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 was going to record talking... the foil was put on; I then shouted 'Mary had a little lamb',... and the machine reproduced it perfectly.”
more quiz questions >>
Home > Category Index for Science Quotations > Category Index E > Category: Exquisite

Exquisite Quotes (27 quotes)

…with common water. Its substance reaches everywhere; it touches the past and prepares the future; it moves under the poles and wanders thinly in the heights of air. It can assume forms of exquisite perfection in a snowflake, or strip the living to a single shining bone cast up by the sea.
From essay 'The Flow of the River', collected in The Immense Journey: An Imaginative Naturalist Explores the Mysteries of Man and Nature (1957, 1959), 16.
Science quotes on:  |  Air (366)  |  Bone (101)  |  Cast (69)  |  Everywhere (98)  |  Form (976)  |  Future (467)  |  Height (33)  |  Live (650)  |  Past (355)  |  Perfection (131)  |  Pole (49)  |  Sea (326)  |  Shine (49)  |  Single (365)  |  Snowflake (15)  |  Strip (7)  |  Touch (146)  |  Wander (44)  |  Water (503)

[On common water.] Its substance reaches everywhere; it touches the past and prepares the future; it moves under the poles and wanders thinly in the heights of air. It can assume forms of exquisite perfection in a snowflake, or strip the living to a single shining bone cast up by the sea.
From essay 'The Flow of the River', collected in The Immense Journey: An Imaginative Naturalist Explores the Mysteries of Man and Nature (1957, 1959), 16.
Science quotes on:  |  Air (366)  |  Assume (43)  |  Bone (101)  |  Cast (69)  |  Common (447)  |  Everywhere (98)  |  Form (976)  |  Future (467)  |  Height (33)  |  Living (492)  |  Move (223)  |  Past (355)  |  Perfection (131)  |  Pole (49)  |  Prepare (44)  |  Reach (286)  |  Sea (326)  |  Shining (35)  |  Single (365)  |  Snowflake (15)  |  Strip (7)  |  Substance (253)  |  Touch (146)  |  Under (7)  |  Wander (44)  |  Water (503)

As every circumstance relating to so capital a discovery as this (the greatest, perhaps, that has been made in the whole compass of philosophy, since the time of Sir Isaac Newton) cannot but give pleasure to all my readers, I shall endeavour to gratify them with the communication of a few particulars which I have from the best authority. The Doctor [Benjamin Franklin], after having published his method of verifying his hypothesis concerning the sameness of electricity with the matter lightning, was waiting for the erection of a spire in Philadelphia to carry his views into execution; not imagining that a pointed rod, of a moderate height, could answer the purpose; when it occurred to him, that, by means of a common kite, he could have a readier and better access to the regions of thunder than by any spire whatever. Preparing, therefore, a large silk handkerchief, and two cross sticks, of a proper length, on which to extend it, he took the opportunity of the first approaching thunder storm to take a walk into a field, in which there was a shed convenient for his purpose. But dreading the ridicule which too commonly attends unsuccessful attempts in science, he communicated his intended experiment to no body but his son, who assisted him in raising the kite.
The kite being raised, a considerable time elapsed before there was any appearance of its being electrified. One very promising cloud passed over it without any effect; when, at length, just as he was beginning to despair of his contrivance, he observed some loose threads of the hempen string to stand erect, and to avoid one another, just as if they had been suspended on a common conductor. Struck with this promising appearance, he inmmediately presented his knuckle to the key, and (let the reader judge of the exquisite pleasure he must have felt at that moment) the discovery was complete. He perceived a very evident electric spark. Others succeeded, even before the string was wet, so as to put the matter past all dispute, and when the rain had wetted the string, he collected electric fire very copiously. This happened in June 1752, a month after the electricians in France had verified the same theory, but before he had heard of any thing that they had done.
The History and Present State of Electricity, with Original Experiments (1767, 3rd ed. 1775), Vol. 1, 216-7.
Science quotes on:  |  Access (21)  |  Answer (389)  |  Appearance (145)  |  Attempt (266)  |  Attend (67)  |  Authority (99)  |  Avoid (123)  |  Beginning (312)  |  Being (1276)  |  Best (467)  |  Better (493)  |  Body (557)  |  Carry (130)  |  Circumstance (139)  |  Cloud (111)  |  Common (447)  |  Communication (101)  |  Compass (37)  |  Complete (209)  |  Conductor (17)  |  Considerable (75)  |  Despair (40)  |  Discovery (837)  |  Dispute (36)  |  Doctor (191)  |  Effect (414)  |  Electric (76)  |  Electrician (6)  |  Electricity (168)  |  Endeavour (63)  |  Evident (92)  |  Execution (25)  |  Experiment (736)  |  Extend (129)  |  Field (378)  |  Fire (203)  |  First (1302)  |  France (29)  |  Benjamin Franklin (95)  |  Greatest (330)  |  Happen (282)  |  Happened (88)  |  Hypothesis (314)  |  Judge (114)  |  Key (56)  |  Kite (4)  |  Large (398)  |  Lightning (49)  |  Matter (821)  |  Mean (810)  |  Means (587)  |  Method (531)  |  Moment (260)  |  Month (91)  |  Must (1525)  |  Observed (149)  |  Opportunity (95)  |  Other (2233)  |  Pass (241)  |  Past (355)  |  Philadelphia (3)  |  Philosophy (409)  |  Pleasure (191)  |  Point (584)  |  Preparing (21)  |  Present (630)  |  Proper (150)  |  Purpose (336)  |  Rain (70)  |  Ridicule (23)  |  Sameness (3)  |  Silk (14)  |  Spark (32)  |  Spire (5)  |  Stand (284)  |  Storm (56)  |  String (22)  |  Succeed (114)  |  Theory (1015)  |  Thing (1914)  |  Thread (36)  |  Thunder (21)  |  Time (1911)  |  Two (936)  |  Verification (32)  |  View (496)  |  Waiting (42)  |  Walk (138)  |  Whatever (234)  |  Whole (756)

