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: “A people without children would face a hopeless future; a country without trees is almost as helpless.”
more quiz questions >>
Home > Category Index for Science Quotations > Category Index I > Category: Innate

Innate Quotes (14 quotes)

All progress is based upon a universal innate desire of every organism to live beyond its means.
…...
Science quotes on:  |  Base (120)  |  Beyond (316)  |  Desire (212)  |  Live (650)  |  Mean (810)  |  Means (587)  |  Organism (231)  |  Progress (492)  |  Universal (198)

Has Matter innate Motion? Then each Atom,
Asserting its indisputable Right
To dance, would form an Universe of Dust.
The Complaint: or, Night-Thoughts on Life, Death, and Immortality (1742, 1750), Night 9, 278.
Science quotes on:  |  Assert (69)  |  Atom (381)  |  Dance (35)  |  Dust (68)  |  Form (976)  |  Indisputable (8)  |  Matter (821)  |  Motion (320)  |  Right (473)  |  Universe (900)

It is inconceivable, that inanimate brute matter should, without the mediation of something else, which is not material, operate upon and affect other matter without mutual contact … That gravity should be innate, inherent, and essential to matter, so that one body may act upon another at a distance, through a vacuum, without the mediation of anything else, by and through which their action and force may be conveyed from one to another, is to me so great an absurdity, that I believe no man who has in philosophical matters a competent faculty of thinking, can ever fall into it. Gravity must be caused by an agent, acting constantly according to certain laws; but whether this agent be material or immaterial, I have left to the consideration of my readers.
Third letter to Bentley, 25 Feb 1693. Quoted in The Works of Richard Bentley, D.D. (1838), Vol. 3, 212-3.
Science quotes on:  |  Absurdity (34)  |  According (236)  |  Act (278)  |  Action (342)  |  Agent (73)  |  Body (557)  |  Brute (30)  |  Certain (557)  |  Consideration (143)  |  Contact (66)  |  Distance (171)  |  Essential (210)  |  Fall (243)  |  Force (497)  |  Gravity (140)  |  Great (1610)  |  Immaterial (6)  |  Inherent (43)  |  Law (913)  |  Man (2252)  |  Material (366)  |  Matter (821)  |  Mediation (4)  |  Must (1525)  |  Mutual (54)  |  Other (2233)  |  Something (718)  |  Thinking (425)  |  Through (846)  |  Vacuum (41)

It is strange, but the longer I live the more I am governed by the feeling of Fatalism, or rather predestination. The feeling or free-will, said to be innate in man, fails me more and more. I feel so deeply that however much I may struggle, I cannot change fate one jot. I am now almost resigned. I work because I feel I am at the worst. I can neither wish nor hope for anything. You have no idea how indifferent I am to everything.
In Letter to Anna Carlotta, collected in Anna Charlotte Leffler, Sonya Kovalevsky: A Biography (1895), 133, as translated by A. De Furuhjelm and A.M. Clive Bayley.
Science quotes on:  |  Change (639)  |  Deeply (17)  |  Everything (489)  |  Fail (191)  |  Fatalism (2)  |  Fate (76)  |  Feel (371)  |  Feeling (259)  |  Free (239)  |  Free Will (15)  |  Govern (66)  |  Hope (321)  |  Idea (881)  |  Indifferent (17)  |  Jot (3)  |  Live (650)  |  Longer (10)  |  Man (2252)  |  More (2558)  |  Resign (4)  |  Strange (160)  |  Struggle (111)  |  Will (2350)  |  Wish (216)  |  Work (1402)  |  Worst (57)

