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: “Truth is ever to be found in simplicity, and not in the multiplicity and confusion of things.”
more quiz questions >>
Home > Category Index for Science Quotations > Category Index H > Category: History Of Mankind

History Of Mankind Quotes (15 quotes)

… the truth is that the knowledge of external nature and of the sciences which that knowledge requires or includes, is not the great or the frequent business of the human mind. Whether we provide for action or conversation, whether we wish to be useful or pleasing, the first requisite is the religious and moral knowledge of right and wrong; the next is an acquaintance with the history of mankind, and with those examples which may be said to embody truth, and prove by events the reasonableness of opinions. Prudence and justice are virtues, and excellencies, of all times and of all places; we are perpetually moralists, but we are geometricians only by chance. Our intercourse with intellectual nature is necessary; our speculations upon matter are voluntary, and at leisure. Physical knowledge is of such rare emergence, that one man may know another half his life without being able to estimate his skill in hydrostatics or astronomy; but his moral and prudential character immediately appears.
In Lives of the Poets (1779-81).
Science quotes on:  |  Acquaintance (38)  |  Action (342)  |  Astronomy (251)  |  Being (1276)  |  Business (156)  |  Chance (244)  |  Character (259)  |  Conversation (46)  |  Emergence (35)  |  Estimate (59)  |  Event (222)  |  First (1302)  |  Great (1610)  |  History (716)  |  Human (1512)  |  Human Mind (133)  |  Immediately (115)  |  Include (93)  |  Intellectual (258)  |  Justice (40)  |  Know (1538)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Leisure (25)  |  Life (1870)  |  Man (2252)  |  Mankind (356)  |  Matter (821)  |  Mind (1377)  |  Moral (203)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Necessary (370)  |  Next (238)  |  Opinion (291)  |  Perpetually (20)  |  Physical (518)  |  Prove (261)  |  Rare (94)  |  Reasonableness (6)  |  Religious (134)  |  Require (229)  |  Right (473)  |  Skill (116)  |  Speculation (137)  |  Time (1911)  |  Truth (1109)  |  Useful (260)  |  Virtue (117)  |  Wish (216)  |  Wrong (246)

A multidisciplinary study group ... estimated that it would be 1980 before developments in artificial intelligence make it possible for machines alone to do much thinking or problem solving of military significance. That would leave, say, five years to develop man-computer symbiosis and 15 years to use it. The 15 may be 10 or 500, but those years should be intellectually the most creative and exciting in the history of mankind.
From article 'Man-Computer Symbiosis', in IRE Transactions on Human Factors in Electronics (Mar 1960), Vol. HFE-1, 4-11.
Science quotes on:  |  Alone (324)  |  Artificial Intelligence (12)  |  Computer (131)  |  Creative (144)  |  Develop (278)  |  Development (441)  |  Do (1905)  |  Exciting (50)  |  History (716)  |  Intellectual (258)  |  Intelligence (218)  |  Machine (271)  |  Man (2252)  |  Mankind (356)  |  Military (45)  |  Most (1728)  |  Possible (560)  |  Problem (731)  |  Say (989)  |  Significance (114)  |  Solving (6)  |  Study (701)  |  Symbiosis (4)  |  Thinking (425)  |  Use (771)  |  Year (963)