Contingency is rich and fascinating; it embodies an exquisite tension between the power of individuals to modify history and the intelligible limits set by laws of nature. The details of individual and species’s lives are not mere frills, without power to shape the large-scale course of events, but particulars that can alter entire futures, profoundly and forever.
Reprinted from column, 'This View of Life',Natural History magazine, in Eight Little Piggies (1993), 77.
Science quotes on:  |  Alter (64)  |  Contingency (11)  |  Course (413)  |  Detail (150)  |  Embody (18)  |  Entire (50)  |  Event (222)  |  Fascinating (38)  |  Forever (111)  |  Future (467)  |  History (716)  |  Individual (420)  |  Intelligible (35)  |  Large (398)  |  Law (913)  |  Limit (294)  |  Live (650)  |  Mere (86)  |  Modify (15)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Power (771)  |  Profoundly (13)  |  Rich (66)  |  Scale (122)  |  Set (400)  |  Shape (77)  |  Species (435)  |  Tension (24)

Darwin grasped the philosophical bleakness with his characteristic courage. He argued that hope and morality cannot, and should not, be passively read in the construction of nature. Aesthetic and moral truths, as human concepts, must be shaped in human terms, not ‘discovered’ in nature. We must formulate these answers for ourselves and then approach nature as a partner who can answer other kinds of questions for us–questions about the factual state of the universe, not about the meaning of human life. If we grant nature the independence of her own domain–her answers unframed in human terms–then we can grasp her exquisite beauty in a free and humble way. For then we become liberated to approach nature without the burden of an inappropriate and impossible quest for moral messages to assuage our hopes and fears. We can pay our proper respect to nature’s independence and read her own ways as beauty or inspiration in our different terms.
…...
Science quotes on:  |  Aesthetic (48)  |  Answer (389)  |  Approach (112)  |  Argue (25)  |  Beauty (313)  |  Become (821)  |  Bleakness (2)  |  Burden (30)  |  Characteristic (154)  |  Concept (242)  |  Construction (114)  |  Courage (82)  |  Darwin (14)  |  Different (595)  |  Discover (571)  |  Domain (72)  |  Factual (8)  |  Fear (212)  |  Formulate (16)  |  Free (239)  |  Grant (76)  |  Grasp (65)  |  Hope (321)  |  Human (1512)  |  Human Life (32)  |  Humble (54)  |  Impossible (263)  |  Inappropriate (5)  |  Independence (37)  |  Inspiration (80)  |  Kind (564)  |  Liberate (10)  |  Life (1870)  |  Mean (810)  |  Meaning (244)  |  Message (53)  |  Moral (203)  |  Morality (55)  |  Must (1525)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Other (2233)  |  Ourselves (247)  |  Partner (5)  |  Passively (3)  |  Pay (45)  |  Philosophical (24)  |  Proper (150)  |  Quest (39)  |  Question (649)  |  Read (308)  |  Respect (212)  |  Shape (77)  |  State (505)  |  Term (357)  |  Terms (184)  |  Truth (1109)  |  Universe (900)  |  Way (1214)

Guido was as much enchanted by the rudiments of algebra as he would have been if I had given him an engine worked by steam, with a methylated spirit lamp to heat the boiler; more enchanted, perhaps for the engine would have got broken, and, remaining always itself, would in any case have lost its charm, while the rudiments of algebra continued to grow and blossom in his mind with an unfailing luxuriance. Every day he made the discovery of something which seemed to him exquisitely beautiful; the new toy was inexhaustible in its potentialities.
In Young Archimedes: And Other Stories (1924), 299. The fictional character, Guido, is a seven year old boy. Methylated spirit is an alcohol fuel.
Science quotes on:  |  Alcohol (22)  |  Algebra (117)  |  Beautiful (271)  |  Blossom (22)  |  Boiler (7)  |  Break (109)  |  Broken (56)  |  Charm (54)  |  Continue (179)  |  Discovery (837)  |  Enchanted (2)  |  Engine (99)  |  Give (208)  |  Grow (247)  |  Heat (180)  |  Inexhaustible (26)  |  Lamp (37)  |  Lose (165)  |  Mind (1377)  |  More (2558)  |  New (1273)  |  Potential (75)  |  Remain (355)  |  Remaining (45)  |  Rudiment (6)  |  Something (718)  |  Spirit (278)  |  Steam (81)  |  Steam Engine (47)  |  Toy (22)  |  Unfailing (6)  |  Work (1402)

