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 Superfund legislation... may prove to be as far-reaching and important as any accomplishment of my administration. The reduction of the threat to America's health and safety from thousands of toxic-waste sites will continue to be an urgent�issue �”
more quiz questions >>
Home > Category Index for Science Quotations > Category Index B > Category: Bubble

Bubble Quotes (23 quotes)

[On the future of Chemistry:] Chemistry is not the preservation hall of old jazz that it sometimes looks like. We cannot know what may happen tomorrow. Someone may oxidize mercury (II), francium (I), or radium (II). A mineral in Nova Scotia may contain an unsaturated quark per 1020 nucleons. (This is still 6000 per gram.) We may pick up an extraterrestrial edition of Chemical Abstracts. The universe may be a 4-dimensional soap bubble in an 11-dimensional space as some supersymmetry theorists argued in May of 1983. Who knows?
In George B. Kaufmann, 'Interview with Jannik Bjerrum and Christian Klixbull Jørgensen', Journal of Chemical Education (1985), 62, No. 11, 1005.
Science quotes on:  |  Abstract (141)  |  Chemical (303)  |  Chemistry (376)  |  Dimension (64)  |  Francium (2)  |  Future (467)  |  Happen (282)  |  Know (1538)  |  Look (584)  |  Mercury (54)  |  Mineral (66)  |  Nova (7)  |  Nucleon (5)  |  Old (499)  |  Quark (9)  |  Radium (29)  |  Space (523)  |  Still (614)  |  Theorist (44)  |  Tomorrow (63)  |  Universe (900)

A small bubble of air remained unabsorbed... if there is any part of the phlogisticated air [nitrogen] of our atmosphere which differs from the rest, and cannot be reduced to nitrous acid, we may safely conclude that it is not more than 1/120 part of the whole.
Cavendish did not realize the significance of the remaining small bubble. Not until a century later were the air’s Noble Gases appreciated.
'Experiments on Air', read 2 June 1785, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, 1785, 75, 382.
Science quotes on:  |  Acid (83)  |  Air (366)  |  Atmosphere (117)  |  Century (319)  |  Conclude (66)  |  Differ (88)  |  More (2558)  |  Nitrogen (32)  |  Noble (93)  |  Noble Gas (4)  |  Realize (157)  |  Remain (355)  |  Remaining (45)  |  Rest (287)  |  Significance (114)  |  Small (489)  |  Whole (756)

Astrophysicists closing in on the grand structure of matter and emptiness in the universe are ruling out the meatball theory, challenging the soap bubble theory, and putting forward what may be the strongest theory of all: that the cosmos is organized like a sponge.
'Rethinking Clumps and Voids in the Universe', New York Times (9 Nov 1986), A1.
Science quotes on:  |  Astrophysicist (7)  |  Challenge (91)  |  Cosmos (64)  |  Emptiness (13)  |  Forward (104)  |  Matter (821)  |  Organized (9)  |  Sponge (9)  |  Strong (182)  |  Strongest (38)  |  Structure (365)  |  Theory (1015)  |  Universe (900)

Atoms or systems into ruin hurl’d,
And now a bubble burst, and now a world.
From An Essay on Man (1734), Epistle I, lines 89-90. In An Essay on Man: enlarged and improved by the author. With notes by William Warburton (1745), 5.
Science quotes on:  |  Atom (381)  |  Burst (41)  |  Ruin (44)  |  System (545)  |  World (1850)

