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: “Truth is ever to be found in simplicity, and not in the multiplicity and confusion of things.”
more quiz questions >>
Home > Category Index for Science Quotations > Category Index D > Category: Degradation

Degradation Quotes (18 quotes)

[Coleridge] selected an instance of what was called the sublime, in DARWIN, who imagined the creation of the universe to have taken place in a moment, by the explosion of a mass of matter in the womb, or centre of space. In one and the same instant of time, suns and planets shot into systems in every direction, and filled and spangled the illimitable void! He asserted this to be an intolerable degradation—referring, as it were, all the beauty and harmony of nature to something like the bursting of a barrel of gunpowder! that spit its combustible materials into a pock-freckled creation!
In Seamus Perry (eds.), Coleridge’s Responses: Vol. 1: Coleridge on Writers and Writing (2007), 338-339.
Science quotes on:  |  Assert (69)  |  Beauty (313)  |  Big Bang (45)  |  Call (781)  |  Creation (350)  |  Charles Darwin (322)  |  Direction (185)  |  Explosion (51)  |  Gunpowder (18)  |  Harmony (105)  |  Instant (46)  |  Mass (160)  |  Material (366)  |  Matter (821)  |  Moment (260)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Planet (402)  |  Select (45)  |  Something (718)  |  Space (523)  |  Sublime (50)  |  Sun (407)  |  System (545)  |  Time (1911)  |  Universe (900)  |  Void (31)  |  Womb (25)

Alphonse of Castile is reported to have said that if he had had the making of the universe he would have done it much better. And I think so too. Instead of making a man go through the degradation of faculties and death, he should continually improve with age, and then be translated from this world to a superior planet, where he should begin life with the knowledge gained here, and so on. That would be to my mind, as an old man, a more satisfactory way of conducting affairs
Address, in 'Report to the Chemical Society's Jubilee', Nature (26 Mar 1891), 43, 493.
Science quotes on:  |  Age (509)  |  Begin (275)  |  Better (493)  |  Continual (44)  |  Death (406)  |  Faculty (76)  |  Gain (146)  |  Improve (64)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Life (1870)  |  Making (300)  |  Man (2252)  |  Mind (1377)  |  More (2558)  |  Old (499)  |  Old Age (35)  |  Old Man (6)  |  Planet (402)  |  Satisfactory (19)  |  Superior (88)  |  Think (1122)  |  Through (846)  |  Translate (21)  |  Universe (900)  |  Way (1214)  |  World (1850)

Even environmentalists seem more concerned about the loss of a year or so of life expectation through cancer than they are about the degradation of the natural world by deforestation or greenhouse gases—something that could cause the death of our grandchildren.
In 'The Earth as a Living Organism', Essay collected in E. O. Wilson and F. M. Peter (eds.), Biodiversity (1988), Chap. 56, 489.
Science quotes on:  |  Cancer (61)  |  Cause (561)  |  Concern (239)  |  Death (406)  |  Deforestation (50)  |  Environmentalist (7)  |  Grandchildren (2)  |  Life Expectancy (3)  |  Loss (117)  |  Natural World (33)  |  Year (963)

