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Who said: “As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain; and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality.”
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Home > Dictionary of Science Quotations > Scientist Names Index P > Theodore Parker Quotes

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Theodore Parker
(24 Aug 1810 - 10 May 1860)

American clergyman who as a Unitarian minister gave liberal sermons until opposition caused him to resign. He was a friend of Emerson and other transendentalists. Parker was an antislavery leader, and also pursued social causes such as prison reform, temperance and women's education.

Science Quotes by Theodore Parker (4 quotes)

Man is the highest product of his own history. The discoverer finds nothing so grand or tall as himself, nothing so valuable to him. The greatest star is at the small end of the telescope, the star that is looking, not looked after nor looked at.
— Theodore Parker
In Theodore Parker and Rufus Leighton (ed.), Lessons from the World of Matter and the World of Man: Selected from Notes of Unpublished Sermons (1865), 70.
Science quotes on:  |  Anthropology (61)  |  Discoverer (43)  |  End (603)  |  Find (1014)  |  Grand (29)  |  Greatest (330)  |  Highest (19)  |  Himself (461)  |  History (716)  |  Look (584)  |  Looking (191)  |  Man (2252)  |  Nothing (1000)  |  Product (166)  |  Small (489)  |  Star (460)  |  Tall (11)  |  Telescope (106)  |  Value (393)

Science is the natural ally of religion.
— Theodore Parker
Theodore Parker and Samuel Atkins Eliot (Ed.), Sermons of Religion (1908), 35.
Science quotes on:  |  Natural (810)  |  Religion (369)  |  Science And Religion (337)

Science, also, is most largely indebted to these beauty-loving Greeks, for truth is one form of loveliness.
— Theodore Parker
In The Collected Works of Theodore Parker: Discourses of Politics (1863), 78.
Science quotes on:  |  Beauty (313)  |  Form (976)  |  Greek (109)  |  Indebted (8)  |  Love (328)  |  Loveliness (6)  |  Most (1728)  |  Truth (1109)

To have a railroad, there must have been first the discoverers, who found out the properties of wood and iron, fire and water, and their latent power to carry men over the earth; next the organizers, who put these elements together, surveyed the route, planned the structure, set men to grade the hill, to fill the valley, and pave the road with iron bars; and then the administrators, who after all that is done, procure the engines, engineers, conductors, ticket-distributors, and the rest of the “hands;” they buy the coal and see it is not wasted, fix the rates of fare, calculate the savings, and distribute the dividends. The discoverers and organizers often fare hard in the world, lean men, ill-clad and suspected, often laughed at, while the administrator is thought the greater man, because he rides over their graves and pays the dividends, where the organizer only called for the assessments, and the discoverer told what men called a dream. What happens in a railroad happens also in a Church, or a State.
— Theodore Parker
Address at the Melodeon, Boston (5 Mar 1848), 'A Discourse occasioned by the Death of John Quincy Adams'. Collected in Discourses of Politics: The Collected Works of Theodore Parker: Part 4 (1863), 139. Note: Ralph Waldo Emerson earlier used the phrase “pave the road with iron bars,” in Nature (1836), 17.
Science quotes on:  |  Administrator (11)  |  Assessment (3)  |  Bar (9)  |  Buy (21)  |  Calculate (58)  |  Call (781)  |  Carry (130)  |  Church (64)  |  Coal (64)  |  Conductor (17)  |  Discoverer (43)  |  Distribute (16)  |  Dividend (3)  |  Dream (222)  |  Earth (1076)  |  Element (322)  |  Engine (99)  |  Engineer (136)  |  Fare (5)  |  Fill (67)  |  Fire (203)  |  First (1302)  |  Fix (34)  |  Grade (12)  |  Grave (52)  |  Greater (288)  |  Hand (149)  |  Happen (282)  |  Hard (246)  |  Hill (23)  |  Iron (99)  |  Latent (13)  |  Laugh (50)  |  Man (2252)  |  Must (1525)  |  Next (238)  |  Pave (8)  |  Pay (45)  |  Plan (122)  |  Power (771)  |  Procure (6)  |  Property (177)  |  Railroad (36)  |  Rate (31)  |  Rest (287)  |  Ride (23)  |  Road (71)  |  Route (16)  |  Saving (20)  |  See (1094)  |  Set (400)  |  State (505)  |  Structure (365)  |  Survey (36)  |  Tell (344)  |  Thought (995)  |  Ticket (5)  |  Together (392)  |  Valley (37)  |  Waste (109)  |  Water (503)  |  Wood (97)  |  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
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