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: “Dangerous... to take shelter under a tree, during a thunder-gust. It has been fatal to many, both men and beasts.”
more quiz questions >>
Home > Category Index for Science Quotations > Category Index F > Category: Fruit

Fruit Quotes (108 quotes)

[1155] Mechanics are the Paradise of mathematical science, because here we come to the fruits of mathematics.
Notebook E (1513), folio 8 back. In the original Italian: “La meccanica è il paradiso delle sciētie matematiche, perchè cō quella si viene al frutto matematico.” English and Italian in Jean Paul Richter (trans.), 'Philosophical Maxims: Of Mechanics', The Literary Works of Leonardo da Vinci (1883), Vol. 1, Part 2, 289, Aphorism 1155. [Note: da Vinci wrote ē=en, ō=on] Also translated as “Mechanics is the paradise of the mathematical sciences, because by means of it one comes to the fruits of mathematics,” in Edward McCurdy, The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci (1939, 1958), Vol. 1, 613.
Science quotes on:  |  Mathematics (1395)  |  Means (587)  |  Mechanic (120)  |  Mechanics (137)  |  Paradise (15)

[Newton is the] British physicist linked forever in the schoolboy mind with an apple that fell and bore fruit throughout physics.
Anonymous
As given in Patricia Fara, Newton: The Making of Genius (2004), 192.
Science quotes on:  |  Apple (46)  |  Bearing (10)  |  Britain (26)  |  British (42)  |  Fall (243)  |  Forever (111)  |  Link (48)  |  Mind (1377)  |  Myth (58)  |  Sir Isaac Newton (363)  |  Physic (515)  |  Physicist (270)  |  Physics (564)  |  Schoolboy (9)  |  Throughout (98)

[Regarding evolution believers:] Their business is not with the possible, but the actual—not with a world which might be, but with a world that is. This they explore with a courage not unmixed with reverence, and according to methods which, like the quality of a tree, are tested by their fruits. They have but one desire—to know the truth. They have but one fear—to believe a lie.
'Scientific Use of the Imagination', Discourse Delivered Before the British Association at Liverpool, (16 Sep 1870). Fragments of Science for Unscientific People: A Series of Detached Essays, Lectures, and Reviews (1892), Vol. 2, 134.
Science quotes on:  |  Accord (36)  |  According (236)  |  Actual (118)  |  Actuality (6)  |  Believer (26)  |  Business (156)  |  Courage (82)  |  Desire (212)  |  Evolution (635)  |  Exploration (161)  |  Fear (212)  |  Know (1538)  |  Lie (370)  |  Method (531)  |  Mixture (44)  |  Possibility (172)  |  Possible (560)  |  Quality (139)  |  Reverence (29)  |  Test (221)  |  Tree (269)  |  Truth (1109)  |  World (1850)

[The body of law] has taxed the deliberative spirit of ages. The great minds of the earth have done it homage. It was the fruit of experience. Under it men prospered, all the arts flourished, and society stood firm. Every right and duty could be understood because the rules regulating each had their foundation in reason, in the nature and fitness of things; were adapted to the wants of our race, were addressed to the mind and to the heart; were like so many scraps of logic articulate with demonstration. Legislation, it is true occasionally lent its aid, but not in the pride of opinion, not by devising schemes inexpedient and untried, but in a deferential spirit, as a subordinate co-worker.
From biographical preface by T. Bigelow to Austin Abbott (ed.), Official Report of the Trial of Henry Ward Beecher (1875), Vol. 1, xii.
Science quotes on:  |  Adapt (70)  |  Age (509)  |  Aid (101)  |  Art (680)  |  Arts (3)  |  Body (557)  |  Deference (2)  |  Deliberation (5)  |  Demonstration (120)  |  Duty (71)  |  Earth (1076)  |  Experience (494)  |  Firm (47)  |  Flourish (34)  |  Foundation (177)  |  Great (1610)  |  Heart (243)  |  Homage (4)  |  Law (913)  |  Legislation (10)  |  Logic (311)  |  Mind (1377)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Opinion (291)  |  Pride (84)  |  Prosper (8)  |  Race (278)  |  Reason (766)  |  Regulate (11)  |  Right (473)  |  Rule (307)  |  Scheme (62)  |  Society (350)  |  Spirit (278)  |  Subordinate (11)  |  Tax (27)  |  Thing (1914)  |  Understand (648)  |  Understood (155)  |  Want (504)

Agri non omnes frugiferi sunt.
Not all fields are fruitful.
From Tusculanae Disputationes (Tusculan Disputations) (45 BC), book 2, chap. 5, line 13. As translated in epigraph in Hagen Kleinert, Path Integrals in Quantum Mechanics, Statistics, Polymer Physics, and Financial Markets (2009), 1368. Cicero uses this as a metaphor, to illustrate that all men are not equally susceptible of improvement.
Science quotes on:  |  Field (378)  |  Fruitful (61)

Carpent tua poma nepotes
Your descendants shall gather your fruits.
Virgil
Eclogues, IX, line 50. In The Works of Virgil: Translated Into English Prose, as Near the Original as the Different Idioms of the Latin and English Languages Will Allow (1770), 46, it is translated as “Posterity shall pluck the fruit of thy plantations.”
Science quotes on:  |  Descendant (18)  |  Gather (76)  |  Gathering (23)  |  Posterity (29)

Le paradoxe, c'est de la graine de vérité. Il suffit d'un terrain propice pour que cela germe, fleurisse et fructifie.
The paradox is the seed of truth. This germ just needs a fertile ground to flourish and bear fruit.
In Recueil d'Œuvres de Léo Errera: Botanique Générale (1908), 198. Google translation by Webmaster.
Science quotes on:  |  Bear (162)  |  Bearing (10)  |  Fertile (30)  |  Fertility (23)  |  Flourish (34)  |  Germ (54)  |  Ground (222)  |  Paradox (54)  |  Seed (97)  |  Terrain (6)  |  Truth (1109)

Nos numeros sumus et fruges consumere nati.
We are but ciphers, born to consume earth’s fruits.
[Alternate: We are just statistics, born to consume resources.]
Horace
Epistles bk. 1, no. 2, 1. 27. In Satires, Epistles and Ars Poetica, trans. H. Rushton Fairclough (1926), 264-5.
Science quotes on:  |  Birth (154)  |  Consumer (6)  |  Earth (1076)  |  Statistics (170)

Ut ager quamvis fertilis sine cultura fructuosus esse non potest, sic sine doctrina animus.
A mind without instruction can no more bear fruit than can a field, however fertile, without cultivation.
In Hannis Taylor and Mary Lillie Taylor Hunt, Cicero: a Sketch of His Life and Works (2nd Ed., 1918), 597.
Science quotes on:  |  Bear (162)  |  Cultivate (24)  |  Cultivation (36)  |  Education (423)  |  Fertile (30)  |  Field (378)  |  Instruction (101)  |  Mind (1377)  |  More (2558)

Where faith commences, science ends. Both these arts of the human mind must be strictly kept apart from each other. Faith has its origin in the poetic imagination; knowledge, on the other hand, originates in the reasoning intelligence of man. Science has to pluck the blessed fruits from the tree of knowledge, unconcerned whether these conquests trench upon the poetical imaginings of faith or not.
In Ernst Haeckel and E. Ray Lankester (trans.), The History of Creation (1880), Vol. 1, 9.
Science quotes on:  |  Apart (7)  |  Art (680)  |  Bless (25)  |  Blessed (20)  |  Both (496)  |  Conquest (31)  |  End (603)  |  Faith (209)  |  Human (1512)  |  Human Mind (133)  |  Imagination (349)  |  Imagine (176)  |  Intelligence (218)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Man (2252)  |  Mind (1377)  |  Must (1525)  |  Origin (250)  |  Originate (39)  |  Other (2233)  |  Poetry (150)  |  Reasoning (212)  |  Science And Religion (337)  |  Tree (269)  |  Tree Of Knowledge (8)  |  Trench (6)

A tree is known better by its Fruit, than its Leaves.
No. 444 in Gnomologia: Adagies and Proverbs, Wise Sentences and Witty Sayings (1732), 17. Compare with No. 4280, “Such as the Tree, such is the Fruit”, p.183.
Science quotes on:  |  Identification (20)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Leaf (73)  |  Species (435)  |  Tree (269)

Activity bears fruit in habit, and the kind of activity determines the quality of the habit.
As quoted in William W. Speer, Primary Arithmetic: First Year, for the Use of Teachers (1902), 3.
Science quotes on:  |  Activity (218)  |  Bear (162)  |  Determine (152)  |  Education (423)  |  Habit (174)  |  Kind (564)  |  Quality (139)

All human affairs follow nature's great analogue, the growth of vegetation. There are three periods of growth in every plant. The first, and slowest, is the invisible growth by the root; the second and much accelerated is the visible growth by the stem; but when root and stem have gathered their forces, there comes the third period, in which the plant quickly flashes into blossom and rushes into fruit.
The beginnings of moral enterprises in this world are never to be measured by any apparent growth. ... At length comes the sudden ripeness and the full success, and he who is called in at the final moment deems this success his own. He is but the reaper and not the labourer. Other men sowed and tilled and he but enters into their labours.
Life Thoughts (1858), 20.
Science quotes on:  |  Analogue (7)  |  Apparent (85)  |  Beginning (312)  |  Blossom (22)  |  Call (781)  |  Discovery (837)  |  Enter (145)  |  Entering (3)  |  Enterprise (56)  |  Final (121)  |  First (1302)  |  Follow (389)  |  Force (497)  |  Gather (76)  |  Great (1610)  |  Growth (200)  |  Human (1512)  |  Invention (400)  |  Invisible (66)  |  Labor (200)  |  Laborer (9)  |  Measurement (178)  |  Moment (260)  |  Moral (203)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Never (1089)  |  Other (2233)  |  Period (200)  |  Plant (320)  |  Reaper (4)  |  Research (753)  |  Ripeness (2)  |  Root (121)  |  Science And Religion (337)  |  Soil (98)  |  Sowing (9)  |  Stem (31)  |  Success (327)  |  Sudden (70)  |  Vegetation (24)  |  Visible (87)  |  World (1850)

All our civilization is based on invention; before invention, men lived on fruits and nuts and pine cones and slept in caves.
Aphorism listed Frederick Seitz, The Cosmic Inventor: Reginald Aubrey Fessenden (1866-1932) (1999), 54, being Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, Held at Philadelphia For Promoting Useful Knowledge, Vol. 86, Pt. 6.
Science quotes on:  |  Cave (17)  |  Civilization (220)  |  Cone (8)  |  Invention (400)  |  Mankind (356)  |  Nut (7)  |  Pine (12)  |  Sleep (81)

All over the world there lingers on the memory of a giant tree, the primal tree, rising up from the centre of the Earth to the heavens and ordering the universe around it. It united the three worlds: its roots plunged down into subterranean abysses, Its loftiest branches touched the empyrean. Thanks to the Tree, it became possible to breathe the air; to all the creatures that then appeared on Earth it dispensed its fruit, ripened by the sun and nourished by the water which it drew from the soil. From the sky it attracted the lightning from which man made fire and, beckoning skyward, where clouds gathered around its fall. The Tree was the source of all life, and of all regeneration. Small wonder then that tree-worship was so prevalent in ancient times.
From 'L'Arbre Sacre' ('The Sacred Tree'), UNESCO Courier (Jan 1989), 4. Epigraph to Chap 1, in Kenton Miller and Laura Tangley, Trees of Life: Saving Tropical Forests and Their Biological Wealt (1991), 1.
Science quotes on:  |  Abyss (30)  |  Air (366)  |  Ancient (198)  |  Appeared (4)  |  Attracted (3)  |  Beckoning (4)  |  Branch (155)  |  Breathe (49)  |  Centre (31)  |  Cloud (111)  |  Creature (242)  |  Dispense (10)  |  Down (455)  |  Earth (1076)  |  Empyrean (3)  |  Fall (243)  |  Fire (203)  |  Gather (76)  |  Giant (73)  |  Heaven (266)  |  Heavens (125)  |  Life (1870)  |  Lightning (49)  |  Linger (14)  |  Man (2252)  |  Memory (144)  |  Nourished (2)  |  Possible (560)  |  Prevalent (4)  |  Primal (5)  |  Regeneration (5)  |  Rising (44)  |  Root (121)  |  Sky (174)  |  Skyward (2)  |  Small (489)  |  Soil (98)  |  Source (101)  |  Subterranean (2)  |  Sun (407)  |  Thank (48)  |  Thanks (26)  |  Three (10)  |  Time (1911)  |  Touch (146)  |  Tree (269)  |  United (15)  |  Universe (900)  |  Water (503)  |  Wonder (251)  |  World (1850)  |  Worship (32)

All that we can hope from these inspirations, which are the fruits of unconscious work, is to obtain points of departure for such calculations. As for the calculations themselves, they must be made in the second period of conscious work which follows the inspiration, and in which the results of the inspiration are verified and the consequences deduced.
Science and Method (1914, 2003), 62.
Science quotes on:  |  Calculation (134)  |  Consequence (220)  |  Deduction (90)  |  Departure (9)  |  Follow (389)  |  Hope (321)  |  Inspiration (80)  |  Must (1525)  |  Obtain (164)  |  Period (200)  |  Point (584)  |  Result (700)  |  Themselves (433)  |  Unconscious (24)  |  Verification (32)  |  Work (1402)