Anthropology has reached that point of development where the careful investigation of facts shakes our firm belief in the far-reaching theories that have been built up. The complexity of each phenomenon dawns on our minds, and makes us desirous of proceeding more cautiously. Heretofore we have seen the features common to all human thought. Now we begin to see their differences. We recognize that these are no less important than their similarities, and the value of detailed studies becomes apparent. Our aim has not changed, but our method must change. We are still searching for the laws that govern the growth of human culture, of human thought; but we recognize the fact that before we seek for what is common to all culture, we must analyze each culture by careful and exact methods, as the geologist analyzes the succession and order of deposits, as the biologist examines the forms of living matter. We see that the growth of human culture manifests itself in the growth of each special culture. Thus we have come to understand that before we can build up the theory of the growth of all human culture, we must know the growth of cultures that we find here and there among the most primitive tribes of the Arctic, of the deserts of Australia, and of the impenetrable forests of South America; and the progress of the civilization of antiquity and of our own times. We must, so far as we can, reconstruct the actual history of mankind, before we can hope to discover the laws underlying that history.
The Jesup North Pacific Expedition: Memoir of the American Museum of Natural History (1898), Vol. 1, 4.
Science quotes on:  |  Actual (118)  |  Aim (175)  |  America (143)  |  Anthropology (61)  |  Antiquity (34)  |  Apparent (85)  |  Arctic (10)  |  Australia (11)  |  Become (821)  |  Begin (275)  |  Belief (615)  |  Biologist (70)  |  Build (211)  |  Change (639)  |  Civilization (220)  |  Common (447)  |  Complexity (121)  |  Culture (157)  |  Dawn (31)  |  Desert (59)  |  Desirous (2)  |  Detail (150)  |  Development (441)  |  Difference (355)  |  Discover (571)  |  Examine (84)  |  Fact (1257)  |  Facts (553)  |  Find (1014)  |  Firm (47)  |  Forest (161)  |  Form (976)  |  Geologist (82)  |  Govern (66)  |  Growth (200)  |  History (716)  |  Hope (321)  |  Human (1512)  |  Human Culture (10)  |  Investigation (250)  |  Know (1538)  |  Law (913)  |  Living (492)  |  Mankind (356)  |  Matter (821)  |  Method (531)  |  Mind (1377)  |  More (2558)  |  Most (1728)  |  Must (1525)  |  Order (638)  |  Phenomenon (334)  |  Point (584)  |  Primitive (79)  |  Proceeding (38)  |  Progress (492)  |  Reach (286)  |  Recognize (136)  |  See (1094)  |  Seek (218)  |  Shake (43)  |  South (39)  |  South America (6)  |  Special (188)  |  Still (614)  |  Succession (80)  |  Theory (1015)  |  Thought (995)  |  Time (1911)  |  Tribe (26)  |  Underlying (33)  |  Understand (648)  |  Value (393)

Facts may belong to the past history of mankind, to the social statistics of our great cities, to the atmosphere of the most distant stars, to the digestive organs of a worm, or to the life of a scarcely visible bacillus. It is not the facts themselves which form science, but the method in which they are dealt with.
From The Grammar of Science (1892), 15.
Science quotes on:  |  Atmosphere (117)  |  Bacillus (9)  |  Belong (168)  |  City (87)  |  Digestion (29)  |  Fact (1257)  |  Facts (553)  |  Form (976)  |  Great (1610)  |  History (716)  |  Life (1870)  |  Mankind (356)  |  Method (531)  |  Microscopic (27)  |  Most (1728)  |  Organ (118)  |  Past (355)  |  Scarcely (75)  |  Scientific Method (200)  |  Social (261)  |  Star (460)  |  Stars (304)  |  Statistics (170)  |  Themselves (433)  |  Visible (87)  |  Worm (47)

From a long view of the history of mankind—seen from, say, ten thousand years from now—there can be little doubt that the most significant event of the 19th century will be judged as Maxwell’s discovery of the laws of electrodynamics. The American Civil War will pale into provincial insignificance in comparison with this important scientific event of the same decade.
In The Feynman Lectures on Physics (1964), Vol. 2, page 1-11.
Science quotes on:  |  19th Century (41)  |  Century (319)  |  Civil (26)  |  Comparison (108)  |  Decade (66)  |  Discovery (837)  |  Doubt (314)  |  Electrodynamics (10)  |  Event (222)  |  History (716)  |  Insignificance (12)  |  Law (913)  |  Little (717)  |  Long (778)  |  Mankind (356)  |  Maxwell (42)  |  James Clerk Maxwell (91)  |  Most (1728)  |  Say (989)  |  Scientific (955)  |  Significant (78)  |  Thousand (340)  |  View (496)  |  War (233)  |  Will (2350)  |  Year (963)

