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 T > Category: Transient

Transient Quotes (13 quotes)

...an idea is no more an even relatively constant thing than is a feeling or emotion or volitional process. There exist only changing and transient ideational processes; there are no permanent ideas that return again and disappear again.
An Introduction to Psychology (1912)
Science quotes on:  |  Constant (148)  |  Disappear (84)  |  Emotion (106)  |  Exist (458)  |  Feeling (259)  |  Idea (881)  |  More (2558)  |  Permanent (67)  |  Process (439)  |  Return (133)  |  Thing (1914)

A thing is either alive or it isn’t; there is nothing that is almost alive. There is but the remotest possibility of the origin of life by spontaneous generation, and every likelihood that Arrhenius is right when he dares to claim that life is a cosmic phenomenon, something that drifts between the spheres, like light, and like light transiently descends upon those fit to receive it.
In An Almanac for Moderns (1935), 393.
Science quotes on:  |  Alive (97)  |  Svante Arrhenius (11)  |  Claim (154)  |  Cosmic (74)  |  Dare (55)  |  Descend (49)  |  Descent (30)  |  Drift (14)  |  Fit (139)  |  Generation (256)  |  Life (1870)  |  Light (635)  |  Likelihood (10)  |  Nothing (1000)  |  Origin (250)  |  Origin Of Life (37)  |  Phenomenon (334)  |  Possibility (172)  |  Receive (117)  |  Right (473)  |  Something (718)  |  Sphere (118)  |  Spontaneous (29)  |  Spontaneous Generation (9)  |  Thing (1914)

An eye critically nice will discern in every colour a tendency to some other colour, according as it is influenced by light, shade, depth or diluteness; nor is this the case only in the inherent colours of pigments, &c. but it is so also in the transient colours of the prism, &c. Hence blue in its depth inclines to purple; deep-yellow to orange, &c.; nor is it practicable to realize these colours to the satisfaction of the critical eye,-since perfect colours, like perfect geometrical figures, are pure ideals. My examples of colours are therefore quite as adequate to their office of illustrating and distinguishing, as the figure of an angle inclining to the acute or obtuse, instead of a perfect right angle, or middle form, would be in illustrating the conception of an angle in general.
In 'On Colors—In Answer to Mr. T. Hargreaves’s Strictures on the Work Entitled “Chromatics; or, An Essay on the Analogy and Harmony of Colours”', The Philosophical Magazine and Journal: Comprehending The Various Branches of Science, The Liberal and Fine Arts, Geology, Agriculture, Manufactures and Commerce (Oct 1817), 50, No. 234, 241.
Science quotes on:  |  Acute (8)  |  Angle (25)  |  Blue (63)  |  Color (155)  |  Conception (160)  |  Critical (73)  |  Depth (97)  |  Discern (35)  |  Distinguish (168)  |  Eye (440)  |  Figure (162)  |  General (521)  |  Geometrical (11)  |  Ideal (110)  |  Illustrate (14)  |  Influence (231)  |  Inherent (43)  |  Light (635)  |  Nice (15)  |  Obtuse (2)  |  Orange (15)  |  Perfect (223)  |  Pigment (9)  |  Prism (8)  |  Pure (299)  |  Purple (4)  |  Right Angle (4)  |  Satisfaction (76)  |  Shade (35)  |  Tendency (110)  |  Yellow (31)

From the aspect of energy, renewed by radio-active phenomena, material corpuscles may now be treated as transient reservoirs of concentrated power. Though never found in a state of purity, but always more or less granulated (even in light) energy nowadays represents for science the most primitive form of universal stuff.
In Teilhard de Chardin and Bernard Wall (trans.), The Phenomenon of Man (1959, 2008), 42. Originally published in French as Le Phénomene Humain (1955).
Science quotes on:  |  Active (80)  |  Aspect (129)  |  Corpuscle (14)  |  Energy (373)  |  Form (976)  |  Light (635)  |  Material (366)  |  More (2558)  |  More Or Less (71)  |  Most (1728)  |  Never (1089)  |  Phenomenon (334)  |  Power (771)  |  Primitive (79)  |  Purity (15)  |  Radio (60)  |  Radioactive (24)  |  Renew (20)  |  Represent (157)  |  Reservoir (9)  |  State (505)  |  Stuff (24)  |  Universal (198)