Almost daily we shudder as prophets of doom announce the impending end of civilization and universe. We are being asphyxiated, they say, by the smoke of the industry; we are suffocating in the ever growing mountain of rubbish. Every new project depicts its measureable effects and is denounced by protesters screaming about catastrophe, the upsetting of the land, the assault on nature. If we accepted this new mythology we would have to stop pushing roads through the forest, harnessing rivers to produce the electricity, breaking grounds to extract metals, enriching the soil with chemicals, killing insects, combating viruses … But progress—basically, an effort to organise a corner of land and make it more favourable for human life—cannot be baited. Without the science of pomiculture, for example, trees will bear fruits that are small, bitter, hard, indigestible, and sour. Progress is desirable.
Anonymous
Uncredited. In Lachman Mehta, Stolen Treasure (2012), 117.
Science quotes on:  |  Accept (198)  |  Announce (13)  |  Assault (12)  |  Bear (162)  |  Being (1276)  |  Bitter (30)  |  Catastrophe (35)  |  Chemical (303)  |  Civilization (220)  |  Corner (59)  |  Daily (91)  |  Desirable (33)  |  Doom (34)  |  Effect (414)  |  Effort (243)  |  Electricity (168)  |  End (603)  |  Extract (40)  |  Forest (161)  |  Ground (222)  |  Growing (99)  |  Hard (246)  |  Human (1512)  |  Human Life (32)  |  Impending (5)  |  Industry (159)  |  Insect (89)  |  Life (1870)  |  Metal (88)  |  Mining (22)  |  More (2558)  |  Mountain (202)  |  Mythology (19)  |  Nature (2017)  |  New (1273)  |  Pollution (53)  |  Progress (492)  |  Project (77)  |  Prophet (22)  |  River (140)  |  Rubbish (12)  |  Say (989)  |  Small (489)  |  Smoke (32)  |  Soil (98)  |  Sour (3)  |  Through (846)  |  Tree (269)  |  Universe (900)  |  Virus (32)  |  Will (2350)

Among natural bodies some have, and some have not, life; and by life we mean the faculties of self-nourishment, self-growth and self-decay. Thus every natural body partaking of life may be regarded as an essential existence; … but then it is an existence only in combination. … And since the organism is such a combination, being possessed of life, it cannot be the Vital Principle. Therefore it follows that the Vital Principle most be an essence, as being the form of a natural body, holding life in potentiality; but essence is a reality (entetechie). The Vital Principle is the original reality of a natural body endowed with potential life; this, however, is to be understood only of a body which may be organized. Thus the parts even of plants are organs, but they are organs that are altogether simple; as the leaf which is the covering of the pericarp, the pericarp of the fruit. If, then, there be any general formula for every kind of Vital Principle, it is—tthe primary reality of an organism.
Aristotle
In George Henry Lewes, Aristotle (1864), 231.
Science quotes on:  |  Being (1276)  |  Body (557)  |  Combination (150)  |  Covering (14)  |  Decay (59)  |  Endowed (52)  |  Essence (85)  |  Essential (210)  |  Existence (481)  |  Follow (389)  |  Form (976)  |  Formula (102)  |  General (521)  |  Growth (200)  |  Kind (564)  |  Leaf (73)  |  Life (1870)  |  Mean (810)  |  Most (1728)  |  Natural (810)  |  Nourishment (26)  |  Organ (118)  |  Organism (231)  |  Plant (320)  |  Possess (157)  |  Potential (75)  |  Potentiality (9)  |  Primary (82)  |  Principle (530)  |  Reality (274)  |  Regard (312)  |  Self (268)  |  Simple (426)  |  Understood (155)  |  Vital (89)

An experiment differs from an observation in this, that knowledge gained through observation seems to appear of itself, while that which an experiment brings us is the fruit of an effort that we make, with the object of knowing whether something exists or does not exist.
Traité sur l'expérience en médecine (1774), Vol. 1, 45. In Claude Bernard, Henry C. Greene, L. J. Henderson, An Introduction to the Study of Experimental Medicine (1957), 6.
Science quotes on:  |  Differ (88)  |  Effort (243)  |  Exist (458)  |  Experiment (736)  |  Gain (146)  |  Knowing (137)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Object (438)  |  Observation (593)  |  Something (718)  |  Through (846)

An ignorant or half-informed teacher may present science as an accumulation of unconnected facts. … To teach in that fashion is like going to the tree of science with its glorious fruit in order to pick up a handful of the dry fallen leaves from the ground.
In Inaugural Presidential Address (9 Sep 1885) to the British Association for the Advancement of Science, Aberdeen, Scotland, 'Relations of Science to the Public Weal', Report to the Fifty-Fifth Meeting of the British Association (1886), 11.
Science quotes on:  |  Accumulation (51)  |  Dry (65)  |  Fact (1257)  |  Facts (553)  |  Fallen (2)  |  Fashion (34)  |  Glorious (49)  |  Ground (222)  |  Handful (14)  |  Ignorant (91)  |  Inform (50)  |  Leaf (73)  |  Order (638)  |  Pick (16)  |  Present (630)  |  Teach (299)  |  Teacher (154)  |  Tree (269)  |  Unconnected (10)

An increase in knowledge acquired too quickly and with too little participation on one’s own part is not very fruitful: erudition can produce foliage without bearing fruit.
Aphorism 26 in Notebook C (1772-1773), as translated by R.J. Hollingdale in Aphorisms (1990). Reprinted as The Waste Books (2000), 36.
Science quotes on:  |  Acquired (77)  |  Bearing (10)  |  Erudition (7)  |  Foliage (6)  |  Fruitful (61)  |  Increase (225)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Little (717)  |  Participation (15)  |  Quickly (21)

An infinity of these tiny animals defoliate our plants, our trees, our fruits... they attack our houses, our fabrics, our furniture, our clothing, our furs ... He who in studying all the different species of insects that are injurious to us, would seek means of preventing them from harming us, would seek to cause them to perish, proposes for his goal important tasks indeed.
In J. B. Gough, 'Rene-Antoine Ferchault de Réaumur', in Charles Gillispie (ed.), Dictionary of Scientific Biography (1975), Vol. 11, 332.
Science quotes on:  |  Animal (651)  |  Attack (86)  |  Cause (561)  |  Clothing (11)  |  Difference (355)  |  Different (595)  |  Fabric (27)  |  Fur (7)  |  Furniture (8)  |  Goal (155)  |  Harm (43)  |  House (143)  |  Importance (299)  |  Indeed (323)  |  Infinity (96)  |  Injurious (14)  |  Injury (36)  |  Insect (89)  |  Mean (810)  |  Means (587)  |  Perish (56)  |  Plant (320)  |  Prevention (37)  |  Proposition (126)  |  Seek (218)  |  Seeking (31)  |  Species (435)  |  Study (701)  |  Studying (70)  |  Task (152)  |  Tiny (74)  |  Tree (269)

And God said, “Let the earth put forth vegetation, plants yielding seed, and fruit trees bearing fruit in which is their seed, each according to its kind.” And God saw that it was good. And there was evening and there was morning, a third day.
Bible
(circa 725 B.C.)
Science quotes on:  |  According (236)  |  Agriculture (78)  |  Creation (350)  |  Day (43)  |  Earth (1076)  |  Evening (12)  |  God (776)  |  Good (906)  |  Kind (564)  |  Morning (98)  |  Plant (320)  |  Saw (160)  |  Seed (97)  |  Tree (269)  |  Vegetation (24)

Bible quote: And I brought you into a plentiful country, to eat the fruit thereof and the goodness thereof; but when ye entered
Credit: Nilsy cc-by-3.0 (source)
And I brought you into a plentiful country, to eat the fruit thereof and the goodness thereof; but when ye entered, ye defiled my land, and made mine heritage an abomination.
Bible
Jeremiah 2:7, King James Bible.
Science quotes on:  |  Abomination (3)  |  Conservation (187)  |  Country (269)  |  Deforestation (50)  |  Eat (108)  |  Enter (145)  |  Goodness (26)  |  Heritage (22)  |  Land (131)  |  Mine (78)  |  Plentiful (3)  |  Pollution (53)

And there are absolutely no judgments (or rules) in Mechanics which do not also pertain to Physics, of which Mechanics is a part or type: and it is as natural for a clock, composed of wheels of a certain kind, to indicate the hours, as for a tree, grown from a certain kind of seed, to produce the corresponding fruit. Accordingly, just as when those who are accustomed to considering automata know the use of some machine and see some of its parts, they easily conjecture from this how the other parts which they do not see are made: so, from the perceptible effects and parts of natural bodies, I have attempted to investigate the nature of their causes and of their imperceptible parts.
Principles of Philosophy (1644), trans. V. R. and R. P. Miller (1983), 285-6.
Science quotes on:  |  Accustom (52)  |  Accustomed (46)  |  Attempt (266)  |  Cause (561)  |  Certain (557)  |  Clock (51)  |  Conjecture (51)  |  Do (1905)  |  Effect (414)  |  Hour (192)  |  Indicate (62)  |  Investigate (106)  |  Judgment (140)  |  Kind (564)  |  Know (1538)  |  Machine (271)  |  Mechanic (120)  |  Mechanics (137)  |  Natural (810)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Other (2233)  |  Physic (515)  |  Physics (564)  |  Rule (307)  |  See (1094)  |  Seed (97)  |  Tree (269)  |  Type (171)  |  Use (771)  |  Wheel (51)

As for France and England, with all their pre-eminence in science, the one is a den of robbers, and the other of pirates. If science produces no better fruits than tyranny, murder, rapine, and destitution of national morality, I would rather wish our country to be ignorant, honest, and estimable as our neighboring savages are.
Letter (21 Jan 1812) to John Adams. Collected in Thomas Jefferson Randolph (ed.), Memoirs, Correspondence and Private Papers (1829), Vol. 4, 173.
Science quotes on:  |  Better (493)  |  Country (269)  |  Destitution (2)  |  Eminence (25)  |  England (43)  |  Estimable (2)  |  France (29)  |  Honest (53)  |  Ignorant (91)  |  Morality (55)  |  Murder (16)  |  National (29)  |  Neighboring (5)  |  Other (2233)  |  Pirate (2)  |  Pre-eminence (4)  |  Savage (33)  |  Tyranny (15)  |  Wish (216)

Ask a follower of Bacon what [science] the new philosophy, as it was called in the time of Charles the Second, has effected for mankind, and his answer is ready; “It has lengthened life; it has mitigated pain; it has extinguished diseases; it has increased the fertility of the soil; it has given new securities to the mariner; it has furnished new arms to the warrior; it has spanned great rivers and estuaries with bridges of form unknown to our fathers; it has guided the thunderbolt innocuously from heaven to earth; it has lighted up the night with the splendour of the day; it has extended the range of the human vision; it has multiplied the power of the human muscles; it has accelerated motion; it has annihilated distance; it has facilitated intercourse, correspondence, all friendly offices, all dispatch of business; it has enabled man to descend to the depths of the sea, to soar into the air, to penetrate securely into the noxious recesses of the earth, to traverse the land in cars which whirl along without horses, to cross the ocean in ships which run ten knots an hour against the wind. These are but a part of its fruits, and of its first-fruits; for it is a philosophy which never rests, which has never attained, which is never perfect. Its law is progress. A point which yesterday was invisible is its goal to-day, and will be its starting-point to-morrow.”
From essay (Jul 1837) on 'Francis Bacon' in Edinburgh Review. In Baron Thomas Babington Macaulay and Lady Trevelyan (ed.) The Works of Lord Macaulay Complete (1871), Vol. 6, 222.
Science quotes on:  |  Acceleration (12)  |  Aeronautics (15)  |  Against (332)  |  Agriculture (78)  |  Air (366)  |  Answer (389)  |  Arm (82)  |  Arms (37)  |  Ask (420)  |  Attain (126)  |  Attainment (48)  |  Automobile (23)  |  Sir Francis Bacon (188)  |  Benefit (123)  |  Bridge (49)  |  Bridge Engineering (8)  |  Business (156)  |  Call (781)  |  Car (75)  |  Cave (17)  |  Correspondence (24)  |  Depth (97)  |  Descend (49)  |  Disease (340)  |  Distance (171)  |  Earth (1076)  |  Effect (414)  |  Electricity (168)  |  Engineering (188)  |  Estuary (3)  |  Exploration (161)  |  Extend (129)  |  Father (113)  |  Fertility (23)  |  First (1302)  |  Form (976)  |  Furnish (97)  |  Goal (155)  |  Great (1610)  |  Heaven (266)  |  Horse (78)  |  Hour (192)  |  Human (1512)  |  Invisibility (5)  |  Invisible (66)  |  Knot (11)  |  Law (913)  |  Life (1870)  |  Light (635)  |  Lighting (5)  |  Machine (271)  |  Man (2252)  |  Mankind (356)  |  Mariner (12)  |  Medicine (392)  |  Mining (22)  |  Motion (320)  |  Muscle (47)  |  Never (1089)  |  New (1273)  |  Noxious (8)  |  Ocean (216)  |  Oceanography (17)  |  Office (71)  |  Pain (144)  |  Penetrate (68)  |  Perfect (223)  |  Philosophy (409)  |  Point (584)  |  Power (771)  |  Progress (492)  |  Range (104)  |  Rest (287)  |  River (140)  |  Run (158)  |  Sea (326)  |  Ship (69)  |  Soar (23)  |  Soil (98)  |  Splendour (8)  |  Steam Engine (47)  |  Strength (139)  |  Telegraph (45)  |  Thunderbolt (7)  |  Time (1911)  |  Today (321)  |  Tomorrow (63)  |  Unknown (195)  |  Vision (127)  |  Warrior (6)  |  Whirl (10)  |  Will (2350)  |  Wind (141)  |  Yesterday (37)

