Well Quotes (14 quotes)
[Editorial cartoon showing an executive sitting behind a desk with a Big Oil nameplate]
You want Coal? We own the mines.
You want oil and gas? We own the wells.
You want nuclear energy? We own the uranium.
You want solar power? We own the er..ah..
Solar power isn't feasible.
You want Coal? We own the mines.
You want oil and gas? We own the wells.
You want nuclear energy? We own the uranium.
You want solar power? We own the er..ah..
Solar power isn't feasible.
Mike Peters in Dayton Daily News. Please contact webmaster if you know the date of publication. It was on the cover of the book Solar Gas (1979) by David Hoye.
Dicere enim bene nemo potest, nisi qui prudenter intelligit.
No one can speak well, unless he thoroughly understands his subject.
No one can speak well, unless he thoroughly understands his subject.
Brutus VI., 23. In Thomas Benfield Harbottle, Dictionary of Quotations (classical) (3rd Ed., 1906), 45.
Few men during their lifetime come anywhere near exhausting the resources dwelling within them. There are deep wells of strength that are never used.
In Alone (1938), 189.
How many wells of science there are in whose depths there is nothing but clear water!
In Bluettes et Boutardes. Translated in Conceits and Caprices (1869), 13.
I am not a lover of lawns; … the least interesting adjuncts of the country-house. … Rather would I see daisies in their thousands, ground ivy, hawkweed, and even the hated plantain with tall stems, and dandelions with splendid flowers and fairy down, than the too-well-tended lawn.
In The Book of a Naturalist (1919), 337.
I would rather have a mineral ill-classified and well-described, than well-classified and ill-described.
In On the External Characters of Minerals (1774), xxix, trans. Albert V. and Marguerite CaroaL
If the patient dies, the doctor has killed him; if he gets well, the saints have saved him.
In H. Pullar-Strecker, Proverbs for Pleasure (1954), 194.
It has been said that numbers rule the world; but I know that the numbers teach us, whether it is governed well or badly.
English using Google translate from the original German, “Man hat behauptet, die Welt werde durch Zahlen regiert; das aber weiss ich, dass die Zahlen uns belehren, ob sie gut oder schlecht regiert werde,” in J.P. Eckermann, entry for Sonntag den 31 Januar 1830', Gespräche mit Goethe (1836), 180. However, notice that in the original context, the sense of Zahen is “pay.” In the translation by S.M. Fuller, the full context is thus: “Goethe read in the French periodical, the ‘Times,’ an article on the enormous salaries of the English clergy, who receive more than all other ecclesiastics in Christendom put together. ‘It has been maintained,’ said Goethe, ‘that the world is governed by pay; this I know, by examining the distribution of pay, we can find out whether it is well or ill governed.’” In J.P. Eckermann and S.M. Fuller (trans.), 'Sunday, 31st January', Conversations with Goethe in the Last Years of His Life (1839), 336. Yet commonly seen on the web as “It has been said that figures rule the world. Maybe. But I am sure that figures show us whether it is being ruled well or badly.”
It is sometimes well for a blatant error to draw attention to overmodest truths.
Pensées d'un Biologiste (1939). Translated in The Substance of Man (1962), 89.
Science can be introduced to children well or poorly. If poorly, children can be turned away from science; they can develop a lifelong antipathy; they will be in a far worse condition than if they had never been introduced to science at all.
[Unverified. Please contact Webmaster if you can identify the primary source.]
Talent gives out what it has taken in ; genius, what has risen from its unsounded wells of living thought.
In 'Genius', Wellman’s Miscellany (Dec 1871), 4, No. 6, 203.
The fact that we live at the bottom of a deep gravity well, on the surface of a gas covered planet going around a nuclear fireball 90 million miles away and think this to be normal is obviously some indication of how skewed our perspective tends to be.
In The Salmon of Doubt: Hitchhiking the Galaxy One Last Time (2002), 132.
We do not dwell in the Palace of Truth. But, as was mentioned to me not long since, “There is a time coming when all things shall be found out.” I am not so sanguine myself, believing that the well in which Truth is said to reside is really a bottomless pit.
From 'Electromagnetic Theory, I' in The Electrician (2 Jan 1891), 26, 257.
When the well’s dry, we know the worth of water.
In Poor Richard’s Almanac (1757, 1900), 23. Published earlier (1732) by Thomas Fuller as: “We never know the worth of water ’til the well is dry.” Proverb collected by Thomas Fuller in Gnomologia: Adagies and Proverbs: Wise Sentences and Witty Sayings, Ancient and Modern, Foreign and British (1732), 237.
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) -- 