He that knows the secrets of nature with Albertus Magnus, or the motions of the heavens with Galileo, or the cosmography of the moon with Hevelius, or the body of man with Galen, or the nature of diseases with Hippocrates, or the harmonies in melody with Orpheus, or of poesy with Homer, or of grammar with Lilly, or of whatever else with the greatest artist; he is nothing if he knows them merely for talk or idle speculation, or transient and external use. But he that knows them for value, and knows them his own, shall profit infinitely.
In Bertram Doben (ed.), Centuries of Meditations (1908), The Third Century, No. 41, 189-190.
Science quotes on:  |  Artist (97)  |  Body (557)  |  Cosmography (4)  |  Disease (340)  |  External (62)  |  Galen (20)  |  Galileo Galilei (134)  |  Grammar (15)  |  Greatest (330)  |  Harmony (105)  |  Heaven (266)  |  Heavens (125)  |  Hippocrates (49)  |  Homer (11)  |  Idle (34)  |  Infinite (243)  |  Know (1538)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Man (2252)  |  Melody (2)  |  Merely (315)  |  Moon (252)  |  Motion (320)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Nothing (1000)  |  Orpheus (2)  |  Poesy (2)  |  Profit (56)  |  Secret (216)  |  Speculation (137)  |  Talk (108)  |  Use (771)  |  Value (393)  |  Whatever (234)

Hence, even in the domain of natural science the aid of the experimental method becomes indispensable whenever the problem set is the analysis of transient and impermanent phenomena, and not merely the observation of persistent and relatively constant objects.
Science quotes on:  |  Aid (101)  |  Analysis (244)  |  Become (821)  |  Constant (148)  |  Domain (72)  |  Experimental (193)  |  Merely (315)  |  Method (531)  |  Natural (810)  |  Natural Science (133)  |  Object (438)  |  Observation (593)  |  Persistent (18)  |  Problem (731)  |  Psychology (166)  |  Set (400)  |  Whenever (81)

I cannot but be astonished that Sarsi should persist in trying to prove by means of witnesses something that I may see for myself at any time by means of experiment. Witnesses are examined in doutbful matters which are past and transient, not in those which are actual and present. A judge must seek by means of witnesses to determine whether Peter injured John last night, but not whether John was injured, since the judge can see that for himself.
'The Assayer' (1623), trans. Stillman Drake, Discoveries and Opinions of Galileo (1957), 271.
Science quotes on:  |  Actual (118)  |  Astonish (39)  |  Determine (152)  |  Experiment (736)  |  Himself (461)  |  Judge (114)  |  Last (425)  |  Matter (821)  |  Mean (810)  |  Means (587)  |  Must (1525)  |  Myself (211)  |  Observation (593)  |  Past (355)  |  Present (630)  |  Prove (261)  |  See (1094)  |  Seek (218)  |  Something (718)  |  Time (1911)  |  Truth (1109)  |  Trying (144)

I see no good reason why the views given this volume [The Origin of Species] should shock the religious feelings of any one. It is satisfactory, as showing how transient such impressions are, to remember that the greatest discovery ever made by man, namely, the law of attraction of gravity, was also attacked by Leibnitz, “as subversive of natural, and inferentially of revealed, religion.”
The Origin of Species (1909), 520.
Science quotes on:  |  Attack (86)  |  Attraction (61)  |  Discovery (837)  |  Feeling (259)  |  Feelings (52)  |  Good (906)  |  Gravity (140)  |  Greatest (330)  |  Impression (118)  |  Law (913)  |  Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (51)  |  Man (2252)  |  Natural (810)  |  Origin (250)  |  Origin Of Species (42)  |  Reason (766)  |  Religion (369)  |  Religious (134)  |  Remember (189)  |  Reveal (152)  |  Revealed (59)  |  See (1094)  |  Shock (38)  |  Species (435)  |  View (496)  |  Why (491)

