Assured Quotes (4 quotes)
The geologist, who is blest with an assured conviction of the immensity of geological time, moves with an ease and freedom from cause to effect wholly denied to those wanting in this conviction.
In 'The Relations of Geology', Scottish Geographical Magazine (Aug 1902), 19, No. 8, 398.
The mathematic, then, is an art. As such it has its styles and style periods. It is not, as the layman and the philosopher (who is in this matter a layman too) imagine, substantially unalterable, but subject like every art to unnoticed changes form epoch to epoch. The development of the great arts ought never to be treated without an (assuredly not unprofitable) side-glance at contemporary mathematics.
In Oswald Spengler and Charles Francis Atkinson (trans.), The Decline of the West (1926), 62.
There is one best path to the mountain crest; yet there are other paths, nearly as good. Let Youth be assured that the steeps of success have as many paths as there are stout-hearted climbers.
From chapter 'Jottings from a Note-book', in Canadian Stories (1918), 173-174.
Workers must root out the idea that by keeping the results of their labors to themselves a fortune will be assured to them. Patent fees are so much wasted money. The flying machine of the future will not be born fully fledged and capable of a flight for 1,000 miles or so. Like everything else it must be evolved gradually. The first difficulty is to get a thing that will fly at all. When this is made, a full description should be published as an aid to others. Excellence of design and workmanship will always defy competition.
As quoted in Octave Chanute, Progress in Flying Machines (1894), 218.
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) -- 