Consider now the Milky Way. Here also we see an innumerable dust, only the grains of this dust are no longer atoms but stars; these grains also move with great velocities, they act at a distance one upon another, but this action is so slight at great distances that their trajectories are rectilineal; nevertheless, from time to time, two of them may come near enough together to be deviated from their course, like a comet that passed too close to Jupiter. In a word, in the eyes of a giant, to whom our Suns were what our atoms are to us, the Milky Way would only look like a bubble of gas.
Science and Method (1908), trans. Francis Maitland (1914), 254-5.
Science quotes on:  |  Act (278)  |  Action (342)  |  Atom (381)  |  Closeness (4)  |  Comet (65)  |  Consider (428)  |  Course (413)  |  Deviation (21)  |  Distance (171)  |  Dust (68)  |  Enough (341)  |  Eye (440)  |  Gas (89)  |  Giant (73)  |  Grain (50)  |  Great (1610)  |  Greatness (55)  |  Innumerable (56)  |  Jupiter (28)  |  Look (584)  |  Milky Way (29)  |  Motion (320)  |  Move (223)  |  Nearness (3)  |  Nevertheless (90)  |  Pass (241)  |  Passage (52)  |  Rectilinear (2)  |  See (1094)  |  Slightness (2)  |  Star (460)  |  Stars (304)  |  Sun (407)  |  Time (1911)  |  Together (392)  |  Trajectory (5)  |  Two (936)  |  Velocity (51)  |  Way (1214)  |  Word (650)

Everyone working in science, no matter their politics, has a stake in cleaning up the mess revealed by the East Anglia emails. Science is on the credibility bubble. If it pops, centuries of what we understand to be the role of science go with it.
Newspaper
In D. Henninger, 'Climategate: Science is Dying', Wall Street Journal (Dec 2009), A21.
Science quotes on:  |  Century (319)  |  Cleaning (7)  |  Credibility (4)  |  Email (3)  |  Everyone (35)  |  Matter (821)  |  Mess (14)  |  Politics (122)  |  Pop (2)  |  Reveal (152)  |  Revealed (59)  |  Role (86)  |  Stake (20)  |  Understand (648)  |  Work (1402)

I chatter over stony ways,
In little sharps and trebles,
I bubble into eddying bays,
I babble on the pebbles.…
And out again I curve and flow
To join the brimming river;
For men may come and men may go,
But I go on forever.
From 'Song of the Brook' (1842), collected in The Poetical Works of Alfred Tennyson (1873), 142.
Science quotes on:  |  Babble (2)  |  Bay (6)  |  Brimming (4)  |  Chatter (3)  |  Curve (49)  |  Eddy (4)  |  Flow (89)  |  Forever (111)  |  Hydrology (10)  |  Join (32)  |  Little (717)  |  Pebble (27)  |  River (140)  |  Sharp (17)  |  Stone (168)  |  Way (1214)

If one of these people, in whom the chance-worship of our remoter ancestors thus strangely survives, should be within reach of the sea when a heavy gale is blowing, let him betake himself to the shore and watch the scene. Let him note the infinite variety of form and size of the tossing waves out at sea; or against the curves of their foam-crested breakers, as they dash against the rocks; let him listen to the roar and scream of the shingle as it is cast up and torn down the beach; or look at the flakes of foam as they drive hither and thither before the wind: or note the play of colours, which answers a gleam of sunshine as it falls upon their myriad bubbles. Surely here, if anywhere, he will say that chance is supreme, and bend the knee as one who has entered the very penetralia of his divinity. But the man of science knows that here, as everywhere, perfect order is manifested; that there is not a curve of the waves, not a note in the howling chorus, not a rainbow-glint on a bubble, which is other than a necessary consequence of the ascertained laws of nature; and that with a sufficient knowledge of the conditions, competent physico-mathematical skill could account for, and indeed predict, every one of these 'chance' events.
In 'On the Reception of the Origin of Species'. In Francis Darwin (ed.), The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Including an Autobiographical Chapter (1888), Vol. 2, 200-1.
Science quotes on:  |  Account (195)  |  Against (332)  |  Ancestor (63)  |  Answer (389)  |  Ascertain (41)  |  Beach (23)  |  Blowing (22)  |  Cast (69)  |  Chance (244)  |  Chorus (6)  |  Condition (362)  |  Consequence (220)  |  Curve (49)  |  Divinity (23)  |  Down (455)  |  Enter (145)  |  Event (222)  |  Everywhere (98)  |  Fall (243)  |  Form (976)  |  Himself (461)  |  Indeed (323)  |  Infinite (243)  |  Know (1538)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Law (913)  |  Listen (81)  |  Look (584)  |  Man (2252)  |  Myriad (32)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Necessary (370)  |  Order (638)  |  Other (2233)  |  People (1031)  |  Perfect (223)  |  Predict (86)  |  Rainbow (17)  |  Reach (286)  |  Rock (176)  |  Say (989)  |  Scene (36)  |  Sea (326)  |  Skill (116)  |  Sufficient (133)  |  Supreme (73)  |  Surely (101)  |  Survive (87)  |  Torn (17)  |  Variety (138)  |  Watch (118)  |  Wave (112)  |  Will (2350)  |  Wind (141)  |  Worship (32)

