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: “Science without religion is lame; religion without science is blind.”
more quiz questions >>
Home > Category Index for Science Quotations > Category Index M > Category: Menace

Menace Quotes (7 quotes)

Everyone is aware of the difficult and menacing situation in which human society–shrunk into one community with a common fate–now finds itself, but only a few act accordingly. Most people go on living their every-day life: half frightened, half indifferent, they behold the ghostly tragicomedy which is being performed on the international stage before the eyes and ears of the world. But on that stage, on which the actors under the floodlights play their ordained parts, our fate of tomorrow, life or death of the nations, is being decided.
…...
Science quotes on:  |   (2)  |  Accordingly (5)  |  Act (278)  |  Actor (9)  |  Aware (36)  |  Behold (19)  |  Being (1276)  |  Common (447)  |  Community (111)  |  Death (406)  |  Decide (50)  |  Difficult (263)  |  Ear (69)  |  Everyone (35)  |  Eye (440)  |  Fate (76)  |  Find (1014)  |  Floodlight (2)  |  Half (63)  |  Human (1512)  |  Human Society (14)  |  Indifferent (17)  |  International (40)  |  Life (1870)  |  Live (650)  |  Living (492)  |  Most (1728)  |  Nation (208)  |  Ordain (4)  |  Part (235)  |  People (1031)  |  Perform (123)  |  Play (116)  |  Shrink (23)  |  Situation (117)  |  Society (350)  |  Stage (152)  |  Tomorrow (63)  |  World (1850)

In the year of our Lord 729, two comets appeared around the sun, striking terror into all who saw them. One comet rose early and preceded the sun, while the other followed the setting sun at evening, seeming to portend awful calamity to east and west alike. Or else, since one comet was the precursor of day and the other of night, they indicated that mankind was menaced by evils at both times. They appeared in the month of January, and remained visible for about a fortnight, pointing their fiery torches northward as though to set the welkin aflame. At this time, a swarm of Saracens ravaged Gaul with horrible slaughter; … Both the outset and course of Ceolwulfs reign were filled by so many grave disturbances that it is quite impossible to know what to write about them or what the outcome will be.
Bede
From Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum, Book V, Chap. XXIII., as translated by Leo Sherley-Price, revised by R.E. Latham, Ecclesiastical History of the English People (1955, 1990), 323. Note: The observation likely was on a single comet seen twice each day. The event is also in both the Laud and Parker manuscripts of The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle.
Science quotes on:  |  Alike (60)  |  Appear (122)  |  Awful (9)  |  Both (496)  |  Calamity (11)  |  Comet (65)  |  Course (413)  |  Day (43)  |  Disturbance (34)  |  Early (196)  |  Evil (122)  |  Fiery (5)  |  Follow (389)  |  Fortnight (3)  |  Grave (52)  |  Horrible (10)  |  Impossible (263)  |  Know (1538)  |  Lord (97)  |  Mankind (356)  |  Month (91)  |  Night (133)  |  Other (2233)  |  Portend (2)  |  Precursor (5)  |  Ravage (7)  |  Reign (24)  |  Remain (355)  |  Rose (36)  |  Saracen (2)  |  Saw (160)  |  Set (400)  |  Setting (44)  |  Slaughter (8)  |  Striking (48)  |  Sun (407)  |  Swarm (15)  |  Terror (32)  |  Time (1911)  |  Torch (13)  |  Two (936)  |  Visible (87)  |  Will (2350)  |  Write (250)  |  Year (963)

Is pure science to be considered as something potentially harmful? Answer: Most certainly! Every child knows that it is potentially exceedingly harmful. … The menace of blowing ourselves up by atom bombs, doing ourselves in by chemical or biological warfare, or by population explosion, is certainly with us. I consider the environment thing a trivial question, by comparison—like housekeeping. In any home, the dishes have to be washed, the floors swept, the beds made, and there must be rules as to who is allowed to produce how much stink and noise, and where in the house: When the garbage piles up, these questions become pressing. But they are momentary problems. Once the house is in order, you still want to live in it, not just sit around enjoying its orderliness. I would be sorry to see Caltech move heavily into this type of applied research. … SCIENCE POTENTIALLY HARMFUL? DEFINITELY.
In 'Homo Scientificus According to Beckett," collected in William Beranek, Jr. (ed.)Science, Scientists, and Society, (1972), 135. Excerpted in Ann E. Kammer, Science, Sex, and Society (1979), 277.
Science quotes on:  |  Allow (51)  |  Answer (389)  |  Applied Research (3)  |  Atom Bomb (4)  |  Biological Warfare (3)  |  Blow Up (8)  |  Certainly (185)  |  Child (333)  |  Comparison (108)  |  Consider (428)  |  Definite (114)  |  Enjoy (48)  |  Environment (239)  |  Floor (21)  |  Garbage (10)  |  Harm (43)  |  Home (184)  |  Know (1538)  |  Momentary (5)  |  Noise (40)  |  Order (638)  |  Ourself (21)  |  Population Explosion (2)  |  Potential (75)  |  Pressing (2)  |  Problem (731)  |  Produce (117)  |  Pure Science (30)  |  Question (649)  |  Rule (307)  |  Stink (8)  |  Sweep (22)  |  Trivial (59)