If you were going to risk all that, not just risk the hardship and the pain but risk your life. Put everything on line for a dream, for something that’s worth nothing, that can’t be proved to anybody. You just have the transient moment on a summit and when you come back down to the valley it goes. It is actually a completely illogical thing to do. It is not justifiable by any rational terms. That’s probably why you do it.
The Beckoning Silence
Science quotes on:  |  Actually (27)  |  Anybody (42)  |  Back (395)  |  Completely (137)  |  Do (1905)  |  Down (455)  |  Dream (222)  |  Everything (489)  |  Hardship (4)  |  Illogical (2)  |  Justifiable (3)  |  Life (1870)  |  Line (100)  |  Moment (260)  |  Nothing (1000)  |  Pain (144)  |  Probably (50)  |  Prove (261)  |  Rational (95)  |  Risk (68)  |  Something (718)  |  Summit (27)  |  Term (357)  |  Terms (184)  |  Thing (1914)  |  Valley (37)  |  Why (491)  |  Worth (172)

No place affords a more striking conviction of the vanity of human hopes than a publick library; for who can see the wall crouded on every side by mighty volumes, the works of laborious meditation, and accurate inquiry, now scarcely known but by the catalogue, and preserved only to encrease the pomp of learning, without considering how many hours have been wasted in vain endeavours, how often imagination has anticipated the praises of futurity, how many statues have risen to the eye of vanity, how many ideal converts have elevated zeal, how often wit has exulted in the eternal infamy of his antagonists, and dogmatism has delighted in the gradual advances of his authority, the immutability of his decrees, and the perpetuity of his power.
Non unquam dedit
Documenta fors majora, quam fragili loco
Starent superbi.

Seneca, Troades, II, 4-6
Insulting chance ne'er call'd with louder voice,
On swelling mortals to be proud no more.
Of the innumerable authors whose performances are thus treasured up in magnificent obscurity, most are forgotten, because they never deserved to be remembered, and owed the honours which they have once obtained, not to judgment or to genius, to labour or to art, but to the prejudice of faction, the stratagem of intrigue, or the servility of adulation.
Nothing is more common than to find men whose works are now totally neglected, mentioned with praises by their contemporaries, as the oracles of their age, and the legislators of science. Curiosity is naturally excited, their volumes after long enquiry are found, but seldom reward the labour of the search. Every period of time has produced these bubbles of artificial fame, which are kept up a while by the breath of fashion and then break at once and are annihilated. The learned often bewail the loss of ancient writers whose characters have survived their works; but perhaps if we could now retrieve them we should find them only the Granvilles, Montagus, Stepneys, and Sheffields of their time, and wonder by what infatuation or caprice they could be raised to notice.
It cannot, however, be denied, that many have sunk into oblivion, whom it were unjust to number with this despicable class. Various kinds of literary fame seem destined to various measures of duration. Some spread into exuberance with a very speedy growth, but soon wither and decay; some rise more slowly, but last long. Parnassus has its flowers of transient fragrance as well as its oaks of towering height, and its laurels of eternal verdure.
The Rambler, Number 106, 23 Mar 1751. In W. J. Bate and Albrecht B. Strauss (eds.), The Rambler (1969), Vol. 2, 200-1.
Science quotes on:  |  Accurate (88)  |  Advance (298)  |  Age (509)  |  Ancient (198)  |  Art (680)  |  Author (175)  |  Authority (99)  |  Break (109)  |  Breath (61)  |  Bubble (23)  |  Call (781)  |  Caprice (10)  |  Chance (244)  |  Character (259)  |  Class (168)  |  Common (447)  |  Conviction (100)  |  Curiosity (138)  |  Decay (59)  |  Decree (9)  |  Delight (111)  |  Destined (42)  |  Dogmatism (15)  |  Endeavour (63)  |  Enquiry (89)  |  Eternal (113)  |  Eye (440)  |  Faction (4)  |  Fame (51)  |  Find (1014)  |  Flower (112)  |  Forgotten (53)  |  Genius (301)  |  Growth (200)  |  Honour (58)  |  Hope (321)  |  Hour (192)  |  Human (1512)  |  Ideal (110)  |  Imagination (349)  |  Innumerable (56)  |  Inquiry (88)  |  Judgment (140)  |  Kind (564)  |  Known (453)  |  Labor (200)  |  Laborious (17)  |  Last (425)  |  Learn (672)  |  Learned (235)  |  Learning (291)  |  Library (53)  |  Long (778)  |  Loss (117)  |  Magnificent (46)  |  Measure (241)  |  Meditation (19)  |  Mention (84)  |  More (2558)  |  Mortal (55)  |  Most (1728)  |  Neglect (63)  |  Neglected (23)  |  Never (1089)  |  Nothing (1000)  |  Notice (81)  |  Number (710)  |  Oak (16)  |  Oblivion (10)  |  Obtain (164)  |  Performance (51)  |  Period (200)  |  Perpetuity (9)  |  Power (771)  |  Prejudice (96)  |  Produced (187)  |  Remember (189)  |  Reward (72)  |  Rise (169)  |  Scarcely (75)  |  Search (175)  |  See (1094)  |  Seldom (68)  |  Side (236)  |  Soon (187)  |  Spread (86)  |  Statue (17)  |  Striking (48)  |  Time (1911)  |  Towering (11)  |  Vain (86)  |  Various (205)  |  Wall (71)  |  Wit (61)  |  Wonder (251)  |  Work (1402)  |  Writer (90)

