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: “We are here to celebrate the completion of the first survey of the entire human genome. Without a doubt, this is the most important, most wondrous map ever produced by human kind.”
more quiz questions >>
Home > Category Index for Science Quotations > Category Index I > Category: Immortal

Immortal Quotes (35 quotes)

[Cloning] can't make you immortal because clearly the clone is a different person. If I take twins and shoot one of them, it will be faint consolation to the dead one that the other one is still running around, even though they are genetically identical. So the road to immortality is not through cloning.
Quoted in 'Baby, It's You! And You, And You...', Time magazine (19 Feb 2001).
Science quotes on:  |  Clone (8)  |  Cloning (8)  |  Consolation (9)  |  Different (595)  |  Identical (55)  |  Other (2233)  |  Person (366)  |  Running (61)  |  Still (614)  |  Through (846)  |  Twin (16)  |  Will (2350)

[Some] philosophers have been of opinion that our immortal part acquires during this life certain habits of action or of sentiment, which become forever indissoluble, continuing after death in a future state of existence ... I would apply this ingenious idea to the generation, or production of the embryon, or new animal, which partakes so much of the form and propensities of the parent.
Zoonomia (1794), Vol. 1, 483-4.
Science quotes on:  |  Action (342)  |  Animal (651)  |  Apply (170)  |  Become (821)  |  Certain (557)  |  Death (406)  |  Evolution (635)  |  Existence (481)  |  Forever (111)  |  Form (976)  |  Future (467)  |  Generation (256)  |  Habit (174)  |  Idea (881)  |  Ingenious (55)  |  Life (1870)  |  New (1273)  |  Opinion (291)  |  Parent (80)  |  Philosopher (269)  |  Production (190)  |  State (505)

[Watching natural history programs] brings a solace you can’t describe in words. It’s because we’re part of it fundamentally…. In moments of great grief, that’s where you look and immerse yourself. You realise you are not immortal, you are not a god, you are part of the natural world and you come to accept that.
Reflecting on the letters he received from newly bereaved people. While his series are running on TV, in dozens of letters daily (comprising the majority of the correspondence), they tell him that the only things they can face in their darkest moments are his natural-history programmes. From interview with Joe Shute, 'David Attenborough at 90: ‘I think about my mortality every day’', The Telegraph (29 Oct 2016).
Science quotes on:  |  Accept (198)  |  Describe (132)  |  God (776)  |  Great (1610)  |  Grief (20)  |  History (716)  |  Look (584)  |  Moment (260)  |  Natural (810)  |  Natural History (77)  |  Natural World (33)  |  Realize (157)  |  Word (650)  |  World (1850)

La chemie est une science française; elle fut constitutée par Lavoisier d’immortelle mémoire.
Chemistry is a French Science. It was founded by Lavoisier of immortal memory.
In 'Histoire des doctrines chimiques', Dictionnaire de Chimie Pure et Appliquée (1868), Vol. 1, i.
Science quotes on:  |  Chemistry (376)  |  France (29)  |  Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier (41)  |  Memory (144)

To the Memory of Fourier
Fourier! with solemn and profound delight,
Joy born of awe, but kindling momently
To an intense and thrilling ecstacy,
I gaze upon thy glory and grow bright:
As if irradiate with beholden light;
As if the immortal that remains of thee
Attuned me to thy spirit’s harmony,
Breathing serene resolve and tranquil might.
Revealed appear thy silent thoughts of youth,
As if to consciousness, and all that view
Prophetic, of the heritage of truth
To thy majestic years of manhood due:
Darkness and error fleeing far away,
And the pure mind enthroned in perfect day.
In R. Graves, Life of W. R. Hamilton (1882), Vol. l, 696.
Science quotes on:  |  Appear (122)  |  Attune (2)  |  Awe (43)  |  Bear (162)  |  Breathe (49)  |  Breathing (23)  |  Bright (81)  |  Consciousness (132)  |  Darkness (72)  |  Delight (111)  |  Due (143)  |  Error (339)  |  Flee (9)  |  Fourier (5)  |  Gaze (23)  |  Glory (66)  |  Grow (247)  |  Harmony (105)  |  Heritage (22)  |  Intense (22)  |  Joy (117)  |  Kindle (9)  |  Light (635)  |  Majestic (17)  |  Manhood (3)  |  Mathematicians and Anecdotes (141)  |  Memory (144)  |  Mind (1377)  |  Perfect (223)  |  Profound (105)  |  Prophetic (4)  |  Pure (299)  |  Remain (355)  |  Resolve (43)  |  Reveal (152)  |  Revealed (59)  |  Serene (5)  |  Silent (31)  |  Solemn (20)  |  Spirit (278)  |  Thought (995)  |  Thrill (26)  |  Tranquil (2)  |  Truth (1109)  |  View (496)  |  Year (963)  |  Youth (109)

