Will (2350)  |  Work (1402)  |  Worker (34)

Leo Szilard’s Ten Commandments:
1. Recognize the connections of things and the laws of conduct of men, so that you may know what you are doing.
2. Let your acts be directed towards a worthy goal, but do not ask if they will reach it; they are to be models and examples, not means to an end.
3. Speak to all men as you do to yourself, with no concern for the effect you make, so that you do not shut them out from your world; lest in isolation the meaning of life slips out of sight and you lose the belief in the perfection of the creation.
4. Do not destroy what you cannot create.
5. Touch no dish, except that you are hungry.
6. Do not covet what you cannot have.
7. Do not lie without need.
8. Honor children. Listen reverently to their words and speak to them with infinite love.
9. Do your work for six years; but in the seventh, go into solitude or among strangers, so that the memory of your friends does not hinder you from being what you have become.
10. Lead your life with a gentle hand and be ready to leave whenever you are called.
Circulated by Mrs. Szilard in July 1964, in a letter to their friends (translated by Dr. Jacob Bronowski). As printed in Robert J. Levine, Ethics and Regulation of Clinical Research (1988), 431.
Science quotes on:  |  Act (278)  |  Ask (420)  |  Become (821)  |  Being (1276)  |  Belief (615)  |  Call (781)  |  Child (333)  |  Children (201)  |  Commandment (8)  |  Concern (239)  |  Conduct (70)  |  Connection (171)  |  Create (245)  |  Creation (350)  |  Destroy (189)  |  Destruction (135)  |  Direct (228)  |  Do (1905)  |  Doing (277)  |  Effect (414)  |  End (603)  |  Example (98)  |  Friend (180)  |  Goal (155)  |  Hinder (12)  |  Honor (57)  |  Hunger (23)  |  Infinite (243)  |  Isolation (32)  |  Know (1538)  |  Law (913)  |  Lead (391)  |  Lie (370)  |  Life (1870)  |  Listen (81)  |  Lose (165)  |  Love (328)  |  Mean (810)  |  Meaning (244)  |  Means (587)  |  Memory (144)  |  Model (106)  |  Need (320)  |  Perfection (131)  |  Reach (286)  |  Recognition (93)  |  Recognize (136)  |  Shut (41)  |  Solitude (20)  |  Speak (240)  |  Speaking (118)  |  Stranger (16)  |  Thing (1914)  |  Touch (146)  |  Whenever (81)  |  Will (2350)  |  Word (650)  |  Work (1402)  |  World (1850)  |  Year (963)

Mathematics has the completely false reputation of yielding infallible conclusions. Its infallibility is nothing but identity. Two times two is not four, but it is just two times two, and that is what we call four for short. But four is nothing new at all. And thus it goes on and on in its conclusions, except that in the higher formulas the identity fades out of sight.
As quoted in Richard von Mises, 'Mathematical Postulates and Human Understanding', collected in J.R. Newman (ed.) The World of Mathematics (1956), Vol. 3, 1754.
Science quotes on:  |  Call (781)  |  Completely (137)  |  Conclusion (266)  |  Fade (12)  |  False (105)  |  Formula (102)  |  Identity (19)  |  Infallibility (7)  |  Infallible (18)  |  Mathematics (1395)  |  New (1273)  |  Nothing (1000)  |  Reputation (33)  |  Short (200)  |  Time (1911)  |  Two (936)  |  Yield (86)

My method consists in allowing the mind to play freely for a very brief period, until a couple or so of ideas have passed through it, and then, while the traces or echoes of those ideas are still lingering in the brain, to turn the attention upon them with a sudden and complete awakening; to arrest, to scrutinise them, and to record their exact appearance... The general impression they have left upon me is like that which many of us have experienced when the basement of our house happens to be under thorough sanitary repairs, and we realise for the first time the complex system of drains and gas and water pipes, flues, bell-wires, and so forth, upon which our comfort depends, but which are usually hidden out of sight, and with whose existence, so long as they acted well, we had never troubled ourselves.
Inquiries into Human Faculty and its Development (1883),185-6.
Science quotes on:  |  Act (278)  |  Appearance (145)  |  Attention (196)  |  Awakening (11)  |  Bell (35)  |  Brain (281)  |  Brief (37)  |  Comfort (64)  |  Complete (209)  |  Complex (202)  |  Consist (223)  |  Depend (238)  |  Drain (12)  |  Existence (481)  |  First (1302)  |  Gas (89)  |  General (521)  |  Happen (282)  |  House (143)  |  Idea (881)  |  Impression (118)  |  Long (778)  |  Method (531)  |  Mind (1377)  |  Never (1089)  |  Ourselves (247)  |  Pass (241)  |  Period (200)  |  Psychology (166)  |  Record (161)  |  Still (614)  |  Sudden (70)  |  System (545)  |  Thorough (40)  |  Through (846)  |  Time (1911)  |  Trace (109)  |  Turn (454)  |  Usually (176)  |  Water (503)  |  Wire (36)

Nature is man’s teacher. She unfolds her treasures to his search, unseals his eye, illumes his mind, and purifies his heart; an influence breathes from all the sights and sounds of her existence.
…...
Science quotes on:  |  Breathe (49)  |  Existence (481)  |  Eye (440)  |  Heart (243)  |  Influence (231)  |  Man (2252)  |  Mind (1377)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Purify (9)  |  Search (175)  |  Sound (187)  |  Teacher (154)  |  Treasure (59)  |  Unfold (15)

Newton was the greatest creative genius physics has ever seen. None of the other candidates for the superlative (Einstein, Maxwell, Boltzmann, Gibbs, and Feynman) has matched Newton’s combined achievements as theoretician, experimentalist, and mathematician. … If you were to become a time traveler and meet Newton on a trip back to the seventeenth century, you might find him something like the performer who first exasperates everyone in sight and then goes on stage and sings like an angel.
In Great Physicists (2001), 39.
Science quotes on:  |  17th Century (20)  |  Achievement (187)  |  Angel (47)  |  Back (395)  |  Become (821)  |  Ludwig Eduard Boltzmann (25)  |  Candidate (8)  |  Century (319)  |  Creative (144)  |  Einstein (101)  |  Albert Einstein (624)  |  Experimentalist (20)  |  Richard P. Feynman (125)  |  Find (1014)  |  First (1302)  |  Genius (301)  |  Gibbs_Josiah (2)  |  Greatest (330)  |  Match (30)  |  Mathematician (407)  |  Maxwell (42)  |  James Clerk Maxwell (91)  |  Sir Isaac Newton (363)  |  Other (2233)  |  Performer (2)  |  Physic (515)  |  Physics (564)  |  Sing (29)  |  Something (718)  |  Stage (152)  |  Superlative (4)  |  Theorist (44)  |  Time (1911)  |  Time Travel (4)  |  Traveler (33)

Newton was the greatest creative genius physics has ever seen. None of the other candidates for the superlative (Einstein, Maxwell, Boltzmann, Gibbs, and Feynman) has matched Newton’s combined achievements as theoretician, experimentalist, and mathematician. … If you were to become a time traveler and meet Newton on a trip back to the seventeenth century, you might find him something like the performer who first exasperates everyone in sight and then goes on stage and sings like an angel.
In Great Physicists (2001), 39.
Science quotes on:  |  Achievement (187)  |  Angel (47)  |  Back (395)  |  Become (821)  |  Candidate (8)  |  Century (319)  |  Creative (144)  |  Einstein (101)  |  Experimentalist (20)  |  Find (1014)  |  First (1302)  |  Genius (301)  |  Greatest (330)  |  Match (30)  |  Maxwell (42)  |  Other (2233)  |  Physic (515)  |  Physics (564)  |  Something (718)  |  Stage (152)  |  Time (1911)  |  Traveler (33)

No sight is more provocative of awe than is the night sky.
…...
Science quotes on:  |  Awe (43)  |  More (2558)  |  Night (133)  |  Sky (174)

Nothing afflicted Marcellus so much as the death of Archimedes, who was then, as fate would have it, intent upon working out some problem by a diagram, and having fixed his mind alike and his eyes upon the subject of his speculation, he never noticed the incursion of the Romans, nor that the city was taken. In this transport of study and contemplation, a soldier, unexpectedly coming up to him, commanded him to follow to Marcellus, which he declined to do before he had worked out his problem to a demonstration; the soldier, enraged, drew his sword and ran him through. Others write, that a Roman soldier, running upon him with a drawn sword, offered to kill him; and that Archimedes, looking back, earnestly besought him to hold his hand a little while, that he might not leave what he was at work upon inconclusive and imperfect; but the soldier, nothing moved by his entreaty, instantly killed him. Others again relate, that as Archimedes was carrying to Marcellus mathematical instruments, dials, spheres, and angles, by which the magnitude of the sun might be measured to the sight, some soldiers seeing him, and thinking that he carried gold in a vessel, slew him. Certain it is, that his death was very afflicting to Marcellus; and that Marcellus ever after regarded him that killed him as a murderer; and that he sought for his kindred and honoured them with signal favours.
Plutarch
In John Dryden (trans.), Life of Marcellus.
Science quotes on:  |  Afflict (4)  |  Alike (60)  |  Angle (25)  |  Archimedes (63)  |  Back (395)  |  Beseech (3)  |  Carry (130)  |  Certain (557)  |  City (87)  |  Coming (114)  |  Command (60)  |  Contemplation (75)  |  Death (406)  |  Decline (28)  |  Demonstration (120)  |  Diagram (20)  |  Dial (9)  |  Do (1905)  |  Draw (140)  |  Earnestly (4)  |  Eye (440)  |  Fate (76)  |  Favor (69)  |  Fix (34)  |  Follow (389)  |  Gold (101)  |  Hand (149)  |  Hold (96)  |  Honour (58)  |  Imperfect (46)  |  Inconclusive (3)  |  Incursion (2)  |  Instantly (20)  |  Instrument (158)  |  Intent (9)  |  Kill (100)  |  Kindred (12)  |  Leave (138)  |  Little (717)  |  Looking (191)  |  Magnitude (88)  |  Marcellus (2)  |  Mathematicians and Anecdotes (141)  |  Mathematics (1395)  |  Measure (241)  |  Mind (1377)  |  Move (223)  |  Murderer (4)  |  Never (1089)  |  Nothing (1000)  |  Notice (81)  |  Offer (142)  |  Other (2233)  |  Problem (731)  |  Regard (312)  |  Relate (26)  |  Roman (39)  |  Run (158)  |  Running (61)  |  See (1094)  |  Seeing (143)  |  Seek (218)  |  Signal (29)  |  Soldier (28)  |  Speculation (137)  |  Sphere (118)  |  Study (701)  |  Subject (543)  |  Sun (407)  |  Sword (16)  |  Think (1122)  |  Thinking (425)  |  Through (846)  |  Transport (31)  |  Unexpected (55)  |  Vessel (63)  |  Work (1402)  |  Write (250)

