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 was going to record talking... the foil was put on; I then shouted 'Mary had a little lamb',... and the machine reproduced it perfectly.”
more quiz questions >>
Home > Category Index for Science Quotations > Category Index M > Category: Milk

Milk Quotes (23 quotes)

A drop from the nose of Fleming, who had a cold, fell onto an agar plate where large yellow colonies of a contaminant had grown, and lysosyme was discovered. He made this important discovery because when he saw that the colonies of the contaminant were fading, his mind went straight to the right cause of the phenomenon he was observing—that the drop from his nose contained a lytic substance. And also immediately, he thought that this substance might be present in many secretions and tissues of the body. And he found this was so—the substance was in tears, saliva, leucocytes, skin, fingernails, mother's milk—thus very widely distributed in amounts and also in plants.
Personal recollections of Alexander Fleming by Lady Amelia Fleming. Quoted in Molecular Cloning (2001), Vol. 1, 153.
Science quotes on:  |  Amount (153)  |  Body (557)  |  Cause (561)  |  Cold (115)  |  Discover (571)  |  Discovery (837)  |  Drop (77)  |  Immediately (115)  |  Insight (107)  |  Large (398)  |  Mind (1377)  |  Mother (116)  |  Phenomenon (334)  |  Plant (320)  |  Present (630)  |  Research (753)  |  Right (473)  |  Saliva (4)  |  Saw (160)  |  Skin (48)  |  Straight (75)  |  Substance (253)  |  Tear (48)  |  Thought (995)  |  Tissue (51)  |  Yellow (31)

As I am writing, another illustration of ye generation of hills proposed above comes into my mind. Milk is as uniform a liquor as ye chaos was. If beer be poured into it & ye mixture let stand till it be dry, the surface of ye curdled substance will appear as rugged & mountanous as the Earth in any place.
Letter to Thomas Burnet (Jan 1680/1. In H. W. Turnbull (ed.), The Correspondence of Isaac Newton, 1676-1687 (1960), Vol. 2, 334.
Science quotes on:  |  Beer (10)  |  Chaos (99)  |  Dry (65)  |  Earth (1076)  |  Generation (256)  |  Hill (23)  |  Illustration (51)  |  Mind (1377)  |  Mixture (44)  |  Mountain (202)  |  Rugged (7)  |  Stand (284)  |  Substance (253)  |  Surface (223)  |  Will (2350)  |  Writing (192)

Consider the hateful brew compounded with gleaming, deadly white lead whose fresh colour is like milk…. Over the victim’s jaws and in the grooves of the gums is plastered an astringent froth, and the furrow of the tongue turns rough on either side, and the depth of the throat grows somewhat dry, and from the pernicious venom follows a dry retching and hawking, for this affliction is severe; meanwhile his spirit sickens and he is worn out with mortal suffering. His body too grows chill, while sometimes his eyes behold strange illusions or else he drowses; nor can he bestir his limbs as heretofore, and he succumbs to the overmastering fatigue.
Nicander
As translated by A.S.F. Gow and A.F. Scholfield in Nicander: The Poems and Portical Fragments (1953), 99.
Science quotes on:  |  Body (557)  |  Compound (117)  |  Consider (428)  |  Deadly (21)  |  Depth (97)  |  Dry (65)  |  Eye (440)  |  Fatigue (13)  |  Follow (389)  |  Fresh (69)  |  Grow (247)  |  Illusion (68)  |  Lead (391)  |  Lead Poisoning (4)  |  Mortal (55)  |  Palsy (3)  |  Paralysis (9)  |  Pernicious (9)  |  Plaster (5)  |  Side (236)  |  Spirit (278)  |  Strange (160)  |  Suffering (68)  |  Symptom (38)  |  Tongue (44)  |  Turn (454)  |  Venom (2)  |  Victim (37)  |  White (132)

Educated folk keep to one another's company too much, leaving other people much like milk skimmed of its cream.
From chapter 'Jottings from a Note-Book', in Canadian Stories (1918), 176.
Science quotes on:  |  Company (63)  |  Cream (6)  |  Education (423)  |  Folk (10)  |  Other (2233)  |  People (1031)

