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: “I believe that this Nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to earth.”
more quiz questions >>
Home > Category Index for Science Quotations > Category Index M > Category: Meat

Meat Quotes (19 quotes)

[Two college boys on the Flambeau River in a canoe]… their watches had run down, and for the first time in their lives there was no clock, whistle, or radio to set watches by. For two days they had lived by “sun-time,” and were getting a thrill out of it. No servant brought them meals: they got their meat out of the river, or went without. No traffic cop whistled them off the hidden rock in the next rapids. No friendly roof kept them dry when they misguessed whether or not to pitch the tent. No guide showed them which camping spots offered a nightlong breeze, and which a nightlong misery of mosquitoes; which firewood made clean coals, and which only smoke.
In 'Wisconsin: Flambeau', A Sand County Almanac, and Sketches Here and There (1949, 1987), 112-113.
Science quotes on:  |  Adventure (69)  |  Boy (100)  |  Breeze (8)  |  Camp (12)  |  Canoe (6)  |  Clock (51)  |  Dry (65)  |  Firewood (2)  |  First Time (14)  |  Freedom (145)  |  Friendly (7)  |  Guess (67)  |  Guide (107)  |  Meal (19)  |  Misery (31)  |  Mosquito (16)  |  Night (133)  |  Radio (60)  |  River (140)  |  Rock (176)  |  Roof (14)  |  Servant (40)  |  Smoke (32)  |  Sun (407)  |  Tent (13)  |  Thrill (26)  |  Watch (118)  |  Whistle (3)

All fresh meat is eaten in a state of decay. The process may not have proceeded so far that the dull human nose can discover it, but a carrion bird or a carrion fly can smell it from afar.
In New Dietetics: What to Eat and How (1921), 384.
Science quotes on:  |  Afar (7)  |  Bird (163)  |  Carrion (5)  |  Decay (59)  |  Discover (571)  |  Dull (58)  |  Fly (153)  |  Fresh (69)  |  Human (1512)  |  Nose (14)  |  Proceed (134)  |  Process (439)  |  Smell (29)  |  State (505)

Cheese and salt meat, should be sparingly eat.
In Poor Richard's Almanack (1733).
Science quotes on:  |  Cheese (10)  |  Diet (56)  |  Eat (108)  |  Eating (46)  |  Health (210)  |  Salt (48)

Every creature has its own food, and an appropriate alchemist with the task of dividing it ... The alchemist takes the food and changes it into a tincture which he sends through the body to become blood and flesh. This alchemist dwells in the stomach where he cooks and works. The man eats a piece of meat, in which is both bad and good. When the meat reaches the stomach, there is the alchemist who divides it. What does not belong to health he casts away to a special place, and sends the good wherever it is needed. That is the Creator's decree... That is the virtue and power of the alchemist in man.
Volumen Medicinae Paramirum (c. 1520), in Paracelsus: Essential Readings, edited by Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke (1990), 50-1.
Science quotes on:  |  Alchemist (23)  |  Appropriate (61)  |  Bad (185)  |  Become (821)  |  Belong (168)  |  Blood (144)  |  Body (557)  |  Both (496)  |  Cast (69)  |  Change (639)  |  Cook (20)  |  Creator (97)  |  Creature (242)  |  Decree (9)  |  Digestion (29)  |  Divide (77)  |  Division (67)  |  Eat (108)  |  Excretion (7)  |  Flesh (28)  |  Food (213)  |  Good (906)  |  Health (210)  |  Man (2252)  |  Power (771)  |  Special (188)  |  Stomach (40)  |  Task (152)  |  Through (846)  |  Tincture (5)  |  Virtue (117)  |  Wherever (51)  |  Work (1402)

Food may be defined as material which, when taken into the body, serves to either form tissue or yield energy, or both. This definition includes all the ordinary food materials, since they both build tissue and yield energy. It includes sugar and starch, because they yield energy and form fatty tissue. It includes alcohol, because the latter is burned to yield energy, though it does not build tissue. It excludes creatin, creatininin, and other so-called nitrogeneous extractives of meat, and likewise thein or caffein of tea and coffee, because they neither build tissue nor yield energy, although they may, at times, be useful aids to nutrition.
Methods and Results of Investigations on the Chemistry and Economy of Food, Bulletin 21, US Department of Agriculture (1895). Quoted in Ira Wolinsky, Nutrition in Exercise and Sport (1998), 36.
Science quotes on:  |  Aid (101)  |  Alcohol (22)  |  Body (557)  |  Both (496)  |  Build (211)  |  Burn (99)  |  Call (781)  |  Coffee (21)  |  Definition (238)  |  Energy (373)  |  Food (213)  |  Form (976)  |  Include (93)  |  Material (366)  |  Nitrogen (32)  |  Nutrition (25)  |  Ordinary (167)  |  Other (2233)  |  So-Called (71)  |  Sugar (26)  |  Tea (13)  |  Time (1911)  |  Tissue (51)  |  Useful (260)  |  Yield (86)

