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 path towards sustainable energy sources will be long and sometimes difficult. But America cannot resist this transition, we must lead it... That is how we will preserve our planet, commanded to our care by God. That�s what will lend meaning to the creed our fathers once declared.”
more quiz questions >>
Home > Category Index for Science Quotations > Category Index B > Category: Blast

Blast Quotes (13 quotes)

Have you ever watched an eagle held captive in a zoo, fat and plump and full of food and safe from danger too?
Then have you seen another wheeling high up in the sky, thin and hard and battle-scarred, but free to soar and fly?
Well, which have you pitied the caged one or his brother? Though safe and warm from foe or storm, the captive, not the other!
There’s something of the eagle in climbers, don’t you see; a secret thing, perhaps the soul, that clamors to be free.
It’s a different sort of freedom from the kind we often mean, not free to work and eat and sleep and live in peace serene.
But freedom like a wild thing to leap and soar and strive, to struggle with the icy blast, to really be alive.
That’s why we climb the mountain’s peak from which the cloud-veils flow, to stand and watch the eagle fly, and soar, and wheel... below...
…...
Science quotes on:  |  Alive (97)  |  Below (26)  |  Brother (47)  |  Cage (12)  |  Captive (2)  |  Climb (39)  |  Climber (7)  |  Cloud (111)  |  Danger (127)  |  Different (595)  |  Eagle (20)  |  Eat (108)  |  Fat (11)  |  Flow (89)  |  Fly (153)  |  Foe (11)  |  Food (213)  |  Free (239)  |  Freedom (145)  |  Full (68)  |  Hard (246)  |  High (370)  |  Hold (96)  |  Icy (3)  |  Kind (564)  |  Leap (57)  |  Live (650)  |  Mean (810)  |  Mountain (202)  |  Often (109)  |  Other (2233)  |  Peace (116)  |  Peak (20)  |  Pity (16)  |  Really (77)  |  Safe (61)  |  Secret (216)  |  See (1094)  |  Serene (5)  |  Sky (174)  |  Sleep (81)  |  Soar (23)  |  Something (718)  |  Sort (50)  |  Soul (235)  |  Stand (284)  |  Storm (56)  |  Strive (53)  |  Struggle (111)  |  Thin (18)  |  Thing (1914)  |  Veil (27)  |  Warm (74)  |  Watch (118)  |  Wheel (51)  |  Wheeling (3)  |  Why (491)  |  Wild (96)  |  Work (1402)  |  Zoo (9)

If we compare a mathematical problem with an immense rock, whose interior we wish to penetrate, then the work of the Greek mathematicians appears to us like that of a robust stonecutter, who, with indefatigable perseverance, attempts to demolish the rock gradually from the outside by means of hammer and chisel; but the modern mathematician resembles an expert miner, who first constructs a few passages through the rock and then explodes it with a single blast, bringing to light its inner treasures.
In Die Entwickelung der Mathematik in den letzten Jahrhunderten (1869), 9. As translated in Robert Édouard Moritz, Memorabilia Mathematica; Or, The Philomath’s Quotation-book (1914), 114. From the original German, “Vergleichen wir ein mathematisches Problem mit einem gewaltigen Felsen, in dessen Inneres wir eindringen wollen, so erscheint die Arbeit der griechischen Mathematiker uns als die eines rüstigen Steinhauers, der mit Hammer und Meissel in unermüdlicher Ausdauer den Felsen langsam von aussen her zu zerbröckeln beginnt; der moderne Mathematiker aber als ein trefflicher Minirer, der diesen Felsen zunächst mit wenigen Gängen durchzieht, von denen aus er dann den Felsblock mit einem gewaltigem Schlage zersprengt und die Schätze des Inneren zu Tage fördert.”
Science quotes on:  |  Appear (122)  |  Attempt (266)  |  Bring (95)  |  Chisel (2)  |  Compare (76)  |  Construct (129)  |  Demolish (8)  |  Expert (67)  |  Explode (15)  |  First (1302)  |  Gradual (30)  |  Gradually (102)  |  Greek (109)  |  Hammer (26)  |  Immense (89)  |  Inner (72)  |  Interior (35)  |  Light (635)  |  Mathematician (407)  |  Mathematics (1395)  |  Mean (810)  |  Means (587)  |  Miner (9)  |  Modern (402)  |  Modern Mathematics (50)  |  Outside (141)  |  Passage (52)  |  Penetrate (68)  |  Perseverance (24)  |  Problem (731)  |  Resemble (65)  |  Robust (7)  |  Rock (176)  |  Single (365)  |  Through (846)  |  Treasure (59)  |  Wish (216)  |  Work (1402)