A marveilous newtrality have these things mathematicall, and also a strange participation between things supernaturall, immortall, intellectuall, simple and indivisible, and things naturall, mortall, sensible, componded and divisible.
John Dee
In Mathematicall Praeface to the Elements of Geometrie of Euclid of Megara (1570).
Science quotes on:  |  Compound (117)  |  Divisible (5)  |  Indivisible (22)  |  Intellectual (258)  |  Marvellous (25)  |  Mathematics (1395)  |  Mortal (55)  |  Natural (810)  |  Nature Of Mathematics (80)  |  Neutrality (5)  |  Participation (15)  |  Sensible (28)  |  Simple (426)  |  Strange (160)  |  Supernatural (26)  |  Thing (1914)

Amidst the vicissitudes of the earth’s surface, species cannot be immortal, but must perish, one after another, like the individuals which compose them. There is no possibility of escaping from this conclusion.
Principles of Geology (1837), Vol. 2, 202.
Science quotes on:  |  Conclusion (266)  |  Earth (1076)  |  Extinction (80)  |  Individual (420)  |  Must (1525)  |  Perish (56)  |  Possibility (172)  |  Species (435)  |  Surface (223)  |  Vicissitude (6)

An evolutionary perspective of our place in the history of the earth reminds us that Homo sapiens sapiens has occupied the planet for the tiniest fraction of that planet's four and a half thousand million years of existence. In many ways we are a biological accident, the product of countless propitious circumstances. As we peer back through the fossil record, through layer upon layer of long-extinct species, many of which thrived far longer than the human species is ever likely to do, we are reminded of our mortality as a species. There is no law that declares the human animal to be different, as seen in this broad biological perspective, from any other animal. There is no law that declares the human species to be immortal.
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), 256.
Science quotes on:  |  Accident (92)  |  Animal (651)  |  Back (395)  |  Biological (137)  |  Circumstance (139)  |  Circumstances (108)  |  Countless (39)  |  Declare (48)  |  Different (595)  |  Do (1905)  |  Earth (1076)  |  Evolution (635)  |  Existence (481)  |  Extinct (25)  |  Extinction (80)  |  Fossil (143)  |  Fossil Record (12)  |  History (716)  |  History Of Earth (2)  |  Homo Sapiens (23)  |  Human (1512)  |  Law (913)  |  Layer (41)  |  Long (778)  |  Occupied (45)  |  Other (2233)  |  Perspective (28)  |  Planet (402)  |  Product (166)  |  Record (161)  |  Species (435)  |  Thousand (340)  |  Through (846)  |  Way (1214)  |  Year (963)

Anything made out of destructible matter
Infinite time would have devoured before.
But if the atoms that make and replenish the world
Have endured through the immense span of the past
Their natures are immortal—that is clear.
Never can things revert to nothingness!
On the Nature of Things, trans. Anthony M. Esolen (1995), Book I, lines 232-7, 31.
Science quotes on:  |  Atom (381)  |  Devour (29)  |  Endure (21)  |  Immense (89)  |  Indestructible (12)  |  Infinite (243)  |  Infinity (96)  |  Matter (821)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Never (1089)  |  Nothingness (12)  |  Past (355)  |  Thing (1914)  |  Through (846)  |  Time (1911)  |  World (1850)

By firm immutable immortal laws Impress’d on Nature by the GREAT FIRST CAUSE,
Say, MUSE! how rose from elemental strife
Organic forms, and kindled into life;
How Love and Sympathy with potent charm
Warm the cold heart, the lifted hand disarm;
Allure with pleasures, and alarm with pains,
And bind Society in golden chains.
From 'Production of Life', The Temple of Nature; or, The Origin of Society: A Poem, with Philosophical Notes (1803), 3, Canto I, lines 1-8.
Science quotes on:  |  Alarm (19)  |  Allure (4)  |  Bind (26)  |  Cause (561)  |  Chain (51)  |  Charm (54)  |  Cold (115)  |  Evolution (635)  |  Firm (47)  |  First (1302)  |  Form (976)  |  Golden (47)  |  Great (1610)  |  Heart (243)  |  Immutable (26)  |  Impress (66)  |  Impressed (39)  |  Kindled (2)  |  Law (913)  |  Life (1870)  |  Lift (57)  |  Love (328)  |  Muse (10)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Organic (161)  |  Origin Of Life (37)  |  Pain (144)  |  Pleasure (191)  |  Poem (104)  |  Potent (15)  |  Rose (36)  |  Say (989)  |  Society (350)  |  Strife (9)  |  Sympathy (35)  |  Warm (74)

Certainly Lord Byron has expressed in words some aspects of spiritual turmoil; but our immortal natural historian has reconstructed worlds from bleached bones.
From 'La Peau de Chagrin' (1831). As translated as The Wild Ass’s Skin (1906) trans. Herbert J. Hunt, The Wild Ass’s Skin (1977), 40-1.
Science quotes on:  |  Aspect (129)  |  Bleached (4)  |  Bone (101)  |  Lord George Gordon Byron (28)  |  Certainly (185)  |  Express (192)  |  Historian (59)  |  Lord (97)  |  Natural (810)  |  Natural Historian (2)  |  Reconstruct (5)  |  Spiritual (94)  |  Turmoil (8)  |  Word (650)  |  World (1850)