If, then, the motion of every particle of matter in the universe were precisely reversed at any instant, the course of nature would be simply reversed for ever after. The bursting bubble of foam at the foot of a waterfall would reunite and descend into the water; the thermal motions would reconcentrate their energy, and throw the mass up the fall in drops re-forming into a close column of ascending water. Heat which had been generated by the friction of solids and dissipated by conduction, and radiation, and radiation with absorption, would come again to the place of contact, and throw the moving body back against the force to which it had previously yielded. Boulders would recover from the mud materials required to rebuild them into their previous jagged forms, and would become reunited to the mountain peak from which they had formerly broken away. And if also the materialistic hypothesis of life were true, living creatures would grow backwards, with conscious knowledge of the future but no memory of the past, and would become again unborn.
In 'The Kinetic Theory of the Dissipation of Energy', Nature (1874), 9, 442.
Science quotes on:  |  Absorption (13)  |  Against (332)  |  Back (395)  |  Backwards (18)  |  Become (821)  |  Body (557)  |  Boulder (8)  |  Broken (56)  |  Conduction (8)  |  Contact (66)  |  Course (413)  |  Creature (242)  |  Descend (49)  |  Drop (77)  |  Energy (373)  |  Fall (243)  |  Force (497)  |  Form (976)  |  Forming (42)  |  Friction (14)  |  Future (467)  |  Grow (247)  |  Heat (180)  |  Hypothesis (314)  |  Instant (46)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Life (1870)  |  Living (492)  |  Mass (160)  |  Material (366)  |  Matter (821)  |  Memory (144)  |  Motion (320)  |  Mountain (202)  |  Mud (26)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Particle (200)  |  Past (355)  |  Precisely (93)  |  Radiation (48)  |  Required (108)  |  Solid (119)  |  Thermal (15)  |  Universe (900)  |  Water (503)  |  Waterfall (5)  |  Yield (86)

In my considered opinion the peer review system, in which proposals rather than proposers are reviewed, is the greatest disaster visited upon the scientific community in this century. No group of peers would have approved my building the 72-inch bubble chamber. Even Ernest Lawrence told me he thought I was making a big mistake. He supported me because he knew my track record was good. I believe that U.S. science could recover from the stultifying effects of decades of misguided peer reviewing if we returned to the tried-and-true method of evaluating experimenters rather than experimental proposals. Many people will say that my ideas are elitist, and I certainly agree. The alternative is the egalitarianism that we now practice and I’ve seen nearly kill basic science in the USSR and in the People's Republic of China.
Alvarez: Adventures of a Physicist (1987), 200-1.
Science quotes on:  |  Basic (144)  |  Building (158)  |  Century (319)  |  Certainly (185)  |  China (27)  |  Community (111)  |  Consider (428)  |  Decade (66)  |  Disaster (58)  |  Effect (414)  |  Experimental (193)  |  Experimenter (40)  |  Good (906)  |  Greatest (330)  |  Idea (881)  |  Kill (100)  |  Ernest Orlando Lawrence (5)  |  Making (300)  |  Method (531)  |  Mistake (180)  |  Nearly (137)  |  Opinion (291)  |  Peer Review (4)  |  People (1031)  |  Practice (212)  |  Proposal (21)  |  Record (161)  |  Republic (16)  |  Research (753)  |  Return (133)  |  Review (27)  |  Say (989)  |  Scientific (955)  |  Support (151)  |  System (545)  |  Thought (995)  |  Track (42)  |  Track Record (4)  |  Will (2350)

