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: “Every body perseveres in its state of being at rest or of moving uniformly straight forward, except insofar as it is compelled to change its state by forces impressed.”
more quiz questions >>
Home > Category Index for Science Quotations > Category Index D > Category: Drudgery

Drudgery Quotes (6 quotes)

A patient pursuit of facts, and cautious combination and comparison of them, is the drudgery to which man is subjected by his Maker, if he wishes to attain sure knowledge.
In 'Productions Mineral, Vegetable and Animal', Notes on the State of Virginia (1787), 112.
Science quotes on:  |  Attain (126)  |  Cautious (4)  |  Combination (150)  |  Comparison (108)  |  Fact (1257)  |  Facts (553)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Maker (34)  |  Man (2252)  |  Patient (209)  |  Pursuit (128)  |  Science And Religion (337)  |  Scientific Method (200)  |  Subject (543)  |  Wish (216)

I read once that the true mark of a pro—at anything—is that he understands, loves, and is good at even the drudgery of his profession.
In I Want to be a Mathematician: an Automathography (1985), 37.
Science quotes on:  |  Good (906)  |  Love (328)  |  Mark (47)  |  Profession (108)  |  Professional (77)  |  Read (308)  |  True (239)  |  Understand (648)

Man is still by instinct a predatory animal given to devilish aggression.
The discoveries of science have immensely increased productivity of material things. They have increased the standards of living and comfort. They have eliminated infinite drudgery. They have increased leisure. But that gives more time for devilment.
The work of science has eliminated much disease and suffering. It has increased the length of life. That, together with increase in productivity, has resulted in vastly increased populations. Also it increased the number of people engaged in devilment.
Address delivered to Annual Meeting of the York Bible Class, Toronto, Canada (22 Nov 1938), 'The Imperative Need for Moral Re-armament', collected in America's Way Forward (1939), 50.
Science quotes on:  |  Aggression (10)  |  Animal (651)  |  Comfort (64)  |  Discovery (837)  |  Disease (340)  |  Elimination (26)  |  Increase (225)  |  Infinite (243)  |  Instinct (91)  |  Leisure (25)  |  Life (1870)  |  Living (492)  |  Man (2252)  |  Material (366)  |  More (2558)  |  Number (710)  |  People (1031)  |  Population (115)  |  Predator (6)  |  Productivity (23)  |  Result (700)  |  Standard Of Living (5)  |  Still (614)  |  Suffering (68)  |  Thing (1914)  |  Time (1911)  |  Together (392)  |  Work (1402)

Men in general are very slow to enter into what is reckoned a new thing; and there seems to be a very universal as well as great reluctance to undergo the drudgery of acquiring information that seems not to be absolutely necessary.
In The Commercial and Political Atlas: Representing, by Means of Stained Copper Charts, the Progress of the Commerce, Revenues, Expenditure and Debts of England During the Whole of the Eighteenth Century (1786, 1801), 29.
Science quotes on:  |  Absolutely (41)  |  Acquiring (5)  |  Enter (145)  |  General (521)  |  Generality (45)  |  Great (1610)  |  Information (173)  |  Necessary (370)  |  New (1273)  |  Reckon (31)  |  Reluctance (6)  |  Slow (108)  |  Thing (1914)  |  Undergo (18)  |  Universal (198)

Over the past fifty years or so, scientists have allowed the conventions of expression available to them to become entirely too confining. too confining. The insistence on bland impersonality and the widespread indifference to anything like the display of a unique human author in scientific exposition, have transformed the reading of most scientific papers into an act of tedious drudgery.
In Boojums All the Way Through: Communicating Science in a Prosaic Age (1990), Preface, xi-xii.
Science quotes on:  |  Act (278)  |  Author (175)  |  Available (80)  |  Become (821)  |  Convention (16)  |  Display (59)  |  Exposition (16)  |  Expression (181)  |  Human (1512)  |  Indifference (16)  |  Insistence (12)  |  Most (1728)  |  Paper (192)  |  Past (355)  |  Reading (136)  |  Scientific (955)  |  Scientist (881)  |  Tedious (15)  |  Transform (74)  |  Transformation (72)  |  Unique (72)  |  Widespread (23)  |  Year (963)

To master anything—from football to relativity—requires effort. But it does not require unpleasant effort, drudgery.
In Mathematician's Delight (1943), 9.
Science quotes on:  |  Education (423)  |  Effort (243)  |  Football (11)  |  Master (182)  |  Relativity (91)  |  Require (229)  |  Unpleasant (15)


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.