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: “Genius is two percent inspiration, ninety-eight percent perspiration.”
more quiz questions >>
Home > Category Index for Science Quotations > Category Index I > Category: Indefinitely

Indefinitely Quotes (10 quotes)

Everything material which is the subject of knowledge has number, order, or position; and these are her first outlines for a sketch of the universe. If our feeble hands cannot follow out the details, still her part has been drawn with an unerring pen, and her work cannot be gainsaid. So wide is the range of mathematical sciences, so indefinitely may it extend beyond our actual powers of manipulation that at some moments we are inclined to fall down with even more than reverence before her majestic presence. But so strictly limited are her promises and powers, about so much that we might wish to know does she offer no information whatever, that at other moments we are fain to call her results but a vain thing, and to reject them as a stone where we had asked for bread. If one aspect of the subject encourages our hopes, so does the other tend to chasten our desires, and he is perhaps the wisest, and in the long run the happiest, among his fellows, who has learned not only this science, but also the larger lesson which it directly teaches, namely, to temper our aspirations to that which is possible, to moderate our desires to that which is attainable, to restrict our hopes to that of which accomplishment, if not immediately practicable, is at least distinctly within the range of conception.
From Presidential Address (Aug 1878) to the British Association, Dublin, published in the Report of the 48th Meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science (1878), 31.
Science quotes on:  |  Accomplishment (102)  |  Actual (118)  |  Ask (420)  |  Aspect (129)  |  Aspiration (35)  |  Attainable (3)  |  Beyond (316)  |  Bread (42)  |  Call (781)  |  Chasten (2)  |  Conception (160)  |  Desire (212)  |  Detail (150)  |  Directly (25)  |  Distinctly (5)  |  Down (455)  |  Draw (140)  |  Encourage (43)  |  Everything (489)  |  Extend (129)  |  Fall (243)  |  Feeble (28)  |  Fellow (88)  |  First (1302)  |  Follow (389)  |  Hand (149)  |  Happy (108)  |  Hope (321)  |  Immediately (115)  |  In The Long Run (18)  |  Inclined (41)  |  Information (173)  |  Know (1538)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Large (398)  |  Learn (672)  |  Learned (235)  |  Least (75)  |  Lesson (58)  |  Limit (294)  |  Limited (102)  |  Majestic (17)  |  Manipulation (19)  |  Material (366)  |  Moderate (6)  |  Moment (260)  |  More (2558)  |  Namely (11)  |  Nature Of Mathematics (80)  |  Number (710)  |  Offer (142)  |  Order (638)  |  Other (2233)  |  Outline (13)  |  Part (235)  |  Pen (21)  |  Position (83)  |  Possible (560)  |  Power (771)  |  Practicable (2)  |  Presence (63)  |  Promise (72)  |  Range (104)  |  Reject (67)  |  Restrict (13)  |  Result (700)  |  Reverence (29)  |  Sketch (8)  |  Still (614)  |  Stone (168)  |  Strictly (13)  |  Subject (543)  |  Teach (299)  |  Temper (12)  |  Tend (124)  |  Thing (1914)  |  Unerring (4)  |  Universe (900)  |  Vain (86)  |  Whatever (234)  |  Wide (97)  |  Wise (143)  |  Wish (216)  |  Work (1402)

I was there when Abbe Georges Lemaître first proposed this [Big Bang] theory. ... There is no rational reason to doubt that the universe has existed indefinitely, for an infinite time. .... It is only myth that attempts to say how the universe came to be, either four thousand or twenty billion years ago.
[Expressing his belief that the Big Bang is a myth devised to explain creation. He said he heard Lemaître (who was, at the time both a member of the Catholic hierarchy and an accomplished scientist) say in private that this theory was a way to reconcile science with St. Thomas Aquinas' theological dictum of creatio ex nihilo—creation out of nothing.]
Quoted in Anthony L. Peratt, 'Dean of the Plasma Dissidents', Washington Times, supplement: The World and I (May 1988),196.
Science quotes on:  |  Saint Thomas Aquinas (18)  |  Attempt (266)  |  Bang (29)  |  Belief (615)  |  Big Bang (45)  |  Billion (104)  |  Both (496)  |  Catholic (18)  |  Creatio Ex Nihilo (2)  |  Creation (350)  |  Dictum (10)  |  Doubt (314)  |  Exist (458)  |  Explain (334)  |  First (1302)  |  Hierarchy (17)  |  Infinite (243)  |  Monsignor Georges Lemaître (7)  |  Myth (58)  |  Nothing (1000)  |  Rational (95)  |  Reason (766)  |  Reconcile (19)  |  Say (989)  |  Scientist (881)  |  Theology (54)  |  Theory (1015)  |  Thousand (340)  |  Time (1911)  |  Universe (900)  |  Way (1214)  |  Year (963)