Have you ever observed a humming-bird moving about in an aerial dance among the flowers—a living prismatic gem that changes its colour with every change of position— … its exquisite form, its changeful splendour, its swift motions and intervals of aërial suspension, it is a creature of such fairy-like loveliness as to mock all description.
In Green Mansions: A Romance of the Tropical Forest (1916),
Science quotes on:  |  Aerial (11)  |  Bird (163)  |  Change (639)  |  Color (155)  |  Creature (242)  |  Dance (35)  |  Description (89)  |  Fairy (10)  |  Flower (112)  |  Form (976)  |  Gem (17)  |  Humming (5)  |  Hummingbird (4)  |  Interval (14)  |  Living (492)  |  Loveliness (6)  |  Mock (7)  |  Motion (320)  |  Observe (179)  |  Observed (149)  |  Position (83)  |  Prismatic (2)  |  Splendor (20)  |  Splendour (8)  |  Suspension (7)  |  Swift (16)

He who studies it [Nature] has continually the exquisite pleasure of discerning or half discerning and divining laws; regularities glimmer through an appearance of confusion, analogies between phenomena of a different order suggest themselves and set the imagination in motion; the mind is haunted with the sense of a vast unity not yet discoverable or nameable. There is food for contemplation which never runs short; you are gazing at an object which is always growing clearer, and yet always, in the very act of growing clearer, presenting new mysteries.
From 'Natural History', Macmillan's Magazine (1875), 31, 366.
Science quotes on:  |  Act (278)  |  Analogy (76)  |  Appearance (145)  |  Clearer (4)  |  Confusion (61)  |  Contemplation (75)  |  Continuing (4)  |  Different (595)  |  Discerning (16)  |  Discover (571)  |  Food (213)  |  Gaze (23)  |  Glimmer (5)  |  Growing (99)  |  Half (63)  |  Haunting (3)  |  Imagination (349)  |  Law (913)  |  Mind (1377)  |  Motion (320)  |  Mystery (188)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Never (1089)  |  New (1273)  |  Object (438)  |  Order (638)  |  Phenomenon (334)  |  Pleasure (191)  |  Presenting (2)  |  Regularity (40)  |  Run (158)  |  Sense (785)  |  Set (400)  |  Short (200)  |  Study (701)  |  Suggestion (49)  |  Themselves (433)  |  Through (846)  |  Unity (81)  |  Vast (188)

I consider the differences between man and animals in propensities, feelings, and intellectual faculties, to be the result of the same cause as that which we assign for the variations in other functions, viz. difference of organization; and that the superiority of man in rational endowments is not greater than the more exquisite, complicated, and perfectly developed structure of his brain, and particularly of his ample cerebral hemispheres, to which the rest of the animal kingdom offers no parallel, nor even any near approximation, is sufficient to account for.
Lectures on Physiology, Zoology, and the Natural History of Man (1819), 237.
Science quotes on:  |  Account (195)  |  Animal (651)  |  Animal Kingdom (21)  |  Approximation (32)  |  Brain (281)  |  Cause (561)  |  Complicated (117)  |  Consider (428)  |  Develop (278)  |  Difference (355)  |  Endowment (16)  |  Feeling (259)  |  Feelings (52)  |  Function (235)  |  Greater (288)  |  Intellect (251)  |  Intellectual (258)  |  Kingdom (80)  |  Man (2252)  |  Man And Animals (7)  |  More (2558)  |  Offer (142)  |  Organization (120)  |  Other (2233)  |  Parallel (46)  |  Rational (95)  |  Rest (287)  |  Result (700)  |  Structure (365)  |  Sufficient (133)  |  Superiority (19)  |  Variation (93)

I have occasionally had the exquisite thrill of putting my finger on a little capsule of truth, and heard it give the faint squeak of mortality under my pressure.
Letter to Stanley Hart White (Jan 1929), collected in The Letters of E.B. White (1976, 1989), 85.
Science quotes on:  |  Capsule (7)  |  Faint (10)  |  Finger (48)  |  Hear (144)  |  Little (717)  |  Mortality (16)  |  Occasional (23)  |  Pressure (69)  |  Squeak (3)  |  Thrill (26)  |  Truth (1109)