Nothing afflicted Marcellus so much as the death of Archimedes, who was then, as fate would have it, intent upon working out some problem by a diagram, and having fixed his mind alike and his eyes upon the subject of his speculation, he never noticed the incursion of the Romans, nor that the city was taken. In this transport of study and contemplation, a soldier, unexpectedly coming up to him, commanded him to follow to Marcellus, which he declined to do before he had worked out his problem to a demonstration; the soldier, enraged, drew his sword and ran him through. Others write, that a Roman soldier, running upon him with a drawn sword, offered to kill him; and that Archimedes, looking back, earnestly besought him to hold his hand a little while, that he might not leave what he was at work upon inconclusive and imperfect; but the soldier, nothing moved by his entreaty, instantly killed him. Others again relate, that as Archimedes was carrying to Marcellus mathematical instruments, dials, spheres, and angles, by which the magnitude of the sun might be measured to the sight, some soldiers seeing him, and thinking that he carried gold in a vessel, slew him. Certain it is, that his death was very afflicting to Marcellus; and that Marcellus ever after regarded him that killed him as a murderer; and that he sought for his kindred and honoured them with signal favours.
Plutarch
In John Dryden (trans.), Life of Marcellus.
Science quotes on:  |  Alike (60)  |  Back (395)  |  Certain (557)  |  City (87)  |  Coming (114)  |  Command (60)  |  Contemplation (75)  |  Death (406)  |  Demonstration (120)  |  Diagram (20)  |  Dial (9)  |  Do (1905)  |  Eye (440)  |  Fate (76)  |  Follow (389)  |  Gold (101)  |  Honour (58)  |  Imperfect (46)  |  Instantly (20)  |  Instrument (158)  |  Kill (100)  |  Kindred (12)  |  Little (717)  |  Looking (191)  |  Magnitude (88)  |  Mind (1377)  |  Never (1089)  |  Nothing (1000)  |  Offer (142)  |  Other (2233)  |  Problem (731)  |  Regard (312)  |  Roman (39)  |  Running (61)  |  Seeing (143)  |  Signal (29)  |  Soldier (28)  |  Speculation (137)  |  Sphere (118)  |  Study (701)  |  Subject (543)  |  Sun (407)  |  Thinking (425)  |  Through (846)  |  Transport (31)  |  Vessel (63)  |  Work (1402)  |  Write (250)

Now, I must tell you of a strange experience which bore fruit in my later life. … We had a cold [snap] drier that ever observed before. People walking in the snow left a luminous trail behind them and a snowball thrown against an obstacle gave a flare of light like a loaf of sugar hit with a knife. [As I stroked] Mačak’s back, [it became] a sheet of light and my hand produced a shower of sparks. … My father … remarked, this is nothing but electricity, the same thing you see on the trees in a storm. My mother seemed alarmed. Stop playing with the cat, she said, he might start a fire. I was thinking abstractly. Is nature a cat? If so, who strokes its back? It can only be God, I concluded. …
I cannot exaggerate the effect of this marvelous sight on my childish imagination. Day after day I asked myself what is electricity and found no answer. Eighty years have gone by since and I still ask the same question, unable to answer it.
Letter to Miss Pola Fotitch, 'A Story of Youth Told by Age' (1939). In John Ratzlaff, editor, Tesla Said (1984), 283-84. Cited in Marc J. Seifer, Wizard: The Life and Times of Nikola Tesla (1998), 5.
Science quotes on:  |  Against (332)  |  Alarm (19)  |  Answer (389)  |  Ask (420)  |  Back (395)  |  Behind (139)  |  Biography (254)  |  Cat (52)  |  Childish (20)  |  Cold (115)  |  Effect (414)  |  Electricity (168)  |  Experience (494)  |  Father (113)  |  Fire (203)  |  Fruit (108)  |  God (776)  |  Imagination (349)  |  Knife (24)  |  Life (1870)  |  Light (635)  |  Loaf (5)  |  Luminous (19)  |  Marvelous (31)  |  Mother (116)  |  Must (1525)  |  Myself (211)  |  Mystery (188)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Nothing (1000)  |  Observation (593)  |  Observed (149)  |  Obstacle (42)  |  People (1031)  |  Playing (42)  |  Produced (187)  |  Question (649)  |  See (1094)  |  Snap (7)  |  Snow (39)  |  Snowball (4)  |  Spark (32)  |  Start (237)  |  Still (614)  |  Storm (56)  |  Strange (160)  |  Stroke (19)  |  Sugar (26)  |  Tell (344)  |  Thing (1914)  |  Thinking (425)  |  Tree (269)  |  Year (963)

October 9, 1863
Always, however great the height of the balloon, when I have seen the horizon it has roughly appeared to be on the level of the car though of course the dip of the horizon is a very appreciable quantity or the same height as the eye. From this one might infer that, could the earth be seen without a cloud or anything to obscure it, and the boundary line of the plane approximately the same height as the eye, the general appearance would be that of a slight concavity; but I have never seen any part of the surface of the earth other than as a plane.
Towns and cities, when viewed from the balloon are like models in motion. I shall always remember the ascent of 9th October, 1863, when we passed over London about sunset. At the time when we were 7,000 feet high, and directly over London Bridge, the scene around was one that cannot probably be equalled in the world. We were still so low as not to have lost sight of the details of the spectacle which presented itself to our eyes; and with one glance the homes of 3,000,000 people could be seen, and so distinct was the view, that every large building was easily distinguishable. In fact, the whole of London was visible, and some parts most clearly. All round, the suburbs were also very distinct, with their lines of detached villas, imbedded as it were in a mass of shrubs; beyond, the country was like a garden, its fields, well marked, becoming smaller and smaller as the eye wandered farther and farther away.
Again looking down, there was the Thames, throughout its whole length, without the slightest mist, dotted over its winding course with innumerable ships and steamboats, like moving toys. Gravesend was visible, also the mouth of the Thames, and the coast around as far as Norfolk. The southern shore of the mouth of the Thames was not so clear, but the sea beyond was seen for many miles; when at a higher elevation, I looked for the coast of France, but was unable to see it. On looking round, the eye was arrested by the garden-like appearance of the county of Kent, till again London claimed yet more careful attention.
Smoke, thin and blue, was curling from it, and slowly moving away in beautiful curves, from all except one part, south of the Thames, where it was less blue and seemed more dense, till the cause became evident; it was mixed with mist rising from the ground, the southern limit of which was bounded by an even line, doubtless indicating the meeting of the subsoils of gravel and clay. The whole scene was surmounted by a canopy of blue, everywhere free from cloud, except near the horizon, where a band of cumulus and stratus extended all round, forming a fitting boundary to such a glorious view.
As seen from the earth, the sunset this evening was described as fine, the air being clear and the shadows well defined; but, as we rose to view it and its effects, the golden hues increased in intensity; their richness decreased as the distance from the sun increased, both right and left; but still as far as 90º from the sun, rose-coloured clouds extended. The remainder of the circle was completed, for the most part, by pure white cumulus of well-rounded and symmetrical forms.
I have seen London by night. I have crossed it during the day at the height of four miles. I have often admired the splendour of sky scenery, but never have I seen anything which surpassed this spectacle. The roar of the town heard at this elevation was a deep, rich, continuous sound the voice of labour. At four miles above London, all was hushed; no sound reached our ears.
Travels in the Air (1871), 99-100.
Science quotes on:  |  Air (366)  |  Appearance (145)  |  Attention (196)  |  Balloon (16)  |  Beautiful (271)  |  Becoming (96)  |  Being (1276)  |  Beyond (316)  |  Both (496)  |  Bound (120)  |  Boundary (55)  |  Bridge (49)  |  Building (158)  |  Canopy (8)  |  Car (75)  |  Cause (561)  |  Circle (117)  |  Claim (154)  |  Cloud (111)  |  Completed (30)  |  Continuous (83)  |  Country (269)  |  Course (413)  |  Curve (49)  |  Deep (241)  |  Detail (150)  |  Distance (171)  |  Distinct (98)  |  Down (455)  |  Ear (69)  |  Earth (1076)  |  Effect (414)  |  Elevation (13)  |  Everywhere (98)  |  Evident (92)  |  Extend (129)  |  Eye (440)  |  Fact (1257)  |  Farther (51)  |  Field (378)  |  Flight (101)  |  Form (976)  |  Forming (42)  |  Free (239)  |  Garden (64)  |  General (521)  |  Glance (36)  |  Glorious (49)  |  Golden (47)  |  Great (1610)  |  Ground (222)  |  High (370)  |  Home (184)  |  Horizon (47)  |  Innumerable (56)  |  Intensity (34)  |  Labor (200)  |  Large (398)  |  Limit (294)  |  Look (584)  |  Looking (191)  |  Low (86)  |  Marked (55)  |  Mass (160)  |  Mist (17)  |  Model (106)  |  More (2558)  |  Most (1728)  |  Motion (320)  |  Mouth (54)  |  Never (1089)  |  Obscure (66)  |  Other (2233)  |  Pass (241)  |  People (1031)  |  Present (630)  |  Pure (299)  |  Quantity (136)  |  Reach (286)  |  Remainder (7)  |  Remember (189)  |  Right (473)  |  Rising (44)  |  Rose (36)  |  Scene (36)  |  Sea (326)  |  See (1094)  |  Shadow (73)  |  Ship (69)  |  Shrub (5)  |  Sky (174)  |  Smoke (32)  |  Sound (187)  |  South (39)  |  Spectacle (35)  |  Splendour (8)  |  Steamboat (7)  |  Still (614)  |  Suburb (7)  |  Sun (407)  |  Sunset (27)  |  Surface (223)  |  Surface Of The Earth (36)  |  Surpass (33)  |  Thames (6)  |  Throughout (98)  |  Time (1911)  |  Toy (22)  |  View (496)  |  Visible (87)  |  Wander (44)  |  White (132)  |  Whole (756)  |  Winding (8)  |  World (1850)

