Abnormal Quotes (6 quotes)
As a little boy, I showed an abnormal aptitude for mathematics this gift played a horrible part in tussles with quinsy or scarlet fever, when I felt enormous spheres and huge numbers swell relentlessly in my aching brain.
In Speak, Memory: An Autobiography Revisited (1999), 2
I believe that the medical treatment of the various abnormal conditions arising in infants is in the future to be largely dietetic rather than by means of drugs.
Preface to the First Edition (Oct 1895). In Pediatrics: the hygienic and medical treatment of children (5th. ed., 1906), ix.
Our ancestors, when about to build a town or an army post, sacrificed some of the cattle that were wont to feed on the site proposed and examined their livers. If the livers of the first victims were dark-coloured or abnormal, they sacrificed others, to see whether the fault was due to disease or their food. They never began to build defensive works in a place until after they had made many such trials and satisfied themselves that good water and food had made the liver sound and firm. …healthfulness being their chief object.
In De Architectura, Book 1, Chap 4, Sec. 9. As translated in Morris Hicky Morgan (trans.), Vitruvius: The Ten Books on Architecture (1914), 20.
Physical science has taught us to associate Deity with the normal rather than with the abnormal.
In James Wood, Dictionary of Quotations from Ancient and Modern, English and Foreign Sources (1893), 348.
Science is bound by the everlasting law of honour, to face fearlessly every problem which can fairly be presented to it. If a probable solution, consistent with the ordinary course of nature, can be found, we must not invoke an abnormal act of Creative Power.
From Inaugural Address of the President (2 Aug 1871) to the Edinburgh meeting of the British Association. Published in Chemical News and Journal of Industrial Science (4 Aug 1871), 24, 55.
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.
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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) -- 