I venture to assert that the feelings one has when the beautiful symbolism of the infinitesimal calculus first gets a meaning, or when the delicate analysis of Fourier has been mastered, or while one follows Clerk Maxwell or Thomson into the strange world of electricity, now growing so rapidly in form and being, or can almost feel with Stokes the pulsations of light that gives nature to our eyes, or track with Clausius the courses of molecules we can measure, even if we know with certainty that we can never see them I venture to assert that these feelings are altogether comparable to those aroused in us by an exquisite poem or a lofty thought.
In paper (May 1891) read before Bath Branch of the Teachers’ Guild, published in The Practical Teacher (July 1891), reprinted as 'Geometry', in Frederic Spencer, Chapters on the Aims and Practice of Teaching (1897), 194.
Science quotes on:  |  Analysis (244)  |  Arouse (13)  |  Assert (69)  |  Beautiful (271)  |  Being (1276)  |  Calculus (65)  |  Certainty (180)  |  Rudolf Clausius (9)  |  Clerk (13)  |  Comparable (7)  |  Course (413)  |  Delicate (45)  |  Electricity (168)  |  Eye (440)  |  Feel (371)  |  Feeling (259)  |  Feelings (52)  |  First (1302)  |  Follow (389)  |  Form (976)  |  Growing (99)  |  Infinitesimal (30)  |  Infinitesimal Calculus (2)  |  Know (1538)  |  Light (635)  |  Lofty (16)  |  Master (182)  |  Mathematics As A Fine Art (23)  |  Maxwell (42)  |  James Clerk Maxwell (91)  |  Meaning (244)  |  Measure (241)  |  Molecule (185)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Never (1089)  |  Poem (104)  |  Pulsation (4)  |  Rapidly (67)  |  See (1094)  |  Sir George Gabriel Stokes (3)  |  Strange (160)  |  Symbolism (5)  |  Sir J.J. Thomson (18)  |  Thought (995)  |  Track (42)  |  World (1850)

If Nicolaus Copernicus, the distinguished and incomparable master, in this work had not been deprived of exquisite and faultless instruments, he would have left us this science far more well-established. For he, if anybody, was outstanding and had the most perfect understanding of the geometrical and arithmetical requisites for building up this discipline. Nor was he in any respect inferior to Ptolemy; on the contrary, he surpassed him greatly in certain fields, particularly as far as the device of fitness and compendious harmony in hypotheses is concerned. And his apparently absurd opinion that the Earth revolves does not obstruct this estimate, because a circular motion designed to go on uniformly about another point than the very center of the circle, as actually found in the Ptolemaic hypotheses of all the planets except that of the Sun, offends against the very basic principles of our discipline in a far more absurd and intolerable way than does the attributing to the Earth one motion or another which, being a natural motion, turns out to be imperceptible. There does not at all arise from this assumption so many unsuitable consequences as most people think.
From Letter (20 Jan 1587) to Christopher Rothman, chief astronomer of the Landgrave of Hesse. Webmaster seeks more information to better cite this source — please contact if you can furnish more. Webmaster originally found this quote introduced by an uncredited anonymous commentary explaining the context: “It was not just the Church that resisted the heliocentrism of Copernicus. Many prominent figures, in the decades following the 1543 publication of De Revolutionibus, regarded the Copernican model of the universe as a mathematical artifice which, though it yielded astronomical predictions of superior accuracy, could not be considered a true representation of physical reality.”
Science quotes on:  |  Absurd (60)  |  Accuracy (81)  |  Against (332)  |  Anybody (42)  |  Arise (162)  |  Assumption (96)  |  Basic (144)  |  Being (1276)  |  Building (158)  |  Certain (557)  |  Church (64)  |  Circle (117)  |  Circular (19)  |  Circular Motion (7)  |  Concern (239)  |  Consequence (220)  |  Consider (428)  |  Contrary (143)  |  Nicolaus Copernicus (54)  |  Decade (66)  |  Design (203)  |  Device (71)  |  Discipline (85)  |  Distinguish (168)  |  Distinguished (84)  |  Earth (1076)  |  Estimate (59)  |  Field (378)  |  Figure (162)  |  Harmony (105)  |  Heliocentric Model (7)  |  Inferior (37)  |  Instrument (158)  |  Master (182)  |  Model (106)  |  More (2558)  |  Most (1728)  |  Motion (320)  |  Natural (810)  |  Offend (7)  |  Opinion (291)  |  Outstanding (16)  |  People (1031)  |  Perfect (223)  |  Physical (518)  |  Planet (402)  |  Point (584)  |  Prediction (89)  |  Principle (530)  |  Ptolemy (19)  |  Publication (102)  |  Reality (274)  |  Regard (312)  |  Representation (55)  |  Respect (212)  |  Revolve (26)  |  Solar System (81)  |  Sun (407)  |  Superior (88)  |  Surpass (33)  |  Think (1122)  |  Turn (454)  |  Understanding (527)  |  Universe (900)  |  Way (1214)  |  Well-Established (6)  |  Work (1402)  |  Yield (86)

