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 have no satisfaction in formulas unless I feel their arithmetical magnitude.”
more quiz questions >>
Home > Category Index for Science Quotations > Category Index F > Category: Fascinate

Fascinate Quotes (12 quotes)

Ever since I was a boy, I’ve been fascinated by crazy science and such things as perpetual motion machines and logical paradoxes. I’ve always enjoyed keeping up with those ideas. I suppose I didn’t get into it seriously until I wrote my first book, Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science. I was influenced by the Dianetics movement, now called Scientology, which was then promoted by John Campbell in Astounding Science Fiction. I was astonished at how rapidly the thing had become a cult.
In Scot Morris, 'Interview: Martin Gardner', Omni, 4, No. 4 (Jan 1982), 68.
Science quotes on:  |  Astonish (39)  |  Astonished (10)  |  Astounding (9)  |  Become (821)  |  Book (413)  |  Boy (100)  |  Call (781)  |  Crazy (27)  |  Cult (5)  |  Enjoy (48)  |  Fad (10)  |  Fallacy (31)  |  First (1302)  |  Idea (881)  |  Influence (231)  |  Logical (57)  |  Machine (271)  |  Motion (320)  |  Movement (162)  |  Name (359)  |  Paradox (54)  |  Perpetual (59)  |  Perpetual Motion (14)  |  Rapid (37)  |  Rapidly (67)  |  Science Fiction (35)  |  Suppose (158)  |  Thing (1914)  |  Write (250)

It may well be doubted whether, in all the range of science, there is any field so fascinating to the explorer—so rich in hidden treasures—so fruitful in delightful surprises—as that of Pure Mathematics. The charm lies chiefly, I think, in the absolute certainty of its results; for that is what, beyond all mental treasures, the human intellect craves for. Let us only be sure of something! More light, more light!
Written without pseudonym as Charles L. Dodgson. Opening remarks in Introduction to A New Theory of Parallels (1888, 1890), xv.
Science quotes on:  |  Absolute (153)  |  Beyond (316)  |  Certainty (180)  |  Charm (54)  |  Chiefly (47)  |  Crave (10)  |  Delightful (18)  |  Doubt (314)  |  Explorer (30)  |  Fascinating (38)  |  Field (378)  |  Fruitful (61)  |  Human (1512)  |  Human Intellect (32)  |  Intellect (251)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Lie (370)  |  Light (635)  |  Mathematics (1395)  |  Mental (179)  |  More (2558)  |  Pure (299)  |  Pure Mathematics (72)  |  Range (104)  |  Result (700)  |  Science And Mathematics (10)  |  Something (718)  |  Surprise (91)  |  Think (1122)  |  Treasure (59)

It still fascinates me to think that here in this room you have radio signals from stations all over the world going through, and we can stick up an antenna and receive them.
Recalling how his lifelong “natural interest in how things work” began as a youth, which included such activities as building a Tesla coil and assembling crystal radios. In interview, Rushworth M. Kidder, 'Grounded in Space Science', Christian Science Monitor (22 Dec 1989).
Science quotes on:  |  Antenna (5)  |  Radio (60)  |  Receive (117)  |  Room (42)  |  Signal (29)  |  Station (30)  |  Stick (27)  |  Still (614)  |  Think (1122)  |  Through (846)  |  World (1850)