It seems as though no laws, not even fairly old ones, can safely be regarded as unassailable. The force of gravity, which we have always ascribed to the “pull of the earth,” was reinterpreted the other day by a scientist who says that when we fall it is not earth pulling us, it is heaven pushing us. This blasts the rock on which we sit. If science can do a rightabout-face on a thing as fundamental as gravity, maybe Newton was a sucker not to have just eaten the apple.
In 'Talk of the Town,', The New Yorker (3 Apr 1937). As cited in Martha White (ed.), In the Words of E.B. White (2011), 175.
Science quotes on:  |  Apple (46)  |  Do (1905)  |  Earth (1076)  |  Eat (108)  |  Face (214)  |  Fall (243)  |  Force (497)  |  Fundamental (264)  |  Gravity (140)  |  Heaven (266)  |  Law (913)  |  Law Of Gravity (16)  |  Sir Isaac Newton (363)  |  Old (499)  |  Other (2233)  |  Pull (43)  |  Push (66)  |  Regard (312)  |  Reinterpret (2)  |  Rock (176)  |  Say (989)  |  Scientist (881)  |  Sit (51)  |  Sucker (2)  |  Thing (1914)  |  Unassailable (3)

Man must at all costs overcome the Earth’s gravity and have, in reserve, the space at least of the Solar System. All kinds of danger wait for him on the Earth… We are talking of disaster that can destroy the whole of mankind or a large part of it… For instance, a cloud of bolides [meteors] or a small planet a few dozen kilometers in diameter could fall on the Earth, with such an impact that the solid, liquid or gaseous blast produced by it could wipe off the face of the Earth all traces of man and his buildings. The rise of temperature accompanying it could alone scorch or kill all living beings… We are further compelled to take up the struggle against gravity, and for the utilization of celestial space and all its wealth, because of the overpopulation of our planet. Numerous other terrible dangers await mankind on the Earth, all of which suggest that man should look for a way into the Cosmos. We have said a great deal about the advantages of migration into space, but not all can be said or even imagined.
Science quotes on:  |  Advantage (144)  |  Against (332)  |  Alone (324)  |  Being (1276)  |  Building (158)  |  Celestial (53)  |  Cloud (111)  |  Cosmos (64)  |  Cost (94)  |  Danger (127)  |  Deal (192)  |  Destroy (189)  |  Diameter (28)  |  Disaster (58)  |  Earth (1076)  |  Face (214)  |  Fall (243)  |  Gravity (140)  |  Great (1610)  |  Impact (45)  |  Kill (100)  |  Kilometer (10)  |  Kind (564)  |  Large (398)  |  Liquid (50)  |  Living (492)  |  Look (584)  |  Man (2252)  |  Mankind (356)  |  Meteor (19)  |  Migration (12)  |  Must (1525)  |  Numerous (70)  |  Other (2233)  |  Overcome (40)  |  Overpopulation (6)  |  Planet (402)  |  Produced (187)  |  Reserve (26)  |  Rise (169)  |  Small (489)  |  Solar System (81)  |  Solid (119)  |  Space (523)  |  Struggle (111)  |  System (545)  |  Talking (76)  |  Temperature (82)  |  Terrible (41)  |  Trace (109)  |  Utilization (16)  |  Way (1214)  |  Wealth (100)  |  Whole (756)