Get a scalpel, and practice just, say, cutting a piece of meat or something like that. You sort of learn how you want to hold your fingers, and that sort of thing, and try to become graceful when you operate.
Science quotes on:  |  Become (821)  |  Learn (672)  |  Practice (212)  |  Say (989)  |  Scalpel (4)  |  Something (718)  |  Surgery (54)  |  Thing (1914)  |  Try (296)  |  Want (504)

I prefer not to eat food that has a face.
'Holy cow! We’re crazy to farm livestock like this', in The Times (16 Oct 2007)
Science quotes on:  |  Eat (108)  |  Face (214)  |  Food (213)  |  Vegetarian (13)

Meat reared on land matures relatively quickly, and it takes only a few pounds of plants to produce a pound of meat. Tuna take 10 to 14 years to mature, require thousands of pounds of food to develop, and we’re hunting them to the point of extinction.
In 'Can We Stop Killing Our Oceans Now, Please?', Huffington Post (14 Aug 2013).
Science quotes on:  |  Develop (278)  |  Extinction (80)  |  Food (213)  |  Hunt (32)  |  Hunting (23)  |  Land (131)  |  Mature (17)  |  Overfishing (27)  |  Plant (320)  |  Point (584)  |  Pound (15)  |  Produce (117)  |  Quickly (21)  |  Require (229)  |  Thousand (340)  |  Tuna (4)  |  Year (963)

Meat-eating has not, to my knowledge, been recorded from other parts of the chimpanzee’s range in Africa, although if it is assumed that human infants are in fact taken for food, the report that five babies were carried off in West Africa suggests that carnivorous behavior may be widespread.
In 'Chimpanzees of the Gombe Stream Reserve', collected in Primate Behavior: Field Studies of Monkeys and Apes (1965), 473.
Science quotes on:  |  Africa (38)  |  Animal Behavior (10)  |  Assume (43)  |  Baby (29)  |  Behavior (95)  |  Carnivorous (7)  |  Chimpanzee (14)  |  Eating (46)  |  Fact (1257)  |  Food (213)  |  Human (1512)  |  Infant (26)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Other (2233)  |  Range (104)  |  Record (161)  |  Report (42)  |  Suggest (38)  |  Widespread (23)

Medicines are not meat to live by.
…...
Science quotes on:  |  Live (650)  |  Medicine (392)

Nor can it be supposed that the diversity of chemical structure and process stops at the boundary of the species, and that within that boundary, which has no real finality, rigid uniformity reigns. Such a conception is at variance with any evolutionary conception of the nature and origin of species. The existence of chemical individuality follows of necessity from that of chemical specificity, but we should expect the differences between individuals to be still more subtle and difficult of detection. Indications of their existence are seen, even in man, in the various tints of skin, hair, and eyes, and in the quantitative differences in those portions of the end-products of metabolism which are endogenous and are not affected by diet, such as recent researches have revealed in increasing numbers. Even those idiosyncrasies with regard to drugs and articles of food which are summed up in the proverbial saying that what is one man's meat is another man's poison presumably have a chemical basis.
Inborn Errors of Metabolism: The Croonian Lectures delivered before the Royal College of Physicians of London, in June, 1908 (1909), 2-3.
Science quotes on:  |  Basis (180)  |  Biochemistry (50)  |  Boundary (55)  |  Chemical (303)  |  Conception (160)  |  Detection (19)  |  Diet (56)  |  Difference (355)  |  Difficult (263)  |  Diversity (75)  |  Drug (61)  |  End (603)  |  Existence (481)  |  Expect (203)  |  Eye (440)  |  Finality (8)  |  Follow (389)  |  Food (213)  |  Indication (33)  |  Individual (420)  |  Individuality (25)  |  Man (2252)  |  Metabolism (15)  |  More (2558)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Necessity (197)  |  Number (710)  |  Origin (250)  |  Poison (46)  |  Portion (86)  |  Process (439)  |  Product (166)  |  Proverbial (8)  |  Quantitative (31)  |  Recent (78)  |  Regard (312)  |  Reign (24)  |  Reveal (152)  |  Revealed (59)  |  Rigid (24)  |  Skin (48)  |  Species (435)  |  Still (614)  |  Structure (365)  |  Uniformity (38)  |  Variance (12)  |  Various (205)

Pancreatic juice emulsifies fat, and we have just seen how greedily worms devour fat; it dissolves fibrin, and worms eat raw meat; it converts starch into grape-sugar with wonderful rapidity, and … the digestive fluid of worms acts on starch.
In The Formation of Vegetable Mould Through the Action of Worms, With Some Observations on Their Habits. (1881), 37.
Science quotes on:  |  Digestion (29)  |  Earthworm (8)  |  Eat (108)  |  Pancreas (4)  |  Starch (2)  |  Sugar (26)