Descartes' immortal conclusion cogito ergo sum was recently subjected to destruction testing by a group of graduate researchers at Princeton led by Professors Montjuic and Lauterbrunnen, and now reads, in the Shorter Harvard Orthodoxy:
(a) I think, therefore I am; or
(b) Perhaps I thought, therefore I was; but
(c) These days, I tend to leave that side of things to my wife.
Tom Holt
Ye Gods! (1992), 223.
Science quotes on:  |  Cogito Ergo Sum (4)  |  Conclusion (266)  |  René Descartes (83)  |  Destruction (135)  |  Graduate (32)  |  Logic (311)  |  Orthodoxy (11)  |  Professor (133)  |  Read (308)  |  Researcher (36)  |  Side (236)  |  Subject (543)  |  Sum (103)  |  Tend (124)  |  Thing (1914)  |  Think (1122)  |  Thought (995)  |  Wife (41)

Endowed with two qualities, which seemed incompatible with each other, a volcanic imagination and a pertinacity of intellect which the most tedious numerical calculations could not daunt, Kepler conjectured that the movements of the celestial bodies must be connected together by simple laws, or, to use his own expression, by harmonic laws. These laws he undertook to discover. A thousand fruitless attempts, errors of calculation inseparable from a colossal undertaking, did not prevent him a single instant from advancing resolutely toward the goal of which he imagined he had obtained a glimpse. Twenty-two years were employed by him in this investigation, and still he was not weary of it! What, in reality, are twenty-two years of labor to him who is about to become the legislator of worlds; who shall inscribe his name in ineffaceable characters upon the frontispiece of an immortal code; who shall be able to exclaim in dithyrambic language, and without incurring the reproach of anyone, “The die is cast; I have written my book; it will be read either in the present age or by posterity, it matters not which; it may well await a reader, since God has waited six thousand years for an interpreter of his words.”
In 'Eulogy on Laplace', in Smithsonian Report for the year 1874 (1875), 131-132.
Science quotes on:  |  Advance (298)  |  Age (509)  |  Anyone (38)  |  Attempt (266)  |  Await (6)  |  Become (821)  |  Body (557)  |  Book (413)  |  Calculation (134)  |  Cast (69)  |  Celestial (53)  |  Character (259)  |  Code (31)  |  Colossal (15)  |  Conjecture (51)  |  Connect (126)  |  Die (94)  |  Discover (571)  |  Employ (115)  |  Endow (17)  |  Endowed (52)  |  Error (339)  |  Exclaim (15)  |  Expression (181)  |  Frontispiece (2)  |  Fruitless (9)  |  Glimpse (16)  |  Goal (155)  |  God (776)  |  Harmonic (4)  |  Imagination (349)  |  Imagine (176)  |  Incompatible (4)  |  Incur (4)  |  Inscribe (4)  |  Inseparable (18)  |  Instant (46)  |  Intellect (251)  |  Interpreter (8)  |  Investigation (250)  |  Johannes Kepler (95)  |  Labor (200)  |  Language (308)  |  Law (913)  |  Legislator (4)  |  Mathematicians and Anecdotes (141)  |  Matter (821)  |  Most (1728)  |  Movement (162)  |  Must (1525)  |  Name (359)  |  Numerical (39)  |  Obtain (164)  |  Other (2233)  |  Pertinacity (2)  |  Posterity (29)  |  Present (630)  |  Prevent (98)  |  Quality (139)  |  Read (308)  |  Reader (42)  |  Reality (274)  |  Reproach (4)  |  Resolutely (3)  |  Simple (426)  |  Single (365)  |  Still (614)  |  Tedious (15)  |  Thousand (340)  |  Together (392)  |  Toward (45)  |  Two (936)  |  Undertake (35)  |  Undertaking (17)  |  Use (771)  |  Volcano (46)  |  Wait (66)  |  Weary (11)  |  Will (2350)  |  Word (650)  |  World (1850)  |  Write (250)  |  Year (963)

Get into any taxi and tell the driver you are a mathematician and the response is predictable … you will hear the immortal words: “I was never any good at mathematics.” My response is: “I was never any good at being a taxi driver so I went into mathematics.”
In paper, 'A Mathematician’s Survival Guide', pdf document linked from his homepage at math.missouri.edu (undated, but 2011 or earlier, indicated by an “accessed on” date elsewhere.) Collected in Peter Casazza, Steven G. Krantz and Randi D. Ruden (eds.) I, Mathematician (2005), 31.
Science quotes on:  |  Being (1276)  |  Driver (5)  |  Good (906)  |  Hear (144)  |  Mathematician (407)  |  Mathematics (1395)  |  Never (1089)  |  Response (56)  |  Taxi (4)  |  Tell (344)  |  Will (2350)  |  Word (650)