Before an experiment can be performed, it must be planned—the question to nature must be formulated before being posed. Before the result of a measurement can be used, it must be interpreted—nature's answer must be understood properly. These two tasks are those of the theorist, who finds himself always more and more dependent on the tools of abstract mathematics. Of course, this does not mean that the experimenter does not also engage in theoretical deliberations. The foremost classical example of a major achievement produced by such a division of labor is the creation of spectrum analysis by the joint efforts of Robert Bunsen, the experimenter, and Gustav Kirchoff, the theorist. Since then, spectrum analysis has been continually developing and bearing ever richer fruit.
'The Meaning and Limits of Exact Science', Science (30 Sep 1949), 110, No. 2857, 325. Advance reprinting of chapter from book Max Planck, Scientific Autobiography (1949), 110.
Science quotes on:  |  Abstract (141)  |  Abstract Mathematics (9)  |  Achievement (187)  |  Analysis (244)  |  Answer (389)  |  Bearing (10)  |  Being (1276)  |  Robert Bunsen (8)  |  Classical (49)  |  Collaboration (16)  |  Continuing (4)  |  Course (413)  |  Creation (350)  |  Deliberation (5)  |  Dependence (46)  |  Development (441)  |  Division (67)  |  Effort (243)  |  Engage (41)  |  Example (98)  |  Experiment (736)  |  Experimenter (40)  |  Find (1014)  |  Formulation (37)  |  Himself (461)  |  Interpretation (89)  |  Joint (31)  |  Kirchoff_Gustav (3)  |  Labor (200)  |  Major (88)  |  Mathematics (1395)  |  Mean (810)  |  Measurement (178)  |  More (2558)  |  Must (1525)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Perform (123)  |  Performance (51)  |  Plan (122)  |  Produced (187)  |  Properly (21)  |  Question (649)  |  Result (700)  |  Richness (15)  |  Spectral Analysis (4)  |  Spectrum (35)  |  Task (152)  |  Theorist (44)  |  Tool (129)  |  Two (936)  |  Understanding (527)  |  Understood (155)  |  Use (771)

By the fruit one judges the tree; the tree of science grows exceedingly slowly; centuries elapse before one can pluck the ripe fruits; even today it is hardly possible for us to shell and appraise the kernel of the teachings that blossomed in the seventeenth century. He who sows cannot therefore judge the worth of the corn. He must have faith in the fruitfulness of the seed in order that he may follow untiringly his chosen furrow when he casts his ideas to the four winds of heaven.
As quoted in Philipp Frank, Modern Science and its Philosophy (1949), 62, which cites Évolution de la Mécanique (1903).
Science quotes on:  |  17th Century (20)  |  Appraise (2)  |  Blossom (22)  |  Cast (69)  |  Century (319)  |  Choose (116)  |  Chosen (48)  |  Corn (20)  |  Elapse (3)  |  Exceedingly (28)  |  Faith (209)  |  Follow (389)  |  Fruitfulness (2)  |  Furrow (5)  |  Grow (247)  |  Heaven (266)  |  Idea (881)  |  Judge (114)  |  Kernel (4)  |  Must (1525)  |  Order (638)  |  Pluck (5)  |  Possible (560)  |  Ripe (5)  |  Seed (97)  |  Shell (69)  |  Slowly (19)  |  Sow (11)  |  Teaching (190)  |  Teachings (11)  |  Today (321)  |  Tree (269)  |  Wind (141)  |  Worth (172)

Did Newton, dreaming in his orchard there
Beside the dreaming Witham, see the moon
Burn like a huge gold apple in the boughs
And wonder why should moons not fall like fruit?
In Watchers of the Sky (1922), 193-194.
Science quotes on:  |  Apple (46)  |  Bough (10)  |  Burn (99)  |  Burning (49)  |  Dreaming (3)  |  Fall (243)  |  Gold (101)  |  Huge (30)  |  Moon (252)  |  Sir Isaac Newton (363)  |  Orchard (4)  |  See (1094)  |  Why (491)  |  Wonder (251)  |  Wondering (3)

During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries we can see the emergence of a tension that has yet to be resolved, concerning the attitude of scientists towards the usefulness of science. During this time, scientists were careful not to stress too much their relationships with industry or the military. They were seeking autonomy for their activities. On the other hand, to get social support there had to be some perception that the fruits of scientific activity could have useful results. One resolution of this dilemma was to assert that science only contributed at the discovery stage; others, industrialists for example, could apply the results. ... Few noted the ... obvious paradox of this position; that, if scientists were to be distanced from the 'evil' effects of the applications of scientific ideas, so too should they receive no credit for the 'good' or socially beneficial, effects of their activities.
Co-author with Philip Gummett (1947- ), -British social scientist
Science, Technology and Society Today (1984), Introduction, 4.
Science quotes on:  |  Activity (218)  |  Application (257)  |  Apply (170)  |  Assert (69)  |  Attitude (84)  |  Author (175)  |  Autonomy (6)  |  British (42)  |  Dilemma (11)  |  Discovery (837)  |  Effect (414)  |  Emergence (35)  |  Evil (122)  |  Good (906)  |  Idea (881)  |  Industry (159)  |  Military (45)  |  Obvious (128)  |  Other (2233)  |  Paradox (54)  |  Perception (97)  |  Receive (117)  |  Recognition (93)  |  Relationship (114)  |  Resolution (24)  |  Result (700)  |  Scientific (955)  |  Scientist (881)  |  See (1094)  |  Social (261)  |  Stage (152)  |  Stress (22)  |  Support (151)  |  Tension (24)  |  Time (1911)  |  Useful (260)  |  Usefulness (92)

Every man should eat and drink and enjoy the fruit of all his labor; it is the gift of God.
Bible
(circa 725 B.C.)
Science quotes on:  |  Diet (56)  |  Drink (56)  |  Eat (108)  |  Gift (105)  |  God (776)  |  Labor (200)  |  Man (2252)

Everything existing in the Universe is the fruit of chance and necessity.
Diogenes Laertius IX. This was taken by Jacques Monod as the title of his book. As given by Alan L. Mackay, A Dictionary of Scientific Quotations (1992, 1994), 71.
Science quotes on:  |  Chance (244)  |  Everything (489)  |  Existence (481)  |  Necessity (197)  |  Universe (900)

Far from attempting to control science, few among the general public even seem to recognize just what “science” entails. Because lethal technologies seem to spring spontaneously from scientific discoveries, most people regard dangerous technology as no more than the bitter fruit of science, the real root of all evil.
In Jacques Cousteau and Susan Schiefelbein, The Human, the Orchid, and the Octopus: Exploring and Conserving Our Natural World (2007), 181.
Science quotes on:  |  Bitter (30)  |  Control (182)  |  Dangerous (108)  |  Discovery (837)  |  Entail (4)  |  Evil (122)  |  General (521)  |  Lethal (4)  |  More (2558)  |  Most (1728)  |  People (1031)  |  Public (100)  |  Recognize (136)  |  Regard (312)  |  Research (753)  |  Root (121)  |  Scientific (955)  |  Spontaneous (29)  |  Spring (140)  |  Technology (281)

For three million years we were hunter-gatherers, and it was through the evolutionary pressures of that way of life that a brain so adaptable and so creative eventually emerged. Today we stand with the brains of hunter-gatherers in our heads, looking out on a modern world made comfortable for some by the fruits of human inventiveness, and made miserable for others by the scandal of deprivation in the midst of plenty.
Co-author with American science writer Roger Amos Lewin (1946), Origins: What New Discoveries Reveal about the Emergence of our Species and its Possible Future (1977), 249.
Science quotes on:  |  Adaptability (7)  |  Brain (281)  |  Creative (144)  |  Creativity (84)  |  Deprivation (5)  |  Eventually (64)  |  Evolution (635)  |  Human (1512)  |  Hunter (28)  |  Hunter-Gatherer (2)  |  Inventiveness (8)  |  Life (1870)  |  Looking (191)  |  Modern (402)  |  Other (2233)  |  Pressure (69)  |  Stand (284)  |  Through (846)  |  Today (321)  |  Way (1214)  |  Way Of Life (15)  |  World (1850)  |  Year (963)

Genetics has enticed a great many explorers during the past two decades. They have labored with fruit-flies and guinea-pigs, with sweet peas and corn, with thousands of animals and plants in fact, and they have made heredity no longer a mystery but an exact science to be ranked close behind physics and chemistry in definiteness of conception. One is inclined to believe, however, that the unique magnetic attraction of genetics lies in the vision of potential good which it holds for mankind rather than a circumscribed interest in the hereditary mechanisms of the lowly species used as laboratory material. If man had been found to be sharply demarcated from the rest of the occupants of the world, so that his heritage of physical form, of physiological function, and of mental attributes came about in a superior manner setting him apart as lord of creation, interest in the genetics of the humbler organisms—if one admits the truth—would have flagged severely. Biologists would have turned their attention largely to the ways of human heredity, in spite of the fact that the difficulties encountered would have rendered progress slow and uncertain. Since this was not the case, since the laws ruling the inheritance of the denizens of the garden and the inmates of the stable were found to be applicable to prince and potentate as well, one could shut himself up in his laboratory and labor to his heart's content, feeling certain that any truth which it fell to his lot to discover had a real human interest, after all.
Mankind at the Crossroads (1923), v-vi.
Science quotes on:  |  Animal (651)  |  Applicable (31)  |  Attention (196)  |  Attraction (61)  |  Attribute (65)  |  Behind (139)  |  Biologist (70)  |  Certain (557)  |  Chemistry (376)  |  Conception (160)  |  Corn (20)  |  Creation (350)  |  Decade (66)  |  Discover (571)  |  Explorer (30)  |  Fact (1257)  |  Feeling (259)  |  Form (976)  |  Function (235)  |  Garden (64)  |  Genetic (110)  |  Genetics (105)  |  Good (906)  |  Great (1610)  |  Heart (243)  |  Heredity (62)  |  Heritage (22)  |  Himself (461)  |  Human (1512)  |  Inclined (41)  |  Inheritance (35)  |  Interest (416)  |  Labor (200)  |  Laboratory (214)  |  Law (913)  |  Lie (370)  |  Lord (97)  |  Lot (151)  |  Magnetic (44)  |  Man (2252)  |  Mankind (356)  |  Material (366)  |  Mechanism (102)  |  Mental (179)  |  Mystery (188)  |  Organism (231)  |  Past (355)  |  Physic (515)  |  Physical (518)  |  Physics (564)  |  Physiological (64)  |  Plant (320)  |  Potential (75)  |  Progress (492)  |  Rank (69)  |  Render (96)  |  Rest (287)  |  Setting (44)  |  Shut (41)  |  Slow (108)  |  Species (435)  |  Spite (55)  |  Stable (32)  |  Superior (88)  |  Sweet (40)  |  Thousand (340)  |  Truth (1109)  |  Turn (454)  |  Two (936)  |  Uncertain (45)  |  Unique (72)  |  Vision (127)  |  Way (1214)  |  World (1850)

Give me the storm and tempest of thought and action, rather than the dead calm of ignorance and faith. Banish me from Eden when you will, but first let me eat of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge.
Epigraph, title page of The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll (1902), Vol. 3. Since it is not printed with a citation, Webmaster believes it is attributable to the author of the book.
Science quotes on:  |  Action (342)  |  Banish (11)  |  Calm (32)  |  Eat (108)  |  Eden (2)  |  Faith (209)  |  First (1302)  |  Ignorance (254)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Storm (56)  |  Tempest (7)  |  Thought (995)  |  Tree (269)  |  Tree Of Knowledge (8)  |  Will (2350)

He who plants a Walnut-Tree, expects not to eat of the fruit.
No. 2401 in Gnomologia: Adagies and Proverbs, Wise Sentences and Witty Sayings (1732), 99.
Science quotes on:  |  Eat (108)  |  Eating (46)  |  Expect (203)  |  Expectation (67)  |  Plant (320)  |  Tree (269)

I do not approve of anything that tampers with natural ignorance. Ignorance is like a delicate exotic fruit; touch it and the bloom is gone. The whole theory of modern education is radically unsound. Fortunately in England, at any rate, education produces no effect whatsoever. If it did, it would prove a serious danger to the upper classes.
Lines for fictional Lady Bracknell in play, The Importance of Being Earnest. Collected in Plays (1898), 293-294. [Wilde is speaking his mind through her voice, in characteristic trenchant style, about the mind-boggling stupidity of the British aristocratic leisure class. Wilde is making a serious social and political point. Effective education could threaten the established order. If the English downtrodden poor knew anything about anything they probably would overthrow the ruling class. —condensed from sparknotes.com]
Science quotes on:  |  Approve (6)  |  Bloom (11)  |  Danger (127)  |  Delicate (45)  |  Education (423)  |  England (43)  |  Exotic (8)  |  Fortunately (9)  |  Ignorance (254)  |  Modern (402)  |  Natural (810)  |  Radical (28)  |  Serious (98)  |  Tamper (7)  |  Theory (1015)  |  Touch (146)  |  Unsound (5)

I have always found that mercy bears richer fruits than strict justice.
Quoted in Osborn Hamiline Oldroyd (ed.), Recollection by Joseph Gillespie, The Lincoln Memorial: Album-Immortelles (1882), 459.
Science quotes on:  |  Bear (162)  |  Justice (40)  |  Mercy (12)  |  Rich (66)  |  Strict (20)

I publish this Essay in its present imperfect state, in order to prevent the furacious attempts of the prowling plagiary, and the insidious pretender to chymistry, from arrogating to themselves, and assuming my invention, in plundering silence: for there are those, who, if they can not be chymical, never fail by stratagem, and mechanical means, to deprive industry of the fruits, and fame of her labours.
Preface to An Essay on Combustion with a View to a New Art of Dyeing and Painting (1794), vii-viii.
Science quotes on:  |  Attempt (266)  |  Essay (27)  |  Fail (191)  |  Fame (51)  |  Imperfect (46)  |  Industry (159)  |  Invention (400)  |  Labor (200)  |  Mean (810)  |  Means (587)  |  Mechanical (145)  |  Never (1089)  |  Order (638)  |  Plagiarism (10)  |  Present (630)  |  Prevent (98)  |  Publication (102)  |  Silence (62)  |  State (505)  |  Themselves (433)

