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 C > Category: Conqueror

Conqueror Quotes (8 quotes)

The Redwoods

Here, sown by the Creator's hand,
In serried ranks, the Redwoods stand;
No other clime is honored so,
No other lands their glory know.

The greatest of Earth's living forms,
Tall conquerors that laugh at storms;
Their challenge still unanswered rings,
Through fifty centuries of kings.

The nations that with them were young,
Rich empires, with their forts far-flung,
Lie buried now—their splendor gone;
But these proud monarchs still live on.

So shall they live, when ends our day,
When our crude citadels decay;
For brief the years allotted man,
But infinite perennials' span.

This is their temple, vaulted high,
And here we pause with reverent eye,
With silent tongue and awe-struck soul;
For here we sense life's proper goal;

To be like these, straight, true and fine,
To make our world, like theirs, a shrine;
Sink down, oh traveler, on your knees,
God stands before you in these trees.
In The Record: Volumes 60-61 (1938), 39.
Science quotes on:  |  Awe (43)  |  Brief (37)  |  Challenge (91)  |  Citadel (4)  |  Creator (97)  |  Crude (32)  |  Decay (59)  |  Down (455)  |  Earth (1076)  |  End (603)  |  Eye (440)  |  Form (976)  |  Glory (66)  |  Goal (155)  |  God (776)  |  Greatest (330)  |  High (370)  |  Honor (57)  |  Infinite (243)  |  King (39)  |  Know (1538)  |  Laugh (50)  |  Lie (370)  |  Life (1870)  |  Live (650)  |  Living (492)  |  Man (2252)  |  Nation (208)  |  Other (2233)  |  Perennial (9)  |  Poem (104)  |  Proper (150)  |  Rank (69)  |  Redwood (8)  |  Sense (785)  |  Shrine (8)  |  Sink (38)  |  Soul (235)  |  Sow (11)  |  Splendor (20)  |  Stand (284)  |  Still (614)  |  Storm (56)  |  Storms (18)  |  Straight (75)  |  Tall (11)  |  Temple (45)  |  Through (846)  |  Tongue (44)  |  Traveler (33)  |  Tree (269)  |  Unanswered (8)  |  World (1850)  |  Year (963)  |  Young (253)

Between the frontiers of the three super-states Eurasia, Oceania, and Eastasia, and not permanently in possession of any of them, there lies a rough quadrilateral with its corners at Tangier, Brazzaville, Darwin, and Hongkong. These territories contain a bottomless reserve of cheap labour. Whichever power controls equatorial Africa, or the Middle East or Southern India or the Indonesian Archipelago, disposes also of the bodies of hundreds of millions of ill-paid and hardworking coolies, expended by their conquerors like so much coal or oil in the race to turn out more armaments, to capture more territory, to control more labour, to turn out more armaments, to capture more territory, to control…
Thus George Orwell—in his only reference to the less-developed world.
I wish I could disagree with him. Orwell may have erred in not anticipating the withering of direct colonial controls within the “quadrilateral” he speaks about; he may not quite have gauged the vehemence of urges to political self-assertion. Nor, dare I hope, was he right in the sombre picture of conscious and heartless exploitation he has painted. But he did not err in predicting persisting poverty and hunger and overcrowding in 1984 among the less privileged nations.
I would like to live to regret my words but twenty years from now, I am positive, the less-developed world will be as hungry, as relatively undeveloped, and as desperately poor, as today.
'The Less-Developed World: How Can We be Optimists?' (1964). Reprinted in Ideals and Realities (1984), xv-xvi. Referencing a misquote from George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty Four (1949), Ch. 9.
Science quotes on:  |  Africa (38)  |  Archipelago (7)  |  Armament (6)  |  Bottomless (7)  |  Coal (64)  |  Control (182)  |  Corner (59)  |  Dare (55)  |  Develop (278)  |  Direct (228)  |  Exploitation (14)  |  Frontier (41)  |  Heartless (3)  |  Hope (321)  |  Hundred (240)  |  Hunger (23)  |  Labor (200)  |  Lie (370)  |  Live (650)  |  More (2558)  |  Nation (208)  |  Oil (67)  |   George Orwell (4)  |  Persisting (2)  |  Picture (148)  |  Political (124)  |  Poor (139)  |  Positive (98)  |  Possession (68)  |  Poverty (40)  |  Power (771)  |  Race (278)  |  Regret (31)  |  Reserve (26)  |  Right (473)  |  Self (268)  |  Speak (240)  |  State (505)  |  Territory (25)  |  Today (321)  |  Turn (454)  |  Undeveloped (6)  |  Will (2350)  |  Wish (216)  |  Word (650)  |  World (1850)  |  Year (963)