It seems to me what is called for is an exquisite balance between two conflicting needs: the most skeptical scrutiny of all hypotheses that are served up to us and at the same time a great openness to new ideas … If you are only skeptical, then no new ideas make it through to you … On the other hand, if you are open to the point of gullibility and have not an ounce of skeptical sense in you, then you cannot distinguish the useful ideas from the worthless ones.
In 'The Burden of Skepticism', Skeptical Inquirer (Fall 1987), 12, No. 1.
Science quotes on:  |  Balance (82)  |  Call (781)  |  Conflicting (13)  |  Distinguish (168)  |  Great (1610)  |  Gullibility (3)  |  Hypothesis (314)  |  Idea (881)  |  Most (1728)  |  Need (320)  |  New (1273)  |  On The Other Hand (40)  |  Open (277)  |  Openness (8)  |  Other (2233)  |  Point (584)  |  Scrutiny (15)  |  Sense (785)  |  Skeptical (21)  |  Through (846)  |  Time (1911)  |  Two (936)  |  Useful (260)  |  Worthless (22)

Knowledge and wonder are the dyad of our worthy lives as intellectual beings. Voyager did wonders for our knowledge, but performed just as mightily in the service of wonder–and the two elements are complementary, not independent or opposed. The thought fills me with awe–a mechanical contraption that could fit in the back of a pickup truck, traveling through space for twelve years, dodging around four giant bodies and their associated moons, and finally sending exquisite photos across more than four light-hours of space from the farthest planet in our solar system.
…...
Science quotes on:  |  Across (32)  |  Associate (25)  |  Awe (43)  |  Back (395)  |  Being (1276)  |  Body (557)  |  Complementary (15)  |  Contraption (3)  |  Dodge (3)  |  Element (322)  |  Far (158)  |  Fill (67)  |  Finally (26)  |  Fit (139)  |  Giant (73)  |  Hour (192)  |  Independent (74)  |  Intellectual (258)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Light (635)  |  Live (650)  |  Mechanical (145)  |  Mightily (2)  |  Moon (252)  |  More (2558)  |  Oppose (27)  |  Perform (123)  |  Planet (402)  |  Send (23)  |  Service (110)  |  Solar System (81)  |  Space (523)  |  System (545)  |  Thought (995)  |  Through (846)  |  Travel (125)  |  Truck (3)  |  Two (936)  |  Voyager (3)  |  Wonder (251)  |  Worthy (35)  |  Year (963)

Life is order, death is disorder. A fundamental law of Nature states that spontaneous chemical changes in the universe tend toward chaos. But life has, during milliards of years of evolution, seemingly contradicted this law. With the aid of energy derived from the sun it has built up the most complicated systems to be found in the universe—living organisms. Living matter is characterized by a high degree of chemical organisation on all levels, from the organs of large organisms to the smallest constituents of the cell. The beauty we experience when we enjoy the exquisite form of a flower or a bird is a reflection of a microscopic beauty in the architecture of molecules.
The Nobel Prize for Chemistry: Introductory Address'. Nobel Lectures: Chemistry 1981-1990 (1992), 69.
Science quotes on:  |  Aid (101)  |  Architecture (50)  |  Beauty (313)  |  Bird (163)  |  Build (211)  |  Cell (146)  |  Change (639)  |  Chaos (99)  |  Chemical (303)  |  Chemical Change (8)  |  Complicated (117)  |  Constituent (47)  |  Contradict (42)  |  Contradiction (69)  |  Death (406)  |  Degree (277)  |  Disorder (45)  |  Energy (373)  |  Evolution (635)  |  Experience (494)  |  Flower (112)  |  Form (976)  |  Fundamental (264)  |  High (370)  |  Large (398)  |  Law (913)  |  Law Of Nature (80)  |  Life (1870)  |  Living (492)  |  Matter (821)  |  Microscopic (27)  |  Molecule (185)  |  Most (1728)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Order (638)  |  Organ (118)  |  Organism (231)  |  Reflection (93)  |  Seemingly (28)  |  Spontaneous (29)  |  State (505)  |  Sun (407)  |  System (545)  |  Tend (124)  |  Universe (900)  |  Year (963)

Like the furtive collectors of stolen art, we [cell biologists] are forced to be lonely admirers of spectacular architecture, exquisite symmetry, dramas of violence and death, mobility, self-sacrifice and, yes, rococo sex.
…...
Science quotes on:  |  Admirer (9)  |  Architecture (50)  |  Art (680)  |  Biologist (70)  |  Cell (146)  |  Collector (8)  |  Death (406)  |  Drama (24)  |  Force (497)  |  Furtive (2)  |  Lonely (24)  |  Mobility (11)  |  Sacrifice (58)  |  Self (268)  |  Self-Sacrifice (5)  |  Sex (68)  |  Spectacular (22)  |  Steal (14)  |  Symmetry (44)  |  Violence (37)