Mathematics … above all other subjects, makes the student lust after knowledge, fills him, as it were, with a longing to fathom the cause of things and to employ his own powers independently; it collects his mental forces and concentrates them on a single point and thus awakens the spirit of individual inquiry, self-confidence and the joy of doing; it fascinates because of the view-points which it offers and creates certainty and assurance, owing to the universal validity of its methods. Thus, both what he receives and what he himself contributes toward the proper conception and solution of a problem, combine to mature the student and to make him skillful, to lead him away from the surface of things and to exercise him in the perception of their essence. A student thus prepared thirsts after knowledge and is ready for the university and its sciences. Thus it appears, that higher mathematics is the best guide to philosophy and to the philosophic conception of the world (considered as a self-contained whole) and of one’s own being.
In Die Mathematik die Fackelträgerin einer neuen Zeit (1889), 40. As translated in Robert Édouard Moritz, Memorabilia Mathematica; Or, The Philomath’s Quotation-book (1914), 49.
Science quotes on:  |  Appear (122)  |  Assurance (17)  |  Awaken (17)  |  Being (1276)  |  Best (467)  |  Both (496)  |  Cause (561)  |  Certainty (180)  |  Collect (19)  |  Combine (58)  |  Concentrate (28)  |  Conception (160)  |  Confidence (75)  |  Consider (428)  |  Contribute (30)  |  Create (245)  |  Doing (277)  |  Employ (115)  |  Essence (85)  |  Exercise (113)  |  Fathom (15)  |  Fill (67)  |  Force (497)  |  Guide (107)  |  Himself (461)  |  Independently (24)  |  Individual (420)  |  Inquiry (88)  |  Joy (117)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Lead (391)  |  Long (778)  |  Longing (19)  |  Lust (7)  |  Mathematics (1395)  |  Mature (17)  |  Mental (179)  |  Method (531)  |  Offer (142)  |  Other (2233)  |  Owe (71)  |  Owing (39)  |  Perception (97)  |  Philosophic (6)  |  Philosophy (409)  |  Point (584)  |  Power (771)  |  Prepare (44)  |  Problem (731)  |  Proper (150)  |  Ready (43)  |  Receive (117)  |  Self (268)  |  Self-Confidence (11)  |  Self-Contained (3)  |  Single (365)  |  Skillful (17)  |  Solution (282)  |  Spirit (278)  |  Student (317)  |  Subject (543)  |  Surface (223)  |  Thing (1914)  |  Thirst (11)  |  Universal (198)  |  University (130)  |  Validity (50)  |  Value Of Mathematics (60)  |  View (496)  |  Whole (756)  |  World (1850)

The beauty of natural history programmes is that you can be straightforward and fascinate the 7s and the 70s. If you just present it as it is, all kinds of people of all ages and all educational backgrounds love it. That’s the joy of natural history—it’s a godsend for blokes like me.
In Rowan Hooper, 'One Minute With… David Attenborough', New Scientist (2 Feb 2013), 217, No. 2902, 25.
Science quotes on:  |  Age (509)  |  Background (44)  |  Beauty (313)  |  Education (423)  |  History (716)  |  Joy (117)  |  Kind (564)  |  Love (328)  |  Natural (810)  |  Natural History (77)  |  People (1031)  |  Present (630)  |  Program (57)  |  Straightforward (10)

The game of chess has always fascinated mathematicians, and there is reason to suppose that the possession of great powers of playing that game is in many features very much like the possession of great mathematical ability. There are the different pieces to learn, the pawns, the knights, the bishops, the castles, and the queen and king. The board possesses certain possible combinations of squares, as in rows, diagonals, etc. The pieces are subject to certain rules by which their motions are governed, and there are other rules governing the players. … One has only to increase the number of pieces, to enlarge the field of the board, and to produce new rules which are to govern either the pieces or the player, to have a pretty good idea of what mathematics consists.
In Book review, 'What is Mathematics?', Bulletin American Mathematical Society (May 1912), 18, 386-387.
Science quotes on:  |  Ability (162)  |  Bishop (3)  |  Board (13)  |  Castle (5)  |  Certain (557)  |  Chess (27)  |  Combination (150)  |  Consist (223)  |  Diagonal (3)  |  Different (595)  |  Enlarge (37)  |  Feature (49)  |  Field (378)  |  Game (104)  |  Good (906)  |  Govern (66)  |  Governing (20)  |  Great (1610)  |  Idea (881)  |  Increase (225)  |  King (39)  |  Knight (6)  |  Learn (672)  |  Mathematician (407)  |  Mathematics (1395)  |  Motion (320)  |  New (1273)  |  Number (710)  |  Other (2233)  |  Pawn (2)  |  Piece (39)  |  Play (116)  |  Player (9)  |  Playing (42)  |  Possess (157)  |  Possession (68)  |  Possible (560)  |  Power (771)  |  Pretty (21)  |  Produce (117)  |  Queen (14)  |  Reason (766)  |  Row (9)  |  Rule (307)  |  Square (73)  |  Subject (543)  |  Suppose (158)

The larger our great cities grow, the more irresistible becomes the attraction which they exert on the children of the country, who are fascinated by them, as the birds are fascinated by the lighthouse or the moths by the candle.
In The Task of Social Hygiene (1912), 178.
Science quotes on:  |  Attraction (61)  |  Become (821)  |  Bird (163)  |  Candle (32)  |  Child (333)  |  Children (201)  |  City (87)  |  Civil Engineering (5)  |  Country (269)  |  Exert (40)  |  Great (1610)  |  Grow (247)  |  Irresistible (17)  |  Larger (14)  |  Lighthouse (6)  |  More (2558)  |  Moth (5)