It is only necessary to check the comic books and Reader’s Digest to see the extent of the influence of applied science on the popular imagination. How much it is used to provide an atmosphere of endless thrill and excitement, quite apart from its accidental menace or utility, one can decide from such typical daily headlines as these:
London, March 10, 1947, Reuters: ROCKET TO MOON SEEN POSSIBLE BUT THOUSANDS TO DIE IN ATTEMPT
Cleveland, January 5, 1948.: LIFE SPAN OF 100, BE YOUNG AT 80, ATOM PREDICTION
Washington, June 11, 1947: SCIENTISTS AWAIT COW’S DEATH TO SOLVE MATHEMATICS PROBLEM
Needham Market, Suffolk, England. (U.P.): VICAR PROPOSES BABIES FOR YEARNING SPINSTERS, TEST-TUBE BABIES WILL PRODUCE ROBOTS
Washington, D.C., January 3, 1948. U.S. FLYER PASSING SONIC BARRIER OPENS NEW VISTAS OF DESTRUCTION ONE OF BRAVEST ACTS IN HISTORY
Those headlines represent “human interest” attempts to gear science to the human nervous system.
In The Mechanical Bride: Folklore of Industrial Man (1967), 93.
Science quotes on:  |  Accidental (31)  |  Act (278)  |  Applied Science (36)  |  Atmosphere (117)  |  Atom (381)  |  Attempt (266)  |  Await (6)  |  Baby (29)  |  Brave (16)  |  Check (26)  |  Cow (42)  |  Daily (91)  |  Death (406)  |  Decide (50)  |  Destruction (135)  |  Die (94)  |  Endless (60)  |  Excitement (61)  |  Extent (142)  |  Gear (5)  |  Headline (8)  |  History (716)  |  Imagination (349)  |  Influence (231)  |  Mathematics (1395)  |  Moon (252)  |  Necessary (370)  |  Nervous System (35)  |  New (1273)  |  Open (277)  |  Popular (34)  |  Possible (560)  |  Prediction (89)  |  Problem (731)  |  Produce (117)  |  Propose (24)  |  Provide (79)  |  Represent (157)  |  Robot (14)  |  Rocket (52)  |  Science (39)  |  Scientist (881)  |  Solve (145)  |  Test Tube Baby (2)  |  Thousand (340)  |  Thrill (26)  |  Typical (16)  |  Utility (52)  |  Vista (12)  |  Yearning (13)  |  Young (253)

Most scientists think wars and national boundaries are a menace to the true creative spirit by which science must live, they hate war and they are terrified of atomic war—because they know its possibilities.
As quoted in Michael Amrine, 'I’m A Frightened Man', Collier’s (1946), 117, 51.
Science quotes on:  |  Atomic War (2)  |  Boundary (55)  |  Creative (144)  |  Hate (68)  |  Know (1538)  |  Live (650)  |  Most (1728)  |  Must (1525)  |  National (29)  |  Possibility (172)  |  Scientist (881)  |  Spirit (278)  |  Terrified (4)  |  Think (1122)  |  True (239)  |  War (233)

The history of Western science confirms the aphorism that the great menace to progress is not ignorance but the illusion of knowledge.
In Cleopatra’s Nose: Essays on the Unexpected (1994), 7.
Science quotes on:  |  Aphorism (22)  |  Confirm (58)  |  Great (1610)  |  History (716)  |  Ignorance (254)  |  Illusion (68)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Progress (492)  |  Western (45)

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.
Essay, 'The Smart Set' (Dec 1921), 29. As cited in A Mencken Chrestomathy (1949, 2012), p. 29 (1949).
Science quotes on:  |  Aim (175)  |  Alarm (19)  |  Clamor (7)  |  Endless (60)  |  Imaginary (16)  |  Keep (104)  |  Lead (391)  |  Politics (122)  |  Populace (3)  |  Practical (225)  |  Safety (58)  |  Series (153)  |  Whole (756)


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.