Mathematics may be compared to a mill of exquisite workmanship, which grinds you stuff of any degree of fineness; but, nevertheless, what you get out depends upon what you put in; and as the grandest mill in the world will not extract wheat-flour from peascods, so pages of formulae will not get a definite result out of loose data.
From Anniversary Address of the President to the Geological Society, Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society (1869), l. In 'Geological Reform', Collected Essays: Discourses, Biological and Geological (1894), Vol. 8, 333.
Science quotes on:  |  Data (162)  |  Definite (114)  |  Degree (277)  |  Depend (238)  |  Extract (40)  |  Flour (4)  |  Formula (102)  |  Grandest (10)  |  Mathematics (1395)  |  Mill (16)  |  Nevertheless (90)  |  Result (700)  |  Will (2350)  |  Workmanship (7)  |  World (1850)

Nature! … The spectacle of Nature is always new, for she is always renewing the spectators. Life is her most exquisite invention; and death is her expert contrivance to get plenty of life.
As quoted by T.H. Huxley, in Norman Lockyer (ed.), 'Nature: Aphorisms by Goethe', Nature (1870), 1, 9.
Science quotes on:  |  Contrivance (12)  |  Death (406)  |  Expert (67)  |  Invention (400)  |  Life (1870)  |  Most (1728)  |  Nature (2017)  |  New (1273)  |  Plenty (5)  |  Renew (20)  |  Spectacle (35)  |  Spectator (11)

Neutrinos, they are very small
They have no charge and have no mass
And do not interact at all.
The earth is just a silly ball
To them, through which they simply pass,
Like dustmaids down a drafty hall
Or photons through a sheet of glass.
They snub the most exquisite gas,
Ignore the most substantial wall,
Cold-shoulder steel and sounding brass,
Insult the stallion in his stall,
And, scorning barriers of class,
Infiltrate you and me! Like tall
And painless guillotines, they fall
Down through our heads into the grass.
At night, they enter at Nepal
And pierce the lover and his lass
From underneath the bed—you call
It wonderful; I call it crass.
In poem 'Cosmic Gall', The New Yorker (17 Dec 1960). Collected in Telephone Poles and Other Poems (1964), 5. Note: In fact, about 1014 neutrinos from the Sun and 103 neutrinos in cosmic rays pass through our bodies each second. Neutrinos are now known to have a very small amount of mass, and they do interact (through the weak force).
Science quotes on:  |  Ball (64)  |  Barrier (34)  |  Bed (25)  |  Brass (5)  |  Call (781)  |  Charge (63)  |  Class (168)  |  Cold (115)  |  Do (1905)  |  Down (455)  |  Earth (1076)  |  Enter (145)  |  Fall (243)  |  Gas (89)  |  Glass (94)  |  Grass (49)  |  Guillotine (5)  |  Ignore (52)  |  Insult (16)  |  Interaction (47)  |  Lover (11)  |  Mass (160)  |  Most (1728)  |  Neutrino (11)  |  Pass (241)  |  Photon (11)  |  Pierce (4)  |  Shoulder (33)  |  Silly (17)  |  Small (489)  |  Stall (3)  |  Steel (23)  |  Substantial (24)  |  Through (846)  |  Wall (71)  |  Wonderful (155)

So says the most ancient book of the Earth; thus it is written on its leaves of marble, lime, sand, slate, and clay: ... that our Earth has fashioned itself, from its chaos of substances and powers, through the animating warmth of the creative spirit, to a peculiar and original whole, by a series of preparatory revolutions, till at last the crown of its creation, the exquisite and tender creature man, was enabled to appear.
Outlines of a Philosophy of the History of Man (1803). Translated from 1784 Original, Vol. I, Book 10, 465-6.
Science quotes on:  |  Ancient (198)  |  Book (413)  |  Chaos (99)  |  Creation (350)  |  Creative (144)  |  Creature (242)  |  Crown (39)  |  Earth (1076)  |  Evolution (635)  |  Geology (240)  |  Last (425)  |  Man (2252)  |  Marble (21)  |  Most (1728)  |  Peculiar (115)  |  Power (771)  |  Revolution (133)  |  Sand (63)  |  Say (989)  |  Series (153)  |  Slate (6)  |  Spirit (278)  |  Substance (253)  |  Through (846)  |  Warmth (21)  |  Whole (756)

The chief pleasure [in eating] does not consist in costly seasoning, or exquisite flavor, but in yourself.
Horace
In Maturin Murray Ballou (ed.) Treasury of Thought: Forming an Encyclopædia of Quotations from Ancient and Modern Authors (1871), 125.
Science quotes on:  |  Chief (99)  |  Consist (223)  |  Dietetics (4)  |  Eating (46)  |  Flavor (8)  |  Pleasure (191)

The inventor who is often misunderstood and unrewarded … finds ample compensation in the pleasing exercises of his powers and in the knowledge of being one of that exceptionally privileged class without whom the race would have long ago perished in the bitter struggle against pitiless elements. Speaking for myself, I have already had more than my full measure of this exquisite enjoyment, so much that for many years my life was little short of continuous rapture.
In 'My Early Life', My Inventions: And Other Writings (2016), 1. Originally published in serial form in Part 1, 'My Inventions', Electrical Experimenter magazine (1919).
Science quotes on:  |  Compensation (8)  |  Enjoyment (37)  |  Inventor (79)  |  Perish (56)  |  Rapture (8)  |  Struggle (111)