On tue un homme, on est un assassin. On tue des millions d’hommes, on est un conquérant. On les tue tous, on est un dieu.
Kill a man, and you are an assassin. Kill millions of men and you are a conqueror. Kill everyone, and you are a god.
Pensées d'un biologiste (1939), 116.
Science quotes on:  |  Assassin (2)  |  God (776)  |  Kill (100)  |  Killing (14)  |  Man (2252)  |  Million (124)

Sigmund Freud quote: A man who has been the indisputable favorite of his mother keeps for life the feeling of a
A man who has been the indisputable favorite of his mother keeps for life the feeling of a conqueror, that confidence of success that often induces real success.
Quoted in Ernest Jones, The Life and Work of Sigmund Freud (1957), Vol. 1, 5.
Science quotes on:  |  Confidence (75)  |  Favorite (37)  |  Feeling (259)  |  Indisputable (8)  |  Induce (24)  |  Keep (104)  |  Life (1870)  |  Man (2252)  |  Mother (116)  |  Success (327)

At times the mathematician has the passion of a poet or a conqueror, the rigor of his arguments is that of a responsible statesman or, more simply, of a concerned father, and his tolerance and resignation are those of an old sage; he is revolutionary and conservative, skeptical and yet faithfully optimistic.
Max Dehn
Address (18 Jan 1928) at the University of Frankfurt am Main, Germany. Trans. by Abe Schenitzer, and published in 'The Mentality of the Mathematician: A Characterization', The Mathematical Intelligencer (1983), 5, No. 2. As quoted in Michael Fitzgerald and Ioan James, The Mind of the Mathematician (2007), 6.
Science quotes on:  |  Argument (145)  |  Concern (239)  |  Conservative (16)  |  Faithfully (3)  |  Father (113)  |  Mathematician (407)  |  More (2558)  |  Old (499)  |  Passion (121)  |  Poet (97)  |  Resignation (3)  |  Responsible (19)  |  Revolutionary (31)  |  Rigor (29)  |  Sage (25)  |  Skeptical (21)  |  Statesman (20)  |  Time (1911)  |  Tolerance (11)

It is not knowledge, but the act of learning, not possession but the act of getting there, which grants the greatest enjoyment. When I have clarified and exhausted a subject, then I turn away from it, in order to go into darkness again; the never-satisfied man is so strange if he has completed a structure, then it is not in order to dwell in it peacefully,but in order to begin another. I imagine the world conqueror must feel thus, who, after one kingdom is scarcely conquered, stretches out his arms for others.
Letter to Farkas Wolfgang Bolyai (2 Sep 1808). Quoted in G. Waldo Dunnington, Carl Friedrich Gauss: Titan of Science (2004), 416.
Science quotes on:  |  Act (278)  |  Arm (82)  |  Arms (37)  |  Begin (275)  |  Biography (254)  |  Completed (30)  |  Conquer (39)  |  Darkness (72)  |  Enjoyment (37)  |  Feel (371)  |  Grant (76)  |  Greatest (330)  |  Imagine (176)  |  Kingdom (80)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Learning (291)  |  Man (2252)  |  Must (1525)  |  Never (1089)  |  Order (638)  |  Other (2233)  |  Possession (68)  |  Scarcely (75)  |  Strange (160)  |  Structure (365)  |  Subject (543)  |  Turn (454)  |  World (1850)

The man who has grit enough to bring about the afforestation or the irrigation of a country is not less worthy of honor than its conqueror.
As given in David Starr Jordan, War and the Breed: The Relation of War to the Downfall of Nations (1915), 83.
Science quotes on:  |  Country (269)  |  Enough (341)  |  Honor (57)  |  Irrigation (12)  |  Man (2252)  |  Reforestation (6)  |  Worth (172)

Who would not rather have the fame of Archimedes than that of his conqueror Marcellus?
Letter (26 Aug 1822) to his Aunt Mary Hutton. In Robert Perceval Graves, Life of Sir William Rowan Hamilton (1882), 110.
Science quotes on:  |  Archimedes (63)  |  Fame (51)


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.