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: “Dangerous... to take shelter under a tree, during a thunder-gust. It has been fatal to many, both men and beasts.”
more quiz questions >>
Home > Category Index for Science Quotations > Category Index D > Category: Doubtless

Doubtless Quotes (8 quotes)

[E.H.] Moore was presenting a paper on a highly technical topic to a large gathering of faculty and graduate students from all parts of the country. When half way through he discovered what seemed to be an error (though probably no one else in the room observed it). He stopped and re-examined the doubtful step for several minutes and then, convinced of the error, he abruptly dismissed the meeting—to the astonishment of most of the audience. It was an evidence of intellectual courage as well as honesty and doubtless won for him the supreme admiration of every person in the group—an admiration which was in no wise diminished, but rather increased, when at a later meeting he announced that after all he had been able to prove the step to be correct.
In Obituary, 'Eliakim Hastings Moore', The American Mathematical Monthly (Apr 1933), 40, 191.
Science quotes on:  |  Admiration (61)  |  Announce (13)  |  Astonishment (30)  |  Audience (28)  |  Convinced (23)  |  Correct (95)  |  Country (269)  |  Courage (82)  |  Diminish (17)  |  Discover (571)  |  Dismiss (12)  |  Doubtful (30)  |  Error (339)  |  Evidence (267)  |  Examine (84)  |  Faculty (76)  |  Gathering (23)  |  Graduate (32)  |  Graduate Student (13)  |  Honesty (29)  |  Increase (225)  |  Intellectual (258)  |  Large (398)  |  Meeting (22)  |  Minute (129)  |   Eliakim Hastings Moore (2)  |  Most (1728)  |  Observed (149)  |  Paper (192)  |  Person (366)  |  Present (630)  |  Prove (261)  |  Step (234)  |  Stop (89)  |  Student (317)  |  Supreme (73)  |  Technical (53)  |  Through (846)  |  Topic (23)  |  Way (1214)  |  Wise (143)

Doubtless it is true that while consciousness is occupied in the scientific interpretation of a thing, which is now and again “a thing of beauty,” it is not occupied in the aesthetic appreciation of it. But it is no less true that the same consciousness may at another time be so wholly possessed by the aesthetic appreciation as to exclude all thought of the scientific interpretation. The inability of a man of science to take the poetic view simply shows his mental limitation; as the mental limitation of a poet is shown by his inability to take the scientific view. The broader mind can take both.
In An Autobiography (1904), Vol. 1, 485.
Science quotes on:  |  Aesthetic (48)  |  Appreciation (37)  |  Beauty (313)  |  Both (496)  |  Broader (3)  |  Consciousness (132)  |  Exclusion (16)  |  Inability (11)  |  Interpretation (89)  |  Limitation (52)  |  Man (2252)  |  Men Of Science (147)  |  Mental (179)  |  Mind (1377)  |  Occupation (51)  |  Occupied (45)  |  Poet (97)  |  Possess (157)  |  Possession (68)  |  Science And Art (195)  |  Scientific (955)  |  Show (353)  |  Thing (1914)  |  Thought (995)  |  Time (1911)  |  View (496)  |  Wholly (88)

