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: “Science without religion is lame; religion without science is blind.”
more quiz questions >>
Home > Category Index for Science Quotations > Category Index C > Category: Claw

Claw Quotes (8 quotes)

Tanquam ex ungue leonem.
One knows the lion by his claw.
Latin phrase as given in Charles Boussat, A General History of Mathematics: From the Earliest Times to the Middle of the Eighteenth Century (1803), 334. Reportedly said in 1697, after reading an anonymous solution, that he realized to be the work of Isaac Newton, by its sheer power and imagination. (The Brachistochrone curve problem was to find the shape of a slide down which a frictionless puck would slide in the least amount of time by gravity.)
Science quotes on:  |  Know (1538)  |  Lion (23)  |  Recognize (136)

Are God and Nature then at strife,
That Nature lends such evil dreams?
So careful of the type she seems,
So careless of the single life; ...
'So careful of the type', but no.
From scarped cliff and quarried stone
She cries, 'A thousand types are gone:
I care for nothing, all shall go' ...
Man, her last work, who seemed so fair,
Such splendid purpose in his eyes,
Who rolled the psalm to wintry skies,
Who built him fanes of fruitless prayer,
Who trusted God was love indeed
And love Creation's final law—
Tho’ Nature red in tooth and claw
With ravine, shrieked against his creed...
In Memoriam A. H. H. (1850), Cantos 56-57. Collected in Alfred Tennyson and William James Rolfe (ed.) The Poetic and Dramatic works of Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1898), 176.
Science quotes on:  |  Against (332)  |  Care (203)  |  Cliff (22)  |  Creation (350)  |  Creed (28)  |  Cry (30)  |  Dream (222)  |  Evil (122)  |  Evolution (635)  |  Eye (440)  |  Fairness (2)  |  Final (121)  |  Fruitless (9)  |  God (776)  |  Indeed (323)  |  Last (425)  |  Law (913)  |  Life (1870)  |  Love (328)  |  Man (2252)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Nothing (1000)  |  Prayer (30)  |  Psalm (3)  |  Purpose (336)  |  Quarry (14)  |  Ravine (5)  |  Red (38)  |  Roll (41)  |  Rolling (4)  |  Scarp (2)  |  Shriek (4)  |  Single (365)  |  Sky (174)  |  Splendid (23)  |  Stone (168)  |  Strife (9)  |  Thousand (340)  |  Tooth (32)  |  Trust (72)  |  Type (171)  |  Winter (46)  |  Work (1402)

Every bird which flies has the thread of the infinite in its claw. Germination includes the hatching of a meteor and the tap of a swallow's bill breaking the egg, and it leads forward the birth of an earth-worm and the advent of Socrates.
Victor Hugo and Charles E. Wilbour (trans.), Les Misérables (1862), 41.
Science quotes on:  |  Bill (14)  |  Bird (163)  |  Birth (154)  |  Break (109)  |  Comet (65)  |  Earth (1076)  |  Earthworm (8)  |  Egg (71)  |  Flight (101)  |  Forward (104)  |  Germination (3)  |  Include (93)  |  Infinite (243)  |  Infinity (96)  |  Lead (391)  |  Meteor (19)  |   Socrates, (17)  |  Swallow (32)  |  Tap (10)  |  Thread (36)  |  Worm (47)

I became expert at dissecting crayfish. At one point I had a crayfish claw mounted on an apparatus in such a way that I could operate the individual nerves. I could get the several-jointed claw to reach down and pick up a pencil and wave it around. I am not sure that what I was doing had much scientific value, although I did learn which nerve fiber had to be excited to inhibit the effects of another fiber so that the claw would open. And it did get me interested in robotic instrumentation, something that I have now returned to. I am trying to build better micromanipulators for surgery and the like.
In Jeremy Bernstein, 'A.I.', The New Yorker (14 Dec 1981).
Science quotes on:  |  Apparatus (70)  |  Better (493)  |  Build (211)  |  Dissect (2)  |  Doing (277)  |  Down (455)  |  Effect (414)  |  Excite (17)  |  Expert (67)  |  Fiber (16)  |  Individual (420)  |  Inhibit (4)  |  Instrumentation (4)  |  Interest (416)  |  Joint (31)  |  Learn (672)  |  Manipulate (11)  |  Mount (43)  |  Nerve (82)  |  Open (277)  |  Operate (19)  |  Pencil (20)  |  Pick Up (5)  |  Point (584)  |  Reach (286)  |  Research (753)  |  Return (133)  |  Robot (14)  |  Scientific (955)  |  Something (718)  |  Surgery (54)  |  Trying (144)  |  Value (393)  |  Wave (112)  |  Way (1214)