It seems a miracle that young children easily learn the language of any environment into which they were born. The generative approach to grammar, pioneered by Chomsky, argues that this is only explicable if certain deep, universal features of this competence are innate characteristics of the human brain. Biologically speaking, this hypothesis of an inheritable capability to learn any language means that it must somehow be encoded in the DNA of our chromosomes. Should this hypothesis one day be verified, then lingusitics would become a branch of biology.
'The Generative Grammar of the Immune System', Nobel Lecture, 8 Dec 1984. In Nobel Lectures: Physiology or Medicine 1981-1990 (1993), 223.
Science quotes on:  |  Approach (112)  |  Become (821)  |  Biology (232)  |  Birth (154)  |  Brain (281)  |  Branch (155)  |  Capability (44)  |  Certain (557)  |  Characteristic (154)  |  Child (333)  |  Children (201)  |  Avram Noam Chomsky (7)  |  Chromosome (23)  |  Chromosomes (17)  |  Competence (13)  |  Deep (241)  |  DNA (81)  |  Environment (239)  |  Grammar (15)  |  Human (1512)  |  Hypothesis (314)  |  Inheritance (35)  |  Language (308)  |  Learn (672)  |  Linguistics (39)  |  Mean (810)  |  Means (587)  |  Miracle (85)  |  Must (1525)  |  Pioneer (37)  |  Somehow (48)  |  Speaking (118)  |  Universal (198)  |  Young (253)

Man could not stay there forever. He was bound to spread to new regions, partly because of his innate migratory tendency and partly because of Nature's stern urgency.
The Red Man's Continent: A Chronicle of Aboriginal America (1919), 12.
Science quotes on:  |  Bound (120)  |  Forever (111)  |  Human Race (104)  |  Man (2252)  |  Migration (12)  |  Nature (2017)  |  New (1273)  |  Spread (86)  |  Tendency (110)  |  Urgency (13)

Man has become a superman ... because he not only disposes of innate, physical forces, but because he is in command ... of latent forces in nature he can put them to his service. ... But the essential fact we must surely all feel in our hearts ... is that we are becoming inhuman in proportion as we become supermen.
Speech (4 Nov 1954) upon receiving the Nobel Peace Prize. In 'Excerpts From the Nobel Prize Address Dr. Schweitzer in Oslo', New York Times (5 Nov 1954), 4.
Science quotes on:  |  Become (821)  |  Becoming (96)  |  Command (60)  |  Disposal (5)  |  Essential (210)  |  Fact (1257)  |  Feel (371)  |  Feeling (259)  |  Force (497)  |  Heart (243)  |  Inhumanity (3)  |  Latent (13)  |  Man (2252)  |  Must (1525)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Physical (518)  |  Proportion (140)  |  Service (110)  |  Superman (4)  |  Surely (101)

Personality is the supreme realization of the innate idiosyncrasy of a living being. It is an act of high courage flung in the face of life.
Carl Jung
In The Development of Personality (1953), 171. https://books.google.com/books?id= Carl Gustav Jung - 195
Science quotes on:  |  Act (278)  |  Being (1276)  |  Courage (82)  |  Face (214)  |  Fling (5)  |  High (370)  |  Idiosyncrasy (3)  |  Life (1870)  |  Living (492)  |  Living Being (3)  |  Personality (66)  |  Psychology (166)  |  Realization (44)  |  Supreme (73)

Science can be interpreted effectively only for those who have more than the usual intelligence and innate curiosity. These will work hard if given the chance and if they find they acquire something by so doing.
(1940). Epigraph, without citation, in I. Bernard Cohen, Science, Servant of Man: A Layman's Primer for the Age of Science (1948), xi. Also seen epigraph, without citation in Science Digest (1950), 28, 17.
Science quotes on:  |  Acquire (46)  |  Chance (244)  |  Curiosity (138)  |  Doing (277)  |  Effective (68)  |  Find (1014)  |  Hard (246)  |  Intelligence (218)  |  Interpret (25)  |  More (2558)  |  Something (718)  |  Will (2350)  |  Work (1402)  |  Work Hard (14)

The cooperative forces are biologically the more important and vital. The balance between the cooperative and altruistic tendencies and those which are disoperative and egoistic is relatively close. Under many conditions the cooperative forces lose. In the long run, however, the group centered, more altruistic drives are slightly stronger. … human altruistic drives are as firmly based on an animal ancestry as is man himself. Our tendencies toward goodness, such as they are, are as innate as our tendencies toward intelligence; we could do well with more of both.
In 'Where Angels Fear to Tread: A Contribution From General Sociology to Human Ethics', Science (11 Jun 1943), 97, No. 2528, 521.
Science quotes on:  |  Altruism (7)  |  Ancestry (13)  |  Animal (651)  |  Balance (82)  |  Both (496)  |  Condition (362)  |  Cooperation (38)  |  Do (1905)  |  Force (497)  |  Goodness (26)  |  Himself (461)  |  Human (1512)  |  In The Long Run (18)  |  Intelligence (218)  |  Lose (165)  |  Man (2252)  |  More (2558)  |  Stronger (36)  |  Vital (89)