If the Weismann idea triumphs, it will be in a sense a triumph of fatalism; for, according to it, while we may indefinitely improve the forces of our education and surroundings, and this civilizing nurture will improve the individuals of each generation, its actual effects will not be cumulative as regards the race itself, but only as regards the environment of the race; each new generation must start de novo, receiving no increment of the moral and intellectual advance made during the lifetime of its predecessors. It would follow that one deep, almost instinctive motive for a higher life would be removed if the race were only superficially benefited by its nurture, and the only possible channel of actual improvement were in the selection of the fittest chains of race plasma.
'The Present Problem of Heredity', The Atlantic Monthly (1891), 57, 363.
Science quotes on:  |  According (236)  |  Actual (118)  |  Advance (298)  |  Advancement (63)  |  Benefit (123)  |  Chain (51)  |  Channel (23)  |  Civilization (220)  |  Cumulative (14)  |  Deep (241)  |  Education (423)  |  Effect (414)  |  Environment (239)  |  Fatalism (2)  |  Fit (139)  |  Follow (389)  |  Force (497)  |  Generation (256)  |  Heredity (62)  |  Idea (881)  |  Improvement (117)  |  Increment (2)  |  Individual (420)  |  Instinct (91)  |  Intellect (251)  |  Intellectual (258)  |  Life (1870)  |  Lifetime (40)  |  Moral (203)  |  Motive (62)  |  Must (1525)  |  New (1273)  |  Nurture (17)  |  Plasma (8)  |  Possibility (172)  |  Possible (560)  |  Predecessor (29)  |  Race (278)  |  Regard (312)  |  Removal (12)  |  Selection (130)  |  Sense (785)  |  Start (237)  |  Superficial (12)  |  Surrounding (13)  |  Triumph (76)  |   August Weismann, (11)  |  Will (2350)

Physical pain is easily forgotten, but a moral chagrin lasts indefinitely.
In Charlas de Café: pensamientos, anécdotas y confidencias (1920). (Café Chats: Thoughts, Anecdotes and Confidences). As translated in Peter McDonald (ed.) Oxford Dictionary of Medical Quotations (2004), 83.
Science quotes on:  |  Chagrin (2)  |  Easily (36)  |  Forgotten (53)  |  Last (425)  |  Moral (203)  |  Pain (144)  |  Physical (518)

Sooner or later in every talk, [David] Brower describes the creation of the world. He invites his listeners to consider the six days of Genesis as a figure of speech for what has in fact been 4 billion years. On this scale, one day equals something like six hundred and sixty-six million years, and thus, all day Monday and until Tuesday noon, creation was busy getting the world going. Life began Tuesday noon, and the beautiful organic wholeness of it developed over the next four days. At 4 p.m. Saturday, the big reptiles came on. At three minutes before midnight on the last day, man appeared. At one-fourth of a second before midnight Christ arrived. At one-fortieth of a second before midnight, the Industrial Revolution began. We are surrounded with people who think that what we have been doing for that one-fortieth of a second can go on indefinitely. They are considered normal, but they are stark. raving mad.
In Encounters with the Archdruid (1971), 79-80.
Science quotes on:  |  Appear (122)  |  Arrive (40)  |  Beautiful (271)  |  Begin (275)  |  Big (55)  |  Billion (104)  |  Brower (2)  |  Busy (32)  |  Christ (17)  |  Consider (428)  |  Creation (350)  |  David (6)  |  Describe (132)  |  Develop (278)  |  Doing (277)  |  Equal (88)  |  Fact (1257)  |  Figure (162)  |   Genesis (26)  |  Hundred (240)  |  Industrial Revolution (10)  |  Invite (10)  |  Last (425)  |  Late (119)  |  Life (1870)  |  Listener (7)  |  Mad (54)  |  Man (2252)  |  Midnight (12)  |  Million (124)  |  Minute (129)  |  Monday (3)  |  Next (238)  |  Noon (14)  |  Normal (29)  |  Organic (161)  |  P (2)  |  People (1031)  |  Reptile (33)  |  Revolution (133)  |  Saturday (11)  |  Scale (122)  |  Second (66)  |  Something (718)  |  Sooner (6)  |  Speech (66)  |  Stark (3)  |  Surround (33)  |  Talk (108)  |  Think (1122)  |  Tuesday (3)  |  Wholeness (9)  |  World (1850)  |  Year (963)