Half the time of all medical men is wasted keeping life in human wrecks who have no more intelligible reason for hanging on than a cow has for giving milk.
…...
Science quotes on:  |  Cow (42)  |  Give (208)  |  Half (63)  |  Hang (46)  |  Human (1512)  |  Intelligible (35)  |  Keep (104)  |  Life (1870)  |  Medical (31)  |  More (2558)  |  Reason (766)  |  Time (1911)  |  Waste (109)  |  Wreck (10)

I even believe that those who consider themselves to be opponents of Mach barely know how many of his views they absorbed, in a manner of speaking, with their mother’s milk.
Translation from obituary, 'Ernst Mach', Physikalische Zeitschrift (1 Apr 1916), 102. Einstein was pointing out how Mach as a science philosopher had influenced and continued to exert upon generations of physicists. Originally written in German, the subject quote is a translation into English. There are slight variations in wording in other translations. For example: “I believe that even those who consider themselves opponents of Mach are hardly aware of how much of Mach’s way of thinking they imbibed, so to speak, with their mother’s milk.” From the original German text: “Ich glaube sogar, daß diejenigen, welche sich für Gegner Machs halten, kaum wissen, wieviel von Machscher Betrachtungsweise sie sozusagen mit der Muttermilch eingesogen haben.”
Science quotes on:  |  Absorb (54)  |  Ernst Mach (28)  |  Mother (116)  |  Opponent (23)

I took a glass retort, capable of containing eight ounces of water, and distilled fuming spirit of nitre according to the usual method. In the beginning the acid passed over red, then it became colourless, and lastly again all red: no sooner did this happen, than I took away the receiver; and tied to the mouth of the retort a bladder emptied of air, which I had moistened in its inside with milk of lime lac calcis, (i.e. lime-water, containing more quicklime than water can dissolve) to prevent its being corroded by the acid. Then I continued the distillation, and the bladder gradually expanded. Here-upon I left every thing to cool, tied up the bladder, and took it off from the mouth of the retort.— I filled a ten-ounce glass with this air and put a small burning candle into it; when immediately the candle burnt with a large flame, of so vivid a light that it dazzled the eyes. I mixed one part of this air with three parts of air, wherein fire would not burn; and this mixture afforded air, in every respect familiar to the common sort. Since this air is absolutely necessary for the generation of fire, and makes about one-third of our common air, I shall henceforth, for shortness sake call it empyreal air, [literally fire-air] the air which is unserviceable for the fiery phenomenon, and which makes abut two-thirds of common air, I shall for the future call foul air [literally corrupted air].
Chemische Abhandlung von der Luft und dem Feuer (1777), Chemical Observations and Experiments on Air and Fire (1780), trans. J. R. Forster, 34-5.
Science quotes on:  |  According (236)  |  Acid (83)  |  Air (366)  |  Beginning (312)  |  Being (1276)  |  Bladder (3)  |  Burn (99)  |  Burning (49)  |  Call (781)  |  Candle (32)  |  Capable (174)  |  Common (447)  |  Corrosion (4)  |  Dazzling (13)  |  Dissolve (22)  |  Distillation (11)  |  Expand (56)  |  Eye (440)  |  Fire (203)  |  Flame (44)  |  Foul (15)  |  Fume (7)  |  Future (467)  |  Generation (256)  |  Glass (94)  |  Gradually (102)  |  Happen (282)  |  Immediately (115)  |  Large (398)  |  Light (635)  |  Lime (3)  |  Literally (30)  |  Method (531)  |  Mixture (44)  |  More (2558)  |  Mouth (54)  |  Necessary (370)  |  Nitric Acid (2)  |  Oxygen (77)  |  Pass (241)  |  Phenomenon (334)  |  Prevent (98)  |  Receiver (5)  |  Respect (212)  |  Retort (3)  |  Sake (61)  |  Small (489)  |  Spirit (278)  |  Thing (1914)  |  Two (936)  |  Vivid (25)  |  Water (503)