The progress of biology in the next century will lead to a recognition of the innate inequality of man. This is today most obviously visible in the United States.
In The Inequality of Man (1932), 18.
Science quotes on:  |  Biology (232)  |  Century (319)  |  Inequality (9)  |  Lead (391)  |  Man (2252)  |  Most (1728)  |  Next (238)  |  Progress (492)  |  Recognition (93)  |  State (505)  |  Today (321)  |  United States (31)  |  Visible (87)  |  Will (2350)

The visible universe is subject to quantification, and is so by necessity. … Between you and me only reason will be the judge … since you proceed according to the rational method, so shall I. … I will also give reason and take it. … This generation has an innate vice. It can’t accept anything that has been discovered by a contemporary!
As quoted in James Burke, The Day the Universe Changed (1985), 41. Burke also quotes the first sentence in The Axemaker's Gift (1995), 112, but after the first ellipsis, is substituted “If you wish to hear more from me, give and take reason, because I am not the kind of man to satisfy his hunger on the picture of a steak!”
Science quotes on:  |  Accept (198)  |  Accepting (22)  |  According (236)  |  Contemporary (33)  |  Discover (571)  |  Discovery (837)  |  Generation (256)  |  Judge (114)  |  Method (531)  |  Necessity (197)  |  Proceed (134)  |  Quantification (2)  |  Rational (95)  |  Reason (766)  |  Subject (543)  |  Universe (900)  |  Vice (42)  |  Visible (87)  |  Will (2350)

The whole inherent pride of human nature revolts at the idea that the lord of the creation is to be treated like any other natural object. No sooner does the naturalist discover the resemblance of some higher mammals, such as the ape, to man, than there is a general outcry against the presumptuous audacity that ventures to touch man in his inmost sanctuary. The whole fraternity of philosophers, who have never seen monkeys except in zoological gardens, at once mount the high horse, and appeal to the mind, the soul, to reason, to consciousness, and to all the rest of the innate faculties of man, as they are refracted in their own philosophical prisms.
Carl Vogt
From Carl Vogt and James Hunt (ed.), Lectures on Man: His Place in Creation, and in the History of the Earth (1861), 10.
Science quotes on:  |  Against (332)  |  Ape (54)  |  Appeal (46)  |  Audacity (7)  |  Consciousness (132)  |  Creation (350)  |  Discover (571)  |  Discovery (837)  |  Fraternity (4)  |  Garden (64)  |  General (521)  |  High (370)  |  Horse (78)  |  Human (1512)  |  Human Nature (71)  |  Idea (881)  |  Inherent (43)  |  Lord (97)  |  Mammal (41)  |  Man (2252)  |  Mind (1377)  |  Monkey (57)  |  Mount (43)  |  Natural (810)  |  Naturalist (79)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Never (1089)  |  Object (438)  |  Other (2233)  |  Outcry (3)  |  Philosopher (269)  |  Philosophy (409)  |  Presumption (15)  |  Pride (84)  |  Prism (8)  |  Reason (766)  |  Refraction (13)  |  Resemblance (39)  |  Rest (287)  |  Revolt (3)  |  Sanctuary (12)  |  Soul (235)  |  Touch (146)  |  Whole (756)

Those who love fairy-tales do not like it when people speak of the innate tendencies in mankind toward aggression, destruction, and, in addition, cruelty.
In Sigmund Freud and Joan Riviere (trans.), Civilization and Its Discontents (1930, 1994), 47.
Science quotes on:  |  Addition (70)  |  Aggression (10)  |  Cruelty (24)  |  Destruction (135)  |  Do (1905)  |  Fairy Tale (7)  |  Love (328)  |  Mankind (356)  |  People (1031)  |  Sociology (46)  |  Speak (240)  |  Tendency (110)


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.