Nature, red in tooth and claw.
In Memoriam A. H. H. (1850), Canto 56. Collected in Alfred Tennyson and William James Rolfe (ed.) The Poetic and Dramatic works of Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1898), 176.
Science quotes on:  |  Nature (2017)  |  Red (38)  |  Tooth (32)

Of all the motions the hand can perform, perhaps none is so distinctively human as a punch in the nose. Other animals bite, claw, butt or stomp one another, but only the species that includes Muhammad Ali folds its hands into a fist to perform the quintessential act of intraspecies male-on-male aggression.
From 'Why Do Humans Have Thumbs?', Smithsonian Magazine (Dec 2014).
Science quotes on:  |  Act (278)  |  Aggression (10)  |  Animal (651)  |  Bite (18)  |  Butt (2)  |  Distinct (98)  |  Fist (3)  |  Fold (9)  |  Hand (149)  |  Human (1512)  |  Include (93)  |  Male (26)  |  Motion (320)  |  Nose (14)  |  Other (2233)  |  Perform (123)  |  Punch (2)  |  Quintessential (2)  |  Species (435)

Survival of the fittest led to “nature red in tooth and claw” and this is not sufficiently wishy-washy for modern scientists.
In Science is a Sacred Cow (1950), 107.
Science quotes on:  |  Modern (402)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Scientist (881)  |  Survival (105)  |  Survival Of The Fittest (43)  |  Tooth (32)

The bird which is drawn to the water by its need of finding there the prey on which it lives, separates the digits of its feet in trying to strike the water and move about on the surface. The skin which unites these digits at their base acquires the habit of being stretched by these continually repeated separations of the digits; thus in course of time there are formed large webs which unite the digits of ducks, geese, etc., as we actually find them. In the same way efforts to swim, that is to push against the water so as to move about in it, have stretched the membranes between the digits of frogs, sea-tortoises, the otter, beaver, etc.
On the other hand, a bird which is accustomed to perch on trees and which springs from individuals all of whom had acquired this habit, necessarily has longer digits on its feet and differently shaped from those of the aquatic animals that I have just named. Its claws in time become lengthened, sharpened and curved into hooks, to clasp the branches on which the animal so often rests.
We find in the same way that the bird of the water-side which does not like swimming and yet is in need of going to the water's edge to secure its prey, is continually liable to sink into the mud. Now this bird tries to act in such a way that its body should not be immersed in the liquid, and hence makes its best efforts to stretch and lengthen its legs. The long-established habit acquired by this bird and all its race of continually stretching and lengthening its legs, results in the individuals of this race becoming raised as though on stilts, and gradually obtaining long, bare legs, denuded of feathers up to the thighs and often higher still.
Philosophie Zoologique (1809), Vol. 1, 249-50, trans. Hugh Elliot (1914), 119-20.
Science quotes on:  |  Accustom (52)  |  Accustomed (46)  |  Acquired (77)  |  Act (278)  |  Against (332)  |  Animal (651)  |  Aquatic (5)  |  Bare (33)  |  Base (120)  |  Beaver (8)  |  Become (821)  |  Becoming (96)  |  Being (1276)  |  Best (467)  |  Bird (163)  |  Body (557)  |  Course (413)  |  Duck (3)  |  Edge (51)  |  Effort (243)  |  Find (1014)  |  Foot (65)  |  Form (976)  |  Frog (44)  |  Goose (13)  |  Gradually (102)  |  Habit (174)  |  Individual (420)  |  Large (398)  |  Leg (35)  |  Liquid (50)  |  Live (650)  |  Long (778)  |  Membrane (21)  |  Move (223)  |  Mud (26)  |  Necessarily (137)  |  Other (2233)  |  Otter (2)  |  Perch (7)  |  Push (66)  |  Race (278)  |  Rest (287)  |  Result (700)  |  Sea (326)  |  Separate (151)  |  Separation (60)  |  Sharpen (22)  |  Side (236)  |  Sink (38)  |  Skin (48)  |  Spring (140)  |  Still (614)  |  Stretch (39)  |  Strike (72)  |  Surface (223)  |  Swim (32)  |  Swimming (19)  |  Time (1911)  |  Tortoise (10)  |  Tree (269)  |  Trying (144)  |  Unite (43)  |  Water (503)  |  Way (1214)


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.