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: “Genius is two percent inspiration, ninety-eight percent perspiration.”
more quiz questions >>
Home > Category Index for Science Quotations > Category Index B > Category: Built

Built Quotes (7 quotes)

Changes That Have Occurred in the Globe: When we have seen with our own eyes a mountain progressing into a plain; that is to say, an immense boulder separating from this mountain and covering the fields; an entire castle broken into pieces over the ground; a river swallowed up which then bursts out from its abyss; clear marks of a vast amount of water having once flooded regions now inhabited, and a hundred vestiges of other transformations, then we are much more willing to believe that great changes altered the face of the earth, than a Parisian lady who knows only that the place where her house was built was once a cultivated field. However, a lady from Naples who has seen the buried ruins of Herculaneum, is much less subject to the bias which leads us to believe that everything has always been as it is today.
From article 'Changements arrivées dans le globe', in Dictionnaire philosophique (1764), collected in Œuvres Complètes de Voltaire (1878), Vol. 2, 427-428. Translated by Ian Ellis, from the original French: “Changements arrivées dans le globe: Quand on a vu de ses yeux une montagne s’avancer dans une plaine, c’est-à-dire un immense rocher de cette montagne se détacher et couvrir des champs, un château tout entier enfoncé dans la terre, un fleuve englouti qui sort ensuite de son abîme, des marques indubitables qu’un vaste amas d’eau inondait autrefois un pays habité aujourd’hui, et cent vestiges d’autres révolutions, on est alors plus disposé à croire les grands changements qui ont altéré la face du monde, que ne l’est une dame de Paris qui sait seulement que la place où est bâtie sa maison était autrefois un champ labourable. Mais une dame de Naples, qui a vu sous terre les ruines d’Herculanum, est encore moins asservie au préjugé qui nous fait croire que tout a toujours été comme il est aujourd’hui.”
Science quotes on:  |  Abyss (30)  |  Alter (64)  |  Alteration (31)  |  Altered (32)  |  Amount (153)  |  Belief (615)  |  Bias (22)  |  Boulder (8)  |  Breaking (3)  |  Broken (56)  |  Buried (2)  |  Burst (41)  |  Castle (5)  |  Change (639)  |  Country (269)  |  Cover (40)  |  Covering (14)  |  Dire (6)  |  Disappearance (28)  |  Earth (1076)  |  Entire (50)  |  Erosion (20)  |  Everything (489)  |  Eye (440)  |  Face (214)  |  Field (378)  |  Flood (52)  |  Geologic History (2)  |  Great (1610)  |  Ground (222)  |  Herculaneum (4)  |  House (143)  |  Hundred (240)  |  Immense (89)  |  Inhabitation (2)  |  Know (1538)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Lady (12)  |  Land (131)  |  Lead (391)  |  Mark (47)  |  More (2558)  |  Mountain (202)  |  Move (223)  |  Naples (2)  |  Other (2233)  |  Paris (11)  |  Place (192)  |  Plain (34)  |  Plus (43)  |  River (140)  |  Rock (176)  |  Ruin (44)  |  Say (989)  |  Sinking (6)  |  Subject (543)  |  Swallow (32)  |  Today (321)  |  Transformation (72)  |  Vast (188)  |  Vestige (11)  |  Water (503)  |  Willing (44)

For the world was built in order,
And the atoms march in tune.
In poem, 'Monadnock', collected in Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (1883), 533.
Science quotes on:  |  Atom (381)  |  March (48)  |  Order (638)  |  Tune (20)  |  World (1850)

Human nature is not a machine to be built after a model, and set to do exactly the work prescribed for it, but a tree, which requires to grow and develop itself on all sides, according to the tendency of the inward forces which make it a living thing.
In 'Elements of Well-Being', On Liberty (1859), 107.
Science quotes on:  |  According (236)  |  Develop (278)  |  Do (1905)  |  Force (497)  |  Grow (247)  |  Human (1512)  |  Human Nature (71)  |  Inward (6)  |  Living (492)  |  Machine (271)  |  Model (106)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Prescribed (3)  |  Require (229)  |  Set (400)  |  Side (236)  |  Tendency (110)  |  Thing (1914)  |  Tree (269)  |  Work (1402)

