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: “A people without children would face a hopeless future; a country without trees is almost as helpless.”
more quiz questions >>
Home > Category Index for Science Quotations > Category Index E > Category: Exploit

Exploit Quotes (19 quotes)

Alvarez seemed to care less about the way the picture in the puzzle would look, when everything fit together, than about the fun of looking for pieces that fit. He loved nothing more than doing something that everybody else thought impossible. His designs were clever, and usually exploited some little-known principle that everyone else had forgotten.
As quoted in Walter Sullivan, 'Luis W. Alvarez, Nobel Physicist Who Explored Atom, Dies at 77: Obituary', New York Times (2 Sep 1988).
Science quotes on:  |  Luis W. Alvarez (24)  |  Care (203)  |  Clever (41)  |  Design (203)  |  Doing (277)  |  Everybody (72)  |  Everything (489)  |  Fit (139)  |  Forget (125)  |  Forgotten (53)  |  Fun (42)  |  Impossible (263)  |  Known (453)  |  Little (717)  |  Look (584)  |  Looking (191)  |  More (2558)  |  Nothing (1000)  |  Picture (148)  |  Piece (39)  |  Principle (530)  |  Puzzle (46)  |  Something (718)  |  Thought (995)  |  Together (392)  |  Usually (176)  |  Way (1214)

Biological disciplines tend to guide research into certain channels. One consequence is that disciplines are apt to become parochial, or at least to develop blind spots, for example, to treat some questions as “interesting” and to dismiss others as “uninteresting.” As a consequence, readily accessible but unworked areas of genuine biological interest often lie in plain sight but untouched within one discipline while being heavily worked in another. For example, historically insect physiologists have paid relatively little attention to the behavioral and physiological control of body temperature and its energetic and ecological consequences, whereas many students of the comparative physiology of terrestrial vertebrates have been virtually fixated on that topic. For the past 10 years, several of my students and I have exploited this situation by taking the standard questions and techniques from comparative vertebrate physiology and applying them to insects. It is surprising that this pattern of innovation is not more deliberately employed.
In 'Scientific innovation and creativity: a zoologist’s point of view', American Zoologist (1982), 22, 233.
Science quotes on:  |  Accessible (27)  |  Apply (170)  |  Apt (9)  |  Area (33)  |  Attention (196)  |  Become (821)  |  Behavioral (6)  |  Being (1276)  |  Biological (137)  |  Blind (98)  |  Blind Spot (2)  |  Body (557)  |  Certain (557)  |  Channel (23)  |  Comparative (14)  |  Consequence (220)  |  Control (182)  |  Deliberately (6)  |  Develop (278)  |  Discipline (85)  |  Dismiss (12)  |  Ecological (7)  |  Employ (115)  |  Energetic (6)  |  Example (98)  |  Genuine (54)  |  Guide (107)  |  Heavily (14)  |  Historically (3)  |  Innovation (49)  |  Insect (89)  |  Interest (416)  |  Interesting (153)  |  Least (75)  |  Lie (370)  |  Little (717)  |  More (2558)  |  Often (109)  |  Other (2233)  |  Past (355)  |  Pattern (116)  |  Pay (45)  |  Physiological (64)  |  Physiologist (31)  |  Physiology (101)  |  Plain (34)  |  Question (649)  |  Readily (10)  |  Relatively (8)  |  Research (753)  |  Several (33)  |  Sight (135)  |  Situation (117)  |  Standard (64)  |  Student (317)  |  Surprise (91)  |  Technique (84)  |  Temperature (82)  |  Tend (124)  |  Terrestrial (62)  |  Topic (23)  |  Treat (38)  |  Uninteresting (9)  |  Untouched (5)  |  Unworked (2)  |  Vertebrate (22)  |  Virtually (6)  |  Work (1402)  |  Year (963)

But as the wilderness areas are progressively exploited or “improve”, as the jeeps and bulldozers of uranium prospectors scar up the deserts and the roads are cut into the alpine timberlands, and as the remnants of the unspoiled and natural world are progressively eroded, every such loss is a little death in me. In us.
Letter (3 Dec 1960) written to David E. Pesonen of the Outdoor Recreation Resources Review Commission. Collected in 'Coda: Wilderness Letter', The Sound of Mountain Water: The Changing American West (1969), 150.
Science quotes on:  |  Alpine (2)  |  Bulldozer (6)  |  Cut (116)  |  Death (406)  |  Desert (59)  |  Improve (64)  |  Little (717)  |  Loss (117)  |  Natural (810)  |  Natural World (33)  |  Old West (2)  |  Progressively (4)  |  Prospector (5)  |  Remnant (7)  |  Road (71)  |  Scar (8)  |  Uranium (21)  |  Wilderness (57)  |  World (1850)