For nearly twelve years I travelled and lived mostly among uncivilised or completely savage races, and I became convinced that they all possessed good qualities, some of them in a very remarkable degree, and that in all the great characteristics of humanity they are wonderfully like ourselves. Some, indeed, among the brown Polynesians especially, are declared by numerous independent and unprejudiced observers, to be physically, mentally, and intellectually our equals, if not our superiors; and it has always seemed to me one of the disgraces of our civilisation that these fine people have not in a single case been protected from contamination by the vices and follies of our more degraded classes, and allowed to develope their own social and political organislll under the advice of some of our best and wisest men and the protection of our world-wide power. That would have been indeed a worthy trophy of our civilisation. What we have actually done, and left undone, resulting in the degradation and lingering extermination of so fine a people, is one of the most pathetic of its tragedies.
In 'The Native Problem in South Africa and Elsewhere', Independent Review (1906), 11, 182.
Science quotes on:  |  Advice (57)  |  Best (467)  |  Brown (23)  |  Characteristic (154)  |  Civilization (220)  |  Completely (137)  |  Contamination (4)  |  Declared (24)  |  Degree (277)  |  Development (441)  |  Disgrace (12)  |  Extermination (14)  |  Folly (44)  |  Good (906)  |  Great (1610)  |  Humanity (186)  |  Indeed (323)  |  Intellect (251)  |  More (2558)  |  Most (1728)  |  Nearly (137)  |  Numerous (70)  |  Observer (48)  |  Organism (231)  |  Ourselves (247)  |  People (1031)  |  Political (124)  |  Polynesian (2)  |  Possess (157)  |  Power (771)  |  Protect (65)  |  Protection (41)  |  Race (278)  |  Savage (33)  |  Single (365)  |  Social (261)  |  Superior (88)  |  Tragedy (31)  |  Trophy (3)  |  Uncivilised (2)  |  Vice (42)  |  Wide (97)  |  World (1850)  |  Year (963)

If all boys could be made to know that with every breath of cigarette smoke they inhale imbecility and exhale manhood … and that the cigarette is a maker of invalids, criminals and fools—not men—it ought to deter them some. The yellow finger stain is an emblem of deeper degradation and enslavement than the ball and chain.
In Hudson Maxim and Clifton Johnson, 'Smoking, Swearing, and Perfumery', Hudson Maxim: Reminiscences and Comments (1924), 234. The quote is as reported by Clifton Johnson, based on interviews with Hudson Maxim.
Science quotes on:  |  Ball (64)  |  Boy (100)  |  Breath (61)  |  Chain (51)  |  Cigarette (26)  |  Criminal (18)  |  Deterrent (3)  |  Emblem (4)  |  Enslavement (3)  |  Exhalation (2)  |  Finger (48)  |  Fool (121)  |  Imbecility (5)  |  Invalid (3)  |  Know (1538)  |  Maker (34)  |  Man (2252)  |  Manhood (3)  |  Smoke (32)  |  Stain (10)  |  Yellow (31)

If we are correct in understanding how evolution actually works, and provided we can survive the complications of war, environmental degradation, and possible contact with interstellar planetary travelers, we will look exactly the same as we do now. We won’t change at all. The species is now so widely dispersed that it is not going to evolve, except by gradualism.
In Pamela Weintraub, The Omni Interviews (1984), 75.
Science quotes on:  |  Alien (35)  |  Change (639)  |  Complication (30)  |  Contact (66)  |  Do (1905)  |  Environment (239)  |  Evolution (635)  |  Gradual (30)  |  Interstellar (8)  |  Look (584)  |  Planetary (29)  |  Possible (560)  |  Species (435)  |  Survive (87)  |  Traveler (33)  |  Understand (648)  |  Understanding (527)  |  War (233)  |  Will (2350)  |  Work (1402)

It is clear that the degradation of the position of the scientist as an independent worker and thinker to that of a morally irresponsible stooge in a science-factory has ‘proceeded even more rapidly and devastatingly than I had expected. This subordination of those who ought to think to those who have the administrative power is ruinous for the morale of the scientist, and quite to the same extent it is ruinous to the quality of the subjective scientific output of the country.
In 'A Rebellious Scientist after Two Years', Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, (1948), 4, 338.
Science quotes on:  |  Administration (15)  |  Country (269)  |  Devastation (6)  |  Expect (203)  |  Expectation (67)  |  Extent (142)  |  Factory (20)  |  Independence (37)  |  Irresponsible (5)  |  Moral (203)  |  More (2558)  |  Output (12)  |  Power (771)  |  Proceed (134)  |  Quality (139)  |  Rapidly (67)  |  Scientific (955)  |  Scientist (881)  |  Subjective (20)  |  Subordination (5)  |  Think (1122)  |  Thinker (41)  |  Thinking (425)  |  Worker (34)