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)  |  Fruit (108)  |  Gaze (23)  |  Ground (222)  |  Heresy (9)  |  History (716)  |  Imperfection (32)  |  Important (229)  |  Improvement (117)  |  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)

Through [the growing organism's] power of assimilation there is a constant encroachment of the organic upon the inorganic, a constant attempt to convert all available material into living substance, and to indefinitely multiply the total number of individual organisms.
In History of the Human Body (1919), 2.
Science quotes on:  |  Assimilation (13)  |  Attempt (266)  |  Available (80)  |  Constant (148)  |  Conversion (17)  |  Encroachment (2)  |  Growing (99)  |  Growth (200)  |  Individual (420)  |  Inorganic (14)  |  Life (1870)  |  Living (492)  |  Material (366)  |  Multiplication (46)  |  Multiply (40)  |  Number (710)  |  Organic (161)  |  Organism (231)  |  Power (771)  |  Substance (253)  |  Through (846)  |  Total (95)

Voice is a flowing breath of air, perceptible to the hearing by contact. It moves in an endless number of circular rounds, like the innumerably increasing circular waves which appear when a stone is thrown into smooth water, and which keep on spreading indefinitely from the centre.
Vitruvius
In De Architectura, Book 5, Chap 1, Sec. 6. As translated in Morris Hicky Morgan (trans.), Vitruvius: The Ten Books on Architecture (1914), 138.
Science quotes on:  |  Air (366)  |  Breath (61)  |  Centre (31)  |  Circle (117)  |  Circular (19)  |  Contact (66)  |  Endless (60)  |  Flow (89)  |  Hearing (50)  |  Move (223)  |  Number (710)  |  Smooth (34)  |  Sound (187)  |  Spread (86)  |  Stone (168)  |  Throw (45)  |  Voice (54)  |  Water (503)  |  Wave (112)

We find ourselves, in consequence of the progress of physical science, at the pinnacle of one ascent of civilisation, taking the first step upwards out on to the lowest plane of the next. Above us still rises indefinitely the ascent of physical power—far beyond the dreams of mortals in any previous system of philosophy.
Lecture (1908) at Glasgow University. Collected in The Interpretation of Radium: Being the Substance of Six Free Popular Experimental Lectures Delivered at the University of Glasgow (1912), 252.
Science quotes on:  |  Beyond (316)  |  Civilisation (23)  |  Consequence (220)  |  Dream (222)  |  Find (1014)  |  First (1302)  |  Mortal (55)  |  Next (238)  |  Ourselves (247)  |  Philosophy (409)  |  Physical (518)  |  Physical Science (104)  |  Pinnacle (2)  |  Power (771)  |  Progress (492)  |  Rise (169)  |  Step (234)  |  Still (614)  |  System (545)  |  Upward (44)

We must therefore bear the undoubtedly bad effect s of the weak surviving and propagating their kind; but there appears to be at least one check in steady action, namely that the weaker and inferior members of society do not marry so freely as the sound; and this check might be indefinitely increased by the weak in body or mind refraining from marriage, though this is more to be hoped for than expected.
…...
Science quotes on:  |  Action (342)  |  Appear (122)  |  Bad (185)  |  Bear (162)  |  Body (557)  |  Check (26)  |  Do (1905)  |  Effect (414)  |  Expect (203)  |  Freely (13)  |  Hope (321)  |  Increase (225)  |  Inferior (37)  |  Kind (564)  |  Least (75)  |  Marriage (39)  |  Marry (11)  |  Member (42)  |  Mind (1377)  |  More (2558)  |  Must (1525)  |  Namely (11)  |  Propagate (5)  |  Refrain (9)  |  Society (350)  |  Sound (187)  |  Steady (45)  |  Survive (87)  |  Undoubtedly (3)  |  Weak (73)


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.