Doubtless the reasoning faculty, the mind, is the leading and characteristic attribute of the human race. By the exercise of this, man arrives at the properties of the natural bodies. This is science, properly and emphatically so called. It is the science of pure mathematics; and in the high branches of this science lies the truly sublime of human acquisition. If any attainment deserves that epithet, it is the knowledge, which, from the mensuration of the minutest dust of the balance, proceeds on the rising scale of material bodies, everywhere weighing, everywhere measuring, everywhere detecting and explaining the laws of force and motion, penetrating into the secret principles which hold the universe of God together, and balancing worlds against worlds, and system against system. When we seek to accompany those who pursue studies at once so high, so vast, and so exact; when we arrive at the discoveries of Newton, which pour in day on the works of God, as if a second fiat had gone forth from his own mouth; when, further, we attempt to follow those who set out where Newton paused, making his goal their starting-place, and, proceeding with demonstration upon demonstration, and discovery upon discovery, bring new worlds and new systems of worlds within the limits of the known universe, failing to learn all only because all is infinite; however we may say of man, in admiration of his physical structure, that “in form and moving he is express and admirable,” it is here, and here without irreverence, we may exclaim, “In apprehension how like a god!” The study of the pure mathematics will of course not be extensively pursued in an institution, which, like this [Boston Mechanics’ Institute], has a direct practical tendency and aim. But it is still to be remembered, that pure mathematics lie at the foundation of mechanical philosophy, and that it is ignorance only which can speak or think of that sublime science as useless research or barren speculation.
In Works (1872), Vol. 1, 180.
Science quotes on:  |  Accompany (22)  |  Acquisition (46)  |  Admirable (20)  |  Admiration (61)  |  Against (332)  |  Aim (175)  |  Apprehension (26)  |  Arrive (40)  |  Attainment (48)  |  Attempt (266)  |  Attribute (65)  |  Balance (82)  |  Barren (33)  |  Body (557)  |  Boston (7)  |  Branch (155)  |  Bring (95)  |  Call (781)  |  Characteristic (154)  |  Course (413)  |  Demonstration (120)  |  Deserve (65)  |  Detect (45)  |  Direct (228)  |  Discovery (837)  |  Dust (68)  |  Emphatically (8)  |  Epithet (3)  |  Estimates of Mathematics (30)  |  Everywhere (98)  |  Exact (75)  |  Exclaim (15)  |  Exercise (113)  |  Explain (334)  |  Express (192)  |  Extensive (34)  |  Faculty (76)  |  Fail (191)  |  Far (158)  |  Fiat (7)  |  Follow (389)  |  Force (497)  |  Form (976)  |  Forth (14)  |  Foundation (177)  |  Goal (155)  |  God (776)  |  High (370)  |  Hold (96)  |  Human (1512)  |  Human Race (104)  |  Ignorance (254)  |  Infinite (243)  |  Institution (73)  |  Irreverence (3)  |  Know (1538)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Known (453)  |  Law (913)  |  Lead (391)  |  Learn (672)  |  Lie (370)  |  Limit (294)  |  Making (300)  |  Man (2252)  |  Material (366)  |  Mathematics (1395)  |  Measure (241)  |  Mechanic (120)  |  Mechanical (145)  |  Mechanics (137)  |  Mensuration (2)  |  Mind (1377)  |  Minute (129)  |  Motion (320)  |  Mouth (54)  |  Move (223)  |  Natural (810)  |  New (1273)  |  New Worlds (5)  |  Sir Isaac Newton (363)  |  Of Course (22)  |  Pause (6)  |  Penetrate (68)  |  Philosophy (409)  |  Physical (518)  |  Pour (9)  |  Practical (225)  |  Principle (530)  |  Proceed (134)  |  Proceeding (38)  |  Properly (21)  |  Property (177)  |  Pure (299)  |  Pure Mathematics (72)  |  Pursue (63)  |  Race (278)  |  Reason (766)  |  Reasoning (212)  |  Remember (189)  |  Research (753)  |  Rise (169)  |  Rising (44)  |  Say (989)  |  Scale (122)  |  Second (66)  |  Secret (216)  |  Seek (218)  |  Set (400)  |  Speak (240)  |  Speculation (137)  |  Starting Point (16)  |  Still (614)  |  Structure (365)  |  Study (701)  |  Sublime (50)  |  System (545)  |  Tendency (110)  |  Think (1122)  |  Together (392)  |  Truly (118)  |  Universe (900)  |  Useless (38)  |  Vast (188)  |  Weigh (51)  |  Will (2350)  |  Work (1402)  |  World (1850)

Electricity is but yet a new agent for the arts and manufactures, and, doubtless, generations unborn will regard with interest this century, in which it has been first applied to the wants of mankind.
In Preface to the Third Edition ofElements of Electro-Metallurgy: or The Art of Working in Metals by the Galvanic Fluid (1851), viii.
Science quotes on:  |  Agent (73)  |  Application (257)  |  Applied (176)  |  Art (680)  |  Arts (3)  |  Century (319)  |  Electricity (168)  |  First (1302)  |  Generation (256)  |  Interest (416)  |  Mankind (356)  |  Manufacture (30)  |  New (1273)  |  Regard (312)  |  Unborn (5)  |  Want (504)  |  Will (2350)