Most classifications, whether of inanimate objects or of organisms, are hierarchical. There are “higher” and “lower” categories, there are higher and lower ranks. What is usually overlooked is that the use of the term “hierarchy” is ambiguous, and that two fundamentally different kinds of arrangements have been designated as hierarchical. A hierarchy can be either exclusive or inclusive. Military ranks from private, corporal, sergeant, lieutenant, captain, up to general are a typical example of an exclusive hierarchy. A lower rank is not a subdivision of a higher rank; thus, lieutenants are not a subdivision of captains. The scala naturae, which so strongly dominated thinking from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century, is another good illustration of an exclusive hierarchy. Each level of perfection was considered an advance (or degradation) from the next lower (or higher) level in the hierarchy, but did not include it.
The Growth of Biological Thought: Diversity, Evolution and Inheritance (1982), 205-6.
Science quotes on:  |  Advance (298)  |  Ambiguity (17)  |  Ambiguous (14)  |  Arrangement (93)  |  Captain (16)  |  Century (319)  |  Classification (102)  |  Consider (428)  |  Different (595)  |  Exclusive (29)  |  Fundamental (264)  |  General (521)  |  Good (906)  |  Hierarchy (17)  |  Illustration (51)  |  Inanimate (18)  |  Include (93)  |  Inclusive (4)  |  Kind (564)  |  Level (69)  |  Military (45)  |  Most (1728)  |  Next (238)  |  Object (438)  |  Organism (231)  |  Overlook (33)  |  Perfection (131)  |  Rank (69)  |  Term (357)  |  Thinking (425)  |  Two (936)  |  Use (771)  |  Usually (176)

My profession often gets bad press for a variety of sins, both actual and imagined: arrogance, venality, insensitivity to moral issues about the use of knowledge, pandering to sources of funding with insufficient worry about attendant degradation of values. As an advocate for science, I plead ‘mildly guilty now and then’ to all these charges. Scientists are human beings subject to all the foibles and temptations of ordinary life. Some of us are moral rocks; others are reeds. I like to think (though I have no proof) that we are better, on average, than members of many other callings on a variety of issues central to the practice of good science: willingness to alter received opinion in the face of uncomfortable data, dedication to discovering and publicizing our best and most honest account of nature’s factuality, judgment of colleagues on the might of their ideas rather than the power of their positions.
…...
Science quotes on:  |  Account (195)  |  Actual (118)  |  Advocate (20)  |  Alter (64)  |  Arrogance (22)  |  Attendant (3)  |  Average (89)  |  Bad (185)  |  Being (1276)  |  Best (467)  |  Better (493)  |  Both (496)  |  Central (81)  |  Charge (63)  |  Colleague (51)  |  Data (162)  |  Dedication (12)  |  Discover (571)  |  Face (214)  |  Factuality (2)  |  Foible (2)  |  Fund (19)  |  Funding (20)  |  Good (906)  |  Guilty (8)  |  Honest (53)  |  Human (1512)  |  Human Being (185)  |  Idea (881)  |  Imagine (176)  |  Insufficient (10)  |  Issue (46)  |  Judgment (140)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Life (1870)  |  Member (42)  |  Mildly (2)  |  Moral (203)  |  Most (1728)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Often (109)  |  Opinion (291)  |  Ordinary (167)  |  Other (2233)  |  Pander (3)  |  Plead (3)  |  Position (83)  |  Power (771)  |  Practice (212)  |  Press (21)  |  Profession (108)  |  Proof (304)  |  Receive (117)  |  Reed (8)  |  Rock (176)  |  Scientist (881)  |  Sin (45)  |  Source (101)  |  Subject (543)  |  Temptation (14)  |  Think (1122)  |  Uncomfortable (7)  |  Use (771)  |  Value (393)  |  Variety (138)  |  Willingness (10)  |  Worry (34)

