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: Compared

Compared Quotes (8 quotes)

Lyveris to-forn us
Useden to marke
For selkouthes that thei seighen,
Hir sones for to teche;
And helden it an heigh science
Hir wittes to knowe.
Ac thorugh hir science soothly
Was nevere no soule y-saved,
Ne broght by hir bokes
To blisse ne to joye;
For alle hir kynde knowynges
Come but of diverse sightes.
Patriarkes and prophetes
Repreveden hir science,
And seiden hir wordes and hir wisdomes
Nas but a folye
And to the clergie of Crist
Counted it but a trufle.

Our ancestors in olden days used to record
The strange things they saw, and teach them to their sons;
And they held it a high science, to have knowledge of such things.
But no soul was ever saved by all that science,
Nor brought by books into eternal bliss;
Their science was only a series of sundry observations.
So patriarchs and prophets disapproved of their science,
And said their so-called words of wisdom were but folly—
And compared with Christian philosophy, a contemptible thing.
In William Langland and B. Thomas Wright (ed.) The Vision and Creed of Piers Ploughman (1842), 235-236. Modern translation by Terrence Tiller in Piers Plowman (1981, 1999), 123.
Science quotes on:  |  Ancestor (63)  |  Bliss (3)  |  Book (413)  |  Call (781)  |  Christian (44)  |  Contemptible (8)  |  Count (107)  |  Disapproval (2)  |  Eternal (113)  |  Folly (44)  |  High (370)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Observation (593)  |  Old (499)  |  Patriarch (4)  |  Philosophy (409)  |  Prophet (22)  |  Record (161)  |  Saw (160)  |  Series (153)  |  So-Called (71)  |  Son (25)  |  Soul (235)  |  Strange (160)  |  Sundry (4)  |  Teach (299)  |  Thing (1914)  |  Wisdom (235)  |  Word (650)

Beggars in the streets of London were at that time leading the lives of princes, compared to the life of our soldiers in the Crimea when I arrived on the scene with thirty-six nurses.
As quoted in ‘Little Chats With Big People’, The Scrap Book (Jan 1908), 5, No. 1, 43.
Science quotes on:  |  Beggar (5)  |  Crimean War (2)  |  Life (1870)  |  Live (650)  |  London (15)  |  Nurse (33)  |  Prince (13)  |  Scene (36)  |  Soldier (28)  |  Street (25)  |  Time (1911)  |  War (233)

Edmund Wilson attacked the pedantry of scholarly editions of literary classics, which (he claimed) took the pleasure out of reading. Extensive footnotes … spoiled the reader’s pleasure in the text. Wilson’s friend Lewis Mumford had compared footnote numbers … to “barbed wire” keeping the reader at arm’s length.
In Academic Instincts (2001), 39.
Science quotes on:  |  Arm (82)  |  Attack (86)  |  Barbed Wire (2)  |  Claim (154)  |  Extensive (34)  |  Footnote (5)  |  Friend (180)  |  Lewis Mumford (16)  |  Number (710)  |  Pedantry (5)  |  Pleasure (191)  |  Reader (42)  |  Reading (136)  |  Spoil (8)  |   Edmund Beecher Wilson, (8)  |  Wire (36)

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)  |  Built (7)  |  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)

I claim that many patterns of Nature are so irregular and fragmented, that, compared with Euclid—a term used in this work to denote all of standard geometry—Nature exhibits not simply a higher degree but an altogether different level of complexity … The existence of these patterns challenges us to study these forms that Euclid leaves aside as being “formless,” to investigate the morphology of the “amorphous.”
Cited as from Fractals: Form, Chance, and Dimension (1977), by J.W. Cannon, in review of The Fractal Geometry of Nature (1982) in The American Mathematical Monthly (Nov 1984), 91, No. 9, 594.
Science quotes on:  |  Amorphous (6)  |  Being (1276)  |  Challenge (91)  |  Claim (154)  |  Complexity (121)  |  Degree (277)  |  Different (595)  |  Euclid (60)  |  Exhibit (21)  |  Existence (481)  |  Form (976)  |  Formless (4)  |  Fragment (58)  |  Fragmented (2)  |  Geometry (271)  |  Investigate (106)  |  Investigation (250)  |  Irregular (7)  |  Leaf (73)  |  Level (69)  |  Morphology (22)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Pattern (116)  |  Standard (64)  |  Study (701)  |  Term (357)  |  Work (1402)