Has Matter more than Motion? Has it Thought,
Judgment, and Genius? Is it deeply learn’d
In Mathematics? Has it fram’d such Laws,
Which, but to guess, a Newton made immortal?—
If so, how each sage Atom laughs at me,
Who think a Clod inferior to a Man!
The Complaint: or, Night-Thoughts on Life, Death, and Immortality (1742, 1750), Night 9, 279.
Science quotes on:  |  Atom (381)  |  Clod (3)  |  Genius (301)  |  Guess (67)  |  Inferior (37)  |  Judgment (140)  |  Laugh (50)  |  Law (913)  |  Learn (672)  |  Man (2252)  |  Mankind (356)  |  Mathematics (1395)  |  Matter (821)  |  More (2558)  |  Motion (320)  |  Sir Isaac Newton (363)  |  Sage (25)  |  Think (1122)  |  Thought (995)

I accepted the Copernican position several years ago and discovered from thence the causes of many natural effects which are doubtless inexplicable by the current theories. I have written up many reasons and refutations on the subject, but I have not dared until now to bring them into the open, being warned by the fortunes of Copernicus himself, our master, who procured for himself immortal fame among a few but stepped down among the great crowd (for this is how foolish people are to be numbered), only to be derided and dishonoured. I would dare publish my thoughts if there were many like you; but since there are not, I shall forbear.
Letter to Johannes Kepler, 4 Aug 1597. Quoted in G. de Santillana, Crime of Galileo (1955), 11.
Science quotes on:  |  Accept (198)  |  Being (1276)  |  Cause (561)  |  Nicolaus Copernicus (54)  |  Current (122)  |  Dare (55)  |  Discover (571)  |  Down (455)  |  Effect (414)  |  Fame (51)  |  Foolish (41)  |  Fortune (50)  |  Great (1610)  |  Heliocentric Model (7)  |  Himself (461)  |  Inexplicable (8)  |  Master (182)  |  Natural (810)  |  Number (710)  |  Open (277)  |  People (1031)  |  Publication (102)  |  Reason (766)  |  Subject (543)  |  Thought (995)  |  Year (963)

I believe in an immortal soul. science has proved that nothing disintegrates into nothingness. Life and soul, therefore, cannot disintegrate into nothingness, and so are immortal.
…...
Science quotes on:  |  Belief (615)  |  Disintegrate (3)  |  Life (1870)  |  Nothing (1000)  |  Nothingness (12)  |  Prove (261)  |  Soul (235)

I have tried to show why I believe that the biologist is the most romantic figure on earth at the present day. At first sight he seems to be just a poor little scrubby underpaid man, groping blindly amid the mazes of the ultra-microscopic, engaging in bitter and lifelong quarrels over the nephridia of flatworms, waking perhaps one morning to find that someone whose name he has never heard has demolished by a few crucial experiments the work which he had hoped would render him immortal.
Daedalus or Science and the Future (1924), 77.
Science quotes on:  |  Biologist (70)  |  Bitter (30)  |  Demolish (8)  |  Earth (1076)  |  Experiment (736)  |  Figure (162)  |  Find (1014)  |  First (1302)  |  Lifelong (10)  |  Little (717)  |  Man (2252)  |  Microscope (85)  |  Microscopic (27)  |  Morning (98)  |  Most (1728)  |  Name (359)  |  Never (1089)  |  Poor (139)  |  Present (630)  |  Render (96)  |  Research (753)  |  Romantic (13)  |  Show (353)  |  Sight (135)  |  Waking (17)  |  Why (491)  |  Work (1402)

If we had nothing but pecuniary rewards and worldly honours to look to, our profession would not be one to be desired. But in its practice you will find it to be attended with peculiar privileges, second to none in intense interest and pure pleasures. It is our proud office to tend the fleshly tabernacle of the immortal spirit, and our path, rightly followed, will be guided by unfettered truth and love unfeigned. In the pursuit of this noble and holy calling I wish you all God-speed.
Conclusion of Graduation Address, University of Edinburgh (1876). In John Vaughan, 'Lord Lister', The Living Age (1918), 297, 361.
Science quotes on:  |  Attend (67)  |  Find (1014)  |  Flesh (28)  |  Follow (389)  |  God (776)  |  Holy (35)  |  Honour (58)  |  Interest (416)  |  Look (584)  |  Love (328)  |  Noble (93)  |  Nothing (1000)  |  Path (159)  |  Peculiar (115)  |  Pecuniary (2)  |  Pleasure (191)  |  Practice (212)  |  Privilege (41)  |  Profession (108)  |  Pure (299)  |  Pursuit (128)  |  Reward (72)  |  Speed (66)  |  Spirit (278)  |  Tabernacle (5)  |  Tend (124)  |  Truth (1109)  |  Will (2350)  |  Wish (216)