Our contemporary culture, primed by population growth and driven by technology, has created problems of environmental degradation that directly affect all of our senses: noise, odors and toxins which bring physical pain and suffering, and ugliness, barrenness, and homogeneity of experience which bring emotional and psychological suffering and emptiness. In short, we are jeopardizing our human qualities by pursuing technology as an end rather than a means. Too often we have failed to ask two necessary questions: First, what human purpose will a given technology or development serve? Second, what human and environmental effects will it have?
Report of the Subcommittee on Air and Water Pollution (7 Aug 1969). 'Environmental Quality: Summary and Discussion of Major Provisions', U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Legal Compilation, (Jan 1973), Water, Vol. 3, 1365. EPA website.
Science quotes on:  |  Ask (420)  |  Barren (33)  |  Contemporary (33)  |  Culture (157)  |  Development (441)  |  Drive (61)  |  Effect (414)  |  Emotion (106)  |  Emptiness (13)  |  End (603)  |  Environment (239)  |  Experience (494)  |  Fail (191)  |  First (1302)  |  Growth (200)  |  Homogeneity (9)  |  Human (1512)  |  Mean (810)  |  Means (587)  |  Necessary (370)  |  Noise (40)  |  Odor (11)  |  Pain (144)  |  Physical (518)  |  Population (115)  |  Population Growth (9)  |  Problem (731)  |  Psychological (42)  |  Purpose (336)  |  Pursuing (27)  |  Question (649)  |  Sense (785)  |  Short (200)  |  Suffering (68)  |  Technology (281)  |  Toxin (8)  |  Two (936)  |  Ugliness (3)  |  Will (2350)

The ravages committed by man subvert the relations and destroy the balance which nature had established between her organized and her inorganic creations; and she avenges herself upon the intruder, by letting loose upon her defaced provinces destructive energies hitherto kept in check by organic forces destined to be his best auxiliaries, but which he has unwisely dispersed and driven from the field of action. When the forest is gone, the great reservoir of moisture stored up in its vegetable mould is evaporated, and returns only in deluges of rain to wash away the parched dust into which that mould has been converted. The well-wooded and humid hills are turned to ridges of dry rock, which encumbers the low grounds and chokes the watercourses with its debris, and–except in countries favored with an equable distribution of rain through the seasons, and a moderate and regular inclination of surface–the whole earth, unless rescued by human art from the physical degradation to which it tends, becomes an assemblage of bald mountains, of barren, turfless hills, and of swampy and malarious plains. There are parts of Asia Minor, of Northern Africa, of Greece, and even of Alpine Europe, where the operation of causes set in action by man has brought the face of the earth to a desolation almost as complete as that of the moon; and though, within that brief space of time which we call “the historical period,” they are known to have been covered with luxuriant woods, verdant pastures, and fertile meadows, they are now too far deteriorated to be reclaimable by man, nor can they become again fitted for human use, except through great geological changes, or other mysterious influences or agencies of which we have no present knowledge, and over which we have no prospective control. The earth is fast becoming an unfit home for its noblest inhabitant, and another era of equal human crime and human improvidence, and of like duration with that through which traces of that crime and that improvidence extend, would reduce it to such a condition of impoverished productiveness, of shattered surface, of climatic excess, as to threaten the depravation, barbarism, and perhaps even extinction of the species.
Man and Nature, (1864), 42-3.
Science quotes on:  |  Action (342)  |  Africa (38)  |  Art (680)  |  Assemblage (17)  |  Balance (82)  |  Balance Of Nature (7)  |  Barbarism (8)  |  Barren (33)  |  Become (821)  |  Becoming (96)  |  Best (467)  |  Brief (37)  |  Call (781)  |  Cause (561)  |  Change (639)  |  Complete (209)  |  Condition (362)  |  Conservation (187)  |  Control (182)  |  Creation (350)  |  Crime (39)  |  Deluge (14)  |  Destined (42)  |  Destroy (189)  |  Destruction (135)  |  Distribution (51)  |  Dry (65)  |  Dust (68)  |  Earth (1076)  |  Era (51)  |  Excess (23)  |  Extend (129)  |  Extinction (80)  |  Face (214)  |  Favor (69)  |  Fertile (30)  |  Field (378)  |  Force (497)  |  Forest (161)  |  Great (1610)  |  Ground (222)  |  Historical (70)  |  Home (184)  |  Human (1512)  |  Impoverished (3)  |  Inclination (36)  |  Influence (231)  |  Inhabitant (50)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Known (453)  |  Low (86)  |  Man (2252)  |  Meadow (21)  |  Moisture (21)  |  Mold (37)  |  Moon (252)  |  Mountain (202)  |  Mysterious (83)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Operation (221)  |  Organic (161)  |  Other (2233)  |  Period (200)  |  Physical (518)  |  Present (630)  |  Productivity (23)  |  Prospective (7)  |  Province (37)  |  Rain (70)  |  Ravage (7)  |  Reduce (100)  |  Regular (48)  |  Reservoir (9)  |  Return (133)  |  Rock (176)  |  Season (47)  |  Set (400)  |  Shattered (8)  |  Space (523)  |  Species (435)  |  Surface (223)  |  Tend (124)  |  Threaten (33)  |  Through (846)  |  Time (1911)  |  Trace (109)  |  Turn (454)  |  Use (771)  |  Vegetable (49)  |  Verdant (3)  |  Wash (23)  |  Whole (756)  |  Wood (97)