The Principle of Uncertainty is a bad name. In science or outside of it we are not uncertain; our knowledge is merely confined, within a certain tolerance. We should call it the Principle of Tolerance. And I propose that name in two senses: First, in the engineering sense, science has progressed, step by step, the most successful enterprise in the ascent of man, because it has understood that the exchange of information between man and nature, and man and man, can only take place with a certain tolerance. But second, I also use the word, passionately, about the real world. All knowledge, all information between human beings, can only be exchanged within a play of tolerance. And that is true whether the exchange is in science, or in literature, or in religion, or in politics, or in any form of thought that aspires to dogma. It’s a major tragedy of my lifetime and yours that scientists were refining, to the most exquisite precision, the Principle of Tolerance, and turning their backs on the fact that all around them, tolerance was crashing to the ground beyond repair. The Principle of Uncertainty or, in my phrase, the Principle of Tolerance, fixed once for all the realization that all knowledge is limited. It is an irony of history that at the very time when this was being worked out there should rise, under Hitler in Germany and other tyrants elsewhere, a counter-conception: a principle of monstrous certainty. When the future looks back on the 1930s it will think of them as a crucial confrontation of culture as I have been expounding it, the ascent of man, against the throwback to the despots’ belief that they have absolute certainty. It is said that science will dehumanize people and turn them into numbers. That is false: tragically false. Look for yourself. This is the concentration camp and crematorium at Auschwitz. This is where people were turned into numbers. Into this pond were flushed the ashes of four million people. And that was not done by gas. It was done by arrogance. It was done by dogma. It was done by ignorance. When people believe that they have absolute knowledge, with no test in reality this is how they behave. This is what men do when they aspire to the knowledge of gods. Science is a very human form of knowledge. We are always at the brink of the known; we always feel forward for what is to be hoped. Every judgment in science stands on the edge of error, and is personal. Science is a tribute to what we can know although we are fallible. In the end, the words were said by Oliver Cromwell: “I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ: Think it possible you may be mistaken.” We have to cure ourselves of the itch for absolute knowledge and power. We have to close the distance between the push-button order and the human act. We have to touch people. [Referring to Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle.]
'Knowledge or Certainty,' episode 11, The Ascent of Man (1972), BBC TV series.
Science quotes on:  |  Absolute (153)  |  Act (278)  |  Against (332)  |  Arrogance (22)  |  Ascent Of Man (7)  |  Aspire (15)  |  Auschwitz (5)  |  Back (395)  |  Bad (185)  |  Being (1276)  |  Belief (615)  |  Beseech (3)  |  Beyond (316)  |  Bowel (17)  |  Call (781)  |  Camp (12)  |  Certain (557)  |  Certainty (180)  |  Christ (17)  |  Concentration (29)  |  Conception (160)  |  Confrontation (7)  |  Culture (157)  |  Cure (124)  |  Distance (171)  |  Do (1905)  |  Dogma (49)  |  Edge (51)  |  End (603)  |  Engineering (188)  |  Enterprise (56)  |  Error (339)  |  Exchange (38)  |  Fact (1257)  |  Fallible (6)  |  Feel (371)  |  First (1302)  |  Form (976)  |  Forward (104)  |  Future (467)  |  Gas (89)  |  God (776)  |  Ground (222)  |  History (716)  |  Human (1512)  |  Human Being (185)  |  Ignorance (254)  |  Information (173)  |  Itch (11)  |  Judgment (140)  |  Know (1538)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Known (453)  |  Limit (294)  |  Limited (102)  |  Literature (116)  |  Look (584)  |  Major (88)  |  Man (2252)  |  Merely (315)  |  Most (1728)  |  Name (359)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Number (710)  |  Order (638)  |  Other (2233)  |  Ourselves (247)  |  Outside (141)  |  People (1031)  |  Phrase (61)  |  Politics (122)  |  Pond (17)  |  Possible (560)  |  Power (771)  |  Precision (72)  |  Principle (530)  |  Progress (492)  |  Push (66)  |  Reality (274)  |  Realization (44)  |  Refining (4)  |  Religion (369)  |  Rise (169)  |  Scientist (881)  |  Sense (785)  |  Stand (284)  |  Step (234)  |  Step By Step (11)  |  Successful (134)  |  Test (221)  |  Think (1122)  |  Thought (995)  |  Time (1911)  |  Tolerance (11)  |  Touch (146)  |  Tragedy (31)  |  Tribute (10)  |  Turn (454)  |  Two (936)  |  Uncertain (45)  |  Uncertainty (58)  |  Uncertainty Principle (9)  |  Understood (155)  |  Use (771)  |  Will (2350)  |  Word (650)  |  Work (1402)  |  World (1850)