One doesn’t discover new lands without consenting to lose sight of the shore for a very long time.
In The Counterfeiters: A Novel (1951, 2012), 353. As translated by Dorothy Bussy from the original French, “On ne découvre pas de terre nouvelle sans consentir à perdre de vue, d'abord et longtemps, tout rivage”, in Les Faux Monnayeurs (1925).
Science quotes on:  |  Consent (14)  |  Discover (571)  |  Land (131)  |  Long (778)  |  Lose (165)  |  New (1273)  |  Shore (25)  |  Time (1911)

One summer night, out on a flat headland, all but surrounded by the waters of the bay, the horizons were remote and distant rims on the edge of space. Millions of stars blazed in darkness, and on the far shore a few lights burned in cottages. Otherwise there was no reminder of human life. My companion and I were alone with the stars: the misty river of the Milky Way flowing across the sky, the patterns of the constellations standing out bright and clear, a blazing planet low on the horizon. It occurred to me that if this were a sight that could be seen only once in a century, this little headland would be thronged with spectators. But it can be seen many scores of nights in any year, and so the lights burned in the cottages and the inhabitants probably gave not a thought to the beauty overhead; and because they could see it almost any night, perhaps they never will.
In The Sense of Wonder (1956), as condensed in Reader’s Digest (1986), 129, 174.
Science quotes on:  |  Across (32)  |  Alone (324)  |  Bay (6)  |  Beauty (313)  |  Blaze (14)  |  Bright (81)  |  Burn (99)  |  Century (319)  |  Clear (111)  |  Companion (22)  |  Constellation (18)  |  Cottage (4)  |  Darkness (72)  |  Distant (33)  |  Edge (51)  |  Far (158)  |  Flat (34)  |  Flow (89)  |  Give (208)  |  Headland (2)  |  Horizon (47)  |  Human (1512)  |  Human Life (32)  |  Inhabitant (50)  |  Life (1870)  |  Light (635)  |  Little (717)  |  Low (86)  |  Milky Way (29)  |  Millions (17)  |  Misty (6)  |  Never (1089)  |  Night (133)  |  Occur (151)  |  Otherwise (26)  |  Pattern (116)  |  Planet (402)  |  Probably (50)  |  Reminder (13)  |  Remote (86)  |  Rim (5)  |  River (140)  |  Score (8)  |  See (1094)  |  Shore (25)  |  Sky (174)  |  Space (523)  |  Spectator (11)  |  Stand (284)  |  Star (460)  |  Stars (304)  |  Summer (56)  |  Surround (33)  |  Thought (995)  |  Throng (3)  |  Water (503)  |  Way (1214)  |  Will (2350)  |  Year (963)

Artificial Intelligence quote: One wintry night, dozing by firelight
One wintry night, dozing by firelight,
Kekulé dreamt of snakes curling tight,
  With whirl and twist,
  In a scholarly tryst,
Carbon’s ring structure burst clearly in sight.
Limerick co-written by Artificial Intelligence and Ian Ellis.
Science quotes on:  |  Burst (41)  |  Carbon (68)  |  Clearly (45)  |  Curl (4)  |  Dream (222)  |  August Kekulé (14)  |  Night (133)  |  Ring (18)  |  Scholarly (2)  |  Snake (29)  |  Structure (365)  |  Tight (4)  |  Twist (10)  |  Whirl (10)  |  Winter (46)

Our sight is the most perfect and most delightful of all our senses.
The Spectator (21 Jun 1712), 4, No. 411. In The Works of Joseph Addison editted by George Washington Greene (1883), Vol. 6, 322.
Science quotes on:  |  Delightful (18)  |  Most (1728)  |  Perfect (223)  |  Sense (785)

Probably if half a kilogram [of radium] were in a bottle on that table it would kill us all. It would almost certainly destroy our sight and burn our skins to such an extent that we could not survive. The smallest bit placed on one’s arm would produce a blister which it would need months to heal.
As quoted in 'Radium', New York Times (22 Feb 1903), 6. Note that X-rays were discovered only a few years before, in 1895, radioactivity in 1896, and the electron in 1897. Full knowledge of the harmful radiation did not exist at the time. Nevertheless, Crookes’ remark, in the words of the reporter, “would seem to indicate that it [radium] emits something more than light. Heat and actinic energy must make up a large part of its radiation. It also emits electrons with [great] velocity…”
Science quotes on:  |  Arm (82)  |  Blister (2)  |  Bottle (17)  |  Burn (99)  |  Certainly (185)  |  Destroy (189)  |  Destruction (135)  |  Extent (142)  |  Healing (28)  |  Kill (100)  |  Killing (14)  |  Kilogram (3)  |  Month (91)  |  Radium (29)  |  Skin (48)  |  Survival (105)  |  Survive (87)  |  Table (105)

Science is wonderful at destroying metaphysical answers, but incapable of providing substitute ones. Science takes away foundations without providing a replacement. Whether we want to be there or not, science has put us in the position of having to live without foundations. It was shocking when Nietzsche said this, but today it is commonplace; our historical position—and no end to it is in sight—is that of having to philosophise without 'foundations'.
In Hilary Putnam (ed.), The Many Faces of Realism: The Paul Carns Lectures (1987), 29. Excerpt 'Realism and Reasonableness', in Joseph Margolis and Jacques Catudal, The Quarrel between Invariance and Flux (2001), 122.
Science quotes on:  |  Answer (389)  |  Commonplace (24)  |  End (603)  |  Enquiry (89)  |  Foundation (177)  |  Historical (70)  |  Incapable (41)  |  Live (650)  |  Metaphysical (38)  |  Friedrich Nietzsche (37)  |  Replacement (13)  |  Substitute (47)  |  Today (321)  |  Want (504)  |  Wonderful (155)

Science usually advances by a succession of small steps, through a fog in which even the most keen-sighted explorer can seldom see more than a few paces ahead. Occasionally the fog lifts, an eminence is gained, and a wider stretch of territory can be surveyed—sometimes with startling results. A whole science may then seem to undergo a kaleidoscopic rearrangement, fragments of knowledge sometimes being found to fit together in a hitherto unsuspected manner. Sometimes the shock of readjustment may spread to other sciences; sometimes it may divert the whole current of human thought.
Opening paragraph, Physics and Philosophy (1943), 1.
Science quotes on:  |  Advance (298)  |  Being (1276)  |  Current (122)  |  Eminence (25)  |  Explorer (30)  |  Fit (139)  |  Fog (10)  |  Fragment (58)  |  Gain (146)  |  Human (1512)  |  Kaleidoscope (5)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Lift (57)  |  More (2558)  |  Most (1728)  |  Other (2233)  |  Pace (18)  |  Progress (492)  |  Rearrangement (5)  |  Result (700)  |  See (1094)  |  Seldom (68)  |  Shock (38)  |  Small (489)  |  Spread (86)  |  Startling (15)  |  Step (234)  |  Stretch (39)  |  Succession (80)  |  Survey (36)  |  Territory (25)  |  Thought (995)  |  Through (846)  |  Together (392)  |  Usually (176)  |  Whole (756)

Science, ships, policies, cities, factories, are not nothing,
Like a grand procession to music of distant bugles pouring, triumphantly moving, and grander heaving in sight,
They stand for realities—all is as it should be.
In poem, 'As I Walk These Broad Majestic Days', Leaves of Grass (1892), 379.
Science quotes on:  |  City (87)  |  Distant (33)  |  Factory (20)  |  Grand (29)  |  Heave (3)  |  Music (133)  |  Nothing (1000)  |  Policy (27)  |  Procession (5)  |  Reality (274)  |  Ship (69)  |  Stand (284)  |  Triumph (76)

Scratch an intellectual, and you find a would-be aristocrat who loathes the sight, the sound and the smell of common folk.
In 'The Young and the New York Times Magazine (22 Nov 1970), 120.
Science quotes on:  |  Aristocrat (3)  |  Common (447)  |  Find (1014)  |  Folk (10)  |  Intellectual (258)  |  Loathe (4)  |  Scratch (14)  |  Smell (29)  |  Sound (187)  |  Would-Be (2)

Seeing is an experience. A retinal reaction is only a physical state... People, not their eyes, see. Cameras, and eye-balls, are blind... there is more to seeing than meets the eyeball.
Patterns of Discovery (1958), 6-7.
Science quotes on:  |  Ball (64)  |  Blind (98)  |  Experience (494)  |  Eye (440)  |  More (2558)  |  People (1031)  |  Physical (518)  |  Reaction (106)  |  See (1094)  |  Seeing (143)  |  State (505)

Sight is a faculty; seeing, an art.
Man and Nature, (1864), 10.
Science quotes on:  |  Art (680)  |  Perception (97)  |  Seeing (143)

Some of my cousins who had the great advantage of University education used to tease me with arguments to prove that nothing has any existence except what we think of it. … These amusing mental acrobatics are all right to play with. They are perfectly harmless and perfectly useless. ... I always rested on the following argument. … We look up to the sky and see the sun. Our eyes are dazzled and our senses record the fact. So here is this great sun standing apparently on no better foundation than our physical senses. But happily there is a method, apart altogether from our physical senses, of testing the reality of the sun. It is by mathematics. By means of prolonged processes of mathematics, entirely separate from the senses, astronomers are able to calculate when an eclipse will occur. They predict by pure reason that a black spot will pass across the sun on a certain day. You go and look, and your sense of sight immediately tells you that their calculations are vindicated. So here you have the evidence of the senses reinforced by the entirely separate evidence of a vast independent process of mathematical reasoning. We have taken what is called in military map-making “a cross bearing.” When my metaphysical friends tell me that the data on which the astronomers made their calculations, were necessarily obtained originally through the evidence of the senses, I say, “no.” They might, in theory at any rate, be obtained by automatic calculating-machines set in motion by the light falling upon them without admixture of the human senses at any stage. When it is persisted that we should have to be told about the calculations and use our ears for that purpose, I reply that the mathematical process has a reality and virtue in itself, and that onie discovered it constitutes a new and independent factor. I am also at this point accustomed to reaffirm with emphasis my conviction that the sun is real, and also that it is hot— in fact hot as Hell, and that if the metaphysicians doubt it they should go there and see.
In My Early Life (1930).
Science quotes on:  |  Accustom (52)  |  Accustomed (46)  |  Advantage (144)  |  Argument (145)  |  Astronomer (97)  |  Better (493)  |  Calculate (58)  |  Calculation (134)  |  Call (781)  |  Certain (557)  |  Constitute (99)  |  Conviction (100)  |  Cousin (12)  |  Data (162)  |  Discover (571)  |  Doubt (314)  |  Ear (69)  |  Eclipse (25)  |  Education (423)  |  Evidence (267)  |  Existence (481)  |  Eye (440)  |  Fact (1257)  |  Foundation (177)  |  Friend (180)  |  Great (1610)  |  Hot (63)  |  Human (1512)  |  Immediately (115)  |  Light (635)  |  Look (584)  |  Machine (271)  |  Making (300)  |  Map (50)  |  Mathematics (1395)  |  Mean (810)  |  Means (587)  |  Mental (179)  |  Metaphysical (38)  |  Method (531)  |  Military (45)  |  Motion (320)  |  Necessarily (137)  |  New (1273)  |  Nothing (1000)  |  Obtain (164)  |  Occur (151)  |  Pass (241)  |  Physical (518)  |  Point (584)  |  Predict (86)  |  Process (439)  |  Prolong (29)  |  Prove (261)  |  Pure (299)  |  Purpose (336)  |  Reality (274)  |  Reason (766)  |  Reasoning (212)  |  Record (161)  |  Reply (58)  |  Rest (287)  |  Right (473)  |  Say (989)  |  See (1094)  |  Sense (785)  |  Separate (151)  |  Set (400)  |  Sky (174)  |  Stage (152)  |  Sun (407)  |  Tell (344)  |  Theory (1015)  |  Think (1122)  |  Through (846)  |  University (130)  |  Use (771)  |  Vast (188)  |  Virtue (117)  |  Will (2350)

