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: “I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, ... finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell ... whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.”
more quiz questions >>
Home > Category Index for Science Quotations > Category Index D > Category: Destination

Destination Quotes (16 quotes)

At about the age of sixteen, I began to feel uneasy. My confidence in adults began to be shaken. They were not smarter than us kids. They just had fixed ideas and stuck to them even if they disagreed among themselves. They were dragging us along a road to an unknown destination; they had no goal, just something to escape from: nature. … It was better to begin to look for a safer, side track. I began to feel like a prisoner calmly preparing to jump off a train that was on a wrong track.
In Ch. 1, 'Farewell to Civilization', Fatu-Hiva (1974), 6.
Science quotes on:  |  Adult (24)  |  Age (509)  |  Biography (254)  |  Calm (32)  |  Confidence (75)  |  Disagree (14)  |  Drag (8)  |  Escape (85)  |  Feel (371)  |  Fix (34)  |  Goal (155)  |  Idea (881)  |  Jump (31)  |  Kid (18)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Prepare (44)  |  Prisoner (8)  |  Road (71)  |  Safe (61)  |  Shaken (3)  |  Side (236)  |  Smart (33)  |  Track (42)  |  Train (118)  |  Unknown (195)  |  Wrong (246)

Education is a journey, not a destination.
Anonymous
In Mary Belle Harris, I Knew Them in Prison (1936), 383. (This example, which shows the quote already in use by 1936, actually says 'Reformation, like education, is a journey...'.)
Science quotes on:  |  Education (423)  |  Journey (48)

I can’t change the direction of the wind, but I can adjust my sails to always reach my destination.
…...
Science quotes on:  |  Adjust (11)  |  Change (639)  |  Direction (185)  |  Reach (286)  |  Sail (37)  |  Wind (141)

In particular, and most importantly, this is the reason why the scientific worldview contains of itself no ethical values, no esthetical values, not a word about our own ultimate scope or destination, and no God, if you please. Whence came I and whither go I?
…...
Science quotes on:  |  Aesthetics (12)  |  Contain (68)  |  Ethical (34)  |  God (776)  |  Importantly (3)  |  Most (1728)  |  Particular (80)  |  Please (68)  |  Reason (766)  |  Scientific (955)  |  Scope (44)  |  Ultimate (152)  |  Value (393)  |  Whither (11)  |  Why (491)  |  Word (650)  |  WorldView (5)

In the final, the positive, state, the mind has given over the vain search after absolute notions, the origin and destination of the universe, and the causes of phenomena, and applies itself to the study of their laws—that is, their invariable relations of succession and resemblance. Reasoning and observation, duly combined, are the means of this knowledge. What is now understood when we speak of an explanation of facts is simply the establishment of a connection between single phenomena and some general facts.
The Positive Philosophy, trans. Harriet Martineau (1853), Vol. 1, 2.
Science quotes on:  |  Absolute (153)  |  Cause (561)  |  Connection (171)  |  Establishment (47)  |  Explanation (246)  |  Fact (1257)  |  Facts (553)  |  Final (121)  |  General (521)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Law (913)  |  Mean (810)  |  Means (587)  |  Mind (1377)  |  Notion (120)  |  Observation (593)  |  Origin (250)  |  Positive (98)  |  Reasoning (212)  |  Resemblance (39)  |  Search (175)  |  Single (365)  |  Speak (240)  |  State (505)  |  Study (701)  |  Succession (80)  |  Understood (155)  |  Universe (900)  |  Vain (86)

