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: Collector

Collector Quotes (8 quotes)

There is no such thing as a Scientific Mind. Scientists are people of very dissimilar temperaments doing different things in very different ways. Among scientists are collectors, classifiers, and compulsive tidiers-up; many are detectives by temperament and many are explorers; some are artists and others artisans. There are poet-scientists and philosopher-scientists and even a few mystics.
The Art of the Soluble: Creativity and Originality in Science (1967). Reprinted in Pluto’s Republic (1982), 116.
Science quotes on:  |  Artisan (9)  |  Artist (97)  |  Compulsive (3)  |  Detective (11)  |  Difference (355)  |  Different (595)  |  Dissimilar (6)  |  Doing (277)  |  Explorer (30)  |  Mind (1377)  |  Mystic (23)  |  Other (2233)  |  People (1031)  |  Philosopher (269)  |  Poet (97)  |  Scientific (955)  |  Scientific Mind (13)  |  Scientist (881)  |  Temperament (18)  |  Thing (1914)  |  Way (1214)

Between men of different studies and professions, may be observed a constant reciprocation of reproaches. The collector of shells and stones derides the folly of him who pastes leaves and flowers upon paper, pleases himself with colours that are perceptibly fading, and amasses with care what cannot be preserved. The hunter of insects stands amazed that any man can waste his short time upon lifeless matter, while many tribes of animals yet want their history. Every one is inclined not only to promote his own study, but to exclude all others from regard, and having heated his imagination with some favourite pursuit, wonders that the rest of mankind are not seized with the same passion.
From 'Numb. 83, Tuesday, January 1, 1750', The Rambler (1756), Vol. 2, 150.
Science quotes on:  |  Amass (6)  |  Amazed (4)  |  Animal (651)  |  Care (203)  |  Color (155)  |  Constant (148)  |  Deride (2)  |  Different (595)  |  Exclude (8)  |  Fading (3)  |  Favourite (7)  |  Flower (112)  |  Folly (44)  |  Heat (180)  |  Himself (461)  |  History (716)  |  Hunter (28)  |  Imagination (349)  |  Inclined (41)  |  Insect (89)  |  Leaf (73)  |  Lifeless (15)  |  Man (2252)  |  Mankind (356)  |  Matter (821)  |  Observed (149)  |  Other (2233)  |  Paper (192)  |  Passion (121)  |  Paste (4)  |  Perceptibly (2)  |  Please (68)  |  Preserved (3)  |  Profession (108)  |  Promote (32)  |  Pursuit (128)  |  Regard (312)  |  Reproach (4)  |  Rest (287)  |  Seized (2)  |  Shell (69)  |  Short (200)  |  Stand (284)  |  Stone (168)  |  Study (701)  |  Time (1911)  |  Tribe (26)  |  Want (504)  |  Waste (109)  |  Wonder (251)

How indispensable to a correct study of Nature is a perception of her true meaning. The fact will one day flower out into a truth. The season will mature and fructify what the understanding had cultivated. Mere accumulators of facts—collectors of materials for the master-workmen—are like those plants growing in dark forests, which “put forth only leaves instead of blossoms.”
(16 Dec 1837). In Henry David Thoreau and Bradford Torrey (ed.), The Writings of Henry Thoreau: Journal: I: 1837-1846 (1906), 18.
Science quotes on:  |  Blossom (22)  |  Correct (95)  |  Cultivate (24)  |  Dark (145)  |  Fact (1257)  |  Facts (553)  |  Flower (112)  |  Forest (161)  |  Growing (99)  |  Indispensable (31)  |  Leaf (73)  |  Master (182)  |  Material (366)  |  Mature (17)  |  Meaning (244)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Perception (97)  |  Plant (320)  |  Season (47)  |  Study (701)  |  Truth (1109)  |  Understanding (527)  |  Will (2350)  |  Workman (13)

I am told that the wall paintings which we had the happiness of admiring in all their beauty and freshness [in the chapel she discovered at Abu Simbel] are already much injured. Such is the fate of every Egyptian monument, great or small. The tourist carves it over with names and dates, and in some instances with caricatures. The student of Egyptology, by taking wet paper “squeezes” sponges away every vestige of the original colour. The “Collector” buys and carries off everything of value that he can, and the Arab steals it for him. The work of destruction, meanwhile goes on apace. The Museums of Berlin, of Turin, of Florence are rich in spoils which tell their lamentable tale. When science leads the way, is it wonderful that ignorance should follow?
Quoted in Margaret S. Drower, The Early Years, in T.G.H. James, (ed.), Excavating in Egypt: The Egypt Exploration Society, 1882-1982 (1982), 10. As cited in Wendy M.K. Shaw, Possessors and Possessed: Museums, Archaeology, and the Visualization of History in the Late Ottoman Empire (2003), 37. Also quoted in Margaret S. Drower, Flinders Petrie: A Life in Archaeology (1995), 57.
Science quotes on:  |  Already (226)  |  Arab (5)  |  Beauty (313)  |  Berlin (10)  |  Buy (21)  |  Caricature (6)  |  Carry (130)  |  Carve (5)  |  Color (155)  |  Date (14)  |  Destruction (135)  |  Discover (571)  |  Egypt (31)  |  Egyptology (3)  |  Everything (489)  |  Fate (76)  |  Florence (2)  |  Follow (389)  |  Freshness (8)  |  Great (1610)  |  Happiness (126)  |  Ignorance (254)  |  Injure (3)  |  Instance (33)  |  Lamentable (5)  |  Lead (391)  |  Monument (45)  |  Museum (40)  |  Name (359)  |  Original (61)  |  Painting (46)  |  Paper (192)  |  Small (489)  |  Sponge (9)  |  Steal (14)  |  Student (317)  |  Tale (17)  |  Tell (344)  |  Tourist (6)  |  Turin (3)  |  Value (393)  |  Vestige (11)  |  Wall (71)  |  Way (1214)  |  Wonderful (155)  |  Work (1402)