It behooves us always to remember that in physics it has taken great men to discover simple things. They are very great names indeed which we couple with the explanation of the path of a stone, the droop of a chain, the tints of a bubble, the shadows of a cup.
In On Growth and Form (1917).
Science quotes on:  |  Behoove (6)  |  Discover (571)  |  Explanation (246)  |  Great (1610)  |  Indeed (323)  |  Name (359)  |  Path (159)  |  Physic (515)  |  Physics (564)  |  Remember (189)  |  Shadow (73)  |  Simple (426)  |  Stone (168)  |  Thing (1914)

Looking back across the long cycles of change through which the land has been shaped into its present form, let us realise that these geographical revolutions are not events wholly of the dim past, but that they are still in progress. So slow and measured has been their march, that even from the earliest times of human history they seem hardly to have advanced at all. But none the less are they surely and steadily transpiring around us. In the fall of rain and the flow of rivers, in the bubble of springs and the silence of frost, in the quiet creep of glaciers and the tumultuous rush of ocean waves, in the tremor of the earthquake and the outburst of the volcano, we may recognise the same play of terrestrial forces by which the framework of the continents has been step by step evolved.
Lecture at the Evening Meeting, Royal Geographical Society (24 Mar 1879), 'Discussion on Geographical Evolution', in Proceedings of the Royal Geographical Society and Monthly Record (1879), New Monthly Series, 1, 443.
Science quotes on:  |  Back (395)  |  Change (639)  |  Continent (79)  |  Creep (15)  |  Cycle (42)  |  Earthquake (37)  |  Eruption (10)  |  Event (222)  |  Fall (243)  |  Flow (89)  |  Force (497)  |  Form (976)  |  Framework (33)  |  From The Earliest Times (2)  |  Frost (15)  |  Glacier (17)  |  History (716)  |  Human (1512)  |  Long (778)  |  Looking (191)  |  March (48)  |  Ocean (216)  |  Past (355)  |  Present (630)  |  Progress (492)  |  Quiet (37)  |  Rain (70)  |  Revolution (133)  |  River (140)  |  Silence (62)  |  Slow (108)  |  Spring (140)  |  Step (234)  |  Step By Step (11)  |  Still (614)  |  Surely (101)  |  Terrestrial (62)  |  Through (846)  |  Time (1911)  |  Tremor (3)  |  Volcano (46)  |  Wave (112)  |  Wholly (88)

No place affords a more striking conviction of the vanity of human hopes than a publick library; for who can see the wall crouded on every side by mighty volumes, the works of laborious meditation, and accurate inquiry, now scarcely known but by the catalogue, and preserved only to encrease the pomp of learning, without considering how many hours have been wasted in vain endeavours, how often imagination has anticipated the praises of futurity, how many statues have risen to the eye of vanity, how many ideal converts have elevated zeal, how often wit has exulted in the eternal infamy of his antagonists, and dogmatism has delighted in the gradual advances of his authority, the immutability of his decrees, and the perpetuity of his power.
Non unquam dedit
Documenta fors majora, quam fragili loco
Starent superbi.