In the next twenty centuries … humanity may begin to understand its most baffling mystery—where are we going? The earth is, in fact, traveling many thousands of miles per hour in the direction of the constellation Hercules—to some unknown destination in the cosmos. Man must understand his universe in order to understand his destiny. Mystery, however, is a very necessary ingredient in our lives. Mystery creates wonder and wonder is the basis for man’s desire to understand. Who knows what mysteries will be solved in our lifetime, and what new riddles will become the challenge of the new generation? Science has not mastered prophesy. We predict too much for the next year yet far too little for the next ten. Responding to challenges is one of democracy’s great strengths. Our successes in space can be used in the next decade in the solution of many of our planet’s problems.
In a speech to a Joint Meeting of the Two Houses of Congress to Receive the Apollo 11 Astronauts (16 Sep 1969), in the Congressional Record.
Science quotes on:  |  Baffling (5)  |  Basis (180)  |  Become (821)  |  Begin (275)  |  Century (319)  |  Challenge (91)  |  Constellation (18)  |  Cosmos (64)  |  Create (245)  |  Decade (66)  |  Democracy (36)  |  Desire (212)  |  Destiny (54)  |  Direction (185)  |  Earth (1076)  |  Fact (1257)  |  Generation (256)  |  Great (1610)  |  Hercules (9)  |  Hour (192)  |  Humanity (186)  |  Ingredient (16)  |  Know (1538)  |  Life (1870)  |  Lifetime (40)  |  Little (717)  |  Live (650)  |  Man (2252)  |  Master (182)  |  Most (1728)  |  Must (1525)  |  Mystery (188)  |  Necessary (370)  |  New (1273)  |  Next (238)  |  Order (638)  |  Planet (402)  |  Predict (86)  |  Problem (731)  |  Prophesy (11)  |  Respond (14)  |  Riddle (28)  |  Solution (282)  |  Solve (145)  |  Space (523)  |  Strength (139)  |  Success (327)  |  Thousand (340)  |  Travel (125)  |  Understand (648)  |  Universe (900)  |  Unknown (195)  |  Will (2350)  |  Wonder (251)  |  Year (963)

It is natural for man to relate the units of distance by which he travels to the dimensions of the globe that he inhabits. Thus, in moving about the earth, he may know by the simple denomination of distance its proportion to the whole circuit of the earth. This has the further advantage of making nautical and celestial measurements correspond. The navigator often needs to determine, one from the other, the distance he has traversed from the celestial arc lying between the zeniths at his point of departure and at his destination. It is important, therefore, that one of these magnitudes should be the expression of the other, with no difference except in the units. But to that end, the fundamental linear unit must be an aliquot part of the terrestrial meridian. ... Thus, the choice of the metre was reduced to that of the unity of angles.
Lecture at the École Normale to the Year III (Apr 1795), Oeuvres Completes de Laplace (1878-1912), Vol. 14, 141. In Charles Coulston Gillispie, Dictionary of Scientific Biography (1978), Vol. 15, 335.
Science quotes on:  |  Advantage (144)  |  Angle (25)  |  Arc (14)  |  Celestial (53)  |  Choice (114)  |  Circuit (29)  |  Definition (238)  |  Denomination (6)  |  Determine (152)  |  Difference (355)  |  Dimension (64)  |  Distance (171)  |  Earth (1076)  |  End (603)  |  Expression (181)  |  Fundamental (264)  |  Know (1538)  |  Linear (13)  |  Lying (55)  |  Magnitude (88)  |  Making (300)  |  Man (2252)  |  Measurement (178)  |  Meridian (4)  |  Meter (9)  |  Must (1525)  |  Natural (810)  |  Navigator (8)  |  Other (2233)  |  Point (584)  |  Proportion (140)  |  Simple (426)  |  Terrestrial (62)  |  Travel (125)  |  Unit (36)  |  Unity (81)  |  Whole (756)

It is said that in a certain grassy part of the world a man will walk a mile to catch a horse, whereon to ride a quarter of a mile to pay an afternoon call. Similarly, it is not quite respectable to arrive at a mathematical destination, under the gaze of a learned society, at the mere footpace of arithmetic. Even at the expense of considerable time and effort, one should be mounted on the swift steed of symbolic analysis.
Opening of 'How to Solve Differential Equations Approximately by Arithmetic', The Mathematical Gazette (Jul 1925), 12, No. 177, 415
Science quotes on:  |  Analysis (244)  |  Arithmetic (144)  |  Effort (243)  |  Horse (78)  |  Mathematics (1395)  |  Mile (43)  |  Mount (43)  |  Respectable (8)  |  Ride (23)  |  Steed (2)  |  Swift (16)  |  Time (1911)  |  Walk (138)

Science sees the process of evolution from the outside, as one might a train of cars going by, and resolves it into the physical and mechanical elements, without getting any nearer the reason of its going by, or the point of its departure or destination.
From essay, 'A Prophet of the Soul', Under the Apple-Trees (1916), 212.
Science quotes on:  |  Car (75)  |  Departure (9)  |  Element (322)  |  Evolution (635)  |  Mechanical (145)  |  Nearer (45)  |  Outside (141)  |  Physical (518)  |  Point (584)  |  Process (439)  |  Reason (766)  |  Resolution (24)  |  Resolve (43)  |  See (1094)  |  Train (118)

