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 D > Category: Desk

Desk Quotes (13 quotes)


[Elementary student, laying a cocoon on the teacher's desk:] That is serendipity. The caterpillar thinks it is dying but it is really being born.
Anonymous
As quoted, without citation, by Marcus Bach, 'Serendiptiy in the Business World', in The Rotarian (Oct 1981), 139, No. 4, 40.
Science quotes on:  |  Being (1276)  |  Birth (154)  |  Caterpillar (5)  |  Cocoon (4)  |  Death (406)  |  Elementary (98)  |  Reality (274)  |  Serendipity (17)  |  Student (317)  |  Teacher (154)  |  Think (1122)  |  Thinking (425)

Buffon said unreservedly, "Genius is simply patience carried to the extreme." To those who asked how he achieved fame he replied: "By spending forty years of my life bent over my writing desk.”
From Reglas y Consejos sobre Investigacíon Cientifica: Los tónicos de la voluntad. (1897), as translated by Neely and Larry W. Swanson, in Advice for a Young Investigator (1999), 39.
Science quotes on:  |  Achieved (2)  |  Ask (420)  |  Asked (2)  |  Bent (2)  |  Comte Georges-Louis Leclerc de Buffon (37)  |  Carried (2)  |  Extreme (78)  |  Fame (51)  |  Genius (301)  |  Life (1870)  |  Patience (58)  |  Replied (2)  |  Simply (53)  |  Spending (24)  |  Writing (192)  |  Year (963)

First, the chief character, who is supposed to be a professional astronomer, spends his time fund raising and doing calculations at his desk, rather than observing the sky. Second, the driving force of a scientific project is institutional self-aggrandizement rather than intellectual curiosity.
[About the state of affairs in academia.]
In Marc J. Madou, Fundamentals of Microfabrication: the Science of Miniaturization (2nd ed., 2002), 535
Science quotes on:  |  Academia (4)  |  Astronomer (97)  |  Calculation (134)  |  Character (259)  |  Chief (99)  |  Curiosity (138)  |  Doing (277)  |  Drive (61)  |  Driving (28)  |  First (1302)  |  Force (497)  |  Fund (19)  |  Institution (73)  |  Institutional (3)  |  Intellect (251)  |  Intellectual (258)  |  Observation (593)  |  Observe (179)  |  Professional (77)  |  Project (77)  |  Raise (38)  |  Scientific (955)  |  Second (66)  |  Self (268)  |  Sky (174)  |  Spend (97)  |  State (505)  |  State Of affairs (5)  |  Suppose (158)  |  Time (1911)

I do not maintain that the chief value of the study of arithmetic consists in the lessons of morality that arise from this study. I claim only that, to be impressed from day to day, that there is something that is right as an answer to the questions with which one is able to grapple, and that there is a wrong answer—that there are ways in which the right answer can be established as right, that these ways automatically reject error and slovenliness, and that the learner is able himself to manipulate these ways and to arrive at the establishment of the true as opposed to the untrue, this relentless hewing to the line and stopping at the line, must color distinctly the thought life of the pupil with more than a tinge of morality. … To be neighborly with truth, to feel one’s self somewhat facile in ways of recognizing and establishing what is right, what is correct, to find the wrong persistently and unfailingly rejected as of no value, to feel that one can apply these ways for himself, that one can think and work independently, have a real, a positive, and a purifying effect upon moral character. They are the quiet, steady undertones of the work that always appeal to the learner for the sanction of his best judgment, and these are the really significant matters in school work. It is not the noise and bluster, not even the dramatics or the polemics from the teacher’s desk, that abide longest and leave the deepest and stablest imprint upon character. It is these still, small voices that speak unmistakably for the right and against the wrong and the erroneous that really form human character. When the school subjects are arranged on the basis of the degree to which they contribute to the moral upbuilding of human character good arithmetic will be well up the list.
In Arithmetic in Public Education (1909), 18. As quoted and cited in Robert Édouard Moritz, Memorabilia Mathematica; Or, The Philomath’s Quotation-book (1914), 69.
Science quotes on:  |  Against (332)  |  Answer (389)  |  Apply (170)  |  Arise (162)  |  Arithmetic (144)  |  Arrange (33)  |  Arrive (40)  |  Automatic (16)  |  Basis (180)  |  Best (467)  |  Bluster (2)  |  Build (211)  |  Character (259)  |  Chief (99)  |  Claim (154)  |  Color (155)  |  Consist (223)  |  Contribute (30)  |  Degree (277)  |  Do (1905)  |  Dramatic (19)  |  Effect (414)  |  Erroneous (31)  |  Error (339)  |  Establish (63)  |  Establishment (47)  |  Facile (4)  |  Feel (371)  |  Find (1014)  |  Form (976)  |  Good (906)  |  Grapple (11)  |  Himself (461)  |  Human (1512)  |  Impress (66)  |  Impressed (39)  |  Imprint (6)  |  Independently (24)  |  Judgment (140)  |  Learner (10)  |  Lesson (58)  |  Life (1870)  |  List (10)  |  Maintain (105)  |  Manipulate (11)  |  Matter (821)  |  Moral (203)  |  Morality (55)  |  More (2558)  |  Must (1525)  |  Noise (40)  |  Oppose (27)  |  Polemic (3)  |  Positive (98)  |  Pupil (62)  |  Question (649)  |  Quiet (37)  |  Reject (67)  |  Rejected (26)  |  Relentless (9)  |  Right (473)  |  Sanction (8)  |  School (227)  |  Self (268)  |  Significant (78)  |  Slovenliness (2)  |  Small (489)  |  Something (718)  |  Speak (240)  |  Stable (32)  |  Steady (45)  |  Still (614)  |  Study (701)  |  Subject (543)  |  Teacher (154)  |  Think (1122)  |  Thought (995)  |  True (239)  |  Truth (1109)  |  Undertone (2)  |  Unmistakable (6)  |  Untrue (12)  |  Value (393)  |  Value Of Mathematics (60)  |  Voice (54)  |  Way (1214)  |  Will (2350)  |  Work (1402)  |  Wrong (246)