Some of the most important results (e.g. Cauchy’s theorem) are so surprising at first sight that nothing short of a proof can make them credible.
As co-author with Bertha Swirls Jeffreys, in Methods of Mathematical Physics (1946, 1999), v.
Science quotes on:  |  Baron Augustin-Louis Cauchy (11)  |  Credible (3)  |  First (1302)  |  First Sight (6)  |  Important (229)  |  Most (1728)  |  Nothing (1000)  |  Proof (304)  |  Result (700)  |  Short (200)  |  Surprise (91)  |  Theorem (116)

Suppose you were given a watch, a tube to sight with and a string, and then asked to determine the distance to the nearest star. Or you were asked the chemical composition, pressure or temperature of the Sun. A hundred or more years ago, these questions seemed impossible. Now astronomers are answering them all the time, and they believe their answers. Why? Because there are many parallel ways and tests, and they all give the same answers.
As quoted in John Noble Wilford, 'Sizing up the Cosmos: An Astronomers Quest', New York Times (12 Mar 1991), C10.
Science quotes on:  |  All The Time (4)  |  Answer (389)  |  Ask (420)  |  Astronomer (97)  |  Belief (615)  |  Chemical (303)  |  Composition (86)  |  Determine (152)  |  Distance (171)  |  Hundred (240)  |  Impossible (263)  |  More (2558)  |  Parallel (46)  |  Pressure (69)  |  Question (649)  |  Seem (150)  |  Star (460)  |  String (22)  |  Sun (407)  |  Suppose (158)  |  Temperature (82)  |  Test (221)  |  Time (1911)  |  Tube (6)  |  Watch (118)  |  Way (1214)  |  Why (491)  |  Year (963)

That many very remarkable change and involuntary motions are sudden produced in the body by various affections of the mind, is undeniably evinced from a number of facts. Thus fear often causes a sudden and uncommon flow of pale urine. Looking much at one troubled with sore eyes, has sometimes affected the spectator with the same disease.—Certain sounds cause a shivering over the whole body.—The noise of a bagpipe has raised in some persons an inclination to make urine.—The sudden appearance of any frightful object, will, in delicate people, cause an uncommon palpitation of the heart.—The sight of an epileptic person agitated with convulsions, has brought on an epilepsy; and yawning is so very catching, as frequently to be propagated through whole companies.
In An Essay on the Vital and Other Involuntary Motions of Animals (1751), 253-254.
Science quotes on:  |  Affection (44)  |  Appearance (145)  |  Body (557)  |  Cause (561)  |  Certain (557)  |  Change (639)  |  Convulsion (5)  |  Delicate (45)  |  Disease (340)  |  Epilepsy (3)  |  Eye (440)  |  Fact (1257)  |  Facts (553)  |  Fear (212)  |  Flow (89)  |  Fright (11)  |  Heart (243)  |  Inclination (36)  |  Involuntary (4)  |  Looking (191)  |  Mind (1377)  |  Motion (320)  |  Noise (40)  |  Number (710)  |  Object (438)  |  People (1031)  |  Person (366)  |  Produced (187)  |  Propagation (15)  |  Sound (187)  |  Sudden (70)  |  Through (846)  |  Urine (18)  |  Various (205)  |  Whole (756)  |  Will (2350)  |  Yawn (2)

The advance of science is not comparable to the changes of a city, where old edifices are pitilessly torn down to give place to new, but to the continuous evolution of zoologic types which develop ceaselessly and end by becoming unrecognisable to the common sight, but where an expert eye finds always traces of the prior work of the centuries past. One must not think then that the old-fashioned theories have been sterile and vain.
The Value of Science (1905), in The Foundations of Science: Science and Hypothesis, The Value of Science, Science and Method(1946), trans. by George Bruce Halsted, 208.
Science quotes on:  |  Advance (298)  |  Becoming (96)  |  Century (319)  |  Change (639)  |  City (87)  |  Common (447)  |  Comparison (108)  |  Continuity (39)  |  Continuous (83)  |  Demolition (4)  |  Develop (278)  |  Development (441)  |  Down (455)  |  Edifice (26)  |  End (603)  |  Evolution (635)  |  Expert (67)  |  Eye (440)  |  Find (1014)  |  Must (1525)  |  New (1273)  |  Old (499)  |  Old-Fashioned (9)  |  Past (355)  |  Pity (16)  |  Prior (6)  |  Replacement (13)  |  Sterile (24)  |  Sterility (10)  |  Theory (1015)  |  Think (1122)  |  Thinking (425)  |  Torn (17)  |  Trace (109)  |  Type (171)  |  Vain (86)  |  Vanity (20)  |  Work (1402)  |  Zoology (38)

The antagonism between science and religion, about which we hear so much, appears to me purely factitious, fabricated on the one hand by short-sighted religious people, who confound theology with religion; and on the other by equally short-sighted scientific people who forget that science takes for its province only that which is susceptible of clear intellectual comprehension.
…...
Science quotes on:  |  Antagonism (6)  |  Appear (122)  |  Clear (111)  |  Comprehension (69)  |  Confound (21)  |  Equally (129)  |  Fabricate (6)  |  Forget (125)  |  Hand (149)  |  Hear (144)  |  Intellectual (258)  |  Other (2233)  |  People (1031)  |  Province (37)  |  Purely (111)  |  Religion (369)  |  Religious (134)  |  Science And Religion (337)  |  Scientific (955)  |  Short (200)  |  Short-Sighted (5)  |  Susceptible (8)  |  Theology (54)

The astronauts go to the moon, and what do they do?
They collect rocks, they lope around like they are stoned, and they hit a golf ball and they plant a flag. … All that technology to get to the moon, and what do we do—we play golf. … The moon walk was out of sight, wasn’t it?
With one giant step mankind took banality out of America and into the Cosmos. …
In 'Appearing Nightly,' (1980) [See Neil Armstrong].
Science quotes on:  |  America (143)  |  Astronaut (34)  |  Ball (64)  |  Cosmos (64)  |  Do (1905)  |  Giant (73)  |  Mankind (356)  |  Moon (252)  |  Plant (320)  |  Rock (176)  |  Step (234)  |  Technology (281)  |  Walk (138)

The chairs and tables around us which broadcast to us incessantly those signals which affect our sight and touch cannot in their nature be like unto the signals or to the sensations which the signals awake at the end of their journey.
Swarthmore Lecture (1929) at Friends’ House, London, printed in Science and the Unseen World (1929), 36.
Science quotes on:  |  Awake (19)  |  Chair (25)  |  End (603)  |  Journey (48)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Sensation (60)  |  Signal (29)  |  Table (105)  |  Touch (146)

The education of the intellect is a great business, but an unconsecrated intellect is a sight than which the sun in all his daily course can see no sadder.
From a book review giving the quote in an extract from John W. Chadwick’s book, The Education of Conscience in Herald of Health (Mar 1876), 27, 135. Note that this is clearly identified as the work of JOHN Chadwick. IMPORTANT NOTE: It is thus apparently NOT a quote by Edwin Chadwick, to whom it is attributed in 19th century quote collections, and now virally spread across the web. John Chadwick writes sermons; Edwin Chadwick writes on public health and clearly this quote is typical of lines from a sermon. The error traces back at least as early as Tryon Edwards, A Dictionary of Thoughts: Being a Cyclopedia of Laconic Quotations (1891), 266. Edwards gives the quote in the body of the text, attributed with the single word, “Chadwick,” then, in the prefatory material, the 'Index of Authors' lists only “Chadwick, Erwin”. Since the book review cited above makes clear the quote was written in a book by John W. Chadwick, Tryon Edwards must be in error.
Science quotes on:  |  Business (156)  |  Consecrate (3)  |  Course (413)  |  Daily (91)  |  Education (423)  |  Great (1610)  |  Intellect (251)  |  Sadness (36)  |  See (1094)  |  Sun (407)

The experiences are so innumerable and varied, that the journey appears to be interminable and the Destination is ever out of sight. But the wonder of it is, when at last you reach your Destination you find that you had never travelled at all! It was a journey from here to Here.
In 'A Journey Without Journeying', The Everything and the Nothing (1963), 11.
Science quotes on:  |  Appear (122)  |  Destination (16)  |  Experience (494)  |  Find (1014)  |  Innumerable (56)  |  Interminable (3)  |  Journey (48)  |  Last (425)  |  Never (1089)  |  Reach (286)  |  Travel (125)  |  Vary (27)  |  Wonder (251)

