Impel Quotes (6 quotes)
Mathematics … engages, it fructifies, it quickens, compels attention, is as circumspect as inventive, induces courage and self-confidence as well as modesty and submission to truth. It yields the essence and kernel of all things, is brief in form and overflows with its wealth of content. It discloses the depth and breadth of the law and spiritual element behind the surface of phenomena; it impels from point to point and carries within itself the incentive toward progress; it stimulates the artistic perception, good taste in judgment and execution, as well as the scientific comprehension of things.
In Die Mathematik die Fackelträgerin einer neuen Zeit (1889), 40. As translated in Robert Édouard Moritz, Memorabilia Mathematica; Or, The Philomath’s Quotation-book (1914), 49.
The aid which we feel impelled to give to the helpless is mainly an incidental result of the instinct of sympathy, which was originally acquired as part of the social instincts, but subsequently rendered, in the manner previously indicated, more tender and more widely diffused. Nor could we check our sympathy, even at the urging of hard reason, without deterioration in the noblest part of our nature.
In The Descent of Man (1874), Part 1, Chap 5, 136.
The blood in the animal body is impelled in a circle and is in a state of ceaseless motion … and that it is the sole and only end of the motion and contraction of the heart.
In On the Motion of the Heart and Blood (1628) as in edition based on the translation by Willis, Alex. Bowie (ed.), (1889), 71.
The labor of love aspect is important. The most successful scientists are not the most talented. But they are the ones who are impelled by curiosity. They’ve got to know what the answer is.
As quoted in Andrew Grant and Gaia Grant, Who Killed Creativity?: ...And How Do We Get It Back? (2012).
The production of heat alone is not sufficient to give birth to the impelling power: it is necessary that there should also be cold; without it the heat would be useless. And in fact, if we should find about us only bodies as hot as our furnaces, how can we condense steam? What should we do with it if once produced? We should not presume that we might discharge it into the atmosphere, as is done in some engines; the atmosphere would not receive it. It does receive it under the actual condition of things only because…it is at a lower temperature, otherwise it…would be already saturated.
As translated in Reflections on the Motive Power of Heat and on Machines Fitted to Develop Power (1890, Rev. 1897), 46-47. Edited by R. H. Thurston, from the original French, Réflexions sur la Puissance Motrice du Feu (1824).
Three causes especially have excited the discontent of mankind; and, by impelling us to seek remedies for the irremediable, have bewildered us in a maze of madness and error. These are death, toil, and the ignorance of the future.
From Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions (2nd ed., 1852), Vol. 1, 93.
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) -- 