From thus meditating on the great similarity of the structure of the warm-blooded animals, and at the same time of the great changes they undergo both before and after their nativity; and by considering in how minute a portion of time many of the changes of animals above described have been produced; would it be too bold to imagine that, in the great length of time since the earth began to exist, perhaps millions of ages before the commencement of the history of mankind would it be too bold to imagine that all warm-blooded animals have arisen from one living filament, which THE GREAT FIRST CAUSE endued with animality, with the power of acquiring new parts, attended with new propensities, directed by irritations, sensations, volitions and associations, and thus possessing the faculty of continuing to improve by its own inherent activity, and of delivering down these improvements by generation to its posterity, world without end!
Zoonomia, Or, The Laws of Organic Life, in three parts (1803), Vol. 1, 397.
Science quotes on:  |  Activity (218)  |  Age (509)  |  Animal (651)  |  Association (49)  |  Attend (67)  |  Blood (144)  |  Bold (22)  |  Both (496)  |  Cause (561)  |  Change (639)  |  Commencement (14)  |  Direct (228)  |  Down (455)  |  Earth (1076)  |  End (603)  |  Evolution (635)  |  Exist (458)  |  Filament (4)  |  First (1302)  |  Generation (256)  |  Great (1610)  |  History (716)  |  Imagine (176)  |  Improvement (117)  |  Inherent (43)  |  Living (492)  |  Mankind (356)  |  Minute (129)  |  New (1273)  |  Portion (86)  |  Posterity (29)  |  Power (771)  |  Produced (187)  |  Sensation (60)  |  Similarity (32)  |  Small (489)  |  Structure (365)  |  Time (1911)  |  Volition (3)  |  Warm (74)  |  Warm-Blooded (3)  |  World (1850)

Human evolution is nothing else but the natural continuation, at a collective level, of the perennial and cumulative process of “psychogenetic” arrangement of matter which we call life. … The whole history of mankind has been nothing else (and henceforth it will never be anything else) but an explosive outburst of ever-growing cerebration. … Life, if fully understood, is not a freak in the universe—nor man a freak in life. On the contrary, life physically culminates in man, just as energy physically culminates in life.
(1952). As quoted in Stephen Jay Gould, Hen's Teeth and Horse's Toes: Further Reflections in Natural History (1984, 1994), 246.
Science quotes on:  |  Arrangement (93)  |  Call (781)  |  Continuation (20)  |  Contrary (143)  |  Cumulative (14)  |  Energy (373)  |  Evolution (635)  |  Explosive (24)  |  Freak (6)  |  Growing (99)  |  History (716)  |  Human (1512)  |  Life (1870)  |  Man (2252)  |  Mankind (356)  |  Matter (821)  |  Natural (810)  |  Never (1089)  |  Nothing (1000)  |  Perennial (9)  |  Process (439)  |  Understand (648)  |  Understood (155)  |  Universe (900)  |  Whole (756)  |  Will (2350)

I happened to read recently a remark by American nuclear physicist W. Davidson, who noted that the explosion of one hydrogen bomb releases a greater amount of energy than the explosions set off by all countries in all wars known in the entire history of mankind. And he, apparently, is right.
[The quoted physicist was, in fact, William Davidon, Argonne National Laboratory.]
Address to the United Nations, New York City, 18 Sep 1959. Quoted in 'Texts of Khrushchev's Address at United Nations and the Soviet Declaration', New York Times (19 Sep 1959), 8.
Science quotes on:  |  Amount (153)  |  Energy (373)  |  Explosion (51)  |  Fact (1257)  |  Greater (288)  |  Happen (282)  |  Happened (88)  |  History (716)  |  Hydrogen (80)  |  Hydrogen Bomb (16)  |  Known (453)  |  Laboratory (214)  |  Mankind (356)  |  Nuclear (110)  |  Nuclear Physicist (5)  |  Physicist (270)  |  Read (308)  |  Release (31)  |  Right (473)  |  Set (400)  |  War (233)