IN MEMORIAM: FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE
She whom we love, our Lady of Compassion,
Can never die, for Love forbids her death.
Love has bent down in his old kindly fashion,
And breathed upon her his immortal breath.
On wounded soldiers, in their anguish lying,
Her gentle spirit shall descend like rain.
Where the white flag with the red cross is flying,
There shall she dwell, the vanquisher of pain.
[In remembrance of 'The Lady of the Lamp' who died 13 Aug 1910.]
In New York Times (29 Aug 1910), 6. Collected in Summer of Love (1911), 72.
Science quotes on:  |  Breath (61)  |  Compassion (12)  |  Death (406)  |  Descend (49)  |  Down (455)  |  Flag (12)  |  Flying (74)  |  Forbid (14)  |  In Memoriam (2)  |  Lamp (37)  |  Love (328)  |  Lying (55)  |  Never (1089)  |  Florence Nightingale (34)  |  Nurse (33)  |  Old (499)  |  Pain (144)  |  Poetry (150)  |  Rain (70)  |  Remembrance (5)  |  Soldier (28)  |  Spirit (278)  |  White (132)  |  Wound (26)

Is not Cuvier the great poet of our era? Byron has given admirable expression to certain moral conflicts, but our immortal naturalist has reconstructed past worlds from a few bleached bones; has rebuilt cities, like Cadmus, with monsters’ teeth; has animated forests with all the secrets of zoology gleaned from a piece of coal; has discovered a giant population from the footprints of a mammoth.
From 'La Peau de Chagrin' (1831). As translated by Ellen Marriage in The Wild Ass’s Skin (1906), 21-22.
Science quotes on:  |  Admirable (20)  |  Animated (5)  |  Bleached (4)  |  Bone (101)  |  Lord George Gordon Byron (28)  |  Certain (557)  |  Coal (64)  |  Conflict (77)  |  Baron Georges Cuvier (34)  |  Discover (571)  |  Era (51)  |  Expression (181)  |  Footprint (16)  |  Forest (161)  |  Giant (73)  |  Glean (2)  |  Great (1610)  |  Mammoth (9)  |  Monster (33)  |  Moral (203)  |  Naturalist (79)  |  Past (355)  |  Poet (97)  |  Population (115)  |  Reconstruct (5)  |  Secret (216)  |  Teeth (43)  |  Tooth (32)  |  World (1850)  |  Zoology (38)

Is not Cuvier the greatest poet of our age? Of course Lord Byron has set down in fine words certain of our souls’ longings; but our immortal naturalist has reconstructed whole worlds out of bleached bones. Like Cadmus, he has rebuilt great cities from teeth, repopulated thousands of forests with all the mysteries of zoology from a few pieces of coal, discovered races of giants in the foot of a mammoth.
From 'La Peau de Chagrin' (1831). As translated as by Helen Constantine The Wild Ass’s Skin (2012), 19.
Science quotes on:  |  Age (509)  |  Bleached (4)  |  Bone (101)  |  Build (211)  |  Lord George Gordon Byron (28)  |  Certain (557)  |  City (87)  |  Coal (64)  |  Course (413)  |  Cuvier_George (2)  |  Discover (571)  |  Down (455)  |  Foot (65)  |  Forest (161)  |  Giant (73)  |  Great (1610)  |  Greatest (330)  |  Longing (19)  |  Lord (97)  |  Mammoth (9)  |  Mystery (188)  |  Naturalist (79)  |  Poet (97)  |  Populate (4)  |  Race (278)  |  Reconstruct (5)  |  Set (400)  |  Soul (235)  |  Teeth (43)  |  Thousand (340)  |  Tooth (32)  |  Whole (756)  |  Whole World (29)  |  Word (650)  |  World (1850)  |  Zoology (38)