The first drizzling shower is born...
[Then] the flood comes down,
Threatening with deluge this devoted town. ...
Now from all parts the swelling kennels flow,
And bear their trophies with them as they go:
Filth of all hues and odors seem to tell
What street they sailed from, by their sight and smell.
They, as each torrent drives with rapid force,
From Smithfield or St. Pulchre’s shape their course,
And in huge confluence joined at Snow Hill ridge,
Fall from the conduit prone to Holborn Bridge.
Sweepings from butchers’ stalls, dung, guts, and blood.
Drowned puppies, stinking sprats, all drenched in mud,
Dead cats, and turnip tops, come tumbling down the flood.
Poem, 'A Description of a City Shower', first published in the Tatler, No. 238 (17 Oct 1710). Reprinted in Pope and Swift's Miscellanies in Prose and Verse (1711, 1721), 225-227. Swift wrote at the time in London that the street surface open gutters (kennels) were the primary means for handling stormwater flows and disposing of every kind of human and animal waste. “Devoted” means overwhelmed. Smithfield was a market with butchers' shops and cattle and sheep pens. St. Sepulchre refers to a church in Holborn. The Holborn Conduit was taken down in 1746. Below Holborn Bridge ran the Fleet Ditch (a stagnant remnant of the former Fleet River after its water supply had been diverted). It was joined by a stream called Snow Hill. Notes printed with the poem collected in Jay Parini, The Wadsworth Anthology Of Poetry (2005), 723-724.
Science quotes on:  |  Bear (162)  |  Blood (144)  |  Bridge (49)  |  Butcher (9)  |  Cat (52)  |  Conduit (3)  |  Course (413)  |  Deluge (14)  |  Devoted (59)  |  Down (455)  |  Dung (10)  |  Fall (243)  |  Filth (5)  |  First (1302)  |  Flood (52)  |  Flow (89)  |  Force (497)  |  Guts (2)  |  Mud (26)  |  Odor (11)  |  Puppy (2)  |  Sail (37)  |  Sewer (5)  |  Shower (7)  |  Smell (29)  |  Snow (39)  |  Stall (3)  |  Sweeping (2)  |  Tell (344)  |  Top (100)  |  Torrent (5)  |  Tumbling (2)  |  Turnip (3)  |  Water (503)  |  Water Management (2)

The first effect of the mind growing cultivated is that processes once multiple get to be performed in a single act. Lazarus has called this the progressive “condensation” of thought. ... Steps really sink from sight. An advanced thinker sees the relations of his topics is such masses and so instantaneously that when he comes to explain to younger minds it is often hard ... Bowditch, who translated and annotated Laplace's Méchanique Céleste, said that whenever his author prefaced a proposition by the words “it is evident,” he knew that many hours of hard study lay before him.
In The Principles of Psychology (1918), Vol. 2, 369-370.
Science quotes on:  |  Act (278)  |  Advanced (12)  |  Author (175)  |   Nathaniel Bowditch (3)  |  Call (781)  |  Condensation (12)  |  Cultivation (36)  |  Effect (414)  |  Evident (92)  |  Explain (334)  |  Explanation (246)  |  First (1302)  |  Growing (99)  |  Hard (246)  |  Hour (192)  |  Instantaneous (4)  |  It Is Evident (6)  |  Pierre-Simon Laplace (63)  |  Mind (1377)  |  Multiple (19)  |  Perform (123)  |  Performance (51)  |  Preface (9)  |  Process (439)  |  Progressive (21)  |  Proposition (126)  |  Relation (166)  |  See (1094)  |  Single (365)  |  Sink (38)  |  Sophistication (12)  |  Step (234)  |  Study (701)  |  Thinker (41)  |  Thought (995)  |  Topic (23)  |  Whenever (81)  |  Word (650)  |  Younger (21)

The first time the appearance of the liquid had really escaped our observation. … [L]ater on we clearly saw the liquid level get hollow by the blowing of the gas from the valve … The surface of the liquid was soon made clearly visible by reflection of light from below and that unmistakably, because it was clearly pierced by the two wires of the thermoelement. … After the surface had once been seen, the sight of it was no more lost. It stood out sharply defined like the edge of a knife against the glass wall.
In 'The Liquefaction of Helium', Communication No. 108 from the Physical Laboratory at Leiden, Proceedings of the Royal Academy of Amsterdam (1909), 11, Part 1, 181.
Science quotes on:  |  Against (332)  |  Appearance (145)  |  Blowing (22)  |  Edge (51)  |  First (1302)  |  Gas (89)  |  Glass (94)  |  Knife (24)  |  Light (635)  |  Liquid (50)  |  More (2558)  |  Observation (593)  |  Reflection (93)  |  Saw (160)  |  Soon (187)  |  Surface (223)  |  Time (1911)  |  Two (936)  |  Visible (87)  |  Wall (71)  |  Wire (36)

The Humorless Person: I have a friend who has about as much sense of humor as the wooden Indian of commerce. Some time ago he made a trip through the Mammoth Cave of Kentucky. … He did his sight-seeing very thoroughly. He didn’t miss a single ramification in that great crack in the face of Mother Nature. … I asked him what he thought of the Mammoth Cave. “Well,” said he, “taking it as a hole, it is all right.”
In A Sample Case of Humor (1919), 15.
Science quotes on:  |  Ask (420)  |  Commerce (23)  |  Crack (15)  |  Face (214)  |  Friend (180)  |  Great (1610)  |  Hole (17)  |  Humor (10)  |  Indian (32)  |  Kentucky (4)  |  Mammoth (9)  |  Miss (51)  |  Mother (116)  |  Mother Nature (5)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Person (366)  |  Ramification (8)  |  Right (473)  |  Seeing (143)  |  Sense (785)  |  Sight-Seeing (2)  |  Single (365)  |  Thoroughly (67)  |  Thought (995)  |  Through (846)  |  Time (1911)  |  Trip (11)

The layman, taught to revere scientists for their absolute respect for the observed facts, and for the judiciously detached and purely provisional manner in which they hold scientific theories (always ready to abandon a theory at the sight of any contradictory evidence) might well have thought that, at [Dayton C.] Miller's announcement of this overwhelming evidence of a “positive effect” [indicating that the speed of light is not independent from the motion of the observer, as Einstein's theory of relativity demands] in his presidential address to the American Physical Society on December 29th, 1925, his audience would have instantly abandoned the theory of relativity. Or, at the very least, that scientists—wont to look down from the pinnacle of their intellectual humility upon the rest of dogmatic mankind—might suspend judgment in this matter until Miller's results could be accounted for without impairing the theory of relativity. But no: by that time they had so well closed their minds to any suggestion which threatened the new rationality achieved by Einstein's world-picture, that it was almost impossible for them to think again in different terms. Little attention was paid to the experiments, the evidence being set aside in the hope that it would one day turn out to be wrong.
Personal Knowledge: Towards a Post-Critical Philosophy (1958, 1998), 13. Miller had earlier presented his evidence against the validity of the relativity theory at the annual meeting, 28 Apr 1925, of the National Academy of Sciences. Miller believed he had, by a much-refined and improved repetition of the so-called Michelson-Morley experiment, shown that there is a definite and measurable motion of the earth through the ether. In 1955, a paper by R.S. Shankland, et al., in Rev. Modern Phys. (1955), 27, 167, concluded that statistical fluctuations and temperature effects in the data had simulated what Miller had taken to be he apparent ether drift.
Science quotes on:  |  Abandon (73)  |  Absolute (153)  |  Account (195)  |  Announcement (15)  |  Attention (196)  |  Audience (28)  |  Being (1276)  |  Closed (38)  |  Demand (131)  |  Different (595)  |  Down (455)  |  Effect (414)  |  Einstein (101)  |  Albert Einstein (624)  |  Evidence (267)  |  Experiment (736)  |  Fact (1257)  |  Facts (553)  |  Hope (321)  |  Humility (31)  |  Impossible (263)  |  Instantly (20)  |  Intellectual (258)  |  Judgment (140)  |  Layman (21)  |  Light (635)  |  Little (717)  |  Look (584)  |  Mankind (356)  |  Matter (821)  |  Mind (1377)  |  Motion (320)  |  New (1273)  |  Objectivity (17)  |  Observation (593)  |  Observed (149)  |  Overwhelming (30)  |  Physical (518)  |  Picture (148)  |  Positive (98)  |  Provisional (7)  |  Purely (111)  |  Rationality (25)  |  Relativity (91)  |  Respect (212)  |  Rest (287)  |  Result (700)  |  Reverence (29)  |  Scientific (955)  |  Scientific Theory (24)  |  Scientist (881)  |  Set (400)  |  Society (350)  |  Speed (66)  |  Speed Of Light (18)  |  Suggestion (49)  |  Term (357)  |  Terms (184)  |  Theory (1015)  |  Theory Of Relativity (33)  |  Think (1122)  |  Thought (995)  |  Threaten (33)  |  Time (1911)  |  Turn (454)  |  World (1850)  |  Wrong (246)

The lessons of science should be experimental also. The sight of a planet through a telescope is worth all the course on astronomy; the shock of the electric spark in the elbow outvalues all theories; the taste of the nitrous oxide, the firing of an artificial volcano, are better than volumes of chemistry.
The Prose Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (1870), 552.
Science quotes on:  |  Astronomy (251)  |  Better (493)  |  Chemistry (376)  |  Course (413)  |  Elbow (3)  |  Electric (76)  |  Electricity (168)  |  Experiment (736)  |  Experimental (193)  |  Lesson (58)  |  Nitrous Oxide (5)  |  Planet (402)  |  Shock (38)  |  Spark (32)  |  Taste (93)  |  Telescope (106)  |  Theory (1015)  |  Through (846)  |  Volcano (46)  |  Worth (172)

The mind has its illusions as the sense of sight; and in the same manner that the sense of feeling corrects the latter, reflection and calculation correct the former.
A Philosophical Essay on Probabilities translated by F.W. Truscott and F.L. Emory (1902), 160.
Science quotes on:  |  Calculation (134)  |  Feeling (259)  |  Former (138)  |  Illusion (68)  |  Mind (1377)  |  Reflection (93)  |  Sense (785)