Seneca, Troades, II, 4-6
Insulting chance ne'er call'd with louder voice,
On swelling mortals to be proud no more.
Of the innumerable authors whose performances are thus treasured up in magnificent obscurity, most are forgotten, because they never deserved to be remembered, and owed the honours which they have once obtained, not to judgment or to genius, to labour or to art, but to the prejudice of faction, the stratagem of intrigue, or the servility of adulation.
Nothing is more common than to find men whose works are now totally neglected, mentioned with praises by their contemporaries, as the oracles of their age, and the legislators of science. Curiosity is naturally excited, their volumes after long enquiry are found, but seldom reward the labour of the search. Every period of time has produced these bubbles of artificial fame, which are kept up a while by the breath of fashion and then break at once and are annihilated. The learned often bewail the loss of ancient writers whose characters have survived their works; but perhaps if we could now retrieve them we should find them only the Granvilles, Montagus, Stepneys, and Sheffields of their time, and wonder by what infatuation or caprice they could be raised to notice.
It cannot, however, be denied, that many have sunk into oblivion, whom it were unjust to number with this despicable class. Various kinds of literary fame seem destined to various measures of duration. Some spread into exuberance with a very speedy growth, but soon wither and decay; some rise more slowly, but last long. Parnassus has its flowers of transient fragrance as well as its oaks of towering height, and its laurels of eternal verdure.
The Rambler, Number 106, 23 Mar 1751. In W. J. Bate and Albrecht B. Strauss (eds.), The Rambler (1969), Vol. 2, 200-1.
Science quotes on:  |  Accurate (88)  |  Advance (298)  |  Age (509)  |  Ancient (198)  |  Art (680)  |  Author (175)  |  Authority (99)  |  Break (109)  |  Breath (61)  |  Call (781)  |  Caprice (10)  |  Chance (244)  |  Character (259)  |  Class (168)  |  Common (447)  |  Conviction (100)  |  Curiosity (138)  |  Decay (59)  |  Decree (9)  |  Delight (111)  |  Destined (42)  |  Dogmatism (15)  |  Endeavour (63)  |  Enquiry (89)  |  Eternal (113)  |  Eye (440)  |  Faction (4)  |  Fame (51)  |  Find (1014)  |  Flower (112)  |  Forgotten (53)  |  Genius (301)  |  Growth (200)  |  Honour (58)  |  Hope (321)  |  Hour (192)  |  Human (1512)  |  Ideal (110)  |  Imagination (349)  |  Innumerable (56)  |  Inquiry (88)  |  Judgment (140)  |  Kind (564)  |  Known (453)  |  Labor (200)  |  Laborious (17)  |  Last (425)  |  Learn (672)  |  Learned (235)  |  Learning (291)  |  Library (53)  |  Long (778)  |  Loss (117)  |  Magnificent (46)  |  Measure (241)  |  Meditation (19)  |  Mention (84)  |  More (2558)  |  Mortal (55)  |  Most (1728)  |  Neglect (63)  |  Neglected (23)  |  Never (1089)  |  Nothing (1000)  |  Notice (81)  |  Number (710)  |  Oak (16)  |  Oblivion (10)  |  Obtain (164)  |  Performance (51)  |  Period (200)  |  Perpetuity (9)  |  Power (771)  |  Prejudice (96)  |  Produced (187)  |  Remember (189)  |  Reward (72)  |  Rise (169)  |  Scarcely (75)  |  Search (175)  |  See (1094)  |  Seldom (68)  |  Side (236)  |  Soon (187)  |  Spread (86)  |  Statue (17)  |  Striking (48)  |  Time (1911)  |  Towering (11)  |  Transient (13)  |  Vain (86)  |  Various (205)  |  Wall (71)  |  Wit (61)  |  Wonder (251)  |  Work (1402)  |  Writer (90)