I shall never forget the sight. The vessel of crystallization was three quarters full of slightly muddy water—that is, dilute water-glass—and from the sandy bottom there strove upwards a grotesque little landscape of variously colored growths: a confused vegetation of blue, green, and brown shoots which reminded one of algae, mushrooms, attached polyps, also moss, then mussels, fruit pods, little trees or twigs from trees, here, and there of limbs. It was the most remarkable sight I ever saw, and remarkable not so much for its profoundly melancholy nature. For when Father Leverkühn asked us what we thought of it and we timidly answered him that they might be plants: “No,” he replied, “they are not, they only act that way. But do not think the less of them. Precisely because they do, because they try as hard as they can, they are worthy of all respect.”
It turned out that these growths were entirely unorganic in their origin; they existed by virtue of chemicals from the apothecary's shop.
Description of a “chemical garden” in Doktor Faustus: The Life of the German Composer Adrian Leverkühn, as Told by a Friend, (1947), 19.
Science quotes on:  |  Act (278)  |  Algae (7)  |  Answer (389)  |  Apothecary (10)  |  Ask (420)  |  Attach (57)  |  Attached (36)  |  Brown (23)  |  Chemical (303)  |  Color (155)  |  Crystal (71)  |  Do (1905)  |  Exist (458)  |  Father (113)  |  Forget (125)  |  Glass (94)  |  Green (65)  |  Growth (200)  |  Hard (246)  |  Inorganic (14)  |  Landscape (46)  |  Little (717)  |  Melancholy (17)  |  Moss (14)  |  Most (1728)  |  Mushroom (4)  |  Mussel (2)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Never (1089)  |  Origin (250)  |  Plant (320)  |  Pod (2)  |  Polyp (4)  |  Precisely (93)  |  Respect (212)  |  Saw (160)  |  Sight (135)  |  Think (1122)  |  Thought (995)  |  Tree (269)  |  Try (296)  |  Turn (454)  |  Twig (15)  |  Upward (44)  |  Vegetation (24)  |  Vessel (63)  |  Virtue (117)  |  Water (503)  |  Way (1214)

I thought that the wisdom of our City had certainly designed the laudable practice of taking and distributing these accompts [parish records of christenings and deaths] for other and greater uses than [merely casual comments], or, at least, that some other uses might be made of them; and thereupon I ... could, and (to be short) to furnish myself with as much matter of that kind ... the which when I had reduced into tables ... so as to have a view of the whole together, in order to the more ready comparing of one Year, Season, Parish, or other Division of the City, with another, in respect of all Burials and Christnings, and of all the Diseases and Casualties happening in each of them respectively...
Moreover, finding some Truths and not-commonly-believed opinions to arise from my meditations upon these neglected Papers, I proceeded further to consider what benefit the knowledge of the same would bring to the world, ... with some real fruit from those ayrie blossoms.
From Natural and Political Observations Mentioned in a Following Index and Made upon Bills of Mortality (1662), Preface. Reproduced in Cornelius Walford, The Insurance Cyclopaedia (1871), Vol. 1, 286-287.
Science quotes on:  |  Analysis (244)  |  Arise (162)  |  Benefit (123)  |  Blossom (22)  |  Burial (8)  |  Casualty (3)  |  Certainly (185)  |  City (87)  |  Comparison (108)  |  Consider (428)  |  Data (162)  |  Death (406)  |  Design (203)  |  Disease (340)  |  Division (67)  |  Furnish (97)  |  Greater (288)  |  Happening (59)  |  Kind (564)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Matter (821)  |  Meditation (19)  |  Merely (315)  |  More (2558)  |  Myself (211)  |  Neglect (63)  |  Neglected (23)  |  Opinion (291)  |  Order (638)  |  Other (2233)  |  Paper (192)  |  Practice (212)  |  Proceed (134)  |  Record (161)  |  Respect (212)  |  Respectively (13)  |  Season (47)  |  Short (200)  |  Statistics (170)  |  Table (105)  |  Thought (995)  |  Together (392)  |  Truth (1109)  |  Use (771)  |  View (496)  |  Whole (756)  |  Wisdom (235)  |  World (1850)  |  Year (963)

I went to the trash pile at Tuskegee Institute and started my laboratory with bottles, old fruit jars and any other thing I found I could use. … [The early efforts were] worked out almost wholly on top of my flat topped writing desk and with teacups, glasses, bottles and reagents I made myself.
Manuscript fragment, no date, Box 1, George Washington Carver Papers. Cited in Linda O. McMurry, George Washington Carver, Scientist and Symbol (1982), 130.
Science quotes on:  |  Bottle (17)  |  Desk (13)  |  Early (196)  |  Effort (243)  |  Flat (34)  |  Glass (94)  |  Jar (9)  |  Laboratory (214)  |  Made (14)  |  Myself (211)  |  Old (499)  |  Other (2233)  |  Reagent (8)  |  Research (753)  |  Start (237)  |  Teacup (2)  |  Thing (1914)  |  Top (100)  |  Trash (3)  |  Tuskegee Institute (2)  |  Use (771)  |  Wholly (88)  |  Work (1402)  |  Writing (192)

If there is no solace in the fruits of our research, there is at least some consolation in the research itself. Men and women are not content to comfort themselves with tales of gods and giants, or to confine their thoughts to the daily affairs of life; they also build telescopes and satellites and accelerators and sit at their desks for endless hours working out the meaning of the data they gather.
In The First Three Minutes (1977), 154-155.
Science quotes on:  |  Accelerator (11)  |  Build (211)  |  Comfort (64)  |  Consolation (9)  |  Daily (91)  |  Data (162)  |  Desk (13)  |  Endless (60)  |  Gather (76)  |  Giant (73)  |  God (776)  |  Hour (192)  |  Life (1870)  |  Meaning (244)  |  Research (753)  |  Satellite (30)  |  Solace (7)  |  Tale (17)  |  Telescope (106)  |  Themselves (433)  |  Thought (995)  |  Work (1402)

Artificial Intelligence quote: In a grove lay Einstein one day
In a grove lay Einstein one day,
’Neath an apple tree’s inviting display.
  Hoped for insight anew,
  Like old Newton’s big clue,
But the fruit gave no eureka away.
Caricature by AI: midjourney, clipdrop. Text by Artificial Intelligence: ChatGPT. Slight text edit and prompts by Webmaster. (19 Aug 2023)
Science quotes on:  |  Apple Tree (2)  |  Beneath (68)  |  Big (55)  |  Clue (20)  |  Display (59)  |  Albert Einstein (624)  |  Eureka (13)  |  Give (208)  |  Grove (7)  |  Hope (321)  |  Insight (107)  |  Invite (10)  |  Lie (370)  |  Limerick (7)  |  New (1273)  |  Sir Isaac Newton (363)  |  Old (499)

In summary, all great work is the fruit of patience and perseverance, combined with tenacious concentration on a subject over a period of months or years.
From Reglas y Consejos sobre Investigacíon Cientifica: Los tónicos de la voluntad. (1897), as translated by Neely and Larry W. Swanson, in Advice for a Young Investigator (1999), 38.
Science quotes on:  |  Combined (3)  |  Concentration (29)  |  Great (1610)  |  Month (91)  |  Patience (58)  |  Period (200)  |  Perseverance (24)  |  Subject (543)  |  Summary (11)  |  Tenacious (2)  |  Work (1402)  |  Year (963)

In the benzene nucleus we have been given a soil out of which we can see with surprise the already-known realm of organic chemistry multiply, not once or twice but three, four, five or six times just like an equivalent number of trees. What an amount of work had suddenly become necessary, and how quickly were busy hands found to carry it out! First the eye moves up the six stems opening out from the tremendous benzene trunk. But already the branches of the neighbouring stems have become intertwined, and a canopy of leaves has developed which becomes more spacious as the giant soars upwards into the air. The top of the tree rises into the clouds where the eye cannot yet follow it. And to what an extent is this wonderful benzene tree thronged with blossoms! Everywhere in the sea of leaves one can spy the slender hydroxyl bud: hardly rarer is the forked blossom [Gabelblüte] which we call the amine group, the most frequent is the beautiful cross-shaped blossom we call the methyl group. And inside this embellishment of blossoms, what a richness of fruit, some of them shining in a wonderful blaze of color, others giving off an overwhelming fragrance.
A. W. Hofmann, after-dinner speech at Kekulé Benzolfest (Mar 1890). Trans. in W. H. Brock, O. Theodor Benfrey and Susanne Stark, 'Hofmann's Benzene Tree at the Kekulé Festivities', Journal of Chemical Education (1991), 68, 887-8.
Science quotes on:  |  Air (366)  |  Already (226)  |  Amine (2)  |  Amount (153)  |  Beautiful (271)  |  Become (821)  |  Benzene (7)  |  Blossom (22)  |  Call (781)  |  Canopy (8)  |  Carry (130)  |  Chemistry (376)  |  Cloud (111)  |  Color (155)  |  Develop (278)  |  Equivalent (46)  |  Everywhere (98)  |  Extent (142)  |  Eye (440)  |  First (1302)  |  Follow (389)  |  Giant (73)  |  Known (453)  |  More (2558)  |  Most (1728)  |  Move (223)  |  Multiply (40)  |  Necessary (370)  |  Nucleus (54)  |  Number (710)  |  Organic (161)  |  Organic Chemistry (41)  |  Other (2233)  |  Overwhelming (30)  |  Radical (28)  |  Realm (87)  |  Rise (169)  |  Sea (326)  |  See (1094)  |  Shining (35)  |  Soar (23)  |  Soil (98)  |  Spy (9)  |  Stem (31)  |  Suddenly (91)  |  Surprise (91)  |  Time (1911)  |  Top (100)  |  Tree (269)  |  Tremendous (29)  |  Trunk (23)  |  Upward (44)  |  Wonderful (155)  |  Work (1402)

Is not disease the rule of existence? There is not a lily pad floating on the river but has been riddled by insects. Almost every shrub and tree has its gall, oftentimes esteemed its chief ornament and hardly to be distinguished from the fruit. If misery loves company, misery has company enough. Now, at midsummer, find me a perfect leaf or fruit.
In The Writings of Henry David Thoreau (1893), Vol. 9, 458.
Science quotes on:  |  Chief (99)  |  Company (63)  |  Disease (340)  |  Distinguish (168)  |  Distinguished (84)  |  Enough (341)  |  Existence (481)  |  Find (1014)  |  Gall (3)  |  Insect (89)  |  Leaf (73)  |  Lily (5)  |  Love (328)  |  Midsummer (3)  |  Misery (31)  |  Ornament (20)  |  Perfect (223)  |  Perfection (131)  |  River (140)  |  Rule (307)  |  Shrub (5)  |  Tree (269)

It be urged that the wild and uncultivated tree, hitherto yielding sour and bitter fruit only, can never be made to yield better; yet we know that the grafting art implants a new tree on the savage stock, producing what is most estimable in kind and degree. Education, in like manner, engrafts a new man on the native stock, and improves what in his nature was vicious and perverse into qualities of virtue and social worth.
From paper 'Report of the Commissioners Appointed to Fix the Site of the University of Virginia', included in Annual Report of the Board of Visitors of the University of Virginia for the Fiscal Year Ending May 31, 1879 (1879), 10. Collected in Commonwealth of Virginia, Annual Reports of Officers, Boards, and Institutions of the Commonwealth of Virginia, for the Year Ending September 30, 1879 (1879).
Science quotes on:  |  Agriculture (78)  |  Art (680)  |  Better (493)  |  Bitter (30)  |  Degree (277)  |  Education (423)  |  Graft (4)  |  Improvement (117)  |  Kind (564)  |  Know (1538)  |  Man (2252)  |  Most (1728)  |  Native (41)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Never (1089)  |  New (1273)  |  Perverse (5)  |  Producing (6)  |  Quality (139)  |  Savage (33)  |  Social (261)  |  Sour (3)  |  Stock (7)  |  Tree (269)  |  Uncultivated (2)  |  Vicious (5)  |  Virtue (117)  |  Wild (96)  |  Worth (172)  |  Yield (86)

It is characteristic of our age to endeavour to replace virtues by technology. That is to say, wherever possible we strive to use methods of physical or social engineering to achieve goals which our ancestors thought attainable only by the training of character. Thus, we try so far as possible to make contraception take the place of chastity, and anaesthetics to take the place of fortitude; we replace resignation by insurance policies and munificence by the Welfare State. It would be idle romanticism to deny that such techniques and institutions are often less painful and more efficient methods of achieving the goods and preventing the evils which unaided virtue once sought to achieve and avoid. But it would be an equal and opposite folly to hope that the take-over of virtue by technology may one day be complete, so that the necessity for the laborious acquisition of the capacity for rational choice by individuals can be replaced by the painless application of the fruits of scientific discovery over the whole field of human intercourse and enterprise.
'Mental Health in Plato's Republic', in The Anatomy of the Soul: Historical Essays in the Philosophy of Mind (1973), 26.
Science quotes on:  |  Acquisition (46)  |  Age (509)  |  Anaesthetic (2)  |  Ancestor (63)  |  Application (257)  |  Avoid (123)  |  Capacity (105)  |  Character (259)  |  Characteristic (154)  |  Chastity (5)  |  Choice (114)  |  Complete (209)  |  Contraception (2)  |  Deny (71)  |  Discovery (837)  |  Endeavour (63)  |  Engineering (188)  |  Enterprise (56)  |  Evil (122)  |  Field (378)  |  Folly (44)  |  Goal (155)  |  Good (906)  |  Hope (321)  |  Human (1512)  |  Idle (34)  |  Individual (420)  |  Institution (73)  |  Insurance (12)  |  Laborious (17)  |  Method (531)  |  More (2558)  |  Munificence (2)  |  Necessity (197)  |  Opposite (110)  |  Physical (518)  |  Possible (560)  |  Rational (95)  |  Romanticism (5)  |  Say (989)  |  Science And Society (25)  |  Scientific (955)  |  Social (261)  |  Social Engineering (2)  |  State (505)  |  Technique (84)  |  Technology (281)  |  Thought (995)  |  Training (92)  |  Try (296)  |  Use (771)  |  Virtue (117)  |  Welfare (30)  |  Wherever (51)  |  Whole (756)