I’m saying that the leaders of the church have locked the sacred cow called science in the stable and they won’t let anybody enter; they should open it immediately so that we can milk that cow in the name of humanity and thus find the truth.
From the play Galileo Galilei (2001) .
Science quotes on:  |  Anybody (42)  |  Call (781)  |  Called Science (14)  |  Church (64)  |  Cow (42)  |  Enter (145)  |  Find (1014)  |  Humanity (186)  |  Immediately (115)  |  Leader (51)  |  Name (359)  |  Open (277)  |  Sacred (48)  |  Science And Religion (337)  |  Stable (32)  |  Truth (1109)

In a sense cosmology contains all subjects because it is the story of everything, including biology, psychology and human history. In that single sense it can be said to contain an explanation also of time's arrow. But this is not what is meant by those who advocate the cosmological explanation of irreversibility. They imply that in some way the time arrow of cosmology imposes its sense on the thermodynamic arrow. I wish to disagree with this view. The explanation assumes that the universe is expanding. While this is current orthodoxy, there is no certainty about it. The red-shifts might be due to quite different causes. For example, when light passes through the expanding clouds of gas it will be red-shifted. A large number of such clouds might one day be invoked to explain these red shifts. It seems an odd procedure to attempt to 'explain' everyday occurrences, such as the diffusion of milk into coffee, by means of theories of the universe which are themselves less firmly established than the phenomena to be explained. Most people believe in explaining one set of things in terms of others about which they are more certain, and the explanation of normal irreversible phenomena in terms of the cosmological expansion is not in this category.
'Thermodynamics, Cosmology) and the Physical Constants', in J. T. Fraser (ed.), The Study of Time III (1973), 117-8.
Science quotes on:  |  Advocate (20)  |  Arrow (22)  |  Attempt (266)  |  Biology (232)  |  Category (19)  |  Cause (561)  |  Certain (557)  |  Certainty (180)  |  Cloud (111)  |  Coffee (21)  |  Cosmological (11)  |  Cosmology (26)  |  Current (122)  |  Different (595)  |  Diffusion (13)  |  Due (143)  |  Everyday (32)  |  Everything (489)  |  Expansion (43)  |  Explain (334)  |  Explanation (246)  |  Gas (89)  |  History (716)  |  Human (1512)  |  Irreversibility (4)  |  Irreversible (12)  |  Large (398)  |  Light (635)  |  Mean (810)  |  Means (587)  |  More (2558)  |  Most (1728)  |  Number (710)  |  Occurrence (53)  |  Orthodoxy (11)  |  Other (2233)  |  People (1031)  |  Procedure (48)  |  Psychology (166)  |  Red-Shift (4)  |  Sense (785)  |  Set (400)  |  Shift (45)  |  Single (365)  |  Story (122)  |  Subject (543)  |  Term (357)  |  Terms (184)  |  Themselves (433)  |  Thermodynamics (40)  |  Thing (1914)  |  Through (846)  |  Time (1911)  |  Universe (900)  |  View (496)  |  Way (1214)  |  Will (2350)  |  Wish (216)

It’s funny how worms can turn leaves into silk.
But funnier far is the cow:
She changes a field of green grass into milk
And not a professor knows how.
In Dorothy Caruso, Enrico Caruso: His Life and Death (1963), 42. Written for Michael Pupin, who made a similar statement in prose: “Look at those animals and remember the greatest scientists in the world have never discovered how to make grass into milk.”
Science quotes on:  |  Change (639)  |  Cow (42)  |  Field (378)  |  Funny (11)  |  Grass (49)  |  Green (65)  |  Know (1538)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Leaf (73)  |  Professor (133)  |  Silk (14)  |  Turn (454)  |  Worm (47)

Knowledge is a sacred cow, and my problem will be how we can milk her while keeping clear of her horns.
In 'Teaching and Expanding Knowledge,' Science, December 4, 1964.
Science quotes on:  |  Cow (42)  |  Horn (18)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Problem (731)  |  Sacred (48)  |  Will (2350)