Nothing in the whole system of nature is isolated or unimportant. The fall of a leaf and the motion of a planet are governed by the same laws. … It is in the study of objects considered trivial and unworthy of notice by the casual observer that genius finds the most important and interesting phenomena. It was in the investigation of the varying colors of the soap-bubble that Newton detected the remarkable fact of the fits of easy reflection and easy refraction presented by a ray of light in its passage through space, and upon which he established the fundamental principle of the present generalization of the undulatory theory of light. … The microscopic organization of animals and plants is replete with the highest instruction; and, surely, in the language of one of the fathers of modern physical science, “nothing can be unworthy of being investigated by man which was thought worthy of being created by GOD.”
In 'Report of the Secretary', Seventh Annual Report of the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution for 1852 (1853), 15.
Science quotes on:  |  Animal (651)  |  Being (1276)  |  Color (155)  |  Consider (428)  |  Detect (45)  |  Easy (213)  |  Fact (1257)  |  Fall (243)  |  Father (113)  |  Find (1014)  |  Fit (139)  |  Fundamental (264)  |  Generalization (61)  |  Genius (301)  |  God (776)  |  Govern (66)  |  Important (229)  |  Instruction (101)  |  Interesting (153)  |  Investigation (250)  |  Isolated (15)  |  Language (308)  |  Law (913)  |  Leaf (73)  |  Light (635)  |  Man (2252)  |  Microscope (85)  |  Microscopic (27)  |  Modern (402)  |  Most (1728)  |  Motion (320)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Sir Isaac Newton (363)  |  Nothing (1000)  |  Notice (81)  |  Object (438)  |  Organization (120)  |  Passage (52)  |  Physical (518)  |  Physical Science (104)  |  Planet (402)  |  Plant (320)  |  Present (630)  |  Principle (530)  |  Ray (115)  |  Reflection (93)  |  Refraction (13)  |  Same (166)  |  Soap (11)  |  Space (523)  |  Study (701)  |  Surely (101)  |  System (545)  |  Theory (1015)  |  Thought (995)  |  Through (846)  |  Trivial (59)  |  Unimportant (6)  |  Unworthy (18)  |  Whole (756)

One night we were hauling long lines on the Faroe slope, working with an electric lamp hanging over the side in order to see the line, when like lightning flashes one squid after another shot towards the light; … In October 1902 we were one night steaming outside the slopes of the coast banks of Norway, and for many miles we could see the squids moving in the surface waters like luminous bubbles, resembling large milky white electric lamps being constantly lit and extinguished.
From Sir John Murray and Johan Hyort, The Depths of the Ocean (1912), 649.
Science quotes on:  |  Bank (31)  |  Being (1276)  |  Electric (76)  |  Extinguish (8)  |  Lamp (37)  |  Large (398)  |  Light (635)  |  Lightning (49)  |  Long (778)  |  Luminous (19)  |  Order (638)  |  Outside (141)  |  Resemble (65)  |  See (1094)  |  Side (236)  |  Slope (10)  |  Squid (3)  |  Surface (223)  |  Water (503)  |  White (132)

The vortices of Descartes, gave way to the gravitation of Newton... One generation blows bubbles, and the next breaks them.
From Letter (29 Sep 1783) to Rev. William Unwin, collected in William Cowper and William Hayley (ed.), The Life, and Posthumous Writings, of William Cowper (1803), Vol. 3, 196.
Science quotes on:  |  Blow (45)  |  Break (109)  |  René Descartes (83)  |  Generation (256)  |  Gravitation (72)  |  Sir Isaac Newton (363)  |  Next (238)  |  Vortex (10)  |  Way (1214)

The glories and the beauties of form, color, and sound unite in the Grand Canyon—forms unrivaled even by the mountains, colors that vie with sunsets, and sounds that span the diapason from tempest to tinkling raindrop, from cataract to bubbling fountain.
In Canyons of the Colorado (1895), 397.
Science quotes on:  |  Beauty (313)  |  Cataract (4)  |  Color (155)  |  Form (976)  |  Fountain (18)  |  Geology (240)  |  Glory (66)  |  Grand Canyon (11)  |  Mountain (202)  |  Raindrop (4)  |  Sound (187)  |  Sunset (27)  |  Tempest (7)  |  Unite (43)

The infinite variations in the ways creatures fulfill the same requirement—to fuel energy needs—constantly astound me. Booby birds and pelicans … actually performed underwater dives, descending some twenty feet below the surface and then flapping their wings to fly through water. Totally encrusted with tiny diamond bubbles—like the jeweled nightingales of Asian emperors—they soared around below for nearly half a minute.
In Jacques Cousteau and Susan Schiefelbein, The Human, the Orchid, and the Octopus: Exploring and Conserving Our Natural World (2007), 282.
Science quotes on:  |  Asian (3)  |  Astound (9)  |  Below (26)  |  Bird (163)  |  Creature (242)  |  Diamond (21)  |  Dive (13)  |  Emperor (6)  |  Energy (373)  |  Fly (153)  |  Fuel (39)  |  Fulfill (19)  |  Infinite (243)  |  Minute (129)  |  Nearly (137)  |  Need (320)  |  Nightingale (2)  |  Perform (123)  |  Requirement (66)  |  Soar (23)  |  Surface (223)  |  Through (846)  |  Tiny (74)  |  Underwater (5)  |  Variation (93)  |  Water (503)  |  Way (1214)  |  Wing (79)