Perhaps our and Gaia’s greatest error was the conscious abuse of fire. Cooking meat over a wood fire may have been acceptable, but the deliberate destruction of whole ecosystems by fire merely to drive out the animals within was surely our first great sin against the living Earth. It has haunted us ever since and combustion could now be our auto da fé, and the cause of our extinction.
In The Revenge of Gaia: Earth’s Climate Crisis & The Fate of Humanity (2006, 2007), 186.
Science quotes on:  |  Abuse (25)  |  Acceptable (14)  |  Animal (651)  |  Cause (561)  |  Combustion (22)  |  Conscious (46)  |  Cook (20)  |  Deliberate (19)  |  Destruction (135)  |  Drive Out (2)  |  Ecosystem (33)  |  Error (339)  |  Extinction (80)  |  Fire (203)  |  First (1302)  |  Great (1610)  |  Haunt (6)  |  Living Earth (5)  |  Sin (45)  |  Whole (756)  |  Wood (97)

The human species was born when one isolated group of bipedal apes got itself stuck and then speciated to get better survival value out of eating meat.
In Pamela Weintraub, The Omni Interviews (1984), 66.
Science quotes on:  |  Ape (54)  |  Better (493)  |  Bipedal (3)  |  Eat (108)  |  Eating (46)  |  Evolution (635)  |  Human (1512)  |  Human Species (11)  |  Isolated (15)  |  Species (435)  |  Stuck (5)  |  Survival (105)  |  Value (393)

The part of the soul which desires meats and drinks and the other things of which it has need by reason of the bodily nature, they (the gods) placed between the midriff and the boundary of the navel, contriving in all this region a sort of manager for the food of the body, and that there they bound it down like a wild animal which was chained up with man, and must be nourished if man is to exist.
Plato
In Plato and B. Jowett (trans.), The Dialogues of Plato: Republic (3rd ed., 1892), Vol. 3, 492.
Science quotes on:  |  Animal (651)  |  Body (557)  |  Bound (120)  |  Boundary (55)  |  Desire (212)  |  Dietetics (4)  |  Down (455)  |  Drink (56)  |  Exist (458)  |  Food (213)  |  God (776)  |  Man (2252)  |  Manager (6)  |  Must (1525)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Nourish (18)  |  Other (2233)  |  Reason (766)  |  Soul (235)  |  Thing (1914)  |  Wild (96)  |  Wild Animal (9)

The public buys its opinions as it buys its meat, or takes in its milk, on the principle that it is cheaper to do this than to keep a cow. So it is, but the milk is more likely to be watered.
Samuel Butler, Henry Festing Jones (ed.), The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1917), 261.
Science quotes on:  |  Cheap (13)  |  Cow (42)  |  Do (1905)  |  Milk (23)  |  More (2558)  |  Opinion (291)  |  Principle (530)  |  Public (100)  |  Water (503)  |  Watered (2)

The theory that gravitational attraction is inversely proportional to the square of the distance leads by remorseless logic to the conclusion that the path of a planet should be an ellipse, … It is this logical thinking that is the real meat of the physical sciences. The social scientist keeps the skin and throws away the meat. … His theorems no more follow from his postulates than the hunches of a horse player follow logically from the latest racing news. The result is guesswork clad in long flowing robes of gobbledygook.
In Science is a Sacred Cow (1950), 149-150.
Science quotes on:  |  Attraction (61)  |  Conclusion (266)  |  Distance (171)  |  Ellipse (8)  |  Follow (389)  |  Gambler (7)  |  Gravitation (72)  |  Guesswork (4)  |  Horse (78)  |  Hunch (5)  |  Inversely Proportional (7)  |  Lead (391)  |  Logic (311)  |  Long (778)  |  More (2558)  |  New (1273)  |  News (36)  |  Path (159)  |  Physical (518)  |  Physical Science (104)  |  Planet (402)  |  Postulate (42)  |  Result (700)  |  Scientist (881)  |  Skin (48)  |  Social (261)  |  Social Science (37)  |  Square (73)  |  Theorem (116)  |  Theory (1015)  |  Thinking (425)

To fulfill a dream, to be allowed to sweat over lonely labor, to be given a chance to create, are the meat and potatoes of life. The money is the gravy.
…...
Science quotes on:  |  Allow (51)  |  Chance (244)  |  Create (245)  |  Dream (222)  |  Fulfill (19)  |  Give (208)  |  Gravy (2)  |  Labor (200)  |  Life (1870)  |  Lonely (24)  |  Money (178)  |  Potato (11)  |  Sweat (17)

You make me sick! You are offered meat and you choose a banana-split-with-nuts.
Science quotes on:  |  Banana (4)  |  Choose (116)  |  Food (213)  |  Health (210)  |  Offer (142)  |  Sick (83)


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.