It is not surprising, in view of the polydynamic constitution of the genuinely mathematical mind, that many of the major heros of the science, men like Desargues and Pascal, Descartes and Leibnitz, Newton, Gauss and Bolzano, Helmholtz and Clifford, Riemann and Salmon and Plücker and Poincaré, have attained to high distinction in other fields not only of science but of philosophy and letters too. And when we reflect that the very greatest mathematical achievements have been due, not alone to the peering, microscopic, histologic vision of men like Weierstrass, illuminating the hidden recesses, the minute and intimate structure of logical reality, but to the larger vision also of men like Klein who survey the kingdoms of geometry and analysis for the endless variety of things that flourish there, as the eye of Darwin ranged over the flora and fauna of the world, or as a commercial monarch contemplates its industry, or as a statesman beholds an empire; when we reflect not only that the Calculus of Probability is a creation of mathematics but that the master mathematician is constantly required to exercise judgment—judgment, that is, in matters not admitting of certainty—balancing probabilities not yet reduced nor even reducible perhaps to calculation; when we reflect that he is called upon to exercise a function analogous to that of the comparative anatomist like Cuvier, comparing theories and doctrines of every degree of similarity and dissimilarity of structure; when, finally, we reflect that he seldom deals with a single idea at a tune, but is for the most part engaged in wielding organized hosts of them, as a general wields at once the division of an army or as a great civil administrator directs from his central office diverse and scattered but related groups of interests and operations; then, I say, the current opinion that devotion to mathematics unfits the devotee for practical affairs should be known for false on a priori grounds. And one should be thus prepared to find that as a fact Gaspard Monge, creator of descriptive geometry, author of the classic Applications de l’analyse à la géométrie; Lazare Carnot, author of the celebrated works, Géométrie de position, and Réflections sur la Métaphysique du Calcul infinitesimal; Fourier, immortal creator of the Théorie analytique de la chaleur; Arago, rightful inheritor of Monge’s chair of geometry; Poncelet, creator of pure projective geometry; one should not be surprised, I say, to find that these and other mathematicians in a land sagacious enough to invoke their aid, rendered, alike in peace and in war, eminent public service.
In Lectures on Science, Philosophy and Art (1908), 32-33.
Science quotes on:  |  A Priori (26)  |  Achievement (187)  |  Administrator (11)  |  Admit (49)  |  Affair (29)  |  Aid (101)  |  Alike (60)  |  Alone (324)  |  Analogous (7)  |  Analysis (244)  |  Anatomist (24)  |  Application (257)  |  François Arago (15)  |  Army (35)  |  Attain (126)  |  Author (175)  |  Balance (82)  |  Behold (19)  |  Bernhard Bolzano (2)  |  Calculation (134)  |  Calculus (65)  |  Call (781)  |  Lazare-Nicolas-Marguerite Carnot (4)  |  Celebrated (2)  |  Central (81)  |  Certainty (180)  |  Chair (25)  |  Civil (26)  |  Classic (13)  |  William Kingdon Clifford (23)  |  Commercial (28)  |  Comparative (14)  |  Compare (76)  |  Constantly (27)  |  Constitution (78)  |  Contemplate (29)  |  Creation (350)  |  Creator (97)  |  Current (122)  |  Baron Georges Cuvier (34)  |  Charles Darwin (322)  |  Deal (192)  |  Degree (277)  |  René Descartes (83)  |  Descriptive (18)  |  Descriptive Geometry (3)  |  Devotee (7)  |  Devotion (37)  |  Direct (228)  |  Dissimilar (6)  |  Distinction (72)  |  Diverse (20)  |  Division (67)  |  Doctrine (81)  |  Due (143)  |  Eminent (20)  |  Empire (17)  |  Endless (60)  |  Engage (41)  |  Enough (341)  |  Exercise (113)  |  Eye (440)  |  Fact (1257)  |  False (105)  |  Fauna (13)  |  Field (378)  |  Finally (26)  |  Find (1014)  |  Flora (9)  |  Flourish (34)  |  Baron Jean-Baptiste-Joseph Fourier (17)  |  Function (235)  |  Carl Friedrich Gauss (79)  |  General (521)  |  Genuinely (4)  |  Geometry (271)  |  Great (1610)  |  Greatest (330)  |  Ground (222)  |  Group (83)  |  Hero (45)  |  Hide (70)  |  High (370)  |  Histology (4)  |  Host (16)  |  Idea (881)  |  Illuminate (26)  |  Illuminating (12)  |  Industry (159)  |  Infinitesimal (30)  |  Inheritor (2)  |  Interest (416)  |  Intimate (21)  |  Invoke (7)  |  Judgment (140)  |  Kingdom (80)  |  Felix Klein (15)  |  Know (1538)  |  Known (453)  |  Land (131)  |  Large (398)  |  Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (51)  |  Letter (117)  |  Logical (57)  |  Major (88)  |  Master (182)  |  Mathematician (407)  |  Mathematics (1395)  |  Matter (821)  |  Microscopic (27)  |  Mind (1377)  |  Minute (129)  |  Monarch (6)  |  Gaspard Monge (2)  |  Most (1728)  |  Sir Isaac Newton (363)  |  Office (71)  |  Operation (221)  |  Operations (107)  |  Opinion (291)  |  Organize (33)  |  Other (2233)  |  Part (235)  |  Blaise Pascal (81)  |  Peace (116)  |  Peer (13)  |  Philosophy (409)  |  Henri Poincaré (99)  |  Jean-Victor Poncelet (2)  |  Position (83)  |  Practical (225)  |  Prepare (44)  |  Probability (135)  |  Projective Geometry (3)  |  Public Service (6)  |  Pure (299)  |  Range (104)  |  Reality (274)  |  Recess (8)  |  Reduce (100)  |  Reducible (2)  |  Reflect (39)  |  Relate (26)  |  Render (96)  |  Require (229)  |  Required (108)  |  Bernhard Riemann (7)  |  Rightful (3)  |  Sagacious (7)  |  Salmon (7)  |  Say (989)  |  Scatter (7)  |  Seldom (68)  |  Service (110)  |  Similarity (32)  |  Single (365)  |  Statesman (20)  |  Structure (365)  |  Surprise (91)  |  Survey (36)  |  Theory (1015)  |  Thing (1914)  |  Tune (20)  |  Unfit (13)  |  Variety (138)  |  View (496)  |  Vision (127)  |  War (233)  |   Karl Weierstrass, (10)  |  Wield (10)  |  Work (1402)  |  World (1850)

