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 > Category Index for Science Quotations > Category Index A > Category: Above

Above Quotes (7 quotes)

[After science lost] its mystical inspiration … man’s destiny was no longer determined from “above” by a super-human wisdom and will, but from “below” by the sub-human agencies of glands, genes, atoms, or waves of probability. … A puppet of the Gods is a tragic figure, a puppet suspended on his chromosomes is merely grotesque.
In 'Epilogue', The Sleepwalkers: A History of Man’s Changing Vision of the Universe (1959), 539.
Science quotes on:  |  Atom (381)  |  Below (26)  |  Chromosome (23)  |  Chromosomes (17)  |  Destiny (54)  |  Figure (162)  |  Gene (105)  |  Gland (14)  |  God (776)  |  Grotesque (6)  |  Human (1512)  |  Inspiration (80)  |  Man (2252)  |  Merely (315)  |  Mystic (23)  |  Probability (135)  |  Puppet (4)  |  Science And Religion (337)  |  Suspended (5)  |  Tragic (19)  |  Wave (112)  |  Will (2350)  |  Wisdom (235)

Question: On freezing water in a glass tube, the tube sometimes breaks. Why is this? An iceberg floats with 1,000,000 tons of ice above the water line. About how many tons are below the water line?
Answer: The water breaks the tube because of capallarity. The iceberg floats on the top because it is lighter, hence no tons are below the water line. Another reason is that an iceberg cannot exceed 1,000,000 tons in weight: hence if this much is above water, none is below. Ice is exceptional to all other bodies except bismuth. All other bodies have 1090 feet below the surface and 2 feet extra for every degree centigrade. If it were not for this, all fish would die, and the earth be held in an iron grip.
P.S.—When I say 1090 feet, I mean 1090 feet per second.
Genuine student answer* to an Acoustics, Light and Heat paper (1880), Science and Art Department, South Kensington, London, collected by Prof. Oliver Lodge. Quoted in Henry B. Wheatley, Literary Blunders (1893), 179-80, Question 13. (*From a collection in which Answers are not given verbatim et literatim, and some instances may combine several students' blunders.)
Science quotes on:  |  Answer (389)  |  Below (26)  |  Bismuth (7)  |  Break (109)  |  Centigrade (2)  |  Death (406)  |  Degree (277)  |  Earth (1076)  |  Examination (102)  |  Exception (74)  |  Exceptional (19)  |  Extra (7)  |  Fish (130)  |  Float (31)  |  Freezing (16)  |  Glass (94)  |  Grip (10)  |  Howler (15)  |  Ice (58)  |  Iceberg (4)  |  Iron (99)  |  Lighter (2)  |  Mean (810)  |  Other (2233)  |  Question (649)  |  Reason (766)  |  Say (989)  |  Surface (223)  |  Ton (25)  |  Top (100)  |  Tube (6)  |  Water (503)  |  Weight (140)  |  Why (491)

A proposal…to bore a hole in the crust of the Earth and discover the conditions deep down below the surface…may remind us that the most secret places of Nature are, perhaps, not 10 to the n-th miles above our heads, but 10 miles below our feet.
From Presidential address to Section A of the British Association at Cardiff (24 Aug 1920). Published in 'The Internal Constitution of the Stars', The Observatory: A Monthly Review of Astronomy (Oct 1920), 43, No. 557, 341.
Science quotes on:  |  Below (26)  |  Condition (362)  |  Crust (43)  |  Deep (241)  |  Discover (571)  |  Earth (1076)  |  Foot (65)  |  Head (87)  |  Hole (17)  |  Mile (43)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Place (192)  |  Proposal (21)  |  Secret (216)  |  Surface (223)  |  Universe (900)

Botany,—the science of the vegetable kingdom, is one of the most attractive, most useful, and most extensive departments of human knowledge. It is, above every other, the science of beauty.
Using pseudonym Peter Parley, in Peter Parley’s Cyclopedia of Botany (1838), ix. [This is a correction. Earlier on this website, the quote was identified as by Joseph Paxton, because that author’s name was on Google’s (erroneous) cover image of the book search result.]
Science quotes on:  |  Attractive (25)  |  Beauty (313)  |  Botany (63)  |  Department (93)  |  Extensive (34)  |  Human (1512)  |  Kingdom (80)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Most (1728)  |  Other (2233)  |  Useful (260)  |  Usefulness (92)  |  Vegetable (49)

If a teacher is full of his subject, and can induce enthusiasm in his pupils; if his facts are concrete and naturally connected, the amount of material that an average child can assimilate without injury is as astonishing as is the little that will fag him if it is a trifle above or below or remote from him, or taught dully or incoherently.
In The North American Review (Mar 1883), No. 316, 289.
Science quotes on:  |  Amount (153)  |  Assimilate (9)  |  Astonishing (29)  |  Average (89)  |  Below (26)  |  Child (333)  |  Concrete (55)  |  Connect (126)  |  Dull (58)  |  Education (423)  |  Enthusiasm (59)  |  Fact (1257)  |  Facts (553)  |  Incoherent (7)  |  Induce (24)  |  Injury (36)  |  Little (717)  |  Material (366)  |  Naturally (11)  |  Pupil (62)  |  Remote (86)  |  Subject (543)  |  Teach (299)  |  Teacher (154)  |  Tire (7)  |  Trifle (18)  |  Will (2350)

Science is the study of the admitted laws of existence, which cannot prove a universal negative about whether those laws could ever be suspended by something admittedly above them. It is as if we were to say that a lawyer was so deeply learned in the American Constitution that he knew there could never be a revolution in America..
From 'The Early Bird in History',The Thing: Why I Am Catholic (1929), 207. In Collected Works (1990), Vol. 3, 296.
Science quotes on:  |  Admitted (3)  |  Admittedly (2)  |  America (143)  |  Constitution (78)  |  Existence (481)  |  Law (913)  |  Lawyer (27)  |  Learn (672)  |  Learned (235)  |  Negative (66)  |  Never (1089)  |  Prove (261)  |  Revolution (133)  |  Say (989)  |  Something (718)  |  Study (701)  |  Suspended (5)  |  Universal (198)

The mind of man may be compared to a musical instrument with a certain range of notes, beyond which in both directions we have an infinitude of silence. The phenomena of matter and force lie within our intellectual range, and as far as they reach we will at all hazards push our inquiries. But behind, and above, and around all, the real mystery of this universe [Who made it all?] lies unsolved, and, as far as we are concerned, is incapable of solution.
In 'Matter and Force', Fragments of Science for Unscientific People (1871), 93.
Science quotes on:  |  Around (7)  |  Behind (139)  |  Beyond (316)  |  Both (496)  |  Certain (557)  |  Comparison (108)  |  Concern (239)  |  Creation (350)  |  Direction (185)  |  Enquiry (89)  |  Force (497)  |  Hazard (21)  |  Human Mind (133)  |  Incapability (2)  |  Incapable (41)  |  Infinite (243)  |  Instrument (158)  |  Intellect (251)  |  Intellectual (258)  |  Lie (370)  |  Man (2252)  |  Matter (821)  |  Mind (1377)  |  Music (133)  |  Mystery (188)  |  Note (39)  |  Origin Of The Universe (20)  |  Phenomenon (334)  |  Push (66)  |  Range (104)  |  Reach (286)  |  Science And Religion (337)  |  Silence (62)  |  Solution (282)  |  Universe (900)  |  Unsolved (15)  |  Will (2350)  |  Within (7)


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.