There is beauty in discovery. There is mathematics in music, a kinship of science and poetry in the description of nature, and exquisite form in a molecule. Attempts to place different disciplines in different camps are revealed as artificial in the face of the unity of knowledge. All illiterate men are sustained by the philosopher, the historian, the political analyst, the economist, the scientist, the poet, the artisan, and the musician.
From address (1958), upon being appointed Chancellor of the University of California.
Science quotes on:  |  Analyst (8)  |  Artificial (38)  |  Artisan (9)  |  Attempt (266)  |  Beauty (313)  |  Camp (12)  |  Description (89)  |  Different (595)  |  Discipline (85)  |  Discovery (837)  |  Economist (20)  |  Face (214)  |  Form (976)  |  Historian (59)  |  Illiterate (6)  |  Kinship (5)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Mathematics (1395)  |  Molecule (185)  |  Music (133)  |  Musician (23)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Philosopher (269)  |  Poet (97)  |  Poetry (150)  |  Political (124)  |  Reveal (152)  |  Revealed (59)  |  Science And Poetry (17)  |  Scientist (881)  |  Sustain (52)  |  Unity (81)

Walking the streets of Tokyo with Hawking in his wheelchair ... I felt as if I were taking a walk through Galilee with Jesus Christ [as] crowds of Japanese silently streamed after us, stretching out their hands to touch Hawking's wheelchair. ... The crowds had streamed after Einstein [on Einstein's visit to Japan in 1922] as they streamed after Hawking seventy years later. ... They showed exquisite choice in their heroes. ... Somehow they understood that Einstein and Hawking were not just great scientists, but great human beings.
Foreward to Alice Calaprice, The Quotable Einstein (1996), xiii-xiv.
Science quotes on:  |  Being (1276)  |  Choice (114)  |  Christ (17)  |  Einstein (101)  |  Albert Einstein (624)  |  Great (1610)  |  Stephen W. Hawking (62)  |  Hero (45)  |  Human (1512)  |  Human Being (185)  |  Japan (9)  |  Japanese (7)  |  Scientist (881)  |  Show (353)  |  Somehow (48)  |  Stream (83)  |  Through (846)  |  Tokyo (3)  |  Touch (146)  |  Understood (155)  |  Walk (138)  |  Year (963)

What a splendid perspective contact with a profoundly different civilization might provide! In a cosmic setting vast and old beyond ordinary human understanding we are a little lonely, and we ponder the ultimate significance, if any, of our tiny but exquisite blue planet, the Earth… In the deepest sense the search for extraterrestrial intelligence is a search for ourselves.
…...
Science quotes on:  |  Beyond (316)  |  Blue (63)  |  Civilization (220)  |  Contact (66)  |  Cosmic (74)  |  Deep (241)  |  Different (595)  |  Earth (1076)  |  Extraterrestrial (6)  |  Human (1512)  |  Intelligence (218)  |  Little (717)  |  Lonely (24)  |  Old (499)  |  Ordinary (167)  |  Ourselves (247)  |  Perspective (28)  |  Planet (402)  |  Ponder (15)  |  Profoundly (13)  |  Provide (79)  |  Search (175)  |  Sense (785)  |  Set (400)  |  Setting (44)  |  Significance (114)  |  Splendid (23)  |  Tiny (74)  |  Ultimate (152)  |  Understand (648)  |  Understanding (527)  |  Vast (188)

Where the untrained eye will see nothing but mire and dirt, Science will often reveal exquisite possibilities. The mud we tread under our feet in the street is a grimy mixture of clay and sand, soot and water. Separate the sand, however, as Ruskinn observes—let the atoms arrange themselves in peace according to their nature—and you have the opal. Separate the clay, and it becomes a white earth, fit for the finest porcelain; or if it still further purifies itself, you have a sapphire. Take the soot, and it properly treated it will give you a diamond. While lastly, the water, purified and distilled, will become a dew-drop, or crystallize into a lovely star. Or, again, you may see as you will in any shallow pool either the mud lying at the bottom, or the image of the heavens above.
The Pleasures of Life (1887, 2007), 63.
Science quotes on:  |  According (236)  |  Arrange (33)  |  Atom (381)  |  Become (821)  |  Crystallize (12)  |  Dew (10)  |  Diamond (21)  |  Dirt (17)  |  Drop (77)  |  Earth (1076)  |  Eye (440)  |  Fit (139)  |  Heaven (266)  |  Heavens (125)  |  Image (97)  |  Lying (55)  |  Mixture (44)  |  Mud (26)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Nothing (1000)  |  Observation (593)  |  Observe (179)  |  Peace (116)  |  Possibility (172)  |  Reveal (152)  |  Sand (63)  |  Sapphire (4)  |  See (1094)  |  Separate (151)  |  Soot (11)  |  Star (460)  |  Still (614)  |  Themselves (433)  |  Tread (17)  |  Untrained (2)  |  Water (503)  |  White (132)  |  Will (2350)


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.