It is no way derogatory to Newton, or Kepler, or Galileo, that Science in these days should have advanced far beyond them. Rather is this itself their crown of glory. Their works are still bearing fruit, and will continue to do so. The truths which they discovered are still living in our knowledge, pregnant with infinite consequences.
Co-author with his brother Augustus William Hare Guesses At Truth, By Two Brothers: Second Edition: With Large Additions (1848), Second Series, 251. (The volume is introduced as “more than three fourths new.” This quote is identified as by Julius; Augustus had died in 1833.)
Science quotes on:  |  Advance (298)  |  Bearing (10)  |  Beyond (316)  |  Consequence (220)  |  Continuation (20)  |  Continue (179)  |  Crown (39)  |  Derogatory (3)  |  Discover (571)  |  Discovery (837)  |  Do (1905)  |  Galileo Galilei (134)  |  Glory (66)  |  Infinite (243)  |  Johannes Kepler (95)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Living (492)  |  Sir Isaac Newton (363)  |  Pregnant (4)  |  Still (614)  |  Truth (1109)  |  Way (1214)  |  Will (2350)  |  Work (1402)

It is not the fruits of scientific research that elevate man and enrich his nature but the urge to understand, the intellectual work, creative or receptive.
…...
Science quotes on:  |  Creative (144)  |  Elevate (15)  |  Enrich (27)  |  Intellectual (258)  |  Man (2252)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Receptive (5)  |  Research (753)  |  Scientific (955)  |  Understand (648)  |  Urge (17)  |  Work (1402)

Let him [the author] be permitted also in all humility to add … that in consequence of the large arrears of algebraical and arithmetical speculations waiting in his mind their turn to be called into outward existence, he is driven to the alternative of leaving the fruits of his meditations to perish (as has been the fate of too many foregone theories, the still-born progeny of his brain, now forever resolved back again into the primordial matter of thought), or venturing to produce from time to time such imperfect sketches as the present, calculated to evoke the mental co-operation of his readers, in whom the algebraical instinct has been to some extent developed, rather than to satisfy the strict demands of rigorously systematic exposition.
In Philosophic Magazine (1863), 460.
Science quotes on:  |  Add (42)  |  Algebra (117)  |  Alternative (32)  |  Arithmetical (11)  |  Arrears (2)  |  Author (175)  |  Back (395)  |  Brain (281)  |  Calculate (58)  |  Call (781)  |  Consequence (220)  |  Cooperation (38)  |  Demand (131)  |  Develop (278)  |  Drive (61)  |  Evoke (13)  |  Existence (481)  |  Exposition (16)  |  Extent (142)  |  Fate (76)  |  Forego (4)  |  Forever (111)  |  Humility (31)  |  Imperfect (46)  |  Instinct (91)  |  Large (398)  |  Leave (138)  |  Let (64)  |  Matter (821)  |  Meditation (19)  |  Mental (179)  |  Mind (1377)  |  Operation (221)  |  Outward (7)  |  Perish (56)  |  Permit (61)  |  Present (630)  |  Primordial (14)  |  Produce (117)  |  Progeny (16)  |  Reader (42)  |  Resolve (43)  |  Rigorous (50)  |  Satisfy (29)  |  Sketch (8)  |  Speculation (137)  |  Still (614)  |  Stillborn (2)  |  Strict (20)  |  Study And Research In Mathematics (61)  |  Systematic (58)  |  Theory (1015)  |  Thought (995)  |  Time (1911)  |  Turn (454)  |  Venture (19)  |  Wait (66)  |  Waiting (42)

Literature is, in fact, the fruit of leisure.
In Pharaohs, Fellahs and Explorers (1891), 193.
Science quotes on:  |  Fact (1257)  |  Leisure (25)  |  Literature (116)

Man is the summit, the crown of nature's development, and must comprehend everything that has preceded him, even as the fruit includes within itself all the earlier developed parts of the plant. In a word, Man must represent the whole world in miniature.
In Lorenz Oken, trans. by Alfred Tulk, Elements of Physiophilosophy (1847), 2.
Science quotes on:  |  Comprehension (69)  |  Crown (39)  |  Develop (278)  |  Development (441)  |  Earlier (9)  |  Everything (489)  |  Include (93)  |  Man (2252)  |  Miniature (7)  |  Must (1525)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Part (235)  |  Plant (320)  |  Preceding (8)  |  Represent (157)  |  Representation (55)  |  Summit (27)  |  Whole (756)  |  Whole World (29)  |  Word (650)  |  World (1850)

Men give me some credit for genius. All the genius I have lies in this: When I have a subject in hand, I study it profoundly. Day and night it is before me. I explore it in all its bearings. My mind becomes pervaded with it. Then the effort which I have made is what people are pleased to call the fruit of genius. It is the fruit of labor and thought.
Attributed as a comment to a friend. In J. C. Thomas, Manual of Useful Information (1893), 108.
Science quotes on:  |  Become (821)  |  Call (781)  |  Effort (243)  |  Genius (301)  |  Labor (200)  |  Lie (370)  |  Mind (1377)  |  People (1031)  |  Study (701)  |  Subject (543)  |  Thought (995)

Modern war, even from the consideration of physical welfare, is not creative. Soldiers and civilians alike are supposed to put on mental khaki. … War means the death of that fertile war which consists of the free, restless conflict of ideas. The war which matters is that of the scientist with nature; of the farmer with the tawny desert; of … philosopher against … mob stupidity. Such war is creative. … Inventions that further life and joy; freedom; new knowledge, whether Luther Burbank’s about the breeding of fruits or Einstein's about relativity; great cathedrals and Beethoven's music: these modern mechanical war can destroy but never produce. At its most inventive height, war creates the Maxim gun, the submarine, disseminable germs of disease, life-blasting gases. Spiritually and intellectually, modern war is not creative.
From ‘The Stagnation of War’, in Allen D. Hole (ed.) The Messenger of Peace (Nov 1924), 49, No. 11, 162-163.
Science quotes on:  |  Against (332)  |  Alike (60)  |  Beethoven (14)  |  Beethoven_Ludwig (8)  |  Biological Warfare (3)  |  Breeding (21)  |  Luther Burbank (14)  |  Cathedral (27)  |  Conflict (77)  |  Consideration (143)  |  Consist (223)  |  Create (245)  |  Creative (144)  |  Death (406)  |  Desert (59)  |  Destroy (189)  |  Disease (340)  |  Einstein (101)  |  Albert Einstein (624)  |  Farmer (35)  |  Fertile (30)  |  Free (239)  |  Freedom (145)  |  Germ (54)  |  Great (1610)  |  Idea (881)  |  Intellect (251)  |  Invention (400)  |  Joy (117)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Life (1870)  |  Matter (821)  |  Mean (810)  |  Means (587)  |  Mechanical (145)  |  Mental (179)  |  Mob (10)  |  Modern (402)  |  Most (1728)  |  Music (133)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Never (1089)  |  New (1273)  |  Philosopher (269)  |  Physical (518)  |  Produce (117)  |  Relativity (91)  |  Scientist (881)  |  Soldier (28)  |  Spiritually (3)  |  Stupidity (40)  |  Submarine (12)  |  Tawny (3)  |  War (233)  |  Welfare (30)

Nature is so delightful and abundant in its variations that there would not be one that resembles another, and not only plants as a whole, but among their branches, leaves and fruit, will not be found one which is precisely like another.
…...
Science quotes on:  |  Abundant (23)  |  Branch (155)  |  Delightful (18)  |  Find (1014)  |  Leave (138)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Plant (320)  |  Precisely (93)  |  Resemble (65)  |  Variation (93)  |  Whole (756)  |  Will (2350)

No category of sciences exists to which one could give the name of applied sciences. There are science and the applications of science, linked together as fruit is to the tree that has borne it.
Il n’existe pas une catégorie de sciences auxquelles on puisse donner le nom de sciences appliquées. II y a la science et les applications de la science, liées entre elles comme le fruit à l’arbre qui l’a porté.
Original French in 'La Science en france: Pourquoi la France n’a pas trouvé d’hommes supérieurs au moment de péril', La Revue Scientifique de la France et de l’Étranger Revue des Cours Scientifique (22 Jul 1871), 2, No. 4, 74. Translation as given in Isaac Asimov and Jason A. Shulman (eds.), Isaac Asimov’s Book of Science and Nature Quotations (1988), 322. Another translation gives: “…there does not exist a category of science to which one can give the name applied science. There are science and the applications of science, bound together as the fruit to the tree which bears it.”
Science quotes on:  |  Application (257)  |  Applied (176)  |  Applied Science (36)  |  Category (19)  |  Exist (458)  |  Link (48)  |  Name (359)  |  Technology (281)  |  Together (392)  |  Tree (269)

Now, I must tell you of a strange experience which bore fruit in my later life. … We had a cold [snap] drier that ever observed before. People walking in the snow left a luminous trail behind them and a snowball thrown against an obstacle gave a flare of light like a loaf of sugar hit with a knife. [As I stroked] Mačak’s back, [it became] a sheet of light and my hand produced a shower of sparks. … My father … remarked, this is nothing but electricity, the same thing you see on the trees in a storm. My mother seemed alarmed. Stop playing with the cat, she said, he might start a fire. I was thinking abstractly. Is nature a cat? If so, who strokes its back? It can only be God, I concluded. …
I cannot exaggerate the effect of this marvelous sight on my childish imagination. Day after day I asked myself what is electricity and found no answer. Eighty years have gone by since and I still ask the same question, unable to answer it.
Letter to Miss Pola Fotitch, 'A Story of Youth Told by Age' (1939). In John Ratzlaff, editor, Tesla Said (1984), 283-84. Cited in Marc J. Seifer, Wizard: The Life and Times of Nikola Tesla (1998), 5.
Science quotes on:  |  Against (332)  |  Alarm (19)  |  Answer (389)  |  Ask (420)  |  Back (395)  |  Behind (139)  |  Biography (254)  |  Cat (52)  |  Childish (20)  |  Cold (115)  |  Effect (414)  |  Electricity (168)  |  Experience (494)  |  Father (113)  |  Fire (203)  |  God (776)  |  Imagination (349)  |  Knife (24)  |  Life (1870)  |  Light (635)  |  Loaf (5)  |  Luminous (19)  |  Marvelous (31)  |  Mother (116)  |  Must (1525)  |  Myself (211)  |  Mystery (188)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Nothing (1000)  |  Observation (593)  |  Observed (149)  |  Obstacle (42)  |  People (1031)  |  Playing (42)  |  Produced (187)  |  Question (649)  |  See (1094)  |  Sight (135)  |  Snap (7)  |  Snow (39)  |  Snowball (4)  |  Spark (32)  |  Start (237)  |  Still (614)  |  Storm (56)  |  Strange (160)  |  Stroke (19)  |  Sugar (26)  |  Tell (344)  |  Thing (1914)  |  Thinking (425)  |  Tree (269)  |  Year (963)

Of all the trees that have ever been cultivated by man, the genealogical tree is the driest. It is one, we may be sure, that had no place in the garden of Eden. Its root is in the grave; its produce mere Dead Sea fruit—apples of dust and ashes.
In novel, Half a Million of Money (1865), Vol. 1, 18.
Science quotes on:  |  Apple (46)  |  Ash (21)  |  Cultivated (7)  |  Dead Sea (2)  |  Dry (65)  |  Dust (68)  |  Garden (64)  |  Garden Of Eden (2)  |  Genealogy (4)  |  Grave (52)  |  Man (2252)  |  Mere (86)  |  Produce (117)  |  Root (121)  |  Sea (326)  |  Tree (269)

One day in the year 1666 Newton had gone to the country, and seeing the fall of an apple, [as his niece (Mme Conduit) told me,] let himself be led into a deep meditation on the cause which thus draws every object along a line whose extension would pass almost through the center of the Earth.
From the original French, “Un jour, en l'année 1666, Newton, retiré à la campagne, et voyant tomber des fruits d’un arbre, à ce que m'a conté sa nièce, (Mme Conduit) se laissa aller à une méditation profonde sur la cause qui entraîne ainsi tous les corps dans une ligne qui, si elle était prolongée, passerait à peu près par le centre de la Terre,” in Éléments de Philosophie de Newton, Part 1, Chap. 3, in Oeuvres Completes de Voltaire (1785), Vol. 31, 175. Translation as given in an epigraph, in Charles W. Misner, Kip S. Thorn and John Archibald Wheeler, Gravitation (1970, 1973), 47. An alternate translation is: “One day in the year 1666, Newton went into the country, and seeing fruit fall from a tree (as his niece, Madame Conduit, has informed me), entered into a profound train of thought as to the causes which could lead to such a drawing together or attraction.” As given in Robert Chambers (ed.), The Book of Days: A Miscellany of Popular Antiquities in Connection with the Calendar (1888), Vol. 2, 757. (Note: Voltaire originally published his Éléments in 1738, but Webmaster could not find the above quote in it.)
Science quotes on:  |  17th Century (20)  |  Apple (46)  |  Attraction (61)  |  Cause (561)  |  Conduit (3)  |  Country (269)  |  Deep (241)  |  Draw (140)  |  Earth (1076)  |  Extension (60)  |  Fall (243)  |  Gravitation (72)  |  Himself (461)  |  Meditation (19)  |  Sir Isaac Newton (363)  |  Object (438)  |  Pass (241)  |  Seeing (143)  |  Thought (995)  |  Through (846)  |  Tree (269)  |  Year (963)

Only about seventy years ago was chemistry, like a grain of seed from a ripe fruit, separated from the other physical sciences. With Black, Cavendish and Priestley, its new era began. Medicine, pharmacy, and the useful arts, had prepared the soil upon which this seed was to germinate and to flourish.
Familiar Letters on Chemistry (1851),5.
Science quotes on:  |  Art (680)  |  Joseph Black (14)  |  Henry Cavendish (7)  |  Chemistry (376)  |  Era (51)  |  Flourish (34)  |  Grain (50)  |  Medicine (392)  |  New (1273)  |  Other (2233)  |  Pharmacy (4)  |  Physical (518)  |  Physical Science (104)  |  Joseph Priestley (16)  |  Seed (97)  |  Soil (98)  |  Useful (260)  |  Year (963)