Neither art nor science knows anything of moral approval or disapproval. Science is out of the reach of morals, for her eyes are fixed upon eternal truths. Art is out of the reach of morals, for her eyes are fixed upon things beautiful and immortal and ever-changing.
In his dialogue 'The Critic As Artist', collected in Intentions (1891), 156. Also collected in Oscariana: Epigrams (1895), 27.
Science quotes on:  |  Approval (12)  |  Art (680)  |  Beautiful (271)  |  Beauty (313)  |  Change (639)  |  Disapproval (2)  |  Eternal (113)  |  Ever-Changing (2)  |  Eye (440)  |  Know (1538)  |  Moral (203)  |  Reach (286)  |  Science And Art (195)  |  Thing (1914)  |  Truth (1109)

Our immediate interests are after all of but small moment. It is what we do for the future, what we add to the sum of man's knowledge, that counts most. As someone has said, 'The individual withers and the world is more and more.' Man dies at 70, 80, or 90, or at some earlier age, but through his power of physical reproduction, and with the means that he has to transmit the results of effort to those who come after him, he may be said to be immortal.
'Willis Rodney Whitney', National Academy of Sciences, Biographical Memoirs (1960), 360.
Science quotes on:  |  Age (509)  |  Count (107)  |  Death (406)  |  Do (1905)  |  Effort (243)  |  Future (467)  |  Immediate (98)  |  Immortality (11)  |  Individual (420)  |  Interest (416)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Man (2252)  |  Mean (810)  |  Means (587)  |  Moment (260)  |  More (2558)  |  Most (1728)  |  Physical (518)  |  Power (771)  |  Reproduction (74)  |  Result (700)  |  Small (489)  |  Successor (16)  |  Sum (103)  |  Through (846)  |  Transmission (34)  |  World (1850)

Reason is immortal, all else is mortal.
Quoted in Robert J. Scully, The Demon and the Quantum (2007), 11.
Science quotes on:  |  Mortal (55)  |  Reason (766)

The actions of bad men produce only temporary evil, the actions of good men only temporary good ; and eventually the good and the evil altogether subside, are neutralized by subsequent generations, absorbed by the incessant movements of future ages. But the discoveries of great men never leave us; they are immortal; they contain those eternal truths which survive the shock of empires, outlive the struggles of rival creeds, and witness the decay of successive religions.
In History of Civilization in England (1858), Vol. 1, 206.
Science quotes on:  |  Absorb (54)  |  Action (342)  |  Age (509)  |  Bad (185)  |  Creed (28)  |  Decay (59)  |  Discovery (837)  |  Empire (17)  |  Eternal (113)  |  Eventual (9)  |  Eventually (64)  |  Evil (122)  |  Future (467)  |  Generation (256)  |  Good (906)  |  Great (1610)  |  Incessant (9)  |  Leave (138)  |  Movement (162)  |  Never (1089)  |  Outlive (4)  |  Religion (369)  |  Rival (20)  |  Shock (38)  |  Struggle (111)  |  Subsequent (34)  |  Subside (5)  |  Successive (73)  |  Survival (105)  |  Survive (87)  |  Temporary (24)  |  Truth (1109)  |  Witness (57)

The knife is the most permanent, the most immortal, the most ingenious of man's creations. The knife was a guillotine; the knife is a universal means of resolving all knots...
We (1924), translated by Clarence Brown (1993), 113.
Science quotes on:  |  Creation (350)  |  Ingenious (55)  |  Invention (400)  |  Knife (24)  |  Knot (11)  |  Man (2252)  |  Mean (810)  |  Means (587)  |  Most (1728)  |  Permanent (67)  |  Universal (198)  |  Weapon (98)

The universe flows, carrying with it milky ways and worlds, Gondwanas and Eurasias, inconsistent visions and clumsy systems. But the good conceptual models, these serena templa of intelligence on which several masters have worked, never disappear entirely. They are the great legacy of the past. They linger under more and more harmonious forms and actually never cease to grow. They bring solace by the great art that is inseparable from them. Their permanence relies on the immortal poetry of truth, of the truth that is given to us in minute amounts, foretelling an order whose majesty dominates time.
In Tectonics of Asia (1924, 1977), 164, trans. Albert V. and Marguerite Carozzi.
Science quotes on:  |  Amount (153)  |  Art (680)  |  Cease (81)  |  Disappear (84)  |  Earth (1076)  |  Flow (89)  |  Form (976)  |  Good (906)  |  Great (1610)  |  Grow (247)  |  Harmonious (18)  |  Inseparable (18)  |  Intelligence (218)  |  Legacy (14)  |  Linger (14)  |  Majesty (21)  |  Master (182)  |  Milky Way (29)  |  Minute (129)  |  Model (106)  |  More (2558)  |  Never (1089)  |  Order (638)  |  Past (355)  |  Permanence (26)  |  Plate Tectonics (22)  |  Poetry (150)  |  System (545)  |  Time (1911)  |  Truth (1109)  |  Universe (900)  |  Vision (127)  |  Way (1214)  |  Work (1402)  |  World (1850)