Look at those animals and remember the greatest scientists in the world have never discovered how to make grass into milk.
As quoted in Dorothy Caruso, Enrico Caruso: His Life and Death (1963), 41.
Science quotes on:  |  Animal (651)  |  Discover (571)  |  Discovery (837)  |  Grass (49)  |  Greatest (330)  |  Look (584)  |  Never (1089)  |  Remember (189)  |  Scientist (881)  |  World (1850)

Man cannot live by milk alone. Love is an emotion that does not need to be bottle- or spoon-fed.
From Presidential Address (31 Aug 1958), 66th Annual Convention of the American Psychological Association, Washington, D.C., published in In 'The Nature of Love', American Psychologist, 13, 673-685.
Science quotes on:  |  Alone (324)  |  Bottle (17)  |  Emotion (106)  |  Feed (31)  |  Live (650)  |  Love (328)  |  Man (2252)  |  Need (320)  |  Spoon (5)

Maple-trees are the cows of trees (spring-milked).
In Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit (1887), 10. Presumably referring to maple syrup production.
Science quotes on:  |  Cow (42)  |  Spring (140)  |  Tree (269)

Neither cookery nor chymistry [has] been able to make milk out of grass.
In The Works of William Paley (1838), Vol. 1, 105.
Science quotes on:  |  Chemistry (376)  |  Cookery (7)  |  Grass (49)

One of the earliest questions asked by an intelligent child is: “What is this made of?” “What is that made of?” And the answer is generally more or less satisfactory. For example, if the question relates to butter, the reply may be, “From cream.” It may be explained, besides, that when cream is beaten up, or churned, the butter separates, leaving skim-milk behind. But the question has not been answered. The child may ask, “Was the butter in the milk before it was churned? or has it been made out of the milk by the churning?” Possibly the person to whom the question is addressed may know that the milk contained the butter in the state of fine globules, and that the process of churning breaks up the globules, and causes them to stick together. The original question has not really been answered; and indeed it is not an easy one to reply to. Precisely such questions suggested themselves to the people of old, and they led to many speculations.
Opening paragraph of Modern Chemistry (1900, rev. 1907), 1.
Science quotes on:  |  Answer (389)  |  Ask (420)  |  Beat (42)  |  Behind (139)  |  Break (109)  |  Butter (8)  |  Cause (561)  |  Child (333)  |  Churn (4)  |  Cream (6)  |  Earliest (3)  |  Easy (213)  |  Enquiry (89)  |  Explain (334)  |  Explanation (246)  |  Globule (5)  |  Indeed (323)  |  Intelligent (108)  |  Know (1538)  |  More (2558)  |  More Or Less (71)  |  Old (499)  |  People (1031)  |  Person (366)  |  Possibly (111)  |  Precisely (93)  |  Process (439)  |  Question (649)  |  Reply (58)  |  Satisfactory (19)  |  Separate (151)  |  Separation (60)  |  Speculation (137)  |  State (505)  |  Stick (27)  |  Themselves (433)  |  Together (392)

Quiet this metal!
Let the manes put off their terror, let
them put off their aqueous bodies with fire.
Let them assume the milk-white bodies of agate.
Let them draw together the bones of the metal.
'The Alchemist: Chant for the Transmutation of Metal'. In T. S. Eliot (ed.), Ezra Pound: Selected Poems (1928), 61-2.
Science quotes on:  |  Agate (2)  |  Alchemy (31)  |  Aqueous (8)  |  Bone (101)  |  Draw (140)  |  Fire (203)  |  Metal (88)  |  Poem (104)  |  Quiet (37)  |  Terror (32)  |  Together (392)  |  White (132)