I believe that the useful methods of mathematics are easily to be learned by quite young persons, just as languages are easily learned in youth. What a wondrous philosophy and history underlie the use of almost every word in every language—yet the child learns to use the word unconsciously. No doubt when such a word was first invented it was studied over and lectured upon, just as one might lecture now upon the idea of a rate, or the use of Cartesian co-ordinates, and we may depend upon it that children of the future will use the idea of the calculus, and use squared paper as readily as they now cipher. … When Egyptian and Chaldean philosophers spent years in difficult calculations, which would now be thought easy by young children, doubtless they had the same notions of the depth of their knowledge that Sir William Thomson might now have of his. How is it, then, that Thomson gained his immense knowledge in the time taken by a Chaldean philosopher to acquire a simple knowledge of arithmetic? The reason is plain. Thomson, when a child, was taught in a few years more than all that was known three thousand years ago of the properties of numbers. When it is found essential to a boy’s future that machinery should be given to his brain, it is given to him; he is taught to use it, and his bright memory makes the use of it a second nature to him; but it is not till after-life that he makes a close investigation of what there actually is in his brain which has enabled him to do so much. It is taken because the child has much faith. In after years he will accept nothing without careful consideration. The machinery given to the brain of children is getting more and more complicated as time goes on; but there is really no reason why it should not be taken in as early, and used as readily, as were the axioms of childish education in ancient Chaldea.
In Teaching of Mathematics (1902), 14.
Science quotes on:  |  Accept (198)  |  Acquire (46)  |  Actually (27)  |  Afterlife (3)  |  Ancient (198)  |  Arithmetic (144)  |  Axiom (65)  |  Belief (615)  |  Boy (100)  |  Brain (281)  |  Bright (81)  |  Calculation (134)  |  Calculus (65)  |  Careful (28)  |  Cartesian (3)  |  Chaldea (4)  |  Child (333)  |  Childish (20)  |  Children (201)  |  Cipher (3)  |  Close (77)  |  Complicated (117)  |  Consideration (143)  |  Coordinate (5)  |  Depend (238)  |  Depth (97)  |  Difficult (263)  |  Do (1905)  |  Doubt (314)  |  Early (196)  |  Easily (36)  |  Easy (213)  |  Education (423)  |  Egyptian (5)  |  Enable (122)  |  Essential (210)  |  Faith (209)  |  Find (1014)  |  First (1302)  |  Future (467)  |  Gain (146)  |  Give (208)  |  History (716)  |  Idea (881)  |  Immense (89)  |  Invent (57)  |  Investigation (250)  |  Baron William Thomson Kelvin (74)  |  Know (1538)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Known (453)  |  Language (308)  |  Learn (672)  |  Learned (235)  |  Lecture (111)  |  Life (1870)  |  Machinery (59)  |  Mathematics (1395)  |  Memory (144)  |  Method (531)  |  More (2558)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Nothing (1000)  |  Notion (120)  |  Number (710)  |  Paper (192)  |  Person (366)  |  Philosopher (269)  |  Philosophy (409)  |  Plain (34)  |  Property (177)  |  Rate (31)  |  Readily (10)  |  Reason (766)  |  Same (166)  |  Second Nature (3)  |  Simple (426)  |  Spend (97)  |  Spent (85)  |  Square (73)  |  Study (701)  |  Teach (299)  |  Teaching of Mathematics (39)  |  Thought (995)  |  Thousand (340)  |  Time (1911)  |  Unconsciously (9)  |  Underlie (19)  |  Use (771)  |  Useful (260)  |  Why (491)  |  Will (2350)  |  Wondrous (22)  |  Word (650)  |  Year (963)  |  Young (253)  |  Youth (109)