The moment after, I began to respire 20 quarts of unmingled nitrous oxide. A thrilling, extending from the chest to the extremities, was almost immediately produced. I felt a sense of tangible extension highly pleasurable in every limb; my visible impressions were dazzling, and apparently magnified, I heard distinctly every sound in the room and was perfectly aware of my situation. By degrees, as the pleasurable sensations increased, I last all connection with external things; trains of vivid visible images rapidly passed through my mind, and were connected with words in such a manner, as to produce perceptions perfectly novel. I existed in a world of newly connected and newly modified ideas. I theorised—I imagined that I made discoveries. When I was awakened from this semi-delirious trance by Dr. Kinglake, who took the bag from my mouth, indignation and pride were the first feelings produced by the sight of the persons about me. My emotions were enthusiastic and sublime; and for a minute I walked round the room, perfectly regardless of what was said to me. As I recovered my former state of mind, I felt an inclination to communicate the discoveries I had made during the experiment. I endeavoured to recall the ideas, they were feeble and indistinct; one collection of terms, however, presented itself: and with the most intense belief and prophetic manner, I exclaimed to Dr Kinglake, 'Nothing exists but thoughts!—the universe is composed of impressions, ideas, pleasures and pains!'
Researches, Chemical and Philosophical (1800), in J. Davy (ed.), The Collected Works of Sir Humphry Davy (1839-40), Vol 3, 289-90.
Science quotes on:  |  Anaesthetic (2)  |  Belief (615)  |  Biography (254)  |  Collection (68)  |  Communicate (39)  |  Connect (126)  |  Connection (171)  |  Dazzling (13)  |  Degree (277)  |  Emotion (106)  |  Endeavour (63)  |  Exclaim (15)  |  Exist (458)  |  Experiment (736)  |  Extension (60)  |  Feeling (259)  |  Feelings (52)  |  First (1302)  |  Former (138)  |  Idea (881)  |  Image (97)  |  Immediately (115)  |  Impression (118)  |  Inclination (36)  |  Last (425)  |  Mind (1377)  |  Minute (129)  |  Moment (260)  |  Most (1728)  |  Mouth (54)  |  Nitrous Oxide (5)  |  Nothing (1000)  |  Novel (35)  |  Pain (144)  |  Pass (241)  |  Perception (97)  |  Person (366)  |  Pleasure (191)  |  Present (630)  |  Pride (84)  |  Produced (187)  |  Rapidly (67)  |  Sensation (60)  |  Sense (785)  |  Situation (117)  |  Sound (187)  |  State (505)  |  Sublime (50)  |  Tangible (15)  |  Term (357)  |  Terms (184)  |  Thing (1914)  |  Thought (995)  |  Through (846)  |  Train (118)  |  Universe (900)  |  Visible (87)  |  Vivid (25)  |  Walk (138)  |  Word (650)  |  World (1850)

The most pathetic person in the world is someone who has sight, but has no vision.
…...
Science quotes on:  |  Most (1728)  |  Pathetic (4)  |  Person (366)  |  Someone (24)  |  Vision (127)  |  World (1850)

The night spread out of the east in a great flood, quenching the red sunlight in a single minute. We wriggled by breathless degrees deep into our sleeping bags. Our sole thought was of comfort; we were not alive to the beauty or the grandeur of our position; we did not reflect on the splendor of our elevation. A regret I shall always have is that I did not muster up the energy to spend a minute or two stargazing. One peep I did make between the tent flaps into the night, and I remember dimly an appalling wealth of stars, not pale and remote as they appear when viewed through the moisture-laden air of lower levels, but brilliant points of electric blue fire standing out almost stereoscopically. It was a sight an astronomer would have given much to see, and here were we lying dully in our sleeping bags concerned only with the importance of keeping warm and comfortable.
…...
Science quotes on:  |  Air (366)  |  Alive (97)  |  Appalling (10)  |  Appear (122)  |  Astronomer (97)  |  Bag (4)  |  Beauty (313)  |  Blue (63)  |  Brilliant (57)  |  Comfort (64)  |  Comfortable (13)  |  Concern (239)  |  Deep (241)  |  Degree (277)  |  Dimly (6)  |  East (18)  |  Electric (76)  |  Elevation (13)  |  Energy (373)  |  Fire (203)  |  Flap (2)  |  Flood (52)  |  Give (208)  |  Grandeur (35)  |  Great (1610)  |  Importance (299)  |  Keep (104)  |  Level (69)  |  Lie (370)  |  Low (86)  |  Lying (55)  |  Minute (129)  |  Moisture (21)  |  Muster (2)  |  Night (133)  |  Pale (9)  |  Peep (4)  |  Point (584)  |  Position (83)  |  Red (38)  |  Reflect (39)  |  Regret (31)  |  Remember (189)  |  Remote (86)  |  See (1094)  |  Single (365)  |  Sleep (81)  |  Sole (50)  |  Spend (97)  |  Splendor (20)  |  Spread (86)  |  Stand (284)  |  Star (460)  |  Stars (304)  |  Sunlight (29)  |  Tent (13)  |  Thought (995)  |  Through (846)  |  Two (936)  |  View (496)  |  Warm (74)  |  Wealth (100)  |  Wriggle (3)

The number of fixed stars which observers have been able to see without artificial powers of sight up to this day can be counted. It is therefore decidedly a great feat to add to their number, and to set distinctly before the eyes other stars in myriads, which have never been seen before, and which surpass the old, previously known stars in number more than ten times.
In pamphlet, The Sidereal Messenger (1610), reprinted in The Sidereal Messenger of Galileo Galilei: And a Part of the Preface to the Preface to Kepler's Dioptrics Containing the Original Account of Galileo's Astronomical Discoveries (1880), 7-8.
Science quotes on:  |  Add (42)  |  Artificial (38)  |  Count (107)  |  Distinctly (5)  |  Eye (440)  |  Feat (11)  |  Great (1610)  |  Known (453)  |  More (2558)  |  Myriad (32)  |  Never (1089)  |  Number (710)  |  Observer (48)  |  Old (499)  |  Other (2233)  |  Power (771)  |  See (1094)  |  Set (400)  |  Star (460)  |  Stars (304)  |  Surpass (33)  |  Telescope (106)  |  Time (1911)

The process of tracing regularity in any complicated, and at first sight confused, set of appearances, is necessarily tentative; we begin by making any supposition, even a false one, to see what consequences will follow from it ; and by observing how these differ from the real phenomena, we learn what corrections to make in our assumption.
A System of Logic, Ratiocinative and Inductive (1858), 295.
Science quotes on:  |  Appearance (145)  |  Assumption (96)  |  Begin (275)  |  Complicated (117)  |  Consequence (220)  |  Correction (42)  |  Differ (88)  |  First (1302)  |  Follow (389)  |  Learn (672)  |  Making (300)  |  Necessarily (137)  |  Observation (593)  |  Process (439)  |  Regularity (40)  |  See (1094)  |  Set (400)  |  Supposition (50)  |  Tentative (18)  |  Will (2350)

The products of the senses, especially those of sight, hearing, and touch, form the basis of all the higher thought processes. Hence the importance of developing accurate sense concepts. … The purpose of objective thinking is to enable the mind to think without the help of objects.
As quoted in William W. Speer, Primary Arithmetic (1896), 1.
Science quotes on:  |  Accurate (88)  |  Basis (180)  |  Concept (242)  |  Develop (278)  |  Education (423)  |  Enable (122)  |  Form (976)  |  Hear (144)  |  Hearing (50)  |  Help (116)  |  Importance (299)  |  Mind (1377)  |  Object (438)  |  Objective (96)  |  Process (439)  |  Product (166)  |  Purpose (336)  |  Sense (785)  |  Think (1122)  |  Thinking (425)  |  Thought (995)  |  Touch (146)

The purpose of computing is insight, not numbers. … [But] sometimes … the purpose of computing numbers is not yet in sight.
Motto for the book, Numerical Methods for Scientists and Engineers (1962, 1973), 3. The restatement of the motto (merged above as second sentence) is suggested on p.504, footnote.
Science quotes on:  |  Compute (19)  |  Insight (107)  |  Number (710)  |  Purpose (336)

The results of even a cursory examination exceeded all the tales of eyewitnesses and my wildest expectations.
Writing his recollection of his first sight of the Tunguska destruction.
Quoted in Alan E. Rubin, Disturbing the Solar System (2002), 186
Science quotes on:  |  Destruction (135)  |  Examination (102)  |  Expectation (67)  |  First (1302)  |  Meteor (19)  |  Result (700)  |  Writing (192)

The sight of day and night, and the months and the revolutions of the years, have created number and have given us conception of time, and the power of inquiring about the nature of the Universe.
Plato
In Timaeus section 47a, as translated by Benjamin Jowett (1871, 1959), 29. The translation by W.R.M. Lamb gives this passage as “The vision of day and night and of months and circling years has created the art of number and has given us not only the notion of Time but also means of research into the nature of the Universe.”
Science quotes on:  |  Conception (160)  |  Created (6)  |  Day (43)  |  Giving (11)  |  Inquiring (5)  |  Month (91)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Night (133)  |  Number (710)  |  Power (771)  |  Revolution (133)  |  Time (1911)  |  Universe (900)  |  Year (963)

The traveler was active; he went strenuously in search of people, of adventure, of experience. The tourist is passive; he expects interesting things to happen to him. He goes “sight-seeing.”
The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America (1961, 2012), 85. https://books.google.com/books?isbn=0307819167 Daniel J. Boorstin - 2012
Science quotes on:  |  Active (80)  |  Adventure (69)  |  Expect (203)  |  Experience (494)  |  Happen (282)  |  Interesting (153)  |  Passive (8)  |  People (1031)  |  Search (175)  |  Seeing (143)  |  Sight-Seeing (2)  |  Strenuous (5)  |  Thing (1914)  |  Tourist (6)  |  Traveler (33)

The vacuum-apparatus requires that its manipulators constantly handle considerable amounts of mercury. Mercury is a strong poison, particularly dangerous because of its liquid form and noticeable volatility even at room temperature. Its poisonous character has been rather lost sight of during the present generation. My co-workers and myself found from personal experience-confirmed on many sides when published—that protracted stay in an atmosphere charged with only 1/100 of the amount of mercury required for its saturation, sufficed to induce chronic mercury poisoning. This first reveals itself as an affection of the nerves, causing headaches, numbness, mental lassitude, depression, and loss of memory; such are very disturbing to one engaged in intellectual occupations.
Hydrides of Boron and Silicon (1933), 203.
Science quotes on:  |  Affection (44)  |  Amount (153)  |  Apparatus (70)  |  Atmosphere (117)  |  Character (259)  |  Confirm (58)  |  Considerable (75)  |  Dangerous (108)  |  Depression (26)  |  Disturbance (34)  |  Engagement (9)  |  Experience (494)  |  First (1302)  |  Form (976)  |  Generation (256)  |  Handle (29)  |  Handling (7)  |  Headache (5)  |  Induce (24)  |  Intellect (251)  |  Intellectual (258)  |  Lassitude (4)  |  Liquid (50)  |  Loss (117)  |  Manipulator (5)  |  Memory (144)  |  Mental (179)  |  Mercury (54)  |  Mind (1377)  |  Myself (211)  |  Nerve (82)  |  Occupation (51)  |  Poison (46)  |  Present (630)  |  Require (229)  |  Required (108)  |  Reveal (152)  |  Saturation (9)  |  Side (236)  |  Strong (182)  |  Temperature (82)  |  Vacuum (41)  |  Volatility (3)  |  Worker (34)