I believe with Schopenhauer that one of the strongest motives that lead men to art and science is escape from everyday life with its painful crudity and hopeless dreariness, from the fetters of one’s own ever shifting desires. A finely tempered nature longs to escape from personal life into the world of objective perception and thought; this desire may be compared with the townsman’s irresistible longing to escape from his noisy, cramped surroundings into the silence of high mountains, where the eye ranges freely through the still, pure air and fondly traces out the restful contours apparently built for eternity.
Address at The Physical Society, Berlin (1918) for Max Planck’s 60th birthday, 'Principles of Research', collected in Essays in Science (1934) 2.
Science quotes on:  |  Air (366)  |  Apparently (22)  |  Art (680)  |  Belief (615)  |  Compared (8)  |  Contour (3)  |  Crudity (4)  |  Desire (212)  |  Dreariness (3)  |  Escape (85)  |  Eternity (64)  |  Everyday (32)  |  Everyday Life (15)  |  Eye (440)  |  Fetter (4)  |  Fetters (7)  |  Finely (3)  |  Freely (13)  |  High (370)  |  Hopeless (17)  |  Hopelessness (6)  |  Irresistible (17)  |  Lead (391)  |  Life (1870)  |  Long (778)  |  Longing (19)  |  Motive (62)  |  Mountain (202)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Noisy (3)  |  Objective (96)  |  Pain (144)  |  Perception (97)  |  Personal (75)  |  Pure (299)  |  Range (104)  |  Restful (2)  |  Schopenhauer (6)  |  Arthur Schopenhauer (19)  |  Science And Art (195)  |  Shifting (5)  |  Silence (62)  |  Still (614)  |  Strongest (38)  |  Surrounding (13)  |  Tempered (2)  |  Thought (995)  |  Through (846)  |  Trace (109)  |  World (1850)

Life is a phenomenon sui generis, a primal fact in its own right, like energy. Cut flesh or wood how you like, hack at them in a baffled fury—you cannot find life itself, you can only see what it built out of the lifeless dust.
In An Almanac for Moderns (1935), 393.
Science quotes on:  |  Baffled (3)  |  Cut (116)  |  Dust (68)  |  Energy (373)  |  Fact (1257)  |  Find (1014)  |  Flesh (28)  |  Fury (6)  |  Hack (3)  |  Life (1870)  |  Lifeless (15)  |  Phenomenon (334)  |  Right (473)  |  See (1094)  |  Seeing (143)  |  Wood (97)

The sun is a mass of incandescent gas, a gigantic nuclear furnace,
Where hydrogen is built into helium at a temperature of millions of degrees.
Yo ho, it’s hot, the sun is not a place where we could live.
But here on earth there’d be no life without the light it gives.
We need its light, we need its heat, we need its energy.
Without the sun, without a doubt, there’d be no you and me.
Hy Zaret
From song 'Why Does the Sun Shine? (The Sun Is A Mass Of Incandescent Gas)' on LP record album Space Songs (1961), in the series Ballads for the Age of Science. Music by Louis Singer, and sung by Tom Glazer. Also recorded by the group They Might Be Giants (1998) who followed up with 'Why Does The Sun Really Shine? (The Sun is a Miasma of Incandescent Plasma)' on CD album Here Comes Science (2009), which corrects several scientific inaccuracies in the lyrics
Science quotes on:  |  Degree (277)  |  Doubt (314)  |  Earth (1076)  |  Energy (373)  |  Furnace (13)  |  Gas (89)  |  Gigantic (40)  |  Heat (180)  |  Helium (11)  |  Hot (63)  |  Hydrogen (80)  |  Incandescent (7)  |  Life (1870)  |  Light (635)  |  Live (650)  |  Mass (160)  |  Million (124)  |  Need (320)  |  Nuclear (110)  |  Sun (407)  |  Temperature (82)

Though much new light is shed by ... studies in radioactivity, the nucleus of the atom, with its hoard of energy, thus continues to present us with a fascinating mystery. ... Our assault on atoms has broken down the outer fortifications. We feel that we know the fundamental rules according to which the outer part of the atom is built. The appearance and properties of the electron atmosphere are rather familiar. Yet that inner citadel, the atomic nucleus, remains unconquered, and we have reason to believe that within this citadel is secreted a great treasure. Its capture may form the main objective of the physicists’ next great drive.
'Assault on Atoms' (Read 23 Apr 1931 at Symposium—The Changing World) Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society (1931), 70, No. 3, 229.
Science quotes on:  |  According (236)  |  Appearance (145)  |  Assault (12)  |  Atmosphere (117)  |  Atom (381)  |  Belief (615)  |  Broken (56)  |  Broken Down (2)  |  Capture (11)  |  Citadel (4)  |  Continue (179)  |  Down (455)  |  Drive (61)  |  Electron (96)  |  Energy (373)  |  Familiar (47)  |  Fascinating (38)  |  Feel (371)  |  Form (976)  |  Fortification (6)  |  Fundamental (264)  |  Great (1610)  |  Hoard (2)  |  Inner (72)  |  Know (1538)  |  Light (635)  |  Main (29)  |  Mystery (188)  |  New (1273)  |  Next (238)  |  Nucleus (54)  |  Objective (96)  |  Outer (13)  |  Physicist (270)  |  Present (630)  |  Property (177)  |  Radioactivity (33)  |  Reason (766)  |  Remain (355)  |  Rule (307)  |  Secret (216)  |  Study (701)  |  Treasure (59)


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.