Mathematics may be likened to a large rock whose interior composition we wish to examine. The older mathematicians appear as persevering stone cutters slowly attempting to demolish the rock from the outside with hammer and chisel. The later mathematicians resemble expert miners who seek vulnerable veins, drill into these strategic places, and then blast the rock apart with well placed internal charges.
From In Mathematical Circles (1969), 7.
Science quotes on:  |  Appear (122)  |  Attempt (266)  |  Charge (63)  |  Chisel (2)  |  Composition (86)  |  Cutter (2)  |  Demolish (8)  |  Drill (12)  |  Examine (84)  |  Expert (67)  |  Hammer (26)  |  Interior (35)  |  Internal (69)  |  Large (398)  |  Later (18)  |  Mathematician (407)  |  Mathematics (1395)  |  Miner (9)  |  Older (7)  |  Outside (141)  |  Place (192)  |  Resemble (65)  |  Rock (176)  |  Seek (218)  |  Stone (168)  |  Vein (27)  |  Vulnerable (7)  |  Wish (216)

May there not be methods of using explosive energy incomparably more intense than anything heretofore discovered? Might not a bomb no bigger than an orange be found to possess a secret power to destroy a whole block of buildings—nay, to concentrate the force of a thousand tons of cordite and blast a township at a stroke? Could not explosives even of the existing type be guided automatically in flying machines by wireless or other rays, without a human pilot, in ceaseless procession upon a hostile city, arsenal, camp or dockyard?
'Shall We All Commit Suicide?' Pall Mall (Sep 1924). Reprinted in Thoughts and Adventures (1932), 250.
Science quotes on:  |  Atomic Bomb (115)  |  Building (158)  |  Camp (12)  |  City (87)  |  Concentrate (28)  |  Destroy (189)  |  Discover (571)  |  Dockyard (2)  |  Energy (373)  |  Explosive (24)  |  Flying (74)  |  Flying Machine (13)  |  Force (497)  |  Human (1512)  |  Machine (271)  |  Method (531)  |  Missile (7)  |  More (2558)  |  Orange (15)  |  Other (2233)  |  Possess (157)  |  Power (771)  |  Procession (5)  |  Ray (115)  |  Secret (216)  |  Stroke (19)  |  Thousand (340)  |  Ton (25)  |  Type (171)  |  War (233)  |  Whole (756)

Qualified scientists in Washington believe that the atom-blasting of Japan is the start toward heating plants the size of telephone booths for great factories, and motor-car trips of 1,000 hours on one gram of fuel. One expert estimated that with a few grams of uranium it might be possible to power the Queen Mary from Europe to the U.S. and back again. One of America’s leading scientists, Doctor Vollrath, said that the new discovery brings man’s attempt to reach the moon within bounds of possibility.
Newspaper
The Maple Leaf (8 Aug 1945), 4.
Science quotes on:  |  America (143)  |  Atom (381)  |  Atomic Bomb (115)  |  Attempt (266)  |  Back (395)  |  Belief (615)  |  Bound (120)  |  Bounds (8)  |  Car (75)  |  Discovery (837)  |  Doctor (191)  |  Estimation (7)  |  Europe (50)  |  Expert (67)  |  Factory (20)  |  Fuel (39)  |  Gram (4)  |  Great (1610)  |  Hiroshima (18)  |  Hour (192)  |  Japan (9)  |  Man (2252)  |  Mile (43)  |  Moon (252)  |  Motor (23)  |  Motor Car (3)  |  New (1273)  |  Plant (320)  |  Possibility (172)  |  Possible (560)  |  Power (771)  |  Qualified (12)  |  Reach (286)  |  Scientist (881)  |  Size (62)  |  Start (237)  |  Telephone (31)  |  Telephone Booth (2)  |  Thousand (340)  |  Trip (11)  |  U.S.A. (7)  |  Uranium (21)

Science, that gives man hope to live without lies
Or blast himself off the earth; curb science
Until morality catches up?
But look:
At present morality is running rapidly retrograde.
You’d have to turn science, too, back to the witch doctors,
the myth drunkards. Besides that,
Morality is not an end in itself; truth is an end.
To seek the truth is
better than good works, better than survival
Holier than innocence, and higher than love.
Poem, 'Curb Science?', in The Collected Poetry of Robinson Jeffers: 1938-1962 (1988), 199. The poem was suppressed until 1977.
Science quotes on:  |  Back (395)  |  Better (493)  |  Doctor (191)  |  Earth (1076)  |  End (603)  |  Good (906)  |  Himself (461)  |  Holy (35)  |  Hope (321)  |  Innocence (13)  |  Lie (370)  |  Live (650)  |  Look (584)  |  Love (328)  |  Man (2252)  |  Morality (55)  |  Myth (58)  |  Present (630)  |  Rapidly (67)  |  Retrograde (8)  |  Running (61)  |  Seek (218)  |  Survival (105)  |  Truth (1109)  |  Turn (454)  |  Witch Doctor (2)  |  Work (1402)