This world is but the vestibule of an immortal life. Every action of our lives touches on some chord that will vibrate in eternity.
Quoted in Kim Lim (ed.), 1,001 Pearls of Spiritual Wisdom: Words to Enrich, Inspire, and Guide Your Life (2014), 167
Science quotes on:  |  Action (342)  |  Chord (4)  |  Eternity (64)  |  Life (1870)  |  Live (650)  |  Touch (146)  |  Vestibule (2)  |  Vibrate (7)  |  Will (2350)  |  World (1850)

To know him [Sylvester] was to know one of the historic figures of all time, one of the immortals; and when he was really moved to speak, his eloquence equalled his genius.
In Florian Cajori, Teaching and History of Mathematics in the United States (1890), 265. [Halsted was J.J. Sylvester’s first student at Johns Hopkins University.]
Science quotes on:  |  Eloquence (7)  |  Equal (88)  |  Figure (162)  |  Genius (301)  |  Historic (7)  |  Know (1538)  |  Mathematicians and Anecdotes (141)  |  Speak (240)  |  James Joseph Sylvester (58)  |  Time (1911)

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)  |  Fruit (108)  |  God (776)  |  Gold (101)  |  Hide (70)  |  Month (91)  |  Never (1089)  |  Number (710)  |  Overlook (33)  |  Truth (1109)

Unless you make yourself equal to God, you cannot understand God: for the like is not intelligible save to the like. Make yourself grow to a greatness beyond measure, by a bound free yourself from the body; raise yourself above all time, become Eternity; then you will understand God. Believe that nothing is impossible for you, think yourself immortal and capable of understanding all, all arts, all sciences, the nature of every living being. Mount higher than the highest height; descend lower than the lowest depth. Draw into yourself all sensations of everything created, fire and water, dry and moist, imagining that you are everywhere, on earth, in the sea, in the sky, that you are not yet born, in the maternal womb, adolescent, old, dead, beyond death. If you embrace in your thought all things at once, times, places, substances, qualities, quantities, you may understand God.
Quoted in F. A. Yales, Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition (1964), 198.
Science quotes on:  |  Art (680)  |  Become (821)  |  Being (1276)  |  Beyond (316)  |  Body (557)  |  Bound (120)  |  Capable (174)  |  Death (406)  |  Depth (97)  |  Descend (49)  |  Draw (140)  |  Dry (65)  |  Earth (1076)  |  Embrace (47)  |  Eternity (64)  |  Everything (489)  |  Everywhere (98)  |  Fire (203)  |  Free (239)  |  God (776)  |  Greatness (55)  |  Grow (247)  |  Impossible (263)  |  Intelligible (35)  |  Living (492)  |  Measure (241)  |  Moist (13)  |  Mount (43)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Nothing (1000)  |  Old (499)  |  Save (126)  |  Sea (326)  |  Sensation (60)  |  Sky (174)  |  Substance (253)  |  Thing (1914)  |  Think (1122)  |  Thought (995)  |  Time (1911)  |  Understand (648)  |  Understanding (527)  |  Water (503)  |  Will (2350)  |  Womb (25)

We are now in the mountains and they are in us, kindling enthusiasm, making every nerve quiver, filling every pore and cell of us. Our flesh-and-bone tabernacle seems transparent as glass to the beauty about us, as if truly an inseparable part of it, thrilling with the air and trees, streams and rocks, in the waves of the sun,—a part of all nature, neither old nor young, sick nor well, but immortal.
John Muir
In My First Summer in the Sierra (1911), 20. Based on Muir’s original journals and sketches of his 1869 stay in the Sierra.
Science quotes on:  |  Air (366)  |  Beauty (313)  |  Bone (101)  |  Cell (146)  |  Enthusiasm (59)  |  Fill (67)  |  Flesh (28)  |  Glass (94)  |  Immortality (11)  |  Inseparable (18)  |  Kindling (2)  |  Making (300)  |  Mountain (202)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Nerve (82)  |  Old (499)  |  Pore (7)  |  Quiver (3)  |  Rock (176)  |  Sick (83)  |  Sickness (26)  |  Stream (83)  |  Sun (407)  |  Tabernacle (5)  |  Thrill (26)  |  Transparent (16)  |  Tree (269)  |  Truly (118)  |  Wave (112)  |  Wellness (3)  |  Young (253)

What shall we say of the intelligence, not to say religion, of those who are so particular to distinguish between fishes and reptiles and birds, but put a man with an immortal soul in the same circle with the wolf, the hyena, and the skunk? What must be the impression made upon children by such a degradation of man?
Science quotes on:  |  Bird (163)  |  Child (333)  |  Children (201)  |  Circle (117)  |  Degradation (18)  |  Distinguish (168)  |  Evolution (635)  |  Fish (130)  |  Hyena (2)  |  Impression (118)  |  Intelligence (218)  |  Man (2252)  |  Must (1525)  |  Religion (369)  |  Reptile (33)  |  Same (166)  |  Say (989)  |  Skunk (4)  |  Soul (235)  |  Wolf (11)


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.