I find sitting at a specially equipped desk in front of some pretty ugly plastics and staring at a little window is a very unnatural event.
…...
Science quotes on:  |  Equip (6)  |  Equipped (17)  |  Event (222)  |  Find (1014)  |  Front (16)  |  Little (717)  |  Plastic (30)  |  Pretty (21)  |  Sit (51)  |  Sitting (44)  |  Specially (3)  |  Stare (9)  |  Ugly (14)  |  Unnatural (15)  |  Window (59)

I went to the trash pile at Tuskegee Institute and started my laboratory with bottles, old fruit jars and any other thing I found I could use. … [The early efforts were] worked out almost wholly on top of my flat topped writing desk and with teacups, glasses, bottles and reagents I made myself.
Manuscript fragment, no date, Box 1, George Washington Carver Papers. Cited in Linda O. McMurry, George Washington Carver, Scientist and Symbol (1982), 130.
Science quotes on:  |  Bottle (17)  |  Early (196)  |  Effort (243)  |  Flat (34)  |  Fruit (108)  |  Glass (94)  |  Jar (9)  |  Laboratory (214)  |  Made (14)  |  Myself (211)  |  Old (499)  |  Other (2233)  |  Reagent (8)  |  Research (753)  |  Start (237)  |  Teacup (2)  |  Thing (1914)  |  Top (100)  |  Trash (3)  |  Tuskegee Institute (2)  |  Use (771)  |  Wholly (88)  |  Work (1402)  |  Writing (192)

If there is no solace in the fruits of our research, there is at least some consolation in the research itself. Men and women are not content to comfort themselves with tales of gods and giants, or to confine their thoughts to the daily affairs of life; they also build telescopes and satellites and accelerators and sit at their desks for endless hours working out the meaning of the data they gather.
In The First Three Minutes (1977), 154-155.
Science quotes on:  |  Accelerator (11)  |  Build (211)  |  Comfort (64)  |  Consolation (9)  |  Daily (91)  |  Data (162)  |  Endless (60)  |  Fruit (108)  |  Gather (76)  |  Giant (73)  |  God (776)  |  Hour (192)  |  Life (1870)  |  Meaning (244)  |  Research (753)  |  Satellite (30)  |  Solace (7)  |  Tale (17)  |  Telescope (106)  |  Themselves (433)  |  Thought (995)  |  Work (1402)

In a class I was taking there was one boy who was much older than the rest. He clearly had no motive to work. I told him that, if he could produce for me, accurately to scale, drawings of the pieces of wood required to make a desk like the one he was sitting at, I would try to persuade the Headmaster to let him do woodwork during the mathematics hours—in the course of which, no doubt, he would learn something about measurement and numbers. Next day, he turned up with this task completed to perfection. This I have often found with pupils; it is not so much that they cannot do the work, as that they see no purpose in it.
In Mathematician's Delight (1943), 52.
Science quotes on:  |  Accurate (88)  |  Boy (100)  |  Class (168)  |  Complete (209)  |  Completed (30)  |  Course (413)  |  Do (1905)  |  Doubt (314)  |  Draw (140)  |  Drawing (56)  |  Hour (192)  |  Learn (672)  |  Mathematics (1395)  |  Measurement (178)  |  Motive (62)  |  Next (238)  |  Number (710)  |  Perfection (131)  |  Persuade (11)  |  Pupil (62)  |  Purpose (336)  |  Required (108)  |  Rest (287)  |  Scale (122)  |  See (1094)  |  Sitting (44)  |  Something (718)  |  Task (152)  |  Try (296)  |  Turn (454)  |  Wood (97)  |  Woodwork (2)  |  Work (1402)