Research cannot be forced very much. There is always danger of too much foliage and too little fruit.
Letter to Professor Simon H. Gage. Quoted in Paul Franklin Clark, 'Theobald Smith, Student of Disease (1859-1934)', Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences (1959), 14, 492.
Science quotes on:  |  Danger (127)  |  Foliage (6)  |  Force (497)  |  Little (717)  |  Research (753)

Science and common sense differ as cultivated fruits differ from wild fruits. Science sows its seeds of inquiry, and gathers the fruit. Common sense picks the fruit, such as it, is by the wayside. Common sense has no fields or orchards of knowledge.
In Sir William Withey Gull and Theodore Dyke Acland (ed.), A Collection of the Published Writings of William Withey Gull (1896), lvi.
Science quotes on:  |  Common (447)  |  Common Sense (136)  |  Cultivate (24)  |  Differ (88)  |  Difference (355)  |  Field (378)  |  Gather (76)  |  Inquiry (88)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Orchard (4)  |  Pick (16)  |  Seed (97)  |  Sense (785)  |  Sow (11)  |  Wayside (4)  |  Wild (96)

Science is simply the classification of the common knowledge of the common people. It is bringing together the things we all know and putting them together so we can use them. This is creation and finds its analogy in Nature, where the elements are combined in certain ways to give us fruits or flowers or grain.
In Elbert Hubbard (ed. and publ.), The Philistine (Dec 1907), 26, 10.
Science quotes on:  |  Analogy (76)  |  Bringing (10)  |  Certain (557)  |  Classification (102)  |  Combination (150)  |  Common (447)  |  Creation (350)  |  Element (322)  |  Find (1014)  |  Flower (112)  |  Grain (50)  |  Know (1538)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Nature (2017)  |  People (1031)  |  Thing (1914)  |  Together (392)  |  Use (771)  |  Usefulness (92)  |  Way (1214)

Speaking concretely, when we say “making experiments or making observations,” we mean that we devote ourselves to investigation and to research, that we make attempts and trials in order to gain facts from which the mind, through reasoning, may draw knowledge or instruction.
Speaking in the abstract, when we say “relying on observation and gaining experience,” we mean that observation is the mind's support in reasoning, and experience the mind's support in deciding, or still better, the fruit of exact reasoning applied to the interpretation of facts. It follows from this that we can gain experience without making experiments, solely by reasoning appropriately about well-established facts, just as we can make experiments and observations without gaining experience, if we limit ourselves to noting facts.
Observation, then, is what shows facts; experiment is what teaches about facts and gives experience in relation to anything.
From An Introduction to the Study of Experimental Medicine (1865), as translated by Henry Copley Greene (1957), 11.
Science quotes on:  |  Abstract (141)  |  Applied (176)  |  Attempt (266)  |  Better (493)  |  Concretely (4)  |  Draw (140)  |  Experience (494)  |  Experiment (736)  |  Fact (1257)  |  Facts (553)  |  Follow (389)  |  Gain (146)  |  Instruction (101)  |  Interpretation (89)  |  Investigation (250)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Limit (294)  |  Making (300)  |  Mean (810)  |  Mind (1377)  |  Observation (593)  |  Order (638)  |  Ourselves (247)  |  Reasoning (212)  |  Research (753)  |  Say (989)  |  Show (353)  |  Speaking (118)  |  Still (614)  |  Support (151)  |  Through (846)  |  Trial (59)

Such as the Tree, such is the Fruit.
No. 4280 in Gnomologia: Adagies and Proverbs, Wise Sentences and Witty Sayings (1732), 183. Compare with No. 2248, “A tree is known better by its Fruit, than its Leaves”, on p.91.
Science quotes on:  |  Genetics (105)  |  Identification (20)  |  Species (435)  |  Tree (269)

Such is always the pursuit of knowledge. The celestial fruits, the golden apples of the Hesperides, are ever guarded by a hundred-headed dragon which never sleeps, so that it is an Herculean labor to pluck them.
In The Writings of Henry David Thoreau: V; Excursions and Poems (1906), 307.
Science quotes on:  |  Apple (46)  |  Celestial (53)  |  Dragon (6)  |  Golden (47)  |  Guard (19)  |  Hundred (240)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Labor (200)  |  Never (1089)  |  Pluck (5)  |  Pursuit (128)  |  Sleep (81)

The aims of pure basic science, unlike those of applied science, are neither fast-flowing nor pragmatic. The quick harvest of applied science is the useable process, the medicine, the machine. The shy fruit of pure science is understanding.
In 'The Meaning of Einstein's New Theory', Life (9 Jan 1950), 28, No. 2, 22. Einstein had just completed the mathematical formulation of the United Field Theory.
Science quotes on:  |  Aim (175)  |  Applied (176)  |  Applied Science (36)  |  Basic (144)  |  Harvest (28)  |  Machine (271)  |  Medicine (392)  |  Process (439)  |  Pure (299)  |  Pure Science (30)  |  Understanding (527)

The air of caricature never fails to show itself in the products of reason applied relentlessly and without correction. The observation of clinical facts would seem to be a pursuit of the physician as harmless as it is indispensable. [But] it seemed irresistibly rational to certain minds that diseases should be as fully classifiable as are beetles and butterflies. This doctrine … bore perhaps its richest fruit in the hands of Boissier de Sauvauges. In his Nosologia Methodica published in 1768 … this Linnaeus of the bedside grouped diseases into ten classes, 295 genera, and 2400 species.
In 'General Ideas in Medicine', The Lloyd Roberts lecture at House of the Royal Society of Medicine (30 Sep 1935), British Medical Journal (5 Oct 1935), 2, 609. In The Collected Papers of Wilfred Trotter, FRS (1941), 151.
Science quotes on:  |  Air (366)  |  Application (257)  |  Applied (176)  |  Bedside (3)  |  Beetle (19)  |  Butterfly (26)  |  Caricature (6)  |  Certain (557)  |  Class (168)  |  Classification (102)  |  Clinical (18)  |  Correction (42)  |  Disease (340)  |  Doctrine (81)  |  Fact (1257)  |  Facts (553)  |  Fail (191)  |  Failure (176)  |  Genus (27)  |  Harmless (9)  |  Indispensable (31)  |  Irresistible (17)  |  Carolus Linnaeus (36)  |  Mind (1377)  |  Never (1089)  |  Observation (593)  |  Physician (284)  |  Product (166)  |  Pursuit (128)  |  Rational (95)  |  Rationality (25)  |  Reason (766)  |  Relentless (9)  |  Richness (15)  |  Seem (150)  |  Show (353)  |  Species (435)

The avocado is a food without rival among the fruits, the veritable fruit of paradise.
Science quotes on:  |  Avocado (3)  |  Food (213)  |  Paradise (15)  |  Rival (20)

The Commissioner of Patents may be likened to a wine merchant. He has in his office the wine of human progress of every kind and quality—wine, one may say, produced from the fermentation of the facts of the world through the yeast of human effort. Sometimes the yeast is “wild” and sometimes the “must” is poor, and while it all lies there shining with its due measure of the sparkle of divine effort, it is but occasionally that one finds a wine whose bouquet is the result of a pure culture on the true fruit of knowledge. But it is this true, pure wine of discovery that is alone of lasting significance.
In Some Chemical Problems of Today (1911), 108.
Science quotes on:  |  Alone (324)  |  Bouquet (2)  |  Culture (157)  |  Discovery (837)  |  Divine (112)  |  Due (143)  |  Effort (243)  |  Fact (1257)  |  Facts (553)  |  Fermentation (15)  |  Find (1014)  |  Human (1512)  |  Human Progress (18)  |  Invention (400)  |  Kind (564)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Lasting (7)  |  Lie (370)  |  Measure (241)  |  Must (1525)  |  Office (71)  |  Patent (34)  |  Poor (139)  |  Produced (187)  |  Progress (492)  |  Pure (299)  |  Quality (139)  |  Result (700)  |  Say (989)  |  Shining (35)  |  Significance (114)  |  Sparkle (8)  |  Through (846)  |  True (239)  |  Wild (96)  |  Wine (39)  |  World (1850)  |  Yeast (7)

The economic anarchy of capitalist society as it exists today is, in my opinion, the real source of the evil. We see before us a huge community of producers the members of which are unceasingly striving to deprive each other of the fruits of their collective labor–not by force, but on the whole in faithful compliance with legally established rules.
…...
Science quotes on:  |  Anarchy (8)  |  Capitalist (6)  |  Collective (24)  |  Community (111)  |  Compliance (8)  |  Deprive (14)  |  Economic (84)  |  Establish (63)  |  Evil (122)  |  Exist (458)  |  Faithful (13)  |  Force (497)  |  Huge (30)  |  Labor (200)  |  Member (42)  |  Opinion (291)  |  Other (2233)  |  Producer (4)  |  Real (159)  |  Rule (307)  |  See (1094)  |  Society (350)  |  Source (101)  |  Strive (53)  |  Today (321)  |  Unceasingly (2)  |  Whole (756)

The effort to eliminate synthetic pesticides because of unsubstantiated fears about residues in food will make fruits and vegetables more expensive, decrease consumption, and thus increase cancer rates. The levels of synthetic pesticide residues are trivial in comparison to natural chemicals, and thus their potential for cancer causation is extremely low. [Ames believes that “to eat your veggies” is the best way to prevent cancer.]
Paper to the American Chemical Society, 'Pollution, Pesticides and Cancer Misconceptions.' As cited by Art Drysdale, 'Latest Insider News: Natural vs. Synthetic Chemical Pesticides' (14 Feb 1999), on the mitosyfraudes.org website. Bruce Ames has written a similar sentiment in various other publications.
Science quotes on:  |  Best (467)  |  Cancer (61)  |  Causation (14)  |  Chemical (303)  |  Comparison (108)  |  Consumption (16)  |  Decrease (16)  |  Eat (108)  |  Effort (243)  |  Elimination (26)  |  Expense (21)  |  Fear (212)  |  Food (213)  |  Increase (225)  |  Level (69)  |  Low (86)  |  More (2558)  |  Natural (810)  |  Pesticide (5)  |  Potential (75)  |  Prevent (98)  |  Rate (31)  |  Residue (9)  |  Synthetic (27)  |  Trivial (59)  |  Vegetable (49)  |  Way (1214)  |  Will (2350)

The efforts of most human-beings are consumed in the struggle for their daily bread, but most of those who are, either through fortune or some special gift, relieved of this struggle are largely absorbed in further improving their worldly lot. Beneath the effort directed toward the accumulation of worldly goods lies all too frequently the illusion that this is the most substantial and desirable end to be achieved; but there is, fortunately, a minority composed of those who recognize early in their lives that the most beautiful and satisfying experiences open to humankind are not derived from the outside, but are bound up with the development of the individual's own feeling, thinking and acting. The genuine artists, investigators and thinkers have always been persons of this kind. However inconspicuously the life of these individuals runs its course, none the less the fruits of their endeavors are the most valuable contributions which one generation can make to its successors.
In letter (1 May 1935), Letters to the Editor, 'The Late Emmy Noether: Professor Einstein Writes in Appreciation of a Fellow-Mathematician', New York Times (4 May 1935), 12.
Science quotes on:  |  Absorb (54)  |  Accumulation (51)  |  Acting (6)  |  Artist (97)  |  Beautiful (271)  |  Being (1276)  |  Beneath (68)  |  Bound (120)  |  Bread (42)  |  Contribution (93)  |  Course (413)  |  Daily (91)  |  Derivation (15)  |  Desirable (33)  |  Development (441)  |  Direct (228)  |  Early (196)  |  Effort (243)  |  End (603)  |  Endeavor (74)  |  Experience (494)  |  Feeling (259)  |  Fortunately (9)  |  Fortune (50)  |  Generation (256)  |  Genuine (54)  |  Gift (105)  |  Good (906)  |  Human (1512)  |  Humankind (15)  |  Illusion (68)  |  Inconspicuous (4)  |  Individual (420)  |  Investigator (71)  |  Kind (564)  |  Lie (370)  |  Life (1870)  |  Live (650)  |  Lot (151)  |  Minority (24)  |  Most (1728)  |  Emmy Noether (7)  |  Nonetheless (2)  |  Open (277)  |  Outside (141)  |  Person (366)  |  Recognition (93)  |  Recognize (136)  |  Run (158)  |  Satisfaction (76)  |  Special (188)  |  Struggle (111)  |  Substantial (24)  |  Successor (16)  |  Thinker (41)  |  Thinking (425)  |  Through (846)  |  Value (393)

The fruit of the tree of knowledge, always drives man from some paradise or other.
Dean Inge
From Romanes Lecture (27 May 1920), 'The Idea of Progress', collected in Outspoken Essays: Second Series (1922), 159.
Science quotes on:  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Man (2252)  |  Other (2233)  |  Paradise (15)  |  Tree (269)  |  Tree Of Knowledge (8)

The lightning fell and the storm raged, and strata were deposited and uptorn and bent back, and Chaos moved from beneath, to create and flavor the fruit on your table to-day.
In 'Perpetual Forces', North American Review (1877), No. 125. Collected in Ralph Waldo Emerson and James Elliot Cabot (ed.), Lectures and Biographical Sketches (1883), 60.
Science quotes on:  |  Back (395)  |  Beneath (68)  |  Chaos (99)  |  Create (245)  |  Creation (350)  |  Deposit (12)  |  Flavor (8)  |  Lightning (49)  |  Storm (56)  |  Strata (37)  |  Table (105)