Philosophers say, that Man is a Microcosm, or little World, resembling in Miniature every Part of the Great: And, in my Opinion, the Body Natural may be compared to the Body Politic: and if this be so, how can the Epicureans Opinion be true, that the Universe was formed by a fortuitous Concourse of Atoms; which I will no more believe, than that the accidental Jumbling of the Letters of the Alphabet, could fall by Chance into a most ingenious and learned Treatise of Philosophy. Risum teneatis Amici, Hor.
In 'A Tritical Essay Upon the Faculties of the Mind' (6 Aug 1707), collected in various volumes and editions, for example, The Works of J.S, D.D, D.S.P.D.: Volume 1: Miscellanies in Prose (1739), 173. An earlier, undated, fourth volume of Miscellanies gives the 6 Aug 1707 date the essay was written. The final Latin phrase can be translated as, “Can you help laughing, friends?” attributed to Horace. In Jonathan Swift and Temple Scott (ed.), The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift: A Tale of a Tub: the Battle of the Books, and Other Early Works (1897, reprint 1907), Vol. 1, 291, the editor footnotes that “this essay is a parody on the pseudo-philosophical essays of the time, in which all sense was lost in the maze of inconsequential quotations.” Indeed, the rest of the essay is, by design, a jumble of disjointed thoughts and makes next to no sense.
Science quotes on:  |  Accidental (31)  |  Alphabet (14)  |  Atom (381)  |  Belief (615)  |  Body (557)  |  Chance (244)  |  Concourse (5)  |  Epicurean (2)  |  Fall (243)  |  Form (976)  |  Formed (5)  |  Fortuitous (11)  |  Great (1610)  |  Ingenious (55)  |  Jumbling (2)  |  Learn (672)  |  Learned (235)  |  Letter (117)  |  Little (717)  |  Man (2252)  |  Microcosm (10)  |  Miniature (7)  |  More (2558)  |  Most (1728)  |  Natural (810)  |  Opinion (291)  |  Philosopher (269)  |  Philosophy (409)  |  Resembling (2)  |  Say (989)  |  Treatise (46)  |  True (239)  |  Universe (900)  |  Will (2350)  |  World (1850)

Plato compared the intellect to a charioteer guiding the powerful horses of the passions, i.e., he gave it both the power of perception and the power of control.
From Intelligence: Its Structure, Growth and Action: Its Structure, Growth and Action (1987), 2.
Science quotes on:  |  Both (496)  |  Control (182)  |  Guiding (3)  |  Horse (78)  |  Intellect (251)  |  Passion (121)  |  Perception (97)  |  Plato (80)  |  Power (771)  |  Powerful (145)

When we look back beyond one hundred years over the long trails of history, we see immediately why the age we live in differs from all other ages in human annals. … It remained stationary in India and in China for thousands of years. But now it is moving very fast. … A priest from Thebes would probably have felt more at home at the council of Trent, two thousand years after Thebes had vanished, than Sir Isaac Newton at a modern undergraduate physical society, or George Stephenson in the Institute of Electrical Engineers. The changes have have been so sudden and so gigantic, that no period in history can be compared with the last century. The past no longer enables us even dimly to measure the future.
From 'Fifty Years Hence', Strand Magazine (Dec 1931). Reprinted in Popular Mechanics (Mar 1932), 57, No. 3, 393.
Science quotes on:  |  19th Century (41)  |  20th Century (40)  |  Age (509)  |  Annal (3)  |  Back (395)  |  Beyond (316)  |  Century (319)  |  Change (639)  |  China (27)  |  Council (9)  |  Differ (88)  |  Dimly (6)  |  Electrical (57)  |  Electrical Engineer (5)  |  Electrical Engineering (12)  |  Enable (122)  |  Engineer (136)  |  Fast (49)  |  Future (467)  |  Gigantic (40)  |  History (716)  |  Home (184)  |  Human (1512)  |  Hundred (240)  |  Immediately (115)  |  India (23)  |  Institute (8)  |  Last (425)  |  Live (650)  |  Long (778)  |  Look (584)  |  Measure (241)  |  Modern (402)  |  More (2558)  |  Moving (11)  |  Sir Isaac Newton (363)  |  Other (2233)  |  Past (355)  |  Period (200)  |  Physical (518)  |  Priest (29)  |  Probably (50)  |  Remain (355)  |  Remained (2)  |  See (1094)  |  Society (350)  |  Stationary (11)  |  George Stephenson (10)  |  Sudden (70)  |  Thousand (340)  |  Trail (11)  |  Two (936)  |  Undergraduate (17)  |  Vanished (3)  |  Why (491)  |  Year (963)


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.