Suddenly, there was an enormous flash of light, the brightest light I have ever seen or that I think anyone has ever seen. It blasted; it pounced; it bored its way into you. It was a vision which was seen with more than the eye. It was seen to last forever. You would wish it would stop; altogether it lasted about two seconds.
[Witnessing the first atomic bomb test explosion.]
Science: the Center of Culture (1970), 139.
Science quotes on:  |  Atomic Bomb (115)  |  Bore (3)  |  Brightest (12)  |  Explosion (51)  |  Eye (440)  |  First (1302)  |  Flash (49)  |  Forever (111)  |  Last (425)  |  Light (635)  |  More (2558)  |  Pounce (4)  |  Suddenly (91)  |  Test (221)  |  Think (1122)  |  Two (936)  |  Vision (127)  |  Way (1214)  |  Wish (216)

The sea is the source of water and the source of wind; for neither would blasts of wind arise in the clouds and blow out from within them, except for the great sea, nor would the streams of rivers nor the rain-water in the sky exist but for the sea ; but the great sea is the begetter of clouds and winds and rivers.
Quoted in Arthur Fairbanks (ed. And trans.), The First Philosophers of Greece (1898), 69, fragment 11.
Science quotes on:  |  Arise (162)  |  Blow (45)  |  Cloud (111)  |  Exist (458)  |  Great (1610)  |  Ocean (216)  |  Rain (70)  |  River (140)  |  Sea (326)  |  Sky (174)  |  Stream (83)  |  Water (503)  |  Wind (141)

There was a loudspeaker that reported on the time left before the blast: “T-minus ten minutes”—something like that. The last few seconds were counted off one by one. We had all turned away. At zero there was the flash. I counted and then turned around. The first thing I saw was a yellow-orange fireball that kept getting larger. As it grew, it turned more orange and then red. A mushroom-shaped cloud of glowing magenta began to rise over the desert where the explosion had been. My first thought was, “My God, that is beautiful!”
(1982).
Science quotes on:  |  Atomic Bomb (115)  |  Beautiful (271)  |  Cloud (111)  |  Count (107)  |  Desert (59)  |  Explosion (51)  |  Fireball (3)  |  First (1302)  |  Flash (49)  |  Glow (15)  |  God (776)  |  Last (425)  |  Minute (129)  |  More (2558)  |  Mushroom (4)  |  Orange (15)  |  Rise (169)  |  Saw (160)  |  Something (718)  |  Thing (1914)  |  Thought (995)  |  Time (1911)  |  Turn (454)  |  Yellow (31)  |  Zero (38)

Thirty seconds after the explosion came, first the air blast pressing hard against people and things, to be followed almost immediately by the strong, sustained awesome roar which warned of doomsday and made us feel that we puny things were blasphemous to dare tamper with the forces heretofore reserved to the Almighty.
official report on the first atom bomb test, Alamogordo, New Mexico, July 16, 1945 [See Kenneth Tompkins Bainbridge and J. Robert Oppenheimer].
Science quotes on:  |  Against (332)  |  Air (366)  |  Almighty (23)  |  Awesome (15)  |  Dare (55)  |  Doomsday (5)  |  Explosion (51)  |  Feel (371)  |  First (1302)  |  Follow (389)  |  Force (497)  |  Hard (246)  |  Immediately (115)  |  People (1031)  |  Puny (8)  |  Strong (182)  |  Sustain (52)  |  Tamper (7)  |  Thing (1914)

When angry, take a lesson from modern science:
Always count down before blasting off.
Anonymous
In Bob Phillips, Phillips' Treasury of Humorous Quotations (2004), 13.
Science quotes on:  |  Anger (21)  |  Count (107)  |  Down (455)  |  Lesson (58)  |  Modern (402)  |  Modern Science (55)


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.