Fools make researches and wise men exploit them.
repr. In The Works of H.G. Wells, vol. 9 (1925). A Modern Utopia, ch. 2, sct. 5 (1905).
Science quotes on:  |  Fool (121)  |  Research (753)  |  Wise (143)  |  Wise Men (4)

In my estimation it was obvious that Jansky had made a fundamental and very important discovery. Furthermore, he had exploited it to the limit of his equipment facilities. If greater progress were to be made it would be necessary to construct new and different equipment especially designed to measure the cosmic static.
Reber explaining his own motivation to build the first radio telescope.
Science quotes on:  |  Astronomy (251)  |  Construct (129)  |  Cosmic (74)  |  Design (203)  |  Different (595)  |  Discovery (837)  |  Equipment (45)  |  Fundamental (264)  |  Greater (288)  |  Limit (294)  |  Measure (241)  |  Necessary (370)  |  New (1273)  |  Obvious (128)  |  Progress (492)  |  Radio Telescope (5)

In our preoccupations with sex, our submission to gods and leaders, our sometimes suicidal commitment to ideas, religions, and trivial details of cultural style, we become the unconscious creators of the social organism’s exploits.
In 'The Clint Eastwood Conundrum', The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition Into the Forces of History (1997), 8.
Science quotes on:  |  Become (821)  |  Commitment (28)  |  Creator (97)  |  Cultural (26)  |  Detail (150)  |  God (776)  |  Idea (881)  |  Leader (51)  |  Organism (231)  |  Preoccupation (7)  |  Religion (369)  |  Sex (68)  |  Social (261)  |  Style (24)  |  Submission (4)  |  Suicide (23)  |  Trivial (59)  |  Unconscious (24)

It is unreasonable to expect science to produce a system of ethics—ethics are a kind of highway code for traffic among mankind—and the fact that in physics atoms which were yesterday assumed to be square are now assumed to be round is exploited with unjustified tendentiousness by all who are hungry for faith; so long as physics extends our dominion over nature, these changes ought to be a matter of complete indifference to you.
Letter to Oskar Pfister, 24 Feb 1928. Quoted in H. Meng and E. Freud (eds.), Psycho-Analysis and Faith: The Letters of Sigmund Freud and Oscar Pfister (1963), 123.
Science quotes on:  |  Atom (381)  |  Change (639)  |  Code (31)  |  Complete (209)  |  Ethic (39)  |  Ethics (53)  |  Expect (203)  |  Extend (129)  |  Fact (1257)  |  Faith (209)  |  Kind (564)  |  Long (778)  |  Mankind (356)  |  Matter (821)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Physic (515)  |  Physics (564)  |  Square (73)  |  System (545)  |  Traffic (10)  |  Yesterday (37)

Nuclear energy and foreign policy cannot coexist on the planet. The more deep the secret, the greater the determination of every nation to discover and exploit it. Nuclear energy insists on global government, on law, on order, and on the willingness of the community to take the responsibility for the acts of the individual. And to what end? Why, for liberty, first of blessings. Soldier, we await you, and if the
In 'The Talk of the Town', The New Yorker (18 Aug 1945), 13.
Science quotes on:  |  Act (278)  |  Blessing (26)  |  Blessings (17)  |  Coexist (4)  |  Community (111)  |  Deep (241)  |  Determination (80)  |  Discover (571)  |  End (603)  |  Energy (373)  |  First (1302)  |  Foreign (45)  |  Foreign Policy (2)  |  Global (39)  |  Government (116)  |  Greater (288)  |  Individual (420)  |  Insist (22)  |  Law (913)  |  More (2558)  |  Nation (208)  |  Nuclear (110)  |  Nuclear Energy (18)  |  Order (638)  |  Planet (402)  |  Responsibility (71)  |  Secret (216)  |  Soldier (28)  |  Why (491)  |  Willingness (10)