The sun's rays are the ultimate source of almost every motion which takes place on the surface of the earth. By their heat are produced all winds, and those disturbances in the electric equilibrium of the atmosphere which give rise to the phenomena of terrestrial magnetism. By their vivifying action vegetables are elaborated from inorganic matter, and become in their turn the support of animals and of man, and the sources of those great deposits of dynamical efficiency which are laid up for human use in our coal strata. By them the waters of the sea are made to circulate in vapor through the air, and irrigate the land, producing springs and rivers. By them are produced all disturbances of the chemical equilibrium of the elements of nature which, by a series of compositions and decompositions, give rise to new products, and originate a transfer of materials. Even the slow degradation of the solid constituents of the surface, in which its chief geological changes consist, and their diffusion among the waters of the ocean, are entirely due to the abrasion of the wind, rain, and tides, which latter, however, are only in part the effect of solar influence and the alternate action of the seasons.
from Outlines of Astronomy (1849), 237.
Science quotes on:  |  Action (342)  |  Air (366)  |  Animal (651)  |  Atmosphere (117)  |  Become (821)  |  Change (639)  |  Chemical (303)  |  Chief (99)  |  Coal (64)  |  Composition (86)  |  Consist (223)  |  Constituent (47)  |  Decomposition (19)  |  Diffusion (13)  |  Disturbance (34)  |  Due (143)  |  Dynamical (15)  |  Earth (1076)  |  Effect (414)  |  Efficiency (46)  |  Elaborated (7)  |  Electric (76)  |  Element (322)  |  Equilibrium (34)  |  Great (1610)  |  Heat (180)  |  Human (1512)  |  Influence (231)  |  Magnetism (43)  |  Man (2252)  |  Material (366)  |  Matter (821)  |  Motion (320)  |  Nature (2017)  |  New (1273)  |  Ocean (216)  |  Originate (39)  |  Photosynthesis (21)  |  Produced (187)  |  Product (166)  |  Rain (70)  |  Ray (115)  |  Rise (169)  |  River (140)  |  Sea (326)  |  Season (47)  |  Series (153)  |  Slow (108)  |  Solar Energy (21)  |  Solid (119)  |  Spring (140)  |  Strata (37)  |  Sun (407)  |  Support (151)  |  Surface (223)  |  Surface Of The Earth (36)  |  Terrestrial (62)  |  Through (846)  |  Tide (37)  |  Transfer (21)  |  Turn (454)  |  Ultimate (152)  |  Use (771)  |  Vapor (12)  |  Vegetable (49)  |  Water (503)  |  Weather (49)  |  Wind (141)