Simultaneous discovery is utterly commonplace, and it was only the rarity of scientists, not the inherent improbability of the phenomenon, that made it remarkable in the past. Scientists on the same road may be expected to arrive at the same destination, often not far apart.
From review '[Arthur] Koestler’s Theory of the Creative Act: “The Act of Creation”', in New Statesman (19 Jun 1964). According to Michael Scammell in his biography (Koestler: The Literary and Political Odyssey of a Twentieth-Century Skeptic (2009), 491 and 654), Medawar eviscerated the book as “amateurish” with “overstretched metaphors” and “fatuous epigrams” while Koestler’s psychological insights were “in the style of the nineteenth century.” The review, with follow-ups, were reprinted in Medawar’s The Art of the Soluble: Creativity and Originality in Science (1967), 85-98.
Science quotes on:  |  Apart (7)  |  Arriving (2)  |  Commonplace (24)  |  Discovery (837)  |  Expect (203)  |  Expectation (67)  |  Far (158)  |  Improbability (11)  |  Inherent (43)  |  Past (355)  |  Phenomenon (334)  |  Rarity (11)  |  Remarkable (50)  |  Road (71)  |  Same (166)  |  Scientist (881)  |  Simultaneous (23)  |  Utterly (15)

Success is a journey, not a destination.
Anonymous
Magazine of Michigan (1929), 10. Compare this quote with 'Education is a journey...')
Science quotes on:  |  Journey (48)  |  Success (327)

The experiences are so innumerable and varied, that the journey appears to be interminable and the Destination is ever out of sight. But the wonder of it is, when at last you reach your Destination you find that you had never travelled at all! It was a journey from here to Here.
In 'A Journey Without Journeying', The Everything and the Nothing (1963), 11.
Science quotes on:  |  Appear (122)  |  Experience (494)  |  Find (1014)  |  Innumerable (56)  |  Interminable (3)  |  Journey (48)  |  Last (425)  |  Never (1089)  |  Reach (286)  |  Sight (135)  |  Travel (125)  |  Vary (27)  |  Wonder (251)

The future is not a result of choices among alternative paths offered by the present, but a place that is created-created first in the mind and will, created next in activity. The future is not some place we are going to, but one we are creating. The paths are not to be found, but made, and the activity of making them, changes both the maker and the destination.
…...
Science quotes on:  |  Activity (218)  |  Alternative (32)  |  Both (496)  |  Change (639)  |  Choice (114)  |  Create (245)  |  Find (1014)  |  First (1302)  |  Future (467)  |  Maker (34)  |  Making (300)  |  Mind (1377)  |  Next (238)  |  Offer (142)  |  Path (159)  |  Place (192)  |  Present (630)  |  Result (700)  |  Will (2350)

Walking home at night, I shine my flashlight up at the sky. I send billions of ... photons toward space. What is their destination? A tiny fraction will be absorbed by the air. An even smaller fraction will be intercepted by the surface of planets and stars. The vast majority ... will plod on forever. After some thousands of years they will leave our galaxy; after some millions of years they will leave our supercluster. They will wander through an even emptier, even colder realm. The universe is transparent in the direction of the future.
Atoms of Silence
Science quotes on:  |  Absorb (54)  |  Air (366)  |  Billion (104)  |  Billions (7)  |  Cold (115)  |  Direction (185)  |  Empty (82)  |  Forever (111)  |  Fraction (16)  |  Future (467)  |  Galaxy (53)  |  Home (184)  |  Intercept (3)  |  Leave (138)  |  Majority (68)  |  Millions (17)  |  Night (133)  |  Photon (11)  |  Planet (402)  |  Plod (3)  |  Realm (87)  |  Send (23)  |  Shine (49)  |  Sky (174)  |  Small (489)  |  Space (523)  |  Star (460)  |  Stars (304)  |  Surface (223)  |  Thousand (340)  |  Through (846)  |  Tiny (74)  |  Toward (45)  |  Transparent (16)  |  Universe (900)  |  Vast (188)  |  Walk (138)  |  Wander (44)  |  Will (2350)  |  Year (963)

We have the hunger for eternity in our souls, the thought of eternity in our hearts, the destination for eternity written on our inmost being.
Quoted in Kim Lim (ed.), 1,001 Pearls of Spiritual Wisdom: Words to Enrich, Inspire, and Guide Your Life (2014), 5
Science quotes on:  |  Being (1276)  |  Eternity (64)  |  Heart (243)  |  Hunger (23)  |  Inmost (2)  |  Soul (235)  |  Thought (995)  |  Write (250)

What you get by reaching your destination is not as important as what you become by reaching your destination.
…...
Science quotes on:  |  Become (821)  |  Important (229)  |  Reach (286)


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.