Plasticity is a double-edged sword; the more flexible an organism is the greater the variety of maladaptive, as well as adaptive, behaviors it can develop; the more teachable it is the more fully it can profit from the experiences of its ancestors and associates and the more it risks being exploited by its ancestors and associates.
In Gary William Flake, The Computational Beauty of Nature (2000), 361.
Science quotes on:  |  Adaptation (59)  |  Ancestor (63)  |  Associate (25)  |  Behavior (95)  |  Behaviour (42)  |  Being (1276)  |  Develop (278)  |  Experience (494)  |  Flexibility (6)  |  Greater (288)  |  Learning (291)  |  More (2558)  |  Organism (231)  |  Plasticity (7)  |  Profit (56)  |  Risk (68)  |  Teachable (2)  |  Variety (138)

Relativity was a highly technical new theory that gave new meanings to familiar concepts and even to the nature of the theory itself. The general public looked upon relativity as indicative of the seemingly incomprehensible modern era, educated scientists despaired of ever understanding what Einstein had done, and political ideologues used the new theory to exploit public fears and anxieties—all of which opened a rift between science and the broader culture that continues to expand today.
'The Cultural Legacy of Relativity Theory' in Albert Einstein, Robert W. Lawson, Robert Geroch, Roger Penrose and David C. Cassidy, Relativity (2005), 226.
Science quotes on:  |  Concept (242)  |  Continue (179)  |  Culture (157)  |  Despair (40)  |  Einstein (101)  |  Era (51)  |  Expand (56)  |  Fear (212)  |  General (521)  |  Incomprehensible (31)  |  Look (584)  |  Meaning (244)  |  Modern (402)  |  Nature (2017)  |  New (1273)  |  Open (277)  |  Political (124)  |  Relativity (91)  |  Rift (4)  |  Scientist (881)  |  Seemingly (28)  |  Theory (1015)  |  Today (321)  |  Understanding (527)

Scientific literacy is an intellectual vaccine against the claims of charlatans who would exploit ignorance.
…...
Science quotes on:  |  Against (332)  |  Charlatan (8)  |  Claim (154)  |  Ignorance (254)  |  Intellectual (258)  |  Literacy (10)  |  Scientific (955)  |  Scientific Illiteracy (8)  |  Vaccine (9)

Sometimes progress is slow. But then there does come a time when a lot of people accept a new idea and see ways in which it can be exploited. And because of the larger number of workers in the field, progress becomes rapid. That is what happened with the study of protein structure.
From interview with Neil A. Campbell, in 'Crossing the Boundaries of Science', BioScience (Dec 1986), 36, No. 11, 739.
Science quotes on:  |  Accept (198)  |  Become (821)  |  Field (378)  |  Happen (282)  |  Happened (88)  |  Idea (881)  |  Lot (151)  |  New (1273)  |  Number (710)  |  People (1031)  |  Progress (492)  |  Protein (56)  |  Rapid (37)  |  Research (753)  |  See (1094)  |  Slow (108)  |  Structure (365)  |  Study (701)  |  Time (1911)  |  Way (1214)  |  Worker (34)

The great mathematician fully, almost ruthlessly, exploits the domain of permissible reasoning and skirts the impermissible. … [I]t is hard to believe that our reasoning power was brought, by Darwin’s process of natural selection, to the perfection which it seems to possess.
In 'The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences,' Communications in Pure and Applied Mathematics (Feb 1960), 13, No. 1 (February 1960). Collected in Eugene Paul Wigner, A.S. Wightman (ed.), Jagdish Mehra (ed.), The Collected Works of Eugene Paul Wigner (1955), Vol. 6, 536.
Science quotes on:  |  Belief (615)  |  Charles Darwin (322)  |  Domain (72)  |  Great (1610)  |  Hard (246)  |  Mathematician (407)  |  Natural (810)  |  Natural Selection (98)  |  Perfection (131)  |  Permissible (9)  |  Possess (157)  |  Power (771)  |  Process (439)  |  Reasoning (212)  |  Ruthless (12)  |  Selection (130)

The protean nature of the computer is such that it can act like a machine or like a language to be shaped and exploited.
…...
Science quotes on:  |  Act (278)  |  Computer (131)  |  Language (308)  |  Machine (271)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Shape (77)

The pure scientist discovers the universe. The applied scientist exploits existing scientific discoveries to create a usable product.
In Jacques Cousteau and Susan Schiefelbein, The Human, the Orchid, and the Octopus: Exploring and Conserving Our Natural World (2007), 181.
Science quotes on:  |  Applied (176)  |  Applied Science (36)  |  Create (245)  |  Discover (571)  |  Discovery (837)  |  Existing (10)  |  Product (166)  |  Pure (299)  |  Pure Science (30)  |  Scientific (955)  |  Scientist (881)  |  Universe (900)