The mathematician is fascinated with the marvelous beauty of the forms he constructs, and in their beauty he finds everlasting truth.
In Lectures on the Philosophy of Mathematics (1918), 194. This quote by J.B. Shaw is also seen incorrectly attributed to G.B. Shaw, or George Bernard Shaw.
Science quotes on:  |  Beauty (313)  |  Construct (129)  |  Everlasting (11)  |  Find (1014)  |  Form (976)  |  Marvelous (31)  |  Mathematician (407)  |  Truth (1109)

The slow rejection of the foreign skin grafts fascinated me. How could the host distinguish another person's skin from his own?
Recalling his experience during WW II when assigned to a plastic surgery ward of an army hospital. In Tore Frängsmyr and Jan E. Lindsten (eds.), Nobel Lectures: Physiology Or Medicine: 1981-1990 (1993), 556.
Science quotes on:  |  Distinguish (168)  |  Foreign (45)  |  Graft (4)  |  Host (16)  |  Person (366)  |  Rejection (36)  |  Skin (48)  |  Slow (108)

The view of the Earth from the Moon fascinated me - a small disk, 240,000 miles away… Raging nationalistic interests, famines, wars, pestilence don’t show from that distance.
…...
Science quotes on:  |  Disk (3)  |  Distance (171)  |  Earth (1076)  |  Famine (18)  |  Interest (416)  |  Mile (43)  |  Moon (252)  |  Nationalistic (2)  |  Pestilence (14)  |  Rage (10)  |  Show (353)  |  Small (489)  |  View (496)  |  War (233)

There are few enough people with sufficient independence to see the weaknesses and follies of their contemporaries and remain themselves untouched by them. And these isolated few usually soon lose their zeal for putting things to rights when they have come face to face with human obduracy. Only to a tiny minority is it given to fascinate their generation by subtle humour and grace and to hold the mirror up to it by the impersonal agency of art. To-day I salute with sincere emotion the supreme master of this method, who has delighted–and educated–us all.
…...
Science quotes on:  |  Agency (14)  |  Art (680)  |  Contemporary (33)  |  Delight (111)  |  Educate (14)  |  Emotion (106)  |  Enough (341)  |  Face (214)  |  Face To Face (4)  |  Folly (44)  |  Generation (256)  |  Give (208)  |  Grace (31)  |  Hold (96)  |  Human (1512)  |  Humour (116)  |  Impersonal (5)  |  Independence (37)  |  Isolate (24)  |  Lose (165)  |  Master (182)  |  Method (531)  |  Minority (24)  |  Mirror (43)  |  People (1031)  |  Remain (355)  |  Right (473)  |  Salute (3)  |  See (1094)  |  Sincere (4)  |  Soon (187)  |  Subtle (37)  |  Sufficient (133)  |  Supreme (73)  |  Themselves (433)  |  Thing (1914)  |  Tiny (74)  |  To-Day (6)  |  Untouched (5)  |  Usually (176)  |  Weakness (50)  |  Zeal (12)

We see a universe marvelously arranged and obeying certain laws, but only dimly understand these laws. Our limited minds cannot grasp the mysterious force that moves the constellations. I am fascinated by Spinoza’s pantheism, but admire even more his contributions to modern thought because he is the first philosopher to deal with the soul and the body as one, not two separate things.
…...
Science quotes on:  |  Admire (19)  |  Arrange (33)  |  Body (557)  |  Certain (557)  |  Constellation (18)  |  Contribution (93)  |  Deal (192)  |  Dimly (6)  |  First (1302)  |  Force (497)  |  Grasp (65)  |  Law (913)  |  Limit (294)  |  Limited (102)  |  Mind (1377)  |  Modern (402)  |  Modern Thought (4)  |  More (2558)  |  Move (223)  |  Mysterious (83)  |  Obey (46)  |  Philosopher (269)  |  See (1094)  |  Separate (151)  |  Soul (235)  |  Spinoza (11)  |  Spinozas (2)  |  Thing (1914)  |  Thought (995)  |  Two (936)  |  Understand (648)  |  Universe (900)


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.