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: “The Columbia is lost; there are no survivors.”
more quiz questions >>
Home > Category Index for Science Quotations > Category Index H > Category: Humbug

Humbug Quotes (6 quotes)

Aeroplanes are not designed by science, but by art in spite of some pretence and humbug to the contrary. I do not mean to suggest that engineering can do without science, on the contrary, it stands on scientific foundations, but there is a big gap between scientific research and the engineering product which has to be bridged by the art of the engineer.
In John D. North, 'The Case for Metal Construction', The Journal of the Royal Aeronautical Society, (Jan 1923), 27, 11.
Science quotes on:  |  Aeronautics (15)  |  Airplane (43)  |  Art (680)  |  Contrary (143)  |  Design (203)  |  Do (1905)  |  Engineer (136)  |  Engineering (188)  |  Foundation (177)  |  Gap (36)  |  Mean (810)  |  Pretence (7)  |  Product (166)  |  Research (753)  |  Science And Art (195)  |  Scientific (955)  |  Spite (55)  |  Stand (284)

Florey was not an easy personality. His drive and ambition were manifest from the day he arrived ... He could be ruthless and selfish; on the other hand, he could show kindliness, a warm humanity and, at times, sentiment and a sense of humour. He displayed utter integrity and he was scathing of humbug and pretence. His attitude was always—&ldqo;You must take me as you find me” But to cope with him at times, you had to do battle, raise your voice as high as his and never let him shout you down. You had to raise your pitch to his but if you insisted on your right he was always, in the end, very fair. I must say that at times, he went out of his way to cut people down to size with some very destructive criticism. But I must also say in the years I knew him he did not once utter a word of praise about himself.
Personal communication (1970) to Florey's Australian biographer, Lennard Bickel. By letter, Drury described his experience as a peer, being a research collaborator while Florey held a Studentship at Cambridge in the 1920s. This quote appears without naming Drury, in Eric Lax, The Mold in Dr. Florey's Coat: The Story of the Penicillin Miracle (2004), 40. Dury is cited in Lennard Bickel, Rise Up to Life: A Biography of Howard Walter Florey Who Gave Penicillin to the World (1972), 24. Also in Eric Lax
Science quotes on:  |  Ambition (46)  |  Attitude (84)  |  Battle (36)  |  Coping (4)  |  Criticism (85)  |  Cut (116)  |  Destruction (135)  |  Display (59)  |  Do (1905)  |  Down (455)  |  Drive (61)  |  Easy (213)  |  End (603)  |  Fairness (2)  |  Find (1014)  |  Sir Howard Walter Florey (3)  |  High (370)  |  Himself (461)  |  Humanity (186)  |  Humour (116)  |  Insistence (12)  |  Integrity (21)  |  Manifestation (61)  |  Must (1525)  |  Never (1089)  |  Other (2233)  |  People (1031)  |  Personality (66)  |  Pitch (17)  |  Praise (28)  |  Pretense (2)  |  Right (473)  |  Ruthless (12)  |  Ruthlessness (3)  |  Say (989)  |  Selfish (12)  |  Selfishness (9)  |  Sense (785)  |  Sense of Humour (2)  |  Sentiment (16)  |  Shout (25)  |  Show (353)  |  Time (1911)  |  Voice (54)  |  Warm (74)  |  Way (1214)  |  Word (650)  |  Year (963)

I look upon the whole system of giving pensions to literary and scientific people as a piece of gross humbug. It is not done for any good purpose; it ought never to have been done. It is gross humbug from beginning to end.
Words attributed to Melbourne in Fraser's Magazine (1835), 12, 707.
Science quotes on:  |  Beginning (312)  |  End (603)  |  Good (906)  |  Look (584)  |  Never (1089)  |  Pension (2)  |  People (1031)  |  Purpose (336)  |  Scientific (955)  |  Scientist (881)  |  System (545)  |  Whole (756)

The uncertain, unsettled condition of this science of Cetology is in the very vestibule attested by the fact, that in some quarters it still remains a moot point whether a whale be a fish. In his System of Nature, A.D. 1776, Linnæus declares, “I hereby separate the whales from the fish.” But of my own knowledge, I know that down to the year 1850, sharks and shads, alewives and herring, against Linnæus’s express edict, were still found dividing the possession of the same seas with the Leviathan.
The grounds upon which Linnæus would fain have banished the whales from the waters, he states as follows: “On account of their warm bilocular heart, their lungs, their movable eyelids, their hollow ears, penem intrantem feminam mammis lactantem,” and finally, “ex lege naturæ jure meritoque.” I submitted all this to my friends Simeon Macey and Charley Coffin, of Nantucket, both messmates of mine in a certain voyage, and they united in the opinion that the reasons set forth were altogether insufficient. Charley profanely hinted they were humbug.
In Moby Dick (1851, 1892), 128-129.
Science quotes on:  |  Cetology (2)  |  Eyelid (2)  |  Fish (130)  |  Heart (243)  |  Carolus Linnaeus (36)  |  Lung (37)  |  Mammal (41)  |  Whale (45)

There has never been an age so full of humbug. Humbug everywhere, even in science. For years now the scientists have been promising us every morning a new miracle, a new element, a new metal, guaranteeing to warm us with copper discs immersed in water, to feed us with nothing, to kill us at no expense whatever on a grand scale, to keep us alive indefinitely, to make iron out of heaven knows what. And all this fantastic, scientific humbugging leads to membership of the Institut, to decorations, to influence, to stipends, to the respect of serious people. In the meantime the cost of living rises, doubles, trebles; there is a shortage of raw materials; even death makes no progress—as we saw at Sebastopol, where men cut each other to ribbons—and the cheapest goods are still the worst goods in the world.
With co-author Jules de Goncourt (French writer, 1830-70)
Diary entry, 7 Jan 1857. In R. Baldick (ed. & trans.), Pages from the Goncourt Journal (1978), 24.
Science quotes on:  |  Age (509)  |  Alive (97)  |  Author (175)  |  Copper (25)  |  Cost (94)  |  Cut (116)  |  Death (406)  |  Element (322)  |  Everywhere (98)  |  Fantastic (21)  |  Good (906)  |  Heaven (266)  |  Influence (231)  |  Iron (99)  |  Kill (100)  |  Know (1538)  |  Lead (391)  |  Living (492)  |  Material (366)  |  Metal (88)  |  Miracle (85)  |  Morning (98)  |  Never (1089)  |  New (1273)  |  Nothing (1000)  |  Other (2233)  |  People (1031)  |  Prediction (89)  |  Progress (492)  |  Raw (28)  |  Respect (212)  |  Rise (169)  |  Saw (160)  |  Scale (122)  |  Scientific (955)  |  Scientist (881)  |  Serious (98)  |  Still (614)  |  Warm (74)  |  Water (503)  |  Whatever (234)  |  World (1850)  |  Worst (57)  |  Writer (90)  |  Year (963)

To smite all humbugs, however big; to give a nobler tone to science; to set an example of abstinence from petty personal controversies, and of toleration for everything but lying. … —are these my aims?
Journal entry (31 Dec 1856). In Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley (1901), 162.
Science quotes on:  |  Abstinence (4)  |  Aim (175)  |  Controversy (30)  |  Everything (489)  |  Example (98)  |  Lie (370)  |  Lying (55)  |  Noble (93)  |  Personal (75)  |  Petty (9)  |  Set (400)  |  Smite (4)  |  Toleration (7)  |  Tone (22)


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.