These estimates may well be enhanced by one from F. Klein (1849-1925), the leading German mathematician of the last quarter of the nineteenth century. “Mathematics in general is fundamentally the science of self-evident things.” ... If mathematics is indeed the science of self-evident things, mathematicians are a phenomenally stupid lot to waste the tons of good paper they do in proving the fact. Mathematics is abstract and it is hard, and any assertion that it is simple is true only in a severely technical sense—that of the modern postulational method which, as a matter of fact, was exploited by Euclid. The assumptions from which mathematics starts are simple; the rest is not.
Mathematics: Queen and Servant of Science (1952),19-20.
Science quotes on:  |  19th Century (41)  |  Abstract (141)  |  Assumption (96)  |  Century (319)  |  Do (1905)  |  Estimate (59)  |  Euclid (60)  |  Evident (92)  |  Fact (1257)  |  General (521)  |  German (37)  |  Good (906)  |  Hard (246)  |  Indeed (323)  |  Felix Klein (15)  |  Last (425)  |  Lot (151)  |  Mathematics (1395)  |  Matter (821)  |  Method (531)  |  Modern (402)  |  Paper (192)  |  Rest (287)  |  Self (268)  |  Self-Evident (22)  |  Sense (785)  |  Simple (426)  |  Start (237)  |  Stupid (38)  |  Thing (1914)  |  Ton (25)  |  Waste (109)

We are not here to abuse and exploit other creatures. We are here to live and help live. Every meal is part of the journey.
In The Food Revolution: How Your Diet Can Help Save Your Life and the World (2010), 227.
Science quotes on:  |  Abuse (25)  |  Creature (242)  |  Farming (8)  |  Help (116)  |  Journey (48)  |  Live (650)  |  Meal (19)  |  Other (2233)  |  Vegetarian (13)

What Art was to the ancient world, Science is to the modern: the distinctive faculty. In the minds of men the useful has succeeded to the beautiful. Instead of the city of the Violet Crown, a Lancashire village has expanded into a mighty region of factories and warehouses. Yet, rightly understood, Manchester is as great a human exploit; as Athens.
In Coningsby: Or The New Generation (1844), Vol. 2, Book 4, Ch.1, 2.
Science quotes on:  |  Ancient (198)  |  Art (680)  |  Beautiful (271)  |  City (87)  |  Crown (39)  |  Distinctive (25)  |  Expand (56)  |  Great (1610)  |  Human (1512)  |  Manchester (6)  |  Mind (1377)  |  Modern (402)  |  Science And Art (195)  |  Succeed (114)  |  Understood (155)  |  Useful (260)  |  Violet (11)  |  World (1850)

When men are engaged in war and conquest, the tools of science become as dangerous as a razor in the hands of a child of three. We must not condemn man because his inventiveness and patient conquest of the forces of nature are being exploited for false and destructive purposes. Rather, we should remember that the fate of mankind hinges entirely upon man’s moral development.
In 'I Am an American' (22 Jun 1940), Einstein Archives 29-092. Excerpted in David E. Rowe and Robert J. Schulmann, Einstein on Politics: His Private Thoughts and Public Stands on Nationalism, Zionism, War, Peace, and the Bomb (2007), 470. The British Library Sound Archive holds a recording of this statement by Einstein. It was during a radio broadcast for the Immigration and Naturalization Service, interviewed by a State Department Official. Einstein spoke following an examination on his application for American citizenship in Trenton, New Jersey. The attack on Pearl Harbor and America’s declaration of war on Japan was still over a year in the future.
Science quotes on:  |  Become (821)  |  Being (1276)  |  Child (333)  |  Condemn (44)  |  Condemnation (16)  |  Conquest (31)  |  Dangerous (108)  |  Destruction (135)  |  Development (441)  |  Exploitation (14)  |  False (105)  |  Fate (76)  |  Force (497)  |  Force Of Nature (9)  |  Hand (149)  |  Hinge (4)  |  Inventiveness (8)  |  Man (2252)  |  Mankind (356)  |  Moral (203)  |  Must (1525)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Patience (58)  |  Patient (209)  |  Purpose (336)  |  Razor (4)  |  Remember (189)  |  Tool (129)  |  War (233)


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.