The breaking up of the terrestrial globe, this it is we witness. It doubtless began a long time ago, and the brevity of human life enables us to contemplate it without dismay. It is not only in the great mountain ranges that the traces of this process are found. Great segments of the earth's crust have sunk hundreds, in some cases, even thousands, of feet deep, and not the slightest inequality of the surface remains to indicate the fracture; the different nature of the rocks and the discoveries made in mining alone reveal its presence. Time has levelled all.
The Face of the Earth (1904), Vol. 1, 604.
Science quotes on:  |  Alone (324)  |  Break (109)  |  Brevity (8)  |  Contemplation (75)  |  Crust (43)  |  Deep (241)  |  Difference (355)  |  Different (595)  |  Discovery (837)  |  Dismay (5)  |  Earth (1076)  |  Enable (122)  |  Enabling (7)  |  Erosion (20)  |  Fracture (7)  |  Globe (51)  |  Great (1610)  |  Human (1512)  |  Hundred (240)  |  Indicate (62)  |  Indication (33)  |  Inequality (9)  |  Life (1870)  |  Long (778)  |  Mining (22)  |  Mountain (202)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Presence (63)  |  Process (439)  |  Range (104)  |  Remain (355)  |  Reveal (152)  |  Revelation (51)  |  Rock (176)  |  Segment (6)  |  Sinking (6)  |  Surface (223)  |  Terrestrial (62)  |  Thousand (340)  |  Time (1911)  |  Trace (109)  |  Witness (57)

The mathematics of cooperation of men and tools is interesting. Separated men trying their individual experiments contribute in proportion to their numbers and their work may be called mathematically additive. The effect of a single piece of apparatus given to one man is also additive only, but when a group of men are cooperating, as distinct from merely operating, their work raises with some higher power of the number than the first power. It approaches the square for two men and the cube for three. Two men cooperating with two different pieces of apparatus, say a special furnace and a pyrometer or a hydraulic press and new chemical substances, are more powerful than their arithmetical sum. These facts doubtless assist as assets of a research laboratory.
Quoted from a speech delivered at the fiftieth anniversary of granting of M.I.T's charter, in Guy Suits, 'Willis Rodney Whitney', National Academy of Sciences, Biographical Memoirs (1960), 352.
Science quotes on:  |  Additive (2)  |  Apparatus (70)  |  Arithmetic (144)  |  Assistance (23)  |  Call (781)  |  Chemical (303)  |  Cooperation (38)  |  Cube (14)  |  Different (595)  |  Distinct (98)  |  Effect (414)  |  Experiment (736)  |  Fact (1257)  |  Facts (553)  |  First (1302)  |  Furnace (13)  |  Group (83)  |  Higher (37)  |  Hydraulic (5)  |  Individual (420)  |  Interesting (153)  |  Laboratory (214)  |  Man (2252)  |  Mathematics (1395)  |  Merely (315)  |  More (2558)  |  New (1273)  |  Number (710)  |  Operation (221)  |  Power (771)  |  Powerful (145)  |  Press (21)  |  Proportion (140)  |  Research (753)  |  Say (989)  |  Single (365)  |  Special (188)  |  Square (73)  |  Substance (253)  |  Sum (103)  |  Three (10)  |  Tool (129)  |  Trying (144)  |  Two (936)  |  Work (1402)

The people of Sydney who can speak of my work [on flying-machine models] without a smile are very scarce; it is doubtless the same with American workers. I know that success is dead sure to come, and therefore do not waste time and words in trying to convince unbelievers.
As quoted in Octave Chanute, Progress in Flying Machines (1894), 231.
Science quotes on:  |  American (56)  |  Certain (557)  |  Convince (43)  |  Do (1905)  |  Flying (74)  |  Flying Machine (13)  |  Know (1538)  |  Machine (271)  |  Model (106)  |  People (1031)  |  Same (166)  |  Scarce (11)  |  Smile (34)  |  Speak (240)  |  Success (327)  |  Sydney (2)  |  Time (1911)  |  Trying (144)  |  Unbeliever (3)  |  Waste (109)  |  Word (650)  |  Work (1402)  |  Worker (34)


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.