To regard such a positive mental science [psychology] as rising above the sphere of history, and establishing the permanent and unchanging laws of human nature, is therefore possible only to a person who mistakes the transient conditions of a certain historical age for the permanent conditions of human life.
The Idea of History (1946), 224.
Science quotes on:  |  Age (509)  |  Certain (557)  |  Condition (362)  |  Historical (70)  |  History (716)  |  Human (1512)  |  Human Nature (71)  |  Law (913)  |  Life (1870)  |  Mental (179)  |  Mistake (180)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Permanent (67)  |  Person (366)  |  Positive (98)  |  Possible (560)  |  Psychology (166)  |  Regard (312)  |  Rising (44)  |  Sphere (118)

True majorities, in a TV-dominated and anti-intellectual age, may need sound bites and flashing lights–and I am not against supplying such lures if they draw children into even a transient concern with science. But every classroom has one [Oliver] Sacks, one [Eric] Korn, or one [Jonathan] Miller, usually a lonely child with a passionate curiosity about nature, and a zeal that overcomes pressures for conformity. Do not the one in fifty deserve their institutions as well–magic places, like cabinet museums, that can spark the rare flames of genius?
…...
Science quotes on:  |  Against (332)  |  Age (509)  |  Anti-Intellectual (2)  |  Bite (18)  |  Cabinet (5)  |  Child (333)  |  Children (201)  |  Classroom (11)  |  Concern (239)  |  Conformity (15)  |  Curiosity (138)  |  Deserve (65)  |  Do (1905)  |  Draw (140)  |  Fifty (17)  |  Flame (44)  |  Flash (49)  |  Genius (301)  |  Institution (73)  |  Intellectual (258)  |  Light (635)  |  Lonely (24)  |  Lure (9)  |  Magic (92)  |  Majority (68)  |  Miller (2)  |  Museum (40)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Need (320)  |  Overcome (40)  |  Passionate (22)  |  Place (192)  |  Pressure (69)  |  Rare (94)  |  Sack (2)  |  Sound (187)  |  Spark (32)  |  Supply (100)  |  True (239)  |  Usually (176)  |  Zeal (12)

When two people are under the influence of the most violent, most insane, most delusive, and most transient of passions, they are required to swear that they will remain in that exalted, abnormal, and exhausting condition continuously until death do them part.
…...
Science quotes on:  |  Abnormal (6)  |  Condition (362)  |  Continuously (7)  |  Death (406)  |  Do (1905)  |  Exalt (29)  |  Exalted (22)  |  Exhaust (22)  |  Influence (231)  |  Insane (9)  |  Most (1728)  |  Part (235)  |  Passion (121)  |  People (1031)  |  Remain (355)  |  Require (229)  |  Required (108)  |  Swear (7)  |  Two (936)  |  Violent (17)  |  Will (2350)