The attempted synthesis of paleontology and genetics, an essential part of the present study, may be particularly surprising and possibly hazardous. Not long ago, paleontologists felt that a geneticist was a person who shut himself in a room, pulled down the shades, watched small flies disporting themselves in milk bottles, and thought that he was studying nature. A pursuit so removed from the realities of life, they said, had no significance for the true biologist. On the other hand, the geneticists said that paleontology had no further contributions to make to biology, that its only point had been the completed demonstration of the truth of evolution, and that it was a subject too purely descriptive to merit the name 'science'. The paleontologist, they believed, is like a man who undertakes to study the principles of the internal combustion engine by standing on a street corner and watching the motor cars whiz by.
Tempo and Mode in Evolution (1944), 1.
Science quotes on:  |  Attempt (266)  |  Biologist (70)  |  Biology (232)  |  Bottle (17)  |  Car (75)  |  Cat (52)  |  Combustion (22)  |  Completed (30)  |  Completion (23)  |  Contribution (93)  |  Corner (59)  |  Demonstration (120)  |  Description (89)  |  Descriptive (18)  |  Down (455)  |  Engine (99)  |  Essential (210)  |  Evolution (635)  |  Fly (153)  |  Genetic (110)  |  Geneticist (16)  |  Genetics (105)  |  Himself (461)  |  Internal (69)  |  Internal Combustion Engine (4)  |  Life (1870)  |  Long (778)  |  Man (2252)  |  Merit (51)  |  Motor (23)  |  Name (359)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Other (2233)  |  Paleontologist (19)  |  Paleontology (32)  |  Person (366)  |  Point (584)  |  Possibly (111)  |  Present (630)  |  Principle (530)  |  Pull (43)  |  Purely (111)  |  Pursuit (128)  |  Room (42)  |  Shade (35)  |  Shut (41)  |  Significance (114)  |  Small (489)  |  Standing (11)  |  Street (25)  |  Study (701)  |  Studying (70)  |  Subject (543)  |  Synthesis (58)  |  Themselves (433)  |  Thought (995)  |  Truth (1109)  |  Undertake (35)  |  Watch (118)  |  Whiz (2)

The effort to reconcile science and religion is almost always made, not by theologians, but by scientists unable to shake off altogether the piety absorbed with their mother’s milk.
In Minority Report: H.L. Mencken’s Notebooks (1956), 166.
Science quotes on:  |  Absorb (54)  |  Effort (243)  |  Mother (116)  |  Piety (5)  |  Reconcile (19)  |  Religion (369)  |  Science And Religion (337)  |  Scientist (881)  |  Shake (43)  |  Theologian (23)

The growth curves of the famous Hopkins' rats are familiar to anyone who has ever opened a textbook of physiology. One recalls the proud ascendant curve of the milk-fed group which suddenly turns downwards as the milk supplement is removed, and the waning curve of the other group taking its sudden milk-assisted upward spring, until it passes its fellow now abruptly on the decline. 'Feeding experiments illustrating the importance of accessory factors in normal dietaries', Jour. Physiol., 1912, xliv, 425, ranks aesthetically beside the best stories of H. G. Wells.
Vitamins and Other Dietary Essentials (1933), 46.
Science quotes on:  |  Best (467)  |  Biochemistry (50)  |  Curve (49)  |  Decline (28)  |  Diet (56)  |  Experiment (736)  |  Fellow (88)  |  Food (213)  |  Growth (200)  |  Sir Frederick Gowland Hopkins (11)  |  Importance (299)  |  Open (277)  |  Other (2233)  |  Physiology (101)  |  Rank (69)  |  Rat (37)  |  Spring (140)  |  Sudden (70)  |  Suddenly (91)  |  Textbook (39)  |  Turn (454)  |  Upward (44)

The key to the sociobiology of mammals is milk.
In Sociobiology (1975), 456.
Science quotes on:  |  Key (56)  |  Mammal (41)  |  Sociobiology (5)

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)  |  Meat (19)  |  More (2558)  |  Opinion (291)  |  Principle (530)  |  Public (100)  |  Water (503)  |  Watered (2)

There is no substitute for mother’s milk.
Science quotes on:  |  Mother (116)  |  Substitute (47)


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.