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Home > Dictionary of Science Quotations > Scientist Names Index B > Robert Burns Quotes

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Robert Burns
(25 Jan 1759 - 21 Jul 1796)

Scottish poet known for his poetry celebrating the lowlands of Scotland, and also familiar songs including Auld Lang Syne and Comin' thro' the Rye.

Science Quotes by Robert Burns (7 quotes)

Ask why God made the GEM so small,
And why so huge the granite?
Because God meant, mankind should set
That higher value on it.
— Robert Burns
Science quotes on:  |  Ask (420)  |  Gem (17)  |  God (776)  |  Granite (8)  |  High (370)  |  Mankind (356)  |  Set (400)  |  Small (489)  |  Value (393)  |  Why (491)

But facts are chiels that winna ding,
An' downa be disputed.
— Robert Burns
From poem, 'A Dream', (1786), in The Complete Works of Robert Burns (1826), 23.
Science quotes on:  |  Dispute (36)  |  Fact (1257)  |  Facts (553)

Facts are things which cannot be altered or disputed.
— Robert Burns
Science quotes on:  |  Alter (64)  |  Altered (32)  |  Dispute (36)  |  Fact (1257)  |  Facts (553)  |  Thing (1914)

God help the teacher, if a man of sensibility and genius, when a booby father presents him with his booby son, and insists on lighting up the rays of science in a fellow's head whose skull is impervious and inaccessible by any other way than a positive fracture with a cudgel.
— Robert Burns
In a letter to Mr. Cunningham, 11 Jun 1791. Quoted in James Wood Dictionary of Quotations from Ancient and Modern, English and Foreign Sources (1893), 126:18.
Science quotes on:  |  Father (113)  |  Fellow (88)  |  Fracture (7)  |  Genius (301)  |  God (776)  |  Impervious (5)  |  Inaccessible (18)  |  Man (2252)  |  Other (2233)  |  Positive (98)  |  Present (630)  |  Ray (115)  |  Teacher (154)  |  Teaching (190)  |  Way (1214)

It is the moon, I ken her horn
That’s blinkin in the lift sae hie;
She shines sae bright to wyle us hame,
But by my sooth she’ll wait a wee!
— Robert Burns
Science quotes on:  |  Bright (81)  |  Horn (18)  |  Lift (57)  |  Moon (252)  |  Shine (49)

Mankind is a science that defies definitions.
— Robert Burns
In James Wood, Dictionary of Quotations from Ancient and Modern, English and Foreign Sources (1893), 267:30.
Science quotes on:  |  Definition (238)  |  Mankind (356)

Ye ugly, creepin’, blastit wonner,
Detested, shunn’d by saunt an’ sinner!
How dare ye set your fit upon her,
Sae fine a lady?
Gae somewhere else, and seek your dinner
On some poor body.
— Robert Burns
From poem, 'To A Louse: On Seeing One On A Lady’s Bonnet, At Church' (1786).
Science quotes on:  |  Body (557)  |  Dare (55)  |  Entomology (9)  |  Fit (139)  |  Louse (6)  |  Poor (139)  |  Seek (218)  |  Set (400)


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)
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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


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