The man imbued with the proper spirit of science does not seek for immediate pecuniary reward from the practical applications of his discoveries, but derives sufficient gratification from his pursuit and the consciousness of enlarging the bounds of human contemplation, and the magnitude of human power, and leaves to others to gather the golden fruit he may strew along his pathway.
In Letter (3 Feb 1873) to the Committee of Arrangements, in Proceedings of the Farewell Banquet to Professor Tyndall (4 Feb 1873), 19. Reprinted as 'On the Importance of the Cultivation of Science', The Popular Science Monthly (1873), Vol. 2, 645.
Science quotes on:  |  Application (257)  |  Bound (120)  |  Consciousness (132)  |  Contemplation (75)  |  Derive (70)  |  Discovery (837)  |  Financial (5)  |  Gather (76)  |  Golden (47)  |  Gratification (22)  |  Human (1512)  |  Immediate (98)  |  Magnitude (88)  |  Man (2252)  |  Other (2233)  |  Pathway (15)  |  Power (771)  |  Practical (225)  |  Proper (150)  |  Pursuit (128)  |  Reward (72)  |  Seek (218)  |  Spirit (278)  |  Strew (3)  |  Sufficient (133)

The mangosteen, queen of the tropical fruit.
Our Plant Immigrants', The National Geographic Magazine (Apr 1906), Vol. 17, No. 4, 196.
Science quotes on:  |  Food (213)

The methods of science aren’t foolproof, but they are indefinitely perfectible. Just as important: there is a tradition of criticism that enforces improvement whenever and wherever flaws are discovered. The methods of science, like everything else under the sun, are themselves objects of scientific scrutiny, as method becomes methodology, the analysis of methods. Methodology in turn falls under the gaze of epistemology, the investigation of investigation itself—nothing is off limits to scientific questioning. The irony is that these fruits of scientific reflection, showing us the ineliminable smudges of imperfection, are sometimes used by those who are suspicious of science as their grounds for denying it a privileged status in the truth-seeking department—as if the institutions and practices they see competing with it were no worse off in these regards. But where are the examples of religious orthodoxy being simply abandoned in the face of irresistible evidence? Again and again in science, yesterday’s heresies have become today’s new orthodoxies. No religion exhibits that pattern in its history.
…...
Science quotes on:  |  Abandon (73)  |  Analysis (244)  |  Arent (6)  |  Badly (32)  |  Become (821)  |  Being (1276)  |  Compete (6)  |  Criticism (85)  |  Deny (71)  |  Department (93)  |  Discover (571)  |  Enforce (11)  |  Epistemology (8)  |  Everything (489)  |  Evidence (267)  |  Example (98)  |  Exhibit (21)  |  Face (214)  |  Fall (243)  |  Flaw (18)  |  Foolproof (5)  |  Gaze (23)  |  Ground (222)  |  Heresy (9)  |  History (716)  |  Imperfection (32)  |  Important (229)  |  Improvement (117)  |  Indefinitely (10)  |  Institution (73)  |  Investigation (250)  |  Irony (9)  |  Irresistible (17)  |  Limit (294)  |  Method (531)  |  Methodology (14)  |  New (1273)  |  Nothing (1000)  |  Object (438)  |  Orthodoxy (11)  |  Pattern (116)  |  Practice (212)  |  Privilege (41)  |  Question (649)  |  Reflection (93)  |  Regard (312)  |  Religion (369)  |  Religious (134)  |  Scientific (955)  |  Scrutiny (15)  |  See (1094)  |  Show (353)  |  Simply (53)  |  Smudge (2)  |  Sometimes (46)  |  Status (35)  |  Sun (407)  |  Suspicious (3)  |  Themselves (433)  |  Today (321)  |  Tradition (76)  |  Truth (1109)  |  Turn (454)  |  Whenever (81)  |  Wherever (51)  |  Yesterday (37)

The more an idea is developed, the more concise becomes its expression: the more a tree is pruned, the better is the fruit.
Collected in J. de Finod (ed., trans.) A Thousand Flashes of French Wit, Wisdom, and Wickedness (1880), 66, printed citation showing “Alfred Bougeart”. Webmaster has not yet found the primary source for this quote, but has found books with the author name printed on the title page as sometimes Bougeart, others as Bougeard, but references therein to "other books by" have some of the same titles in common. If you know the primary source of this quote, please contact Webmaster.
Science quotes on:  |  Become (821)  |  Better (493)  |  Concise (9)  |  Develop (278)  |  Development (441)  |  Expression (181)  |  Idea (881)  |  More (2558)  |  Pruning (7)  |  Tree (269)

The rat, the mouse, the fox, the rabbit, watch the roots; the lion, the tiger, the horse, the elephant the fruits.
In 'Proverbs', The Poems: With Specimens of the Prose Writings of William Blake (1885), 279.
Science quotes on:  |  Elephant (35)  |  Fox (9)  |  Horse (78)  |  Lion (23)  |  Mouse (33)  |  Rabbit (10)  |  Rat (37)  |  Root (121)  |  Tiger (7)  |  Watch (118)

The three of us have worked on the development of the small and totally harmless fruit fly, Drosophila. This animal has been extremely cooperative in our hands - and has revealed to us some of its innermost secrets and tricks for developing from a single celled egg to a complex living being of great beauty and harmony. ... None of us expected that our work would be so successful or that our findings would ever have relevance to medicine.
Nobel Banquet Speech, 10 Dec 1995
Science quotes on:  |  Animal (651)  |  Beauty (313)  |  Being (1276)  |  Complex (202)  |  Development (441)  |  Drosophila (10)  |  Egg (71)  |  Expect (203)  |  Fly (153)  |  Fruit Fly (6)  |  Genetics (105)  |  Great (1610)  |  Harmony (105)  |  Living (492)  |  Medicine (392)  |  Relevance (18)  |  Reveal (152)  |  Revealed (59)  |  Secret (216)  |  Single (365)  |  Small (489)  |  Successful (134)  |  Trick (36)  |  Work (1402)

The true Southern watermelon is a boon apart, and not to be mentioned with commoner things. It is chief of this world’s luxuries, king by the grace of God over all the fruits of the earth. When one has tasted it, he knows what the angels eat.
In Pudd’nhead Wilson: and, Those Extraordinary Twins (1893, 1899), 132.
Science quotes on:  |  Angel (47)  |  Boon (7)  |  Chief (99)  |  Common (447)  |  Earth (1076)  |  Eat (108)  |  God (776)  |  Grace (31)  |  King (39)  |  Know (1538)  |  Luxury (21)  |  Mention (84)  |  Taste (93)  |  Thing (1914)  |  Watermelon (2)  |  World (1850)

The union of philosophical and mathematical productivity, which besides in Plato we find only in Pythagoras, Descartes and Leibnitz, has always yielded the choicest fruits to mathematics; To the first we owe scientific mathematics in general, Plato discovered the analytic method, by means of which mathematics was elevated above the view-point of the elements, Descartes created the analytical geometry, our own illustrious countryman discovered the infinitesimal calculus—and just these are the four greatest steps in the development of mathematics.
In Geschichte der Mathematik im Altertum und im Mittelalter (1874), 149-150. As translated in Robert Édouard Moritz, Memorabilia Mathematica; Or, The Philomath’s Quotation-book (1914), 210. From the original German, “Die Verbindung philosophischer und mathematischer Productivität, wie wir sie ausser in Platon wohl nur noch in Pythagoras, Descartes, Leibnitz vorfinden, hat der Mathematik immer die schönsten Früchte gebracht: Ersterem verdanken wir die wissenschaftliche Mathematik überhaupt, Platon erfand die analytische Methode, durch welche sich die Mathematik über den Standpunct der Elemente erhob, Descartes schuf die analytische Geometrie, unser berühmter Landsmann den Infinitesimalcalcül—und eben daß sind die vier grössten Stufen in der Entwickelung der Mathematik.”
Science quotes on:  |  Analysis (244)  |  Analytic (11)  |  Calculus (65)  |  Countryman (4)  |  Create (245)  |  René Descartes (83)  |  Development (441)  |  Discover (571)  |  Element (322)  |  Elevate (15)  |  Find (1014)  |  First (1302)  |  General (521)  |  Geometry (271)  |  Greatest (330)  |  Illustrious (10)  |  Infinitesimal (30)  |  Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (51)  |  Mathematics (1395)  |  Mean (810)  |  Means (587)  |  Method (531)  |  Owe (71)  |  Philosophy (409)  |  Plato (80)  |  Point (584)  |  Productivity (23)  |  Pythagoras (38)  |  Scientific (955)  |  Step (234)  |  Union (52)  |  View (496)  |  Viewpoint (13)  |  Yield (86)

There is no such thing as a special category of science called applied science; there is science and its applications, which are related to one another as the fruit is related to the tree that has borne it.
In Pasteur Vallery-Radot (ed.), Correspondance de Pasteur 1840-1895 (1940), Vol. 1, 315. Quoted in Patrice Debré and Elborg Forster (trans.), Louis Pasteur, (1994), 84.
Science quotes on:  |  Application (257)  |  Applied (176)  |  Applied Science (36)  |  Call (781)  |  Category (19)  |  Relation (166)  |  Special (188)  |  Thing (1914)  |  Toast (8)  |  Tree (269)

There is, I think, no more wonderful and illuminating spectacle than that of an osmotic growth,—a crude lump of brute inanimate matter germinating before our very eyes, putting forth bud and stem and root and branch and leaf and fruit, with no stimulus from germ or seed, without even the presence of organic matter. For these mineral growths are not mere crystallizations as many suppose … They imitate the forms, the colour, the texture, and even the microscopical structure of organic growth so closely as to deceive the very elect.
In the 'Translator’s Preface' of his translation of Stéphane Leduc, The Mechanism of Life (1911), vii-viii. Butcher is drawing attention to the remarkable discussion of “Organic Growth” in Leduc’s book. Must-see illustrations of various inorganic growths are shown on the M.I.T. web page Osmotic Morphogenesis. Also note that “to deceive the very elect” is a Biblical reference, where the “elect” are the chosen ones faithful to their divine call.See, for example, Matthew 24:24.
Science quotes on:  |  Branch (155)  |  Brute (30)  |  Color (155)  |  Crude (32)  |  Crystal (71)  |  Deceive (26)  |  Deceiving (5)  |  Eye (440)  |  Form (976)  |  Germ (54)  |  Germinating (2)  |  Growth (200)  |  Illuminating (12)  |  Imitate (18)  |  Imitation (24)  |  Inanimate (18)  |  Leaf (73)  |  Matter (821)  |  Mineral (66)  |  More (2558)  |  Organic (161)  |  Osmosis (3)  |  Presence (63)  |  Root (121)  |  Seed (97)  |  Spectacle (35)  |  Stem (31)  |  Stimulus (30)  |  Structure (365)  |  Suppose (158)  |  Texture (8)  |  Think (1122)  |  Wonder (251)  |  Wonderful (155)

There were taken apples, and … closed up in wax. … After a month's space, the apple inclosed in was was as green and fresh as the first putting in, and the kernals continued white. The cause is, for that all exclusion of open air, which is ever predatory, maintaineth the body in its first freshness and moisture.
[In the U.S., since the 1920s, (to replace the fruit's original wax coating that is lost in the cleaning process after harvesting), natural waxes, such as carnauba wax, are applied in an extremely thin coating, to reduce loss of moisture and maintain crispness and appearance.]
Sylva Sylvarum; or a Natural History in Ten Centuries (1627), Century 4, Experiment 350-317. Collected in The Works of Francis Bacon (1826), Vol 1, 350-351.
Science quotes on:  |  Air (366)  |  Appearance (145)  |  Apple (46)  |  Applied (176)  |  Body (557)  |  Cause (561)  |  Cleaning (7)  |  Closed (38)  |  Exclusion (16)  |  First (1302)  |  Fresh (69)  |  Freshness (8)  |  Green (65)  |  Hermetic Seal (2)  |  Loss (117)  |  Maintain (105)  |  Moisture (21)  |  Month (91)  |  Natural (810)  |  Open (277)  |  Process (439)  |  Reduce (100)  |  Space (523)  |  Wax (13)  |  White (132)

They assembled together and dedicated these as the first-fruits of their love to Apollo in his Delphic temple, inscribing there those maxims which are on every tongue- “know thyself” and “Nothing overmuch”.
Plato
In Protagoras 343ab, trans. W. R. M. Lamb, in Plato: Laches Protagoras Meno Euthydemus (1924), 197.
Science quotes on:  |  Apollo (9)  |  Assembly (13)  |  Dedicated (19)  |  Dedication (12)  |  Delphic (4)  |  First (1302)  |  Inscription (12)  |  Know (1538)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Love (328)  |  Maxim (19)  |  Nothing (1000)  |  Temple (45)  |  Together (392)  |  Tongue (44)

They fall from the branches to wait
But they’re 12,000 summers too late
You can smell them for miles
They’re rotting in piles
The fruits that the gomphotheres ate.
In History of Life (1989, 5th ed. 2013), 293. As a chapter review question to explain the science indicated.
Science quotes on:  |  Dispersal (2)  |  Evolution (635)  |  Extinction (80)  |  Seed (97)

This prime matter which is proper for the form of the Elixir is taken from a single tree which grows in the lands of the West. It has two branches, which are too high for whoso seeks to eat the fruit thereof to reach them without labour and trouble; and two other branches, but the fruit of these is drier and more tanned than that of the two preceding. The blossom of one of the two is red [corresponding to gold], and the blossom of the second is between white and black [corresponding to silver]. Then there are two other branches weaker and softer than the four preceding, and the blossom of one of them is black [referring to iron] and the other between white and yellow [probably tin]. And this tree grows on the surface of the ocean [the material prima from which all metals are formed] as plants grow on the surface of the earth. This is the tree of which whosoever eats, man and jinn obey him; it is also the tree of which Adam (peace be upon him!) was forbidden to eat, and when he ate thereof he was transformed from his angelic form to human form. And this tree may be changed into every animal shape.
Al- Iraqi
'Cultivation of Gold', trans. E. J. Holmyard (1923), 23. Quoted and annotated in Seyyed Hossein Nasr, Science and Civilization in Islam (1968), 279.
Science quotes on:  |  Angel (47)  |  Animal (651)  |  Blossom (22)  |  Creation (350)  |  Earth (1076)  |  Eat (108)  |  Elixir (6)  |  Forbidden (18)  |  Form (976)  |  Gold (101)  |  Grow (247)  |  High (370)  |  Human (1512)  |  Iron (99)  |  Labor (200)  |  Man (2252)  |  Material (366)  |  Matter (821)  |  Metal (88)  |  More (2558)  |  Obey (46)  |  Ocean (216)  |  Other (2233)  |  Peace (116)  |  Plant (320)  |  Proper (150)  |  Reach (286)  |  Science In Islam (2)  |  Seek (218)  |  Silver (49)  |  Single (365)  |  Surface (223)  |  Surface Of The Earth (36)  |  Tin (18)  |  Transform (74)  |  Tree (269)  |  Trouble (117)  |  White (132)  |  Yellow (31)

