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: “God does not care about our mathematical difficulties. He integrates empirically.”
more quiz questions >>
Home > Category Index for Science Quotations > Category Index C > Category: Craving

Craving Quotes (5 quotes)

[M]y work, which I’ve done for a long time, was not pursued in order to gain the praise I now enjoy, but chiefly from a craving after knowledge, which I notice resides in me more than in most other men. And therewithal, whenever I found out anything remarkable, I have thought it my duty to put down my discovery on paper, so that all ingenious people might be informed thereof.
Letter (27 Jun 1716) thanking the University of Louvain for ending him a medal designed in honour of his research. (Leeuwenhoek was then in his 84th year.) As cited by Charles-Edward Amory Winslow in The Conquest of Epidemic Disease: A Chapter in the History of Ideas (), 156.
Science quotes on:  |  Chiefly (47)  |  Discovery (837)  |  Down (455)  |  Duty (71)  |  Find (1014)  |  Gain (146)  |  Inform (50)  |  Ingenious (55)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Long (778)  |  More (2558)  |  Most (1728)  |  Notice (81)  |  Order (638)  |  Other (2233)  |  Paper (192)  |  People (1031)  |  Praise (28)  |  Remarkable (50)  |  Research (753)  |  Reside (25)  |  Thought (995)  |  Time (1911)  |  Whenever (81)  |  Work (1402)  |  Write (250)

As an adolescent I aspired to lasting fame, I craved factual certainty, and I thirsted for a meaningful vision of human life—so I became a scientist. This is like becoming an archbishop so you can meet girls.
In 'Seventy-five reasons to become a scientist', American Scientist (Sep/Oct 1988). 76, No. 5, 452.
Science quotes on:  |  Adolescent (4)  |  Aspiration (35)  |  Becoming (96)  |  Certainty (180)  |  Fact (1257)  |  Fame (51)  |  Girl (38)  |  Human (1512)  |  Human Life (32)  |  Lasting (7)  |  Life (1870)  |  Meaningful (19)  |  Meeting (22)  |  Scientist (881)  |  Thirst (11)  |  Vision (127)

I had this experience at the age of eight. My parents gave me a microscope. I don’t recall why, but no matter. I then found my own little world, completely wild and unconstrained, no plastic, no teacher, no books, no anything predictable. At first I did not know the names of the water-drop denizens or what they were doing. But neither did the pioneer microscopists. Like them, I graduated to looking at butterfly scales and other miscellaneous objects. I never thought of what I was doing in such a way, but it was pure science. As true as could be of any child so engaged, I was kin to Leeuwenhoek, who said that his work “was not pursued in order to gain the praise I now enjoy, but chiefly from a craving after knowledge, which I notice resides in me more that most other men.”
In The Creation: An Appeal to Save Life on Earth (2010), 143-144.
Science quotes on:  |  Age (509)  |  Book (413)  |  Butterfly (26)  |  Chiefly (47)  |  Child (333)  |  Complete (209)  |  Completely (137)  |  Doing (277)  |  Drop (77)  |  Enjoyment (37)  |  Experience (494)  |  Find (1014)  |  First (1302)  |  Gain (146)  |  Graduation (6)  |  Kin (10)  |  Know (1538)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Antonie van Leeuwenhoek (17)  |  Little (717)  |  Looking (191)  |  Matter (821)  |  Microscope (85)  |  Microscopist (2)  |  More (2558)  |  Most (1728)  |  Name (359)  |  Never (1089)  |  Notice (81)  |  Object (438)  |  Order (638)  |  Other (2233)  |  Parent (80)  |  Pioneer (37)  |  Plastic (30)  |  Praise (28)  |  Predictability (7)  |  Pure (299)  |  Pure Science (30)  |  Pursuit (128)  |  Reside (25)  |  Scale (122)  |  Teacher (154)  |  Thought (995)  |  Unconstrained (2)  |  Water (503)  |  Way (1214)  |  Why (491)  |  Wild (96)  |  Work (1402)  |  World (1850)

Inexact method of observation, as I believe, is one flaw in clinical pathology to-day. Prematurity of conclusion is another, and in part follows from the first; but in chief part an unusual craving and veneration for hypothesis, which besets the minds of most medical men, is responsible. Except in those sciences which deal with the intangible or with events of long past ages, no treatises are to be found in which hypothesis figures as it does in medical writings. The purity of a science is to be judged by the paucity of its recorded hypotheses. Hypothesis has its right place, it forms a working basis; but it is an acknowledged makeshift, and, at the best, of purpose unaccomplished. Hypothesis is the heart which no man with right purpose wears willingly upon his sleeve. He who vaunts his lady love, ere yet she is won, is apt to display himself as frivolous or his lady a wanton.
The Mechanism and Graphic Registration of the Heart Beat (1920), vii.
Science quotes on:  |  Age (509)  |  Basis (180)  |  Best (467)  |  Chief (99)  |  Clinical (18)  |  Conclusion (266)  |  Deal (192)  |  Display (59)  |  Event (222)  |  Figure (162)  |  First (1302)  |  Flaw (18)  |  Follow (389)  |  Form (976)  |  Frivolous (8)  |  Heart (243)  |  Himself (461)  |  History (716)  |  Hypothesis (314)  |  Inexact (3)  |  Intangible (6)  |  Long (778)  |  Love (328)  |  Makeshift (2)  |  Man (2252)  |  Medicine (392)  |  Method (531)  |  Mind (1377)  |  Most (1728)  |  Observation (593)  |  Past (355)  |  Pathology (19)  |  Paucity (3)  |  Physician (284)  |  Premature (22)  |  Purity (15)  |  Purpose (336)  |  Record (161)  |  Right (473)  |  Treatise (46)  |  Unusual (37)  |  Wanton (2)  |  Writing (192)

When you see the natural and almost universal craving in English sick for their 'tea,' you cannot but feel that nature knows what she is about. … [A] little tea or coffee restores them. … [T]here is nothing yet discovered which is a substitute to the English patient for his cup of tea.
'Tea, Coffee, and Cocoa for the Sick', Scientific American (2 Jul 1860), New Series, 3, No. 1, 3.
Science quotes on:  |  Coffee (21)  |  Discover (571)  |  English (35)  |  Feel (371)  |  Know (1538)  |  Little (717)  |  Medication (8)  |  Natural (810)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Nothing (1000)  |  Patient (209)  |  See (1094)  |  Sick (83)  |  Substitute (47)  |  Tea (13)  |  Treatment (135)  |  Universal (198)


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.