The mighty steam-engine has its germ in the simple boiler in which the peasant prepares his food. The huge ship is but the expansion of the floating leaf freighted with its cargo of atmospheric dust; and the flying balloon is but the infant's soap-bubble lightly laden and overgrown. But the Telescope, even in its most elementary form, embodies a novel and gigantic idea, without an analogue in nature, and without a prototype in experience
Stories of Inventors and Discoverers in Science and the Useful Arts (1860), 145.
Science quotes on:  |  Analogue (7)  |  Balloon (16)  |  Boiler (7)  |  Cargo (6)  |  Cook (20)  |  Dust (68)  |  Elementary (98)  |  Engine (99)  |  Expansion (43)  |  Experience (494)  |  Flying (74)  |  Food (213)  |  Form (976)  |  Germ (54)  |  Gigantic (40)  |  Idea (881)  |  Infant (26)  |  Leaf (73)  |  Most (1728)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Novel (35)  |  Origin (250)  |  Peasant (9)  |  Prototype (9)  |  Ship (69)  |  Simple (426)  |  Steam (81)  |  Steam Engine (47)  |  Telescope (106)

The overwhelming astonishment, the queerest structure we know about so far in the whole universe, the greatest of all cosmological scientific puzzles, confounding all our efforts to comprehend it, is the earth. We are only now beginning to appreciate how strange and splendid it is, how it catches the breath, the loveliest object afloat around the sun, enclosed in its own blue bubble of atmosphere, manufacturing and breathing its own oxygen, fixing its own nitrogen from the air into its own soil, generating its own weather at the surface of its rain forests, constructing its own carapace from living parts: chalk cliffs, coral reefs, old fossils from earlier forms of life now covered by layers of new life meshed together around the globe, Troy upon Troy.
In Late Night Thoughts on Listening to Mahler’s Ninth Symphony (1984), 22-23.
Science quotes on:  |  Afloat (4)  |  Air (366)  |  Appreciate (67)  |  Astonish (39)  |  Astonishment (30)  |  Atmosphere (117)  |  Beginning (312)  |  Blue (63)  |  Breath (61)  |  Breathe (49)  |  Breathing (23)  |  Catch (34)  |  Chalk (9)  |  Cliff (22)  |  Comprehend (44)  |  Confound (21)  |  Confounding (8)  |  Construct (129)  |  Coral Reef (15)  |  Cosmological (11)  |  Cosmos (64)  |  Cover (40)  |  Early (196)  |  Earth (1076)  |  Effort (243)  |  Enclose (2)  |  Fix (34)  |  Forest (161)  |  Form (976)  |  Fossil (143)  |  Generate (16)  |  Geology (240)  |  Globe (51)  |  Greatest (330)  |  Know (1538)  |  Layer (41)  |  Life (1870)  |  Living (492)  |  Lovely (12)  |  Manufacturing (29)  |  Mesh (3)  |  Meteorology (36)  |  New (1273)  |  Nitrogen (32)  |  Object (438)  |  Old (499)  |  Overwhelm (5)  |  Overwhelming (30)  |  Oxygen (77)  |  Part (235)  |  Puzzle (46)  |  Queer (9)  |  Rain (70)  |  Rain Forest (34)  |  Scientific (955)  |  Soil (98)  |  Splendid (23)  |  Strange (160)  |  Structure (365)  |  Sun (407)  |  Surface (223)  |  Together (392)  |  Troy (3)  |  Universe (900)  |  Weather (49)  |  Whole (756)