There is a moral or metaphysical part of nature as well as a physical. A man who denies this is deep in the mire of folly. ’Tis the crown and glory of organic science that it does through final cause, link material and moral; and yet does not allow us to mingle them in our first conception of laws, and our classification of such laws, whether we consider one side of nature or the other. You have ignored this link; and, if I do not mistake your meaning, you have done your best in one or two pregnant cases to break it. Were it possible (which, thank God, it is not) to break it, humanity, in my mind, would suffer a damage that might brutalize it, and sink the human race into a lower grade of degradation than any into which it has fallen since its written records tell us of its history.
Letter to Charles Darwin (Nov 1859). In Charles Darwin and Francis Darwin (ed.), Charles Darwin: His Life Told in an Autobiographical Chapter, and in a Selected Series of His Published Letters (1892), 217.
Science quotes on:  |  Best (467)  |  Break (109)  |  Cause (561)  |  Classification (102)  |  Conception (160)  |  Consider (428)  |  Crown (39)  |  Damage (38)  |  Deep (241)  |  Do (1905)  |  Final (121)  |  First (1302)  |  Folly (44)  |  Glory (66)  |  God (776)  |  History (716)  |  Human (1512)  |  Human Race (104)  |  Humanity (186)  |  Ignore (52)  |  Law (913)  |  Man (2252)  |  Material (366)  |  Meaning (244)  |  Metaphysical (38)  |  Mind (1377)  |  Mingle (9)  |  Mire (2)  |  Mistake (180)  |  Moral (203)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Organic (161)  |  Other (2233)  |  Physical (518)  |  Possible (560)  |  Race (278)  |  Record (161)  |  Side (236)  |  Sink (38)  |  Tell (344)  |  Thank (48)  |  Through (846)  |  Two (936)

This is the question
Marry
Children—(if it Please God)—Constant companion (& friend in old age) who will feel interested in one—object to be beloved and played with—better than a dog anyhow. Home, & someone to take care of house—Charms of music and female chit-chat.—These things good for one’s health.—but terrible loss of time.—
My God, it is Intolerable to think of spending ones whole life, like a neuter bee, working, working—& nothing after all.—No, no, won’t do. Imagine living all one’s day solitary in smoky dirty London House.—Only picture to yourself a nice soft wife on a sofa with good fire, & books & music perhaps-—Compare this vision with the dingy reality of Grt. Marlbro’ Street.
Not Marry
Freedom to go where one liked—choice of Society and little of it. —Conversation of clever men at clubs—Not forced to visit relatives, & to bend in every trifle. —to have the expense and anxiety of children—perhaps quarreling—Loss of time. —cannot read in the Evenings—fatness & idleness—Anxiety & responsibility—less money for books &c—if many children forced to gain one’s bread. —(but then it is very bad for ones health to work too much)
Perhaps my wife won’t like London; then the sentence is banishment & degradation into indolent, idle fool.
Marry—Marry—Marry Q.E.D.
It being proved necessary to Marry When? Soon or late?
Notes on Marriage, July 1838. In F. Burkhardt and S. Smith (eds.), The Correspondence of Charles Darwin 1837-1843 (1986), Vol. 2, 444.
Science quotes on:  |  Age (509)  |  Anxiety (30)  |  Bad (185)  |  Bee (44)  |  Being (1276)  |  Better (493)  |  Biography (254)  |  Book (413)  |  Bread (42)  |  Care (203)  |  Charm (54)  |  Children (201)  |  Choice (114)  |  Clever (41)  |  Companion (22)  |  Compare (76)  |  Constant (148)  |  Conversation (46)  |  Dirty (17)  |  Do (1905)  |  Dog (70)  |  Feel (371)  |  Female (50)  |  Fire (203)  |  Fool (121)  |  Freedom (145)  |  Friend (180)  |  Gain (146)  |  God (776)  |  Good (906)  |  Health (210)  |  Home (184)  |  House (143)  |  Idle (34)  |  Idleness (15)  |  Imagine (176)  |  Interest (416)  |  Late (119)  |  Life (1870)  |  Little (717)  |  Living (492)  |  Loss (117)  |  Marriage (39)  |  Money (178)  |  Music (133)  |  Necessary (370)  |  Nothing (1000)  |  Object (438)  |  Old (499)  |  Old Age (35)  |  Picture (148)  |  Please (68)  |  Question (649)  |  Read (308)  |  Reality (274)  |  Responsibility (71)  |  Society (350)  |  Soft (30)  |  Soon (187)  |  Spending (24)  |  Terrible (41)  |  Thing (1914)  |  Think (1122)  |  Time (1911)  |  Vision (127)  |  Whole (756)  |  Wife (41)  |  Will (2350)  |  Work (1402)

