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 seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, ... finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell ... whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.”
more quiz questions >>
Home > Category Index for Science Quotations > Category Index F > Category: Forge

Forge Quotes (10 quotes)

L'homme est bien insensé. Il ne saurait forger un ciron, et forge des Dieux à douzaines.
Man is certainly crazy. He could not make a mite, and he makes gods by the dozen.
The Complete Essays of Montaigne, trans. Donald M. Frame (1958), 834.
Science quotes on:  |  Certainly (185)  |  Crazy (27)  |  God (776)  |  Man (2252)  |  Mite (5)

Already the steam-engine works our mines, impels our ships, excavates our ports and our rivers, forges iron, fashions wood, grinds grain, spins and weaves our cloths, transports the heaviest burdens, etc. It appears that it must some day serve as a universal motor, and be substituted for animal power, waterfalls, and air currents.
'Réflexions sur la puissance motrice du feu' (1824) translated by R.H. Thurston in Reflections on the Motive Power of Fire, and on Machines Fitted to Develop that Power (1890), 38.
Science quotes on:  |  Air (366)  |  Already (226)  |  Animal (651)  |  Burden (30)  |  Cloth (6)  |  Current (122)  |  Energy (373)  |  Engine (99)  |  Excavation (8)  |  Fashioning (2)  |  Grain (50)  |  Grind (11)  |  Impelling (2)  |  Iron (99)  |  Mine (78)  |  Motor (23)  |  Must (1525)  |  Port (2)  |  Power (771)  |  River (140)  |  Serving (15)  |  Ship (69)  |  Spin (26)  |  Spinning (18)  |  Steam (81)  |  Steam Engine (47)  |  Substitution (16)  |  Transport (31)  |  Universal (198)  |  Waterfall (5)  |  Weave (21)  |  Weaving (6)  |  Wood (97)  |  Work (1402)

Gather, ye nations, gather!
From forge, and mine, and mill!
Come, Science and Invention;
Come, Industry and Skill!…

Gather, ye nations, gather!
Let ancient discord cease,
And Earth, with myriad voices,
Awake the song of Peace!
From poem, 'The Festival of Labour' (1851), collected in The Poetical Works of Charles Mackay: Now for the First Time Collected Complete in One Volume (1876), 539. Written for the opening of the Great Exhibition.
Science quotes on:  |  Ancient (198)  |  Awake (19)  |  Cease (81)  |  Discord (10)  |  Earth (1076)  |  Festival (2)  |  Gather (76)  |  Industry (159)  |  Invention (400)  |  Labor (200)  |  Mill (16)  |  Mine (78)  |  Myriad (32)  |  Nation (208)  |  Peace (116)  |  Skill (116)  |  Song (41)  |  Voice (54)

I have to forge every sentence in the teeth of irreducible and stubborn facts.
Letter to his brother Henry James, while William was writing his Principles of Psychology. As quoted in 'The Origins of Modern Science', Science and the Modern World (1926, 2011), 3.
Science quotes on:  |  Fact (1257)  |  Facts (553)  |  Irreducible (7)  |  Sentence (35)  |  Stubborn (14)  |  Teeth (43)  |  Write (250)

It is our previous knowledge that must forge the links of connexion between what is given and what is required.
In Induction (1870), 422. Paraphrased by John Tindell when quoting Bain as: “Your present knowledge must forge the links of connection between what has been already achieved and what is now required.” in Fragments of Science for Unscientific People: A Series of Detached Essays (1874), 129.
Science quotes on:  |  Connection (171)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Link (48)  |  Previous (17)  |  Require (229)

It is the tension between the scientist’s laws and his own attempted breaches of them that powers the engines of science and makes it forge ahead.
In Quiddities (1987).
Science quotes on:  |  Attempt (266)  |  Engine (99)  |  Law (913)  |  Power (771)  |  Scientist (881)  |  Tension (24)

My interest in the biology of tissue and organ transplantation arose from my [WW II] military experience at Valley Forge General Hospital in Pennsylvania … a major plastic surgical center. While there, I spent all my available spare time on the plastic surgical wards which were jammed with hundreds of battle casualties. I enjoyed talking to the patients, helping with dressings, and observing the results of the imaginative reconstructive surgical operations.
As a First Lieutenant with only a nine-month surgical internship, randomly assigned to VFGH to await overseas duty. In Tore Frängsmyr and Jan E. Lindsten (eds.), Nobel Lectures: Physiology Or Medicine: 1981-1990 (1993), 556.
Science quotes on:  |  Available (80)  |  Battle (36)  |  Biography (254)  |  Biology (232)  |  Casualty (3)  |  Experience (494)  |  General (521)  |  Help (116)  |  Hospital (45)  |  Hundred (240)  |  Imaginative (9)  |  Interest (416)  |  Major (88)  |  Military (45)  |  Observe (179)  |  Operation (221)  |  Operations (107)  |  Organ (118)  |  Patient (209)  |  Plastic (30)  |  Result (700)  |  Spent (85)  |  Talk (108)  |  Talking (76)  |  Time (1911)  |  Tissue (51)  |  Transplantation (4)  |  Valley (37)  |  Ward (7)

