Approval Quotes (12 quotes)
Discovery always carries an honorific connotation. It is the stamp of approval on a finding of lasting value. Many laws and theories have come and gone in the history of science, but they are not spoken of as discoveries. Kepler is said to have discovered the laws of planetary motion named after him, but no the many other 'laws' which he formulated. ... Theories are especially precarious, as this century profoundly testifies. World views can and do often change. Despite these difficulties, it is still true that to count as a discovery a finding must be of at least relatively permanent value, as shown by its inclusion in the generally accepted body of scientific knowledge.
Discovery in the Physical Sciences (1969). In Rodney P. Carlisle, Scientific American Inventions and Discoveries (2004), 179.
Omne tulit punctum qui miscuit utile dulci.
He gains everyone’s approval who mixes the pleasant with the useful.
He gains everyone’s approval who mixes the pleasant with the useful.
— Horace
In Ars Poetica (c. 18 BC), line 343. As translated and cited in Alan L. Mackay, A Dictionary of Scientific Quotations (1991), 123.
Every man is ready to join in the approval or condemnation of a philosopher or a statesman, a poet or an orator, an artist or an architect. But who can judge of a mathematician? Who will write a review of Hamilton’s Quaternions, and show us wherein it is superior to Newton’s Fluxions?
In 'Imagination in Mathematics', North American Review, 85, 224.
Every utterance from government - from justifying 90-day detention to invading other countries [and] to curtailing civil liberties - is about the dangers of religious division and fundamentalism. Yet New Labour is approving new faith schools hand over fist. We have had the grotesque spectacle of a British prime minister, on the floor of the House of Commons, defending - like some medieval crusader - the teaching of creationism in the science curriculum at a sponsor-run school whose running costs are wholly met from the public purse.
In The Guardian (10 Apr 2006).
I had a plan for the NDRC in four short paragraphs in the middle of a sheet of paper. The whole audience lasted less than ten minutes… I came out with my 'OK - FDR' and all the wheels began to turn.
About Pres. Roosevelt’s approval for the National Defense Research Committee (NDRC), that was shortly subsumed into the U.S. Office of Scientific Research and Development (OSRD), which Bush headed. As quoted in Pieces of the Action (1970), 36.
Joy of discovery is real, and it is one of our rewards. So too is the approval of our work by our peers.
Speech at the Nobel Banquet (10 Dec 1983) for his Nobel Prize in Chemistry. In Wilhelm Odelberg (ed.), Les Prix Nobel: The Nobel Prizes (1984), 43.
Neither art nor science knows anything of moral approval or disapproval. Science is out of the reach of morals, for her eyes are fixed upon eternal truths. Art is out of the reach of morals, for her eyes are fixed upon things beautiful and immortal and ever-changing.
In his dialogue 'The Critic As Artist', collected in Intentions (1891), 156. Also collected in Oscariana: Epigrams (1895), 27.
Not only such Actions as were at first Indifferent to us, but even such as were Painful, will by Custom and Practice become Pleasant. Sir Francis Bacon observes in his Natural Philosophy, that our Taste is never pleased better, than with those things which at first created a Disgust in it. He gives particular Instances of Claret, Coffee, and other Liquors, which the Palate seldom approves upon the first Taste; but when it has once got a Relish of them, generally retains it for Life.
In The Spectator (2 Aug 1712), No. 447, collected in The Spectator (9th ed., 1728), Vol. 6, 225-226.
Pleasure is Nature’s test, her sign of approval. When we are happy we are always good; but when we are good, we are not always happy.
In 'Dorian Gray', The Writings of Oscar Wilde: Epigrams, Phrases and Philosophies For the Use of the Young (1907), 45.
The progress of science is tremendously disorderly, and the motivations that lead to this progress are tremendously varied, and the reasons why scientists go into science, the personal motivations, are tremendously varied. I have said … in the Beckett lecture, at least one particular point that seems to be missed; that science is a haven for freaks, that people go into science because they are misfits, and that it is a sheltered place where they can spin their own yarn and have recognition, be tolerated and happy, and have approval for it.
From Interview (1978) for Oral History Project, California Institute of Technology Archives, Pasadena, California (oralhistories.library.caltech.edu), Online PDF version, 87. Footnoted as Max Delbruck, 'Homo Scientificus According to Beckett," collected in William Beranek, Jr. (ed.)Science, Scientists, and Society, (1972), 135.
These microscopic organisms form an entire world composed of species, families and varieties whose history, which has barely begun to be written, is already fertile in prospects and findings of the highest importance. The names of these organisms are very numerous and will have to be defined and in part discarded. The word microbe which has the advantage of being shorter and carrying a more general meaning, and of having been approved by my illustrious friend, M. Littré, the most competent linguist in France, is one we will adopt.
In paper read to the Académie de Medecine (Mar 1878). In Charles-Emile Sedillot, 'Influence de M. Pasteur sur les progres de la chirurgie' [Influence of Pasteur on the progress of surgery].
Whether we like it or not, quantification in history is here to stay for reasons which the quantifiers themselves might not actively approve. We are becoming a numerate society: almost instinctively there seems now to be a greater degree of truth in evidence expressed numerically than in any literary evidence, no matter how shaky the statistical evidence, or acute the observing eye.
Is History Sick? (1973), 64.
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) -- 