Through it [Science] we believe that man will be saved from misery and degradation, not merely acquiring new material powers, but learning to use and to guide his life with understanding. Through Science he will be freed from the fetters of superstition; through faith in Science he will acquire a new and enduring delight in the exercise of his capacities; he will gain a zest and interest in life such as the present phase of culture fails to supply.
'Biology and the State', The Advancement of Science: Occasional Essays & Addresses (1890), 108-9.
Science quotes on:  |  Culture (157)  |  Delight (111)  |  Exercise (113)  |  Fail (191)  |  Faith (209)  |  Fetters (7)  |  Gain (146)  |  Guide (107)  |  Interest (416)  |  Learning (291)  |  Life (1870)  |  Man (2252)  |  Material (366)  |  Merely (315)  |  Misery (31)  |  New (1273)  |  Phase (37)  |  Power (771)  |  Present (630)  |  Superstition (70)  |  Supply (100)  |  Through (846)  |  Understanding (527)  |  Use (771)  |  Will (2350)

Unless we [practice conservation], those who come after us will have to pay the price of misery, degradation, and failure for the progress and prosperity of our day.
In The Fight for Conservation (1910), 3-4.
Science quotes on:  |  Conservation (187)  |  Failure (176)  |  Misery (31)  |  Pay (45)  |  Practice (212)  |  Price (57)  |  Progress (492)  |  Prosperity (31)  |  Will (2350)

What shall we say of the intelligence, not to say religion, of those who are so particular to distinguish between fishes and reptiles and birds, but put a man with an immortal soul in the same circle with the wolf, the hyena, and the skunk? What must be the impression made upon children by such a degradation of man?
Science quotes on:  |  Bird (163)  |  Child (333)  |  Children (201)  |  Circle (117)  |  Distinguish (168)  |  Evolution (635)  |  Fish (130)  |  Hyena (2)  |  Immortal (35)  |  Impression (118)  |  Intelligence (218)  |  Man (2252)  |  Must (1525)  |  Religion (369)  |  Reptile (33)  |  Same (166)  |  Say (989)  |  Skunk (4)  |  Soul (235)  |  Wolf (11)

Without the suitable conditions life could not exist. But both life and its conditions set forth the operations of inscrutable Power. We know not its origin; we know not its end. And the presumption, if not the degradation, rests with those who place upon the throne of the universe a magnified image of themselves, and make its doings a mere colossal imitation of their own.
In Forms of Water in Clouds and Rivers, Ice and Glaciers (1872), 125.
Science quotes on:  |  Both (496)  |  Colossal (15)  |  Condition (362)  |  Doing (277)  |  End (603)  |  Exist (458)  |  Existence (481)  |  God (776)  |  Image (97)  |  Imitation (24)  |  Inscrutability (2)  |  Know (1538)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Life (1870)  |  Magnification (10)  |  Operation (221)  |  Operations (107)  |  Origin (250)  |  Place (192)  |  Power (771)  |  Presumption (15)  |  Rest (287)  |  Set (400)  |  Suitability (11)  |  Themselves (433)  |  Throne (8)  |  Universe (900)  |  Without (13)


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.