Thou, youthful seeker after knowledge, investigate and experiment and never desist therefrom, for thou willst harvest, fruits a thousand-fold.
Epigraph, in Paul Walden, Salts, Acids, and Bases: Electrolytes: Stereochemistry (1929), 5.
Science quotes on:  |  Experiment (736)  |  Harvest (28)  |  Investigate (106)  |  Investigation (250)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Never (1089)  |  Seeker (8)  |  Thousand (340)  |  Youth (109)

To Archimedes once came a youth intent upon knowledge.
Said he “Initiate me into the Science divine,
Which to our country has borne glorious fruits in abundance,
And which the walls of the town ’gainst the Sambuca protects.”
“Callst thou the science divine? It is so,” the wise man responded;
“But so it was, my son, ere the state by her service was blest.
Would’st thou have fruit of her only? Mortals with that can provide thee,
He who the goddess would woo, seek not the woman in her.”
Poem, 'Archimedes und der Schuler', collected in Gedichte von Friedrich Schiller (1807), Vol. 1, 149. English version 'Archimedes and the Student', in Edgar A. Bowring (trans.), The Poems of Schiller (1875), 262-263. From the original German: Zu Archimedes kam einst ein wissbegieriger Jüngling. / “Weihe mich,” sprach er zu ihm, “ein in die gottliche Kunst, / Die so herrliche Frucht dem Vaterlande getragen, / Und die Mauern der Stadt vor der Sambuca beschützt!” / “Gottlieb nennst du die Kunst? Sie ists,” versetzte der Weise; / “Aber das war sie, mein Sohn, eh sie dem Staat noch gedient. / Willst du nur Früchte von ihr, die kann auch die Sterbliche zeugen; / Wer um die Göttin freit, suche in ihr nicht das Weib.” [Note: “Sambuca” is the name of a machine used in sieges, employed by Marcellus against Syracuse.]
Science quotes on:  |  Abundance (26)  |  Archimedes (63)  |  Blessed (20)  |  Country (269)  |  Divine (112)  |  Glorious (49)  |  Goddess (9)  |  Initiate (13)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Man (2252)  |  Mathematicians and Anecdotes (141)  |  Mortal (55)  |  Protect (65)  |  Seek (218)  |  Service (110)  |  State (505)  |  Town (30)  |  Wall (71)  |  Wise (143)  |  Wise Man (17)  |  Woman (160)  |  Youth (109)

To the exact descriptions he gave of the crystalline forms, he added the measure of their angles, and, which was essential, showed that these angles were constant for each variety. In one word, his crystallography was the fruit of an immense work, almost entirely new and most precious in its usefulness.<[About Jean-Baptiste Romé de l’Isle.]
(1795). As quoted in André Authier, Early Days of X-ray Crystallography (2013), 313.
Science quotes on:  |  Angle (25)  |  Constant (148)  |  Crystal (71)  |  Crystallography (9)  |  Description (89)  |  Essential (210)  |  Exactness (29)  |  Form (976)  |  Immense (89)  |  Measure (241)  |  Most (1728)  |  New (1273)  |  Precious (43)  |  Jean-Baptiste Louis Romé de l’lsle (2)  |  Show (353)  |  Usefulness (92)  |  Variety (138)  |  Word (650)  |  Work (1402)

Truths are immortal, my dear friend; they are immortal like God! What we call a falsity is like a fruit; it has a certain number of days; it is bound to decay. Whereas, what we call truth is like gold; days, months, even centuries can hide gold, can overlook it but they can never make it decay.
From the play Galileo Galilei (2001) .
Science quotes on:  |  Bound (120)  |  Call (781)  |  Century (319)  |  Certain (557)  |  Decay (59)  |  Falsity (16)  |  Friend (180)  |  God (776)  |  Gold (101)  |  Hide (70)  |  Immortal (35)  |  Month (91)  |  Never (1089)  |  Number (710)  |  Overlook (33)  |  Truth (1109)

We admit as many genera as there are different groups of natural species of which the fructification has the same structure.
Fundamenta Botanica (1736), 159. Trans. Gunnar Eriksson, 'Linnaeus the Botanist', in Tore Frängsmyr (ed.), Linnaeus: The Man and his Work (1983), 86.
Science quotes on:  |  Different (595)  |  Genus (27)  |  Natural (810)  |  Species (435)  |  Structure (365)

We inhabit a dead ember swimming wide in the blank of space, dizzily spinning as it swims, and lighted up from several million miles away by a more horrible hell-fire than was ever conceived by the theological imagination. Yet the dead ember is a green, commodious dwelling-place; and the reverberation of this hell-fire ripens flower and fruit and mildly warms us on summer eves upon the lawn.
In Lay Morals, collected in Works: Letters and Miscellanies of Robert Louis Stevenson: Sketches, Criticism, Etc. (1898) Vol. 22, 552.
Science quotes on:  |  Blank (14)  |  Conceive (100)  |  Dead (65)  |  Dizzy (4)  |  Dwelling (12)  |  Ember (2)  |  Eve (4)  |  Fire (203)  |  Flower (112)  |  Green (65)  |  Horrible (10)  |  Imagination (349)  |  Inhabit (18)  |  Lawn (5)  |  Light (635)  |  Mildly (2)  |  Mile (43)  |  Million (124)  |  More (2558)  |  Reverberation (3)  |  Ripen (4)  |  Space (523)  |  Spin (26)  |  Spinning (18)  |  Summer (56)  |  Swim (32)  |  Swimming (19)  |  Theological (3)  |  Warm (74)  |  Wide (97)

We will not act prematurely or unnecessarily risk the costs of world­wide nuclear war in which even the fruits of victory would be ashes in our mouth. But neither will we shrink from that risk at any time it must be faced.
(1962) From address televised during the Cuban missile crisis (22 Oct 1962). As quoted in The Uncommon Wisdom of JFK: A Portrait in His Own Words 92003), 89.
Science quotes on:  |  Act (278)  |  Ash (21)  |  Cost (94)  |  Mouth (54)  |  Must (1525)  |  Nuclear (110)  |  Nuclear Weapon (17)  |  Risk (68)  |  Shrink (23)  |  Time (1911)  |  Victory (40)  |  War (233)  |  Wide (97)  |  Will (2350)  |  World (1850)

What shall be done with nature to reclaim
 The herbless, treeless waste? those dead seas past,
 Dried summer lands, deserts and “antres vast,”
The earth’s reproach, her barrenness and shame.
Can human toil and foresight help the same?
 Science, of soils declares with grand forecast,
 Last shall be first, and first shall be the last
To come to fruit in Irrigation’s name!
In 'Arid Lands', Poems of Expansion (1898), 108.
Science quotes on:  |  Agriculture (78)  |  Barren (33)  |  Dead Sea (2)  |  Declare (48)  |  Desert (59)  |  Dry (65)  |  Earth (1076)  |  First (1302)  |  Forecast (15)  |  Foresight (8)  |  Grand (29)  |  Help (116)  |  Human (1512)  |  Irrigation (12)  |  Land (131)  |  Name (359)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Past (355)  |  Reproach (4)  |  Shame (15)  |  Soil (98)  |  Soil Science (4)  |  Summer (56)  |  Toil (29)  |  Treeless (2)  |  Vast (188)  |  Waste (109)

Whatsoever therefore is consequent to a time of Warre, where every man is Enemy to every man; the same is consequent to the time, wherein men live without other security, than what their own strength, and their own invention shall furnish them withall. In such condition, there is no place for Industry; because the fruit thereof is uncertain: and consequently no Culture of the Earth; no Navigation, nor use of the commodities that may be imported by Sea; no commodious Building; no Instruments of moving, and removing, such things as require much force; no Knowledge of the face of the Earth; no account of Time; no Arts; no Letters; no Society; and which is worst of all, continual fear, and danger of violent death; And the life of man, solitary, poore, nasty, brutish, and short.
Leviathan (1651), ed. C. B. Macpherson (1968), Part 1, Chapter 13, 186.
Science quotes on:  |  Account (195)  |  Art (680)  |  Building (158)  |  Condition (362)  |  Consequent (19)  |  Continual (44)  |  Culture (157)  |  Danger (127)  |  Death (406)  |  Earth (1076)  |  Enemy (86)  |  Face (214)  |  Fear (212)  |  Force (497)  |  Furnish (97)  |  Industry (159)  |  Instrument (158)  |  Invention (400)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Letter (117)  |  Life (1870)  |  Live (650)  |  Man (2252)  |  Navigation (26)  |  Other (2233)  |  Require (229)  |  Sea (326)  |  Security (51)  |  Short (200)  |  Society (350)  |  Strength (139)  |  Thing (1914)  |  Time (1911)  |  Uncertain (45)  |  Use (771)  |  War (233)  |  Whatsoever (41)  |  Worst (57)

When I behold a fashionable table set out in all its magnificence, I fancy that I see gouts and dropsies, fevers and lethargies, with other innumerable distempers lying in ambuscade among the dishes. Nature delights in the most plain and simple diet. Every animal but man keeps to one dish. Herbs are the food of this species, fish of that, and flesh of a third. Man falls upon everything that comes in his way; not the smallest fruit or excrescence of the earth, scarce a berry or a mushroom can escape him.
Spectator, No. 195. In Samuel Austin Allibone, Prose Quotations from Socrates to Macaulay (1880), 363.
Science quotes on:  |  Ambuscade (2)  |  Animal (651)  |  Berry (3)  |  Delight (111)  |  Diet (56)  |  Distemper (5)  |  Dropsy (2)  |  Earth (1076)  |  Escape (85)  |  Everything (489)  |  Fall (243)  |  Fancy (50)  |  Fashionable (15)  |  Fever (34)  |  Fish (130)  |  Flesh (28)  |  Food (213)  |  Gluttony (6)  |  Gout (5)  |  Herb (6)  |  Innumerable (56)  |  Lying (55)  |  Magnificence (14)  |  Man (2252)  |  Most (1728)  |  Mushroom (4)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Other (2233)  |  See (1094)  |  Set (400)  |  Simple (426)  |  Species (435)  |  Table (105)  |  Way (1214)

Who, of men, can tell
That flowers would bloom, or that green fruit would swell
To melting pulp, that fish would have bright mail,
The earth its dower of river, wood, and vale,
The meadows runnels, runnels pebble-stones,
The seed its harvest, or the lute its tones,
Tones ravishment, or ravishment its sweet,
If human souls did never kiss and greet?
Endymion (1818), bk. 1, l. 835-842. In John Barnard (ed.), John Keats. The Complete Poems (1973), 129.
Science quotes on:  |  Bright (81)  |  Earth (1076)  |  Fish (130)  |  Flower (112)  |  Green (65)  |  Harvest (28)  |  Human (1512)  |  Kiss (9)  |  Meadow (21)  |  Never (1089)  |  Pebble (27)  |  Poem (104)  |  River (140)  |  Seed (97)  |  Soul (235)  |  Stone (168)  |  Sweet (40)  |  Tell (344)  |  Tone (22)  |  Wood (97)

Within the last five or six years [from 1916], from a common wild species of fly, the fruit fly, Drosophila ampelophila, which we have brought into the laboratory, have arisen over a hundred and twenty-five new types whose origin is completely known.
In A Critique of the Theory of Evolution (1916), 60.
Science quotes on:  |  Common (447)  |  Completely (137)  |  Drosophila (10)  |  Fly (153)  |  Fruit Fly (6)  |  Hundred (240)  |  Know (1538)  |  Known (453)  |  Laboratory (214)  |  Last (425)  |  New (1273)  |  Origin (250)  |  Species (435)  |  Type (171)  |  Wild (96)  |  Year (963)

You are literally filled with the fruit of your own devices, with rats and mice and such small deer, paramecia, and entomostraceæ, and kicking things with horrid names, which you see in microscopes at the Polytechnic, and rush home and call for brandy—without the water—stone, and gravel, and dyspepsia, and fragments of your own muscular tissue tinged with your own bile.
'The Water Supply of London', North British Review (1851), 15, 246
Science quotes on:  |  Bile (5)  |  Call (781)  |  Deer (11)  |  Device (71)  |  Dyspepsia (2)  |  Fragment (58)  |  Home (184)  |  Literally (30)  |  Microscope (85)  |  Mouse (33)  |  Muscle (47)  |  Name (359)  |  Paramecium (2)  |  Polytechnic (2)  |  Rat (37)  |  See (1094)  |  Small (489)  |  Stone (168)  |  Thing (1914)  |  Tissue (51)  |  Water (503)

You geneticists may know something about the hereditary mechanisms that distinguish a red-eyed from a white-eyed fruit fly but you haven’t the slightest inkling about the hereditary mechanism that distinguishes fruit flies from elephants.
1925, in Corn, Its Origin, Evolution and Improvement by P. C. Mangelsdorf (1974).
Science quotes on:  |  Distinguish (168)  |  Elephant (35)  |  Fly (153)  |  Fruit Fly (6)  |  Geneticist (16)  |  Know (1538)  |  Mechanism (102)  |  Something (718)  |  White (132)

You've to go out on a limb sometimes, because that's where the fruit is.
In Juanita Rose Violini, Almanac of the Infamous, the Incredible, and the Ignored (2009), 56. If you know a primary source, please contact Webmaster, who has not yet found a primary source for this quote, although seen widely attributed to Will Rogers.
Science quotes on:  |  Go (6)  |  Initiative (17)  |  Limb (9)  |  Progress (492)  |  Research (753)


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.