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: “The conservation of natural resources is the fundamental problem. Unless we solve that problem it will avail us little to solve all others.”
more quiz questions >>
Home > Dictionary of Science Quotations > Scientist Names Index H > Fritz Haber Quotes

Thumbnail of Fritz Haber (source)
Fritz Haber
(9 Dec 1868 - 29 Jan 1934)

German physical chemist.


Science Quotes by Fritz Haber (1 quote)

The field of scientific abstraction encompasses independent kingdoms of ideas and of experiments and within these, rulers whose fame outlasts the centuries. But they are not the only kings in science. He also is a king who guides the spirit of his contemporaries by knowledge and creative work, by teaching and research in the field of applied science, and who conquers for science provinces which have only been raided by craftsmen.
— Fritz Haber
While president of the German Chemical Society, making memorial remarks dedicated to the deceased Professor Lunge (Jan 1923). As quoted in Richard Willstätter, Arthur Stoll (ed. of the original German) and Lilli S. Hornig (trans.), From My Life: The Memoirs of Richard Willstätter (1958), 174-175.
Science quotes on:  |  Abstraction (48)  |  Applied (176)  |  Applied Science (36)  |  Century (319)  |  Conquer (39)  |  Contemporary (33)  |  Craftsman (5)  |  Creative (144)  |  Creativity (84)  |  Encompass (3)  |  Experiment (736)  |  Fame (51)  |  Field (378)  |  Guide (107)  |  Idea (881)  |  Independent (74)  |  King (39)  |  Kingdom (80)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Outlast (3)  |  Province (37)  |  Raid (5)  |  Research (753)  |  Ruler (21)  |  Scientific (955)  |  Spirit (278)  |  Teaching (190)  |  Work (1402)



Quotes by others about Fritz Haber (3)

It is a very strange thing to reflect that but for the invention of Professor Haber the Germans could not have continued the War after their original stack of nitrates was exhausted. The invention of this single man has enabled them, utilising the interval in which their accumulations were used up, not only to maintain an almost unlimited supply of explosives for all purposes, but to provide amply for the needs of agriculture in chemical manures. It is a remarkable fact, and shows on what obscure and accidental incidents the fortunes of possible the whole world may turn in these days of scientific discovery.
[During World War I, Fritz Haber and Karl Bosch invented a large scale process to cause the direct combination of hydrogen and nitrogen gases to chemically synthesize ammonia, thus providing a replacement for sodium nitrate in the manufacture of explosives and fertilizers.]
Parliamentary debate (25 Apr 1918). In Winston Churchill, Richard Langworth (ed.), Churchill by Himself: The Definitive Collection of Quotations (2008), 469. by Winston Churchill, Richard Langworth
Science quotes on:  |  Accidental (31)  |  Accumulation (51)  |  Agriculture (78)  |  Ammonia (15)  |  Cause (561)  |  Chemical (303)  |  Combination (150)  |  Direct (228)  |  Discovery (837)  |  Explosive (24)  |  Fact (1257)  |  Fertilizer (13)  |  Fortune (50)  |  German (37)  |  Hydrogen (80)  |  Invention (400)  |  Large (398)  |  Maintain (105)  |  Man (2252)  |  Manufacture (30)  |  Nitrogen (32)  |  Obscure (66)  |  Possible (560)  |  Process (439)  |  Professor (133)  |  Purpose (336)  |  Reaction (106)  |  Replacement (13)  |  Scale (122)  |  Scientific (955)  |  Show (353)  |  Single (365)  |  Sodium (15)  |  Strange (160)  |  Supply (100)  |  Synthesis (58)  |  Thing (1914)  |  Turn (454)  |  Unlimited (24)  |  War (233)  |  Whole (756)  |  World (1850)

[Fritz Haber's] greatness lies in his scientific ideas and in the depth of his searching. The thought, the plan, and the process are more important to him than the completion. The creative process gives him more pleasure than the yield, the finished piece. Success is immaterial. “Doing it was wonderful.” His work is nearly always uneconomical, with the wastefulness of the rich.
In Richard Willstätter, Arthur Stoll (ed. of the original German) and Lilli S. Hornig (trans.), From My Life: The Memoirs of Richard Willstätter (1958), 268.
Science quotes on:  |  Completion (23)  |  Creative (144)  |  Creativity (84)  |  Depth (97)  |  Doing (277)  |  Finish (62)  |  Greatness (55)  |  Idea (881)  |  Immaterial (6)  |  Importance (299)  |  Lie (370)  |  More (2558)  |  Nearly (137)  |  Plan (122)  |  Pleasure (191)  |  Process (439)  |  Rich (66)  |  Scientific (955)  |  Search (175)  |  Success (327)  |  Thought (995)  |  Wastefulness (2)  |  Wonderful (155)  |  Work (1402)  |  Yield (86)

We should misjudge this scientist [Fritz Haber] seriously if we were to judge him only by his harvest. The stimulation of research and the advancement of younger scholars become ever more important to him than his own achievements.
In Richard Willstätter, Arthur Stoll (ed. of the original German) and Lilli S. Hornig (trans.), From My Life: The Memoirs of Richard Willstätter (1958), 269.
Science quotes on:  |  Achievement (187)  |  Advancement (63)  |  Become (821)  |  Harvest (28)  |  Importance (299)  |  Judge (114)  |  More (2558)  |  Research (753)  |  Scholar (52)  |  Scientist (881)  |  Stimulation (18)  |  Young (253)  |  Younger (21)


See also:
  • 9 Dec - short biography, births, deaths and events on date of Haber's birth.
  • More for Fritz Haber on Today in Science History page.
  • Fritz Haber: Chemist, Nobel Laureate, German, Jew: A Biography, by Dietrich Stoltzenberg. - book suggestion.
  • Booklist for Fritz Haber.

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.