Carl Sagan Thumbnail In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion. (1987) -- Carl Sagan
Quotations by:Albert EinsteinIsaac NewtonLord KelvinCharles DarwinSrinivasa RamanujanCarl SaganFlorence NightingaleThomas EdisonAristotleMarie CurieBenjamin FranklinWinston ChurchillGalileo GalileiSigmund FreudRobert BunsenLouis PasteurTheodore RooseveltAbraham LincolnRonald ReaganLeonardo DaVinciMichio KakuKarl PopperJohann GoetheRobert OppenheimerCharles Kettering  ... (more people)

Quotations about:Atomic  BombBiologyChemistryDeforestationEngineeringAnatomyAstronomyBacteriaBiochemistryBotanyConservationDinosaurEnvironmentFractalGeneticsGeologyHistory of ScienceInventionJupiterKnowledgeLoveMathematicsMeasurementMedicineNatural ResourceOrganic ChemistryPhysicsPhysicianQuantum TheoryResearchScience and ArtTeacherTechnologyUniverseVolcanoVirusWind PowerWomen ScientistsX-RaysYouthZoology  ... (more topics)
Sitewide search within all Today In Science History pages:
Visit our Science and Scientist Quotations index for more Science Quotes from archaeologists, biologists, chemists, geologists, inventors and inventions, mathematicians, physicists, pioneers in medicine, science events and technology.

Names index: | A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | J | K | L | M | N | O | P | Q | R | S | T | U | V | W | X | Y | Z |

Categories index: | 1 | 2 | A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | J | K | L | M | N | O | P | Q | R | S | T | U | V | W | X | Y | Z |
Thank you for sharing.
- 100 -
Sophie Germain
Gertrude Elion
Ernest Rutherford
James Chadwick
Marcel Proust
William Harvey
Johann Goethe
John Keynes
Carl Gauss
Paul Feyerabend
- 90 -
Antoine Lavoisier
Lise Meitner
Charles Babbage
Ibn Khaldun
Euclid
Ralph Emerson
Robert Bunsen
Frederick Banting
Andre Ampere
Winston Churchill
- 80 -
John Locke
Bronislaw Malinowski
Bible
Thomas Huxley
Alessandro Volta
Erwin Schrodinger
Wilhelm Roentgen
Louis Pasteur
Bertrand Russell
Jean Lamarck
- 70 -
Samuel Morse
John Wheeler
Nicolaus Copernicus
Robert Fulton
Pierre Laplace
Humphry Davy
Thomas Edison
Lord Kelvin
Theodore Roosevelt
Carolus Linnaeus
- 60 -
Francis Galton
Linus Pauling
Immanuel Kant
Martin Fischer
Robert Boyle
Karl Popper
Paul Dirac
Avicenna
James Watson
William Shakespeare
- 50 -
Stephen Hawking
Niels Bohr
Nikola Tesla
Rachel Carson
Max Planck
Henry Adams
Richard Dawkins
Werner Heisenberg
Alfred Wegener
John Dalton
- 40 -
Pierre Fermat
Edward Wilson
Johannes Kepler
Gustave Eiffel
Giordano Bruno
JJ Thomson
Thomas Kuhn
Leonardo DaVinci
Archimedes
David Hume
- 30 -
Andreas Vesalius
Rudolf Virchow
Richard Feynman
James Hutton
Alexander Fleming
Emile Durkheim
Benjamin Franklin
Robert Oppenheimer
Robert Hooke
Charles Kettering
- 20 -
Carl Sagan
James Maxwell
Marie Curie
Rene Descartes
Francis Crick
Hippocrates
Michael Faraday
Srinivasa Ramanujan
Francis Bacon
Galileo Galilei
- 10 -
Aristotle
John Watson
Rosalind Franklin
Michio Kaku
Isaac Asimov
Charles Darwin
Sigmund Freud
Albert Einstein
Florence Nightingale
Isaac Newton


by Ian Ellis
who invites your feedback
Thank you for sharing.
Today in Science History
Sign up for Newsletter
with quiz, quotes and more.