Inspiration plays no less a role in science than it does in the realm of art. It is a childish notion to think that a mathematician attains any scientifically valuable results by sitting at his desk with a ruler, calculating machines or other mechanical means. The mathematical imagination of a Weierstrass is naturally quite differently oriented in meaning and result than is the imagination of an artist, and differs basically in quality. But the psychological processes do not differ. Both are frenzy (in the sense of Plato’s “mania”) and “inspiration.”
Max Weber
From a Speech (1918) presented at Munich University, published in 1919, and collected in 'Wissenschaft als Beruf', Gessammelte Aufsätze zur Wissenschaftslehre (1922), 524-525. As given in H.H. Gerth and C. Wright-Mills (translators and eds.), 'Science as a Vocation', Max Weber: Essays in Sociology (1946), 136.
Science quotes on:  |  Art (680)  |  Artist (97)  |  Attain (126)  |  Basic (144)  |  Both (496)  |  Calculating Machine (3)  |  Childish (20)  |  Differ (88)  |  Differently (4)  |  Do (1905)  |  Frenzy (6)  |  Imagination (349)  |  Inspiration (80)  |  Machine (271)  |  Mania (3)  |  Mathematician (407)  |  Mathematics (1395)  |  Mean (810)  |  Meaning (244)  |  Means (587)  |  Mechanical (145)  |  Naturally (11)  |  Notion (120)  |  Other (2233)  |  Plato (80)  |  Process (439)  |  Psychological (42)  |  Psychology (166)  |  Quality (139)  |  Realm (87)  |  Result (700)  |  Role (86)  |  Ruler (21)  |  Science And Art (195)  |  Sense (785)  |  Sitting (44)  |  Think (1122)  |  Value (393)  |   Karl Weierstrass, (10)

My Volta is always busy. What an industrious scholar he is! When he is not paying visits to museums or learned men, he devotes himself to experiments. He touches, investigates, reflects, takes notes on everything. I regret to say that everywhere, inside the coach as on any desk, I am faced with his handkerchief, which he uses to wipe indifferently his hands, nose and instruments.
As translated and quoted in Giuliano Pancaldi, Volta: Science and Culture in the Age of Enlightenment (2005), 154.
Science quotes on:  |  Busy (32)  |  Coach (5)  |  Devotion (37)  |  Everything (489)  |  Everywhere (98)  |  Experiment (736)  |  Hand (149)  |  Handkerchief (2)  |  Himself (461)  |  Indifferent (17)  |  Industrious (12)  |  Instrument (158)  |  Investigate (106)  |  Learn (672)  |  Learned (235)  |  Museum (40)  |  Nose (14)  |  Note (39)  |  Reflection (93)  |  Regret (31)  |  Say (989)  |  Scholar (52)  |  Touch (146)  |  Use (771)  |  Visit (27)  |  Count Alessandro Giuseppe Antonio Anastasio Volta (5)  |  Wipe (6)

This is often the way it is in physics—our mistake is not that we take our theories too seriously, but that we do not take them seriously enough. It is always hard to realize that these numbers and equations we play with at our desks have something to do with the real world.
In The First Three Minutes: A Modern View of the Origin of the Universe (1977, Rev. ed. 1993), 131-132.
Science quotes on:  |  Do (1905)  |  Enough (341)  |  Equation (138)  |  Hard (246)  |  Mistake (180)  |  Number (710)  |  Physic (515)  |  Physics (564)  |  Play (116)  |  Real World (15)  |  Realize (157)  |  Seriously (20)  |  Something (718)  |  Theory (1015)  |  Way (1214)  |  World (1850)

When [Erwin Schrödinger] went to the Solvay conferences in Brussels, he would walk from the station to the hotel where the delegates stayed, carrying all his luggage in a rucksack and looking so like a tramp that it needed a great deal of argument at the reception desk before he could claim a room.
Quoted in Robert L. Weber, Pioneers of Science: Nobel Prize Winners in Physics (1980), 100.
Science quotes on:  |  Argument (145)  |  Biography (254)  |  Claim (154)  |  Conference (18)  |  Deal (192)  |  Delegate (3)  |  Great (1610)  |  Hotel (2)  |  Looking (191)  |  Luggage (5)  |  Reception (16)  |  Room (42)  |  Rucksack (3)  |  Erwin Schrödinger (68)  |  Station (30)  |  Walk (138)

When you can dump a load of bricks on a corner lot, and let me watch them arrange themselves into a house — when you can empty a handful of springs and wheels and screws on my desk, and let me see them gather themselves together into a watch — it will be easier for me to believe that all these thousands of worlds could have been created, balanced, and set to moving in their separate orbits, all without any directing intelligence at all.
In 'If A Man Die, Shall He Live again?', More Power To You: Fifty Editorials From Every Week (1917), 218-219.
Science quotes on:  |  Arrange (33)  |  Arrangement (93)  |  Balance (82)  |  Belief (615)  |  Brick (20)  |  Corner (59)  |  Creation (350)  |  Directing (5)  |  Dump (2)  |  Ease (40)  |  Easier (53)  |  Empty (82)  |  Gather (76)  |  Handful (14)  |  House (143)  |  Intelligence (218)  |  Load (12)  |  Lot (151)  |  Moving (11)  |  Orbit (85)  |  Screw (17)  |  See (1094)  |  Separate (151)  |  Set (400)  |  Spring (140)  |  Themselves (433)  |  Thousand (340)  |  Together (392)  |  Watch (118)  |  Wheel (51)  |  Will (2350)  |  Without (13)  |  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.