One will weave the canvas; another will fell a tree by the light of his ax. Yet another will forge nails, and there will be others who observe the stars to learn how to navigate. And yet all will be as one. Building a boat isn’t about weaving canvas, forging nails, or reading the sky. It’s about giving a shared taste for the sea, by the light of which you will see nothing contradictory but rather a community of love.
From the French, “Celui-là tissera des toiles, l’autre dans la forêt par l’éclair de sa hache couchera l’arbre. L’autre, encore, forgera des clous, et il en sera quelque part qui observeront les étoiles afin d’apprendre à gouverner. Et tous cependant ne seront qu’un. Créer le navire ce n’est point tisser les toiles, forger les clous, lire les astres, mais bien donner le goût de la mer qui est un, et à la lumière duquel il n’est plus rien qui soit contradictoire mais communauté dans l’amour.” In Citadelle (1948), Sect. 75, 687. An English edition was published as “Wisdom of the Sands.” The translation in the subject quote is given the website quoteinvestigator.com which discusses how it may have been paraphrased anonymously to yield the commonly seen quote as “If you want to build a ship, don’t recruit the men to gather the wood, divide the work and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for vast and endless sea.”
Science quotes on:  |  Axe (16)  |  Boat (17)  |  Build (211)  |  Building (158)  |  Community (111)  |  Learn (672)  |  Light (635)  |  Love (328)  |  Nail (8)  |  Navigate (4)  |  Nothing (1000)  |  Observe (179)  |  Other (2233)  |  Reading (136)  |  Sail (37)  |  Sea (326)  |  See (1094)  |  Share (82)  |  Sky (174)  |  Star (460)  |  Stars (304)  |  Taste (93)  |  Tree (269)  |  Weave (21)  |  Weaving (6)  |  Will (2350)

Whatever is Natural doth by that appear, adorned with all imaginable Elegance and Beauty. There are such inimitable gildings and embroideries in the smallest seeds of Plants, but especially in the parts of Animals, in the head or eye of a small Fly: such accurate order and symmetry in the frame of the most minute creatures, a Lowse or a Mite, as no man were able to conceive without seeing of them. Whereas the most curious works of Art, the sharpest finest Needle, doth appear as a blunt rough bar of iron, coming from the furnace or the forge. The most accurate engravings or embossments, seem such rude bungling deformed works, as if they had been done with a Mattock or a Trowel.
In Of the Principles and Duties of Natural Religion (1675, 1699), 80.
Science quotes on:  |  Accurate (88)  |  Adornment (4)  |  Animal (651)  |  Art (680)  |  Beauty (313)  |  Coming (114)  |  Conceive (100)  |  Creature (242)  |  Curious (95)  |  Elegance (40)  |  Embroidery (2)  |  Engraving (4)  |  Eye (440)  |  Fly (153)  |  Inimitable (6)  |  Iron (99)  |  Louse (6)  |  Man (2252)  |  Mattock (2)  |  Microscope (85)  |  Minute (129)  |  Mite (5)  |  Most (1728)  |  Natural (810)  |  Order (638)  |  Plant (320)  |  Seed (97)  |  Seeing (143)  |  Small (489)  |  Symmetry (44)  |  Whatever (234)  |  Work (1402)

Yet I also appreciate that we cannot win this battle to save species and environments without forging an emotional bond between ourselves and nature as well–for we will not fight to save what we do not love (but only appreciate in some abstract sense). So let them all continue–the films, the books, the television programs, the zoos, the little half acre of ecological preserve in any community, the primary school lessons, the museum demonstrations, even ... the 6:00 A.M. bird walks. Let them continue and expand because we must have visceral contact in order to love. We really must make room for nature in our hearts.
…...
Science quotes on:  |  Abstract (141)  |  Acre (13)  |  Appreciate (67)  |  Battle (36)  |  Bird (163)  |  Bond (46)  |  Book (413)  |  Community (111)  |  Contact (66)  |  Continue (179)  |  Demonstration (120)  |  Do (1905)  |  Ecological (7)  |  Emotional (17)  |  Environment (239)  |  Expand (56)  |  Fight (49)  |  Film (12)  |  Half (63)  |  Heart (243)  |  Lesson (58)  |  Let (64)  |  Little (717)  |  Love (328)  |  Museum (40)  |  Must (1525)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Order (638)  |  Ourselves (247)  |  Preserve (91)  |  Primary (82)  |  Program (57)  |  Really (77)  |  Room (42)  |  Save (126)  |  School (227)  |  Sense (785)  |  Species (435)  |  Television (33)  |  Visceral (3)  |  Walk (138)  |  Will (2350)  |  Win (53)  |  Zoo (9)


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.