There are some arts which to those that possess them are painful, but to those that use them are helpful, a common good to laymen, but to those that practise them grievous. Of such arts there is one which the Greeks call medicine. For the medical man sees terrible sights, touches unpleasant things, and the misfortunes of others bring a harvest of sorrows that are peculiarly his; but the sick by means of the art rid themselves of the worst of evils, disease, suffering, pain and death.
Breaths, in Hippocrates, trans. W. H. S. Jones (1923), Vol. 2, 227.
Science quotes on:  |  Art (680)  |  Call (781)  |  Common (447)  |  Death (406)  |  Disease (340)  |  Evil (122)  |  Good (906)  |  Greek (109)  |  Harvest (28)  |  Man (2252)  |  Mean (810)  |  Means (587)  |  Medicine (392)  |  Misfortune (13)  |  Other (2233)  |  Pain (144)  |  Physician (284)  |  Possess (157)  |  See (1094)  |  Sick (83)  |  Sorrow (21)  |  Suffering (68)  |  Terrible (41)  |  Themselves (433)  |  Thing (1914)  |  Unpleasant (15)  |  Use (771)  |  Worst (57)

Things of which there is sight, hearing, apprehension, these I prefer.
Heraclitus, fr. 55. Trans. R. W. Sharples.
Science quotes on:  |  Apprehension (26)  |  Hearing (50)  |  Observation (593)  |  Thing (1914)

Think of the image of the world in a convex mirror. ... A well-made convex mirror of moderate aperture represents the objects in front of it as apparently solid and in fixed positions behind its surface. But the images of the distant horizon and of the sun in the sky lie behind the mirror at a limited distance, equal to its focal length. Between these and the surface of the mirror are found the images of all the other objects before it, but the images are diminished and flattened in proportion to the distance of their objects from the mirror. ... Yet every straight line or plane in the outer world is represented by a straight line or plane in the image. The image of a man measuring with a rule a straight line from the mirror, would contract more and more the farther he went, but with his shrunken rule the man in the image would count out exactly the same results as in the outer world, all lines of sight in the mirror would be represented by straight lines of sight in the mirror. In short, I do not see how men in the mirror are to discover that their bodies are not rigid solids and their experiences good examples of the correctness of Euclidean axioms. But if they could look out upon our world as we look into theirs without overstepping the boundary, they must declare it to be a picture in a spherical mirror, and would speak of us just as we speak of them; and if two inhabitants of the different worlds could communicate with one another, neither, as far as I can see, would be able to convince the other that he had the true, the other the distorted, relation. Indeed I cannot see that such a question would have any meaning at all, so long as mechanical considerations are not mixed up with it.
In 'On the Origin and Significance of Geometrical Axioms,' Popular Scientific Lectures< Second Series (1881), 57-59. In Robert Édouard Moritz, Memorabilia Mathematica (1914), 357-358.
Science quotes on:  |  Aperture (5)  |  Axiom (65)  |  Behind (139)  |  Boundary (55)  |  Communicate (39)  |  Consideration (143)  |  Convex (6)  |  Convince (43)  |  Count (107)  |  Declare (48)  |  Different (595)  |  Discover (571)  |  Distance (171)  |  Distort (22)  |  Distortion (13)  |  Do (1905)  |  Euclid (60)  |  Experience (494)  |  Farther (51)  |  Focal Length (2)  |  Good (906)  |  Horizon (47)  |  Image (97)  |  Indeed (323)  |  Inhabitant (50)  |  Lie (370)  |  Limit (294)  |  Limited (102)  |  Line (100)  |  Long (778)  |  Look (584)  |  Man (2252)  |  Meaning (244)  |  Measurement (178)  |  Mechanical (145)  |  Mirror (43)  |  More (2558)  |  Must (1525)  |  Object (438)  |  Other (2233)  |  Picture (148)  |  Proportion (140)  |  Question (649)  |  Represent (157)  |  Result (700)  |  Rigid (24)  |  Rule (307)  |  See (1094)  |  Short (200)  |  Sky (174)  |  Solid (119)  |  Speak (240)  |  Straight (75)  |  Straight Line (34)  |  Sun (407)  |  Surface (223)  |  Think (1122)  |  Two (936)  |  World (1850)

This is Friendship 7. Can see clear back; a big cloud pattern way back across towards the Cape. Beautiful sight.
From the transcript of in-flight communications, 5 min 35 sec after launch, about his view through the porthole.
Science quotes on:  |  Back (395)  |  Beautiful (271)  |  Big (55)  |  Clear (111)  |  Cloud (111)  |  Friendship (18)  |  Friendship 7 (3)  |  Pattern (116)  |  See (1094)  |  Toward (45)  |  Way (1214)

Through seven figures come sensations for a man; there is hearing for sounds, sight for the visible, nostril for smell, tongue for pleasant or unpleasant tastes, mouth for speech, body for touch, passages outwards and inwards for hot or cold breath. Through these come knowledge or lack of it.
Regimen, in Hippocrates, trans. W. H. S. Jones (1931), Vol. 4, 261.
Science quotes on:  |  Body (557)  |  Breath (61)  |  Cold (115)  |  Figure (162)  |  Hearing (50)  |  Hot (63)  |  Inward (6)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Lack (127)  |  Man (2252)  |  Mouth (54)  |  Nostril (4)  |  Passage (52)  |  Sensation (60)  |  Sense (785)  |  Smell (29)  |  Sound (187)  |  Speech (66)  |  Taste (93)  |  Through (846)  |  Tongue (44)  |  Touch (146)  |  Unpleasant (15)  |  Visible (87)

To the days of the aged it addeth length;
To the might of the strong it addeth strength;
It freshens the heart, It brightens the sight;
’Tis like quaffing a goblet of morning light.
So, water, I will drink nothing but thee,
Thou parent of health and energy!
Anonymous
From 'Song of the Water Drinker', The Metropolitan Magazine (1835), 15, 283. Attributed to E. Johnson, but without a full name with which to find more biographical information, Webmaster is putting these lines under Anonymous.
Science quotes on:  |  Age (509)  |  Drink (56)  |  Energy (373)  |  Freshen (2)  |  Health (210)  |  Heart (243)  |  Length (24)  |  Light (635)  |  Morning (98)  |  Nothing (1000)  |  Parent (80)  |  Strength (139)  |  Strong (182)  |  Water (503)  |  Will (2350)

Today we are on the eve of launching a new industry, based on imagination, on scientific research and accomplishment. … Now we add radio sight to sound. It is with a feeling of humbleness that I come to this moment of announcing the birth in this country of a new art so important in its implications that it is bound to affect all society. It is an art which shines like a torch of hope in the troubled world. It is a creative force which we must learn to utilize for the benefit of all mankind. This miracle of engineering skill which one day will bring the world to the home also brings a new American industry to serve man’s material welfare … [Television] will become an important factor in American economic life.
Address at dedication of RCA Exhibit Building, New York World Fair before unveiling the RCA television exhibit (20 Apr 1939). In RCA Review: A Technical Journal (1938), Vols 3-4, 4. As quoted in Marcy Carsey and Tom Werner, 'Father of Broadcasting: David Sarnoff (Time 100)', Time (7 Dec 1998), 152, No. 23, 88; and in Eugene Lyons, David Sarnoff: A Biography (1966), 216.
Science quotes on:  |  Accomplishment (102)  |  Art (680)  |  Become (821)  |  Benefit (123)  |  Birth (154)  |  Bound (120)  |  Country (269)  |  Creative (144)  |  Economic (84)  |  Engineering (188)  |  Feeling (259)  |  Force (497)  |  Home (184)  |  Hope (321)  |  Imagination (349)  |  Industry (159)  |  Invention (400)  |  Learn (672)  |  Life (1870)  |  Man (2252)  |  Mankind (356)  |  Material (366)  |  Miracle (85)  |  Moment (260)  |  Must (1525)  |  New (1273)  |  Radio (60)  |  Research (753)  |  Scientific (955)  |  Skill (116)  |  Society (350)  |  Sound (187)  |  Television (33)  |  Today (321)  |  Torch (13)  |  Welfare (30)  |  Will (2350)  |  World (1850)

Touch is the most fundamental sense. A baby experiences it, all over, before he is born and long before he learns to use sight, hearing, or taste, and no human ever ceases to need it.
In Time Enough for Love: The Lives of Lazarus Long (1973), 366.
Science quotes on:  |  Baby (29)  |  Birth (154)  |  Cease (81)  |  Ceasing (2)  |  Experience (494)  |  Fundamental (264)  |  Hearing (50)  |  Human (1512)  |  Learn (672)  |  Learning (291)  |  Long (778)  |  Most (1728)  |  Need (320)  |  Sense (785)  |  Taste (93)  |  Touch (146)  |  Use (771)

Traveling is a brutality. It forces you to trust strangers and to lose sight of all that familiar comfort of home and friends. You are constantly off balance. Nothing is yours except the essential things - air, sleep, dreams, the sea, the sky - all things tending towards the eternal or what we imagine of it.
…...
Science quotes on:  |  Air (366)  |  Balance (82)  |  Brutality (4)  |  Comfort (64)  |  Constantly (27)  |  Dream (222)  |  Essential (210)  |  Eternal (113)  |  Familiar (47)  |  Force (497)  |  Friend (180)  |  Home (184)  |  Imagine (176)  |  Lose (165)  |  Nothing (1000)  |  Sea (326)  |  Sky (174)  |  Sleep (81)  |  Stranger (16)  |  Tend (124)  |  Thing (1914)  |  Travel (125)  |  Trust (72)

Unfortunately, the study of organic remains is beset with two evils, which, though of an opposite character, do not neutralize each other so much as at first sight might be anticipated: the one consisting of a strong desire to find similar organic remains in supposed equivalent deposits, even at great distances; the other being an equally strong inclination to discover new species, often as it would seem for the sole purpose of appending the apparently magical word nobis.
In Geological Manual (1832), Preface, iii.
Science quotes on:  |  Apparently (22)  |  Being (1276)  |  Character (259)  |  Consisting (5)  |  Deposit (12)  |  Desire (212)  |  Discover (571)  |  Distance (171)  |  Do (1905)  |  Equally (129)  |  Equivalent (46)  |  Evil (122)  |  Find (1014)  |  First (1302)  |  First Sight (6)  |  Great (1610)  |  Inclination (36)  |  Magic (92)  |  New (1273)  |  Opposite (110)  |  Organic (161)  |  Other (2233)  |  Purpose (336)  |  Remain (355)  |  Remains (9)  |  Seem (150)  |  Similar (36)  |  Sole (50)  |  Species (435)  |  Strong (182)  |  Study (701)  |  Supposed (5)  |  Two (936)  |  Unfortunately (40)  |  Word (650)