In their capacity as a tool, computers will be but a ripple on the surface of our culture. In their capacity as intellectual challenge, they are without precedent in the cultural history of mankind.
From Turing Award acceptance speech.
Science quotes on:  |  Capacity (105)  |  Challenge (91)  |  Computer (131)  |  Culture (157)  |  Intellect (251)  |  Precedent (9)  |  Ripple (12)  |  Surface (223)  |  Tool (129)

It is clear, from these considerations, that the three methods of classifying mankind—that according to physical characters, according to language, and according to culture—all reflect the historical development of races from different standpoints; and that the results of the three classifications are not comparable, because the historical facts do not affect the three classes of phenomena equally. A consideration of all these classes of facts is needed when we endeavour to reconstruct the early history of the races of mankind.
'Summary of the Work of the Committee in British Columbia', Report of the Sixty-Eighth Meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, 1899, 670.
Science quotes on:  |  According (236)  |  Character (259)  |  Classification (102)  |  Consideration (143)  |  Culture (157)  |  Development (441)  |  Different (595)  |  Do (1905)  |  Early (196)  |  Endeavour (63)  |  Equally (129)  |  Fact (1257)  |  Facts (553)  |  Historical (70)  |  History (716)  |  Human Culture (10)  |  Language (308)  |  Mankind (356)  |  Method (531)  |  Physical (518)  |  Race (278)  |  Result (700)  |  Standpoint (28)

Somewhere between 1900 and 1912 in this country, according to one sober medical scientist [Henderson] a random patient, with a random disease, consulting a doctor chosen at random had, for the first time in the history of mankind, a better than fifty-fifty chance of profiting from the encounter.
Anonymous
Quoted in New England Journal of Medicine (1964), 270, 449.
Science quotes on:  |  According (236)  |  Better (493)  |  Chance (244)  |  Chosen (48)  |  Country (269)  |  Disease (340)  |  Doctor (191)  |  First (1302)  |  Lawrence Joseph Henderson (9)  |  History (716)  |  Mankind (356)  |  Patient (209)  |  Physician (284)  |  Random (42)  |  Scientist (881)  |  Time (1911)

The history of science is the history of mankind’s unity, of its sublime purpose, of its gradual redemption.
In Introduction to the History of Science (1927), Vol. 1, 32.
Science quotes on:  |  Gradual (30)  |  History (716)  |  History Of Science (80)  |  Mankind (356)  |  Purpose (336)  |  Redemption (3)  |  Sublime (50)  |  Unity (81)

The history of science is the real history of mankind.
As given, without source citation, as an epigraph opening W.T. Sedgwick, and H.W. Tyler, A Short History of Science (1917), ii. The quote is no doubt a translation from an original in German, which Webmaster has not yet been able to track down.
Science quotes on:  |  History (716)  |  History Of Science (80)  |  Mankind (356)  |  Real (159)

We have chosen to write the biography of our disease because we love it platonically — as Amy Lowell loved Keats — and have sought its acquaintance wherever we could find it. And in this growing intimacy we have become increasingly impressed with the influence that this and other infectious diseases, which span — in their protoplasmic continuities — the entire history of mankind, have had upon the fates of men.
Rats, Lice and History (1935)
Science quotes on:  |  Acquaintance (38)  |  Become (821)  |  Biography (254)  |  Chosen (48)  |  Disease (340)  |  Fate (76)  |  Find (1014)  |  Growing (99)  |  History (716)  |  Impress (66)  |  Impressed (39)  |  Influence (231)  |  Love (328)  |  Mankind (356)  |  Other (2233)  |  Wherever (51)  |  Write (250)

We know only a single science, the science of history. History can be contemplated from two sides, it can be divided into the history of nature and the history of mankind. However, the two sides are not to be divided off; as long as men exist the history of nature and the history of men are mutually conditioned.
Karl Marx
Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, The German Ideology (1845-6), Vol. 1, 28. English translation 1965.
Science quotes on:  |  Condition (362)  |  Divided (50)  |  Exist (458)  |  History (716)  |  Know (1538)  |  Long (778)  |  Mankind (356)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Side (236)  |  Single (365)  |  Two (936)


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.