We have one of his [Newton’s] college memorandum-books, which is highly interesting. The following are some of the entries: “Drills, gravers, a hone, a hammer, and a mandril, 5s.;” “a magnet, 16s.;” “compasses, 2s.;” “glass bubbles, 4s.;” “at the tavern several other times, £1;” “spent on my cousin, 12s.;” “on other acquaintances, 10s.;” “Philosophical Intelligences, 9s. 6d.;” “lost at cards twice, 15s.;” “at the tavern twice, 3s. 6d.;” “to three prisms, £3;” “four ounces of putty, 1s. 4d.;” “Bacon’s Miscellanies, 1s. 6d.;” “a bible binding, 3s.;” “for oranges to my sister, 4s. 2d.;” “for aquafortis, sublimate, oyle pink, fine silver, antimony, vinegar, spirit of wine, white lead, salt of tartar, £2;” “Theatrum chemicum, £1 8s.”
In 'Sir Isaac Newton', People’s Book of Biography: Or, Short Lives of the Most Interesting Persons of All Ages and Countries (1868), 255.
Science quotes on:  |  Acquaintance (38)  |  Antimony (7)  |  Bacon (4)  |  Bible (105)  |  Binding (9)  |  Book (413)  |  Card (5)  |  College (71)  |  Compass (37)  |  Cousin (12)  |  Drill (12)  |  Glass (94)  |  Hammer (26)  |  Hone (3)  |  Intelligence (218)  |  Interesting (153)  |  Lead (391)  |  Lose (165)  |  Magnet (22)  |  Mathematicians and Anecdotes (141)  |  Sir Isaac Newton (363)  |  Orange (15)  |  Other (2233)  |  Ounce (9)  |  Philosophical (24)  |  Pound (15)  |  Prism (8)  |  Putty (2)  |  Salt (48)  |  Silver (49)  |  Sister (8)  |  Spend (97)  |  Spent (85)  |  Spirit (278)  |  Sublimate (4)  |  Time (1911)  |  Vinegar (7)  |  White (132)  |  Wine (39)

What is the shape of space? Is it flat, or is it bent? Is it nicely laid out, or is it warped and shrunken? Is it finite, or is it infinite? Which of the following does space resemble more: (a) a sheet of paper, (b) an endless desert, (c) a soap bubble, (d) a doughnut, (e) an Escher drawing, (f) an ice cream cone, (g) the branches of a tree, or (h) a human body?
The Fourth Dimension: And How to Get There (1985), 91.
Science quotes on:  |  Bent (2)  |  Body (557)  |  Branch (155)  |  Cone (8)  |  Desert (59)  |  Doughnut (3)  |  Drawing (56)  |  Endless (60)  |  Finite (60)  |  Flat (34)  |  Human (1512)  |  Ice (58)  |  Ice Cream (2)  |  Infinite (243)  |  More (2558)  |  Paper (192)  |  Resemblance (39)  |  Resemble (65)  |  Shape (77)  |  Sheet (8)  |  Shrink (23)  |  Soap (11)  |  Space (523)  |  Tree (269)  |  Warp (7)

When I began my physical studies [in Munich in 1874] and sought advice from my venerable teacher Philipp von Jolly...he portrayed to me physics as a highly developed, almost fully matured science...Possibly in one or another nook there would perhaps be a dust particle or a small bubble to be examined and classified, but the system as a whole stood there fairly secured, and theoretical physics approached visibly that degree of perfection which, for example, geometry has had already for centuries.

From a lecture (1924). In Damien Broderick (ed.), Year Million: Science at the Far Edge of Knowledge (2008), 104.
Science quotes on:  |  Advice (57)  |  Already (226)  |  Approach (112)  |  Degree (277)  |  Develop (278)  |  Dust (68)  |  Geometry (271)  |  Particle (200)  |  Perfection (131)  |  Physic (515)  |  Physical (518)  |  Physics (564)  |  Possibly (111)  |  Secured (18)  |  Small (489)  |  System (545)  |  Teacher (154)  |  Theoretical Physics (26)  |  Venerable (7)  |  Whole (756)


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.