Basement Quotes (4 quotes)
Beneath the soil and waters of the earth’s surface there is everywhere a basement of rocks.
First sentence of 'Introduction', A Text-book of Geology: Designed for Schools and Academies (1863), 1.
I think it’s in my basement… let me go upstairs and check. —M.C. Escher [joke attribution]
Widely seen feral on the web. Webmaster has not yet found a primary source for this a quote, and regards it as an anonymous joke, with a false attribution to Escher as part of the joke (because Escher’s art works are known for distorted reality). Compare the authentic quote, “Are you really sure that a floor can’t also be a ceiling?” on the M.C. Escher Quotes page of this site.
It is fashionable nowadays to talk about the endless riches of the sea. The ocean is regarded as a sort of bargain basement, but I don’t agree with that estimate. People don’t realize that water in the liquid state is very rare in the universe. Away from earth it is usually a gas. This moisture is a blessed treasure, and it is our basic duty, if we don’t want to commit suicide, to preserve it.
As quoted by Nancy Hicks in 'Cousteau’s Philosophy of the Sea Helps Him Get Another Medal', New York Times (25 Oct 1970), 54.
The laboratory was an unattractive half basement and low ceilinged room with an inner dark room for the galvanometer and experimental animals. It was dark, crowded with equipment and uninviting. Into it came patients for electrocardiography, dogs for experiments, trays with coffee and buns for lunch. It was hot and dusty in summer and cold in winter. True a large fire burnt brightly in the winter but anyone who found time to warm his backside at it was not beloved by [Sir Thomas] Lewis. It was no good to try and look out of the window for relaxation, for it was glazed with opaque glass. The scientific peaks were our only scenery, and it was our job to try and find the pathways to the top.
— Magazine
'Tribute to Sir Thomas Lewis', University College Hospital Magazine (1955), 40, 71.
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) -- 