Unless the eye had sun-like parts
It could not see the sun and sight us.
In 'Unless the Eye Had Sunlike Parts' (1810), Selected Poems (1998), 107.
Science quotes on:  |  Eye (440)  |  Part (235)  |  See (1094)  |  Sun (407)

We are like dwarfs [the moderns] sitting on the shoulders of giants [the ancients]. Our glance can thus take in more things and reach farther than theirs. It is not because our sight is sharper nor our height greater than theirs; it is that we are carried and elevated by the high stature of the giants.
Attributed to Bernard of Chartres in John of Salisbury, Metalogicon [1159], Book III, chapter 4, quoted in E. Jeaneau, “Bernard of Chartres”, in C. C. Gillispie, Dictionary of Scientific Biography (1971), Vol. 3, 19.
Science quotes on:  |  Ancient (198)  |  Farther (51)  |  Giant (73)  |  Glance (36)  |  Greater (288)  |  High (370)  |  Modern (402)  |  More (2558)  |  Progress (492)  |  Reach (286)  |  Shoulder (33)  |  Sitting (44)  |  Thing (1914)

We can see our forests vanishing, our water-powers going to waste, our soil being carried by floods into the sea; and the end of our coal and our iron is in sight. But our larger wastes of human effort, which go on every day through such of our acts as are blundering, ill-directed, or inefficient, … are less visible, less tangible, and are but vaguely appreciated.
In The Principles of Scientific Management (1911), 5.
Science quotes on:  |  Act (278)  |  Appreciate (67)  |  Being (1276)  |  Blunder (21)  |  Carry (130)  |  Coal (64)  |  Direct (228)  |  Efficiency (46)  |  Effort (243)  |  End (603)  |  Flood (52)  |  Forest (161)  |  Human (1512)  |  Inefficient (3)  |  Iron (99)  |  Power (771)  |  Productivity (23)  |  Sea (326)  |  See (1094)  |  Soil (98)  |  Tangible (15)  |  Through (846)  |  Vague (50)  |  Vanish (19)  |  Vanishing (11)  |  Visible (87)  |  Waste (109)  |  Water (503)  |  Water Power (6)

We find in the history of ideas mutations which do not seem to correspond to any obvious need, and at first sight appear as mere playful whimsies—such as Apollonius’ work on conic sections, or the non-Euclidean geometries, whose practical value became apparent only later.
In 'Epilogue', The Sleepwalkers: A History of Man’s Changing Vision of the Universe (1959), 515.
Science quotes on:  |  Apollonius (6)  |  Apparent (85)  |  Become (821)  |  Conic Section (8)  |  Correspond (13)  |  Do (1905)  |  Find (1014)  |  First (1302)  |  Geometry (271)  |  History (716)  |  Idea (881)  |  Later (18)  |  Mutation (40)  |  Need (320)  |  Non-Euclidean (7)  |  Obvious (128)  |  Practical (225)  |  Value (393)  |  Work (1402)

We know that mathematicians care no more for logic than logicians for mathematics. The two eyes of science are mathematics and logic; the mathematical set puts out the logical eye, the logical set puts out the mathematical eye; each believing that it sees better with one eye than with two.
Note that De Morgan, himself, only had sight with only one eye.
Review of a book on geometry in the Athenaeum, 1868, Vol. 2, 71-73.
Science quotes on:  |  Better (493)  |  Care (203)  |  Eye (440)  |  Himself (461)  |  Know (1538)  |  Logic (311)  |  Logician (18)  |  Mathematician (407)  |  Mathematics (1395)  |  Mathematics And Logic (27)  |  More (2558)  |  See (1094)  |  Set (400)  |  Two (936)

We may lay it down that a happy person never phantasises, only an unsatisfied one... The motive forces of phantasies are unsatisfied wishes, and every single phantasy is the fulfilment of a wish, a correction of unsatisfying reality. These motivating wishes vary according to the sex, character and circumstances of the person who is having the phantasy; but they fall naturally into two main groups. They are either ambitious wishes, which serve to elevate the subject's personality; or they are erotic ones. It was shocking when Nietzsche said this, but today it is commonplace; our historical position—and no end to it is in sight—is that of having to philosophise without 'foundations'.
Creative Writers and Day-Dreaming (1906), In James Strachey (ed.), The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychcological Works of Sigmund Freud (1959), Vol 9, 146-7.
Science quotes on:  |  According (236)  |  Character (259)  |  Circumstance (139)  |  Circumstances (108)  |  Commonplace (24)  |  Correction (42)  |  Down (455)  |  End (603)  |  Fall (243)  |  Force (497)  |  Foundation (177)  |  Happy (108)  |  Historical (70)  |  Motive (62)  |  Never (1089)  |  Person (366)  |  Personality (66)  |  Psychoanalysis (37)  |  Reality (274)  |  Sex (68)  |  Single (365)  |  Subject (543)  |  Today (321)  |  Two (936)  |  Wish (216)

We should not argue with the blind man who maintained that sight was an illusion to which some abnormal people were subject. Therefore in speaking of religious experience I do not attempt to prove the existence of religious experience…
Swarthmore Lecture (1929) at Friends’ House, London, printed in Science and the Unseen World (1929), 48-49.
Science quotes on:  |  Attempt (266)  |  Blind (98)  |  Do (1905)  |  Existence (481)  |  Experience (494)  |  Illusion (68)  |  Maintain (105)  |  Man (2252)  |  People (1031)  |  Prove (261)  |  Religious (134)  |  Speaking (118)  |  Subject (543)

When it comes to understanding the planet’s blue [ocean] frontier, one of the largest challenges we face can be encapsulated by a simple phrase: Out of sight, out of mind.
huffingtonpost.com/philippe-cousteau/ocean-oases-protecting-ca_b_873016.html
Science quotes on:  |  Challenge (91)  |  Face (214)  |  Frontier (41)  |  Largest (39)  |  Mind (1377)  |  Ocean (216)  |  Phrase (61)  |  Planet (402)  |  Simple (426)  |  Understanding (527)

Where a body is in motion, there exists space and time, the simplest sentient creature in this world would thus be a measure of them. Our hearing, and perhaps our seeing too, consists of a counting of oscillations.
Aphorism 54 in Notebook D (1773-1775), as translated by R.J. Hollingdale in Aphorisms (1990). Reprinted as The Waste Books (2000), 52.
Science quotes on:  |  Body (557)  |  Consist (223)  |  Count (107)  |  Counting (26)  |  Creature (242)  |  Exist (458)  |  Existence (481)  |  Hearing (50)  |  Measure (241)  |  Measurement (178)  |  Motion (320)  |  Oscillation (13)  |  Seeing (143)  |  Sentient (8)  |  Space (523)  |  Space And Time (38)  |  Time (1911)  |  Time And Space (39)  |  World (1850)

Who that has ever visited the borders of this classic sea, has not felt at the first sight of its waters a glow of reverent rapture akin to devotion, and an instinctive sensation of thanksgiving at being permitted to stand before these hallowed waves?
From Literary Papers (1855), 106. As quoted in On Early Explorations in the Mediterranean.In George Wilson and Archibald Geikie, Memoir of Edward Forbes F.R.S. (1861), 279. Geike introduces the Forbes quote as “the recollection of these, his earliest explorations in the Mediterranean,” as written down years later.
Science quotes on:  |  Being (1276)  |  Devotion (37)  |  First (1302)  |  Mediterranean Sea (6)  |  Ocean (216)  |  Rapture (8)  |  Sea (326)  |  Sensation (60)  |  Stand (284)  |  Thanks (26)  |  Water (503)  |  Wave (112)

Why does such and such animal feed only on flesh, while another on plants? Where does one get the finesse of its sense of smell, or that of its hearing? What is the source of the prodigious strength of the muscles of birds? How is this force used to produce this amazing movement of flight? How does it come about that the bird sees equally well at quite different distances? What is the cause of the range and variety of its voice? Why is a reptile so lethargic? Why does a worm stay alive long after being divided? Why can a zoophyte live equally well with some parts of its body cut off? Is it presumed there could be natural history without these questions, and thousands of others like them, and do we think we can answer without a thorough comparative anatomy?
From 'Lettre à M. de la Cépède', collected in G. L. Duvernpy (ed.) Leçons d’Anatomie Comparée de Georges Cuvier: Tome IV, Première Partie: Corrigée et Augmentée (2nd ed. 1833), xxij. As translated and tweaked by Webmaster using online translation sites from the original French: “Pourquoi tel animal ne se nourrit-il que de chair, tel autre que de végétaux? D’où celui-ci tire-t-il la finesse de son odorat, ou celle de son ouïe? Quelle est la source de la force prodigieux des muscles des oiseaux? Comment cette force est-elle employée à produire ce mouvement si étonnant du vol? D’où viens que l’oiseau voit également bien à des distances si differentes? Quelles sont les causes de l’etendue, et de la variété de sa voix? Pourquoi tel reptile, est-il si engourdie? Pourquoi tel ver, conserve-t-il de la vie long-temps après être divisé? Pourquoi tel zoophyte peut-il vivre égalment bien, quelque partie de son corps que l’on en retranche. Suppose-t-on qu’il puisse exister une histoire naturelle sans ces questions, et des millieurs d’autres semblables, et des milliers d’autres semblables, y soient traitées, et croit-on pouvoir y répondre sans une anatomie compárée profonde?” [John Abernethy used this quote in a lecture to illustrate what animating motive caused Cuvier to strive so hard to find answers.]
Science quotes on:  |  Anatomy (75)  |  Animal (651)  |  Answer (389)  |  Bird (163)  |  Comparative (14)  |  Flight (101)  |  Lethargic (2)  |  Muscle (47)  |  Natural History (77)  |  Question (649)  |  Reptile (33)  |  Research (753)  |  Smell (29)  |  Worm (47)  |  Zoophyte (5)

You’ve climbed the highest mountain in the world. What’s left? It’s all downhill from there. You’ve got to set your sights on something higher than Everest.
…...
Science quotes on:  |  Climb (39)  |  Downhill (3)  |  Everest (10)  |  High (370)  |  Leave (138)  |  Mountain (202)  |  Set (400)  |  Something (718)  |  World (1850)


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.