Like the furtive collectors of stolen art, we [cell biologists] are forced to be lonely admirers of spectacular architecture, exquisite symmetry, dramas of violence and death, mobility, self-sacrifice and, yes, rococo sex.
…...
Science quotes on:  |  Admirer (9)  |  Architecture (50)  |  Art (680)  |  Biologist (70)  |  Cell (146)  |  Death (406)  |  Drama (24)  |  Exquisite (27)  |  Force (497)  |  Furtive (2)  |  Lonely (24)  |  Mobility (11)  |  Sacrifice (58)  |  Self (268)  |  Self-Sacrifice (5)  |  Sex (68)  |  Spectacular (22)  |  Steal (14)  |  Symmetry (44)  |  Violence (37)

My father, the practicing physician, … was a passionate collector of natural objects (amber, shells, minerals, beetles, etc.) and a great friend of the natural sciences. … To my energetic and intellectually vigorous mother I owe an infinite debt.
As quoted in Paul Forman and Armin Hermann, 'Sommerfeld, Arnold (Johannes Wilhelm)', Biography in Dictionary of Scientific Biography (1975), Vol. 12, 525. Cited from 'Autobiographische Skizze', Gesammelte Schriften, Vol 4, 673–682.
Science quotes on:  |  Amber (3)  |  Autobiography (58)  |  Beetle (19)  |  Debt (15)  |  Energetic (6)  |  Father (113)  |  Friend (180)  |  Great (1610)  |  Infinite (243)  |  Intellectual (258)  |  Mineral (66)  |  Mother (116)  |  Natural (810)  |  Natural Science (133)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Object (438)  |  Owe (71)  |  Passionate (22)  |  Physician (284)  |  Shell (69)  |  Vigorous (21)

One-story intellects, two-story intellects, three-story intellects with skylights. All fact-collectors, who have no aim beyond their facts, are one-story men. Two-story men compare, reason, generalize, using the labors of the fact-collectors as well as their own. Three-story men idealize, imagine, predict; their best illumination comes from above, through the skylight. There are minds with large ground-floors, that can store an infinite amount of knowledge; some librarians, for instance, who know enough of books to help other people, without being able to make much other use of their knowledge, have intellects of this class. Your great working lawyer has two spacious stories; his mind is clear, because his mental floors are large, and he has room to arrange his thoughts so that lie can get at them,—facts below, principles above, and all in ordered series; poets are often narrow below, incapable of clear statement, and with small power of consecutive reasoning, but full of light, if sometimes rather bare of furniture, in the attics.
The Poet at the Breakfast Table (1883), 50.
Science quotes on:  |  Aim (175)  |  Amount (153)  |  Arrange (33)  |  Bare (33)  |  Being (1276)  |  Best (467)  |  Beyond (316)  |  Book (413)  |  Class (168)  |  Compare (76)  |  Comparison (108)  |  Enough (341)  |  Fact (1257)  |  Facts (553)  |  Furniture (8)  |  Generalization (61)  |  Generalize (19)  |  Great (1610)  |  Ground (222)  |  Idealization (3)  |  Illumination (15)  |  Imagine (176)  |  Incapable (41)  |  Infinite (243)  |  Intellect (251)  |  Know (1538)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Labor (200)  |  Large (398)  |  Lawyer (27)  |  Librarian (2)  |  Lie (370)  |  Light (635)  |  Mental (179)  |  Mind (1377)  |  Narrow (85)  |  Order (638)  |  Other (2233)  |  People (1031)  |  Poet (97)  |  Power (771)  |  Predict (86)  |  Prediction (89)  |  Principle (530)  |  Reason (766)  |  Reasoning (212)  |  Series (153)  |  Small (489)  |  Statement (148)  |  Store (49)  |  Story (122)  |  Thought (995)  |  Through (846)  |  Two (936)  |  Use (771)

There’s probably 5000 times more solar energy than the humans will ever need. We could cover our highways with solar collectors to make ribbons of energy, and I think that it’s really the largest job creation program in the history of the planet that’s in front of us. It’s a celebration of the abundance of human creativity combined with the abundance of the natural world.
In audio segment, 'William McDonough: Godfather of Green', WNYC, Studio 360 broadcast on NPR radio (18 Mar 2008) and archived on the station website.
Science quotes on:  |  Abundance (26)  |  Celebration (7)  |  Cover (40)  |  Creation (350)  |  Creativity (84)  |  Energy (373)  |  Highway (15)  |  History (716)  |  Human (1512)  |  Job (86)  |  Largest (39)  |  More (2558)  |  Natural (810)  |  Natural World (33)  |  Need (320)  |  Planet (402)  |  Solar Energy (21)  |  Think (1122)  |  Time (1911)  |  Will (2350)  |  World (1850)


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.