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: “Politics is more difficult than physics.”
more quiz questions >>
Home > Category Index for Science Quotations > Category Index N > Category: Naught

Naught Quotes (10 quotes)

[In the beginning, before creation] There was neither Aught nor Naught, no air nor sky beyond. …
[There was only]
A self-supporting mass beneath, and energy above.
Who knows, who ever told, from whence this vast creation rose?
No gods had yet been born—who then can e’er the truth disclose?
In Rigveda. In John Robson, Hinduism and Its Relations to Christianity (1893), 17.
Science quotes on:  |  Air (366)  |  Aught (6)  |  Beginning (312)  |  Beneath (68)  |  Beyond (316)  |  Big Bang (45)  |  Creation (350)  |  Disclose (19)  |  Energy (373)  |  God (776)  |  Know (1538)  |  Mass (160)  |  Myth (58)  |  Rose (36)  |  Self (268)  |  Sky (174)  |  Truth (1109)  |  Universe (900)  |  Vast (188)

But how shall we this union well expresse?
Naught tyes the soule: her subtiltie is such
She moves the bodie, which she doth possesse.
Yet no part toucheth, but by Vertue's touch.
Then dwels she not therein as in a tent;
Nor as a pilot in his Ship doth sit;
Nor as the spider in his web is pent;
Nor as the Waxe retaines the print in it;
Nor as a Vessell water doth containe;
Nor as one Liquor in another shed;
Nor as the heate dath in the fire remaine;
Nor as a voice throughout the ayre is spred;
But as the faire and cheerfull morning light,
Doth here, and there, her silver beames impart,
And in an instant doth her selfe unite
To the transparent Aire, in all, and part:
Still resting whole, when blowes the Aire devide;
Abiding pure, when th' Aire is most corrupted;
Throughout the Aire her beames dispersing wide,
And when the Aire is tost, not interrupted:
So doth the piercing Soule the body fill;
Being all in all, and all in part diffus'd;
Indivisible, incorruptible still,
Not forc't, encountred, troubled or confus'd.
And as the Sunne above the light doth bring,
Tough we behold it in the Aire below;
So from th'eternall light the Soule doth spring,
Though in the Bodie she her powers do show.
From 'Nosce Teipsum' (1599), in Claire Howard (ed.), The Poems of Sir John Davies (1941), 151-2.
Science quotes on:  |  Being (1276)  |  Body (557)  |  Do (1905)  |  Fire (203)  |  Impart (24)  |  Indivisible (22)  |  Instant (46)  |  Light (635)  |  Morning (98)  |  Most (1728)  |  Move (223)  |  Power (771)  |  Pure (299)  |  Ship (69)  |  Show (353)  |  Silver (49)  |  Spider (14)  |  Spring (140)  |  Still (614)  |  Sun (407)  |  Tent (13)  |  Throughout (98)  |  Touch (146)  |  Tough (22)  |  Transparent (16)  |  Union (52)  |  Unite (43)  |  Water (503)  |  Whole (756)  |  Wide (97)

A game is on, at the other end of this infinite distance, and heads or tails will turn up. What will you wager? According to reason you cannot leave either; according to reason you cannot leave either undone... Yes, but wager you must; there is no option, you have embarked on it. So which will you have. Come. Since you must choose, let us see what concerns you least. You have two things to lose: truth and good, and two things to stake: your reason and your will, your knowledge and your happiness. And your nature has two things to shun: error and misery. Your reason does not suffer by your choosing one more than the other, for you must choose. That is one point cleared. But your happiness? Let us weigh gain and loss in calling heads that God is. Reckon these two chances: if you win, you win all; if you lose, you lose naught. Then do not hesitate, wager that He is.
Pensées (1670), Section I, aphorism 223. In H. F. Stewart (ed.), Pascal's Pensées (1950), 117-119.
Science quotes on:  |  According (236)  |  Chance (244)  |  Choice (114)  |  Choose (116)  |  Concern (239)  |  Distance (171)  |  Do (1905)  |  Embarkation (2)  |  End (603)  |  Error (339)  |  Gain (146)  |  Game (104)  |  God (776)  |  Good (906)  |  Happiness (126)  |  Head (87)  |  Hesitate (24)  |  Hesitation (19)  |  Infinite (243)  |  Infinity (96)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Lose (165)  |  Loss (117)  |  Misery (31)  |  More (2558)  |  Must (1525)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Option (10)  |  Other (2233)  |  Point (584)  |  Reason (766)  |  Reckon (31)  |  Reckoning (19)  |  See (1094)  |  Shun (4)  |  Stake (20)  |  Suffering (68)  |  Tail (21)  |  Thing (1914)  |  Truth (1109)  |  Turn (454)  |  Two (936)  |  Wager (3)  |  Weigh (51)  |  Will (2350)  |  Win (53)

Come, see the north-wind’s masonry, Out of an unseen quarry evermore Furnished with tile, the fierce artificer Curves his white bastions with projected roof Round every windward stake, or tree, or door. Speeding, the myriad-handed, his wild work So fanciful, so savage, naught cares he For number or proportion.
…...
Science quotes on:  |  Artificer (5)  |  Bastion (3)  |  Care (203)  |  Curve (49)  |  Door (94)  |  Evermore (2)  |  Fanciful (6)  |  Fierce (8)  |  Furnish (97)  |  Masonry (4)  |  Myriad (32)  |  North Wind (2)  |  Number (710)  |  Project (77)  |  Proportion (140)  |  Quarry (14)  |  Roof (14)  |  Round (26)  |  Savage (33)  |  See (1094)  |  Speed (66)  |  Stake (20)  |  Tile (2)  |  Tree (269)  |  Unseen (23)  |  White (132)  |  Wild (96)  |  Wind (141)  |  Windward (2)  |  Work (1402)

Ere land and sea and the all-covering sky
Were made, in the whole world the countenance
Of nature was the same, all one, well named
Chaos, a raw and undivided mass,
Naught but a lifeless bulk, with warring seeds
Of ill-joined elements compressed together.
Ovid’s description of the Creation of the universe at the beginning of Metamorphoses, Book I, lines 5-9, as translated in A.D. Melville (trans.), Ovid: Metamorphoses (1987), 1.
Science quotes on:  |  Bulk (24)  |  Chaos (99)  |  Countenance (9)  |  Covering (14)  |  Element (322)  |  Land (131)  |  Lifeless (15)  |  Mass (160)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Origin Of The Earth (13)  |  Raw (28)  |  Sea (326)  |  Seed (97)  |  Sky (174)  |  Together (392)  |  Undivided (3)  |  Whole (756)  |  Whole World (29)  |  World (1850)

Far must thy researches go
Wouldst thou learn the world to know;
Thou must tempt the dark abyss
Wouldst thou prove what Being is;
Naught but firmness gains the prize,—
Naught but fullness makes us wise,—
Buried deep truth ever lies!
In Edgar A. Bowring (trans.), The Poems of Schiller (1875), 260.
Science quotes on:  |  Abyss (30)  |  Being (1276)  |  Bury (19)  |  Dark (145)  |  Deep (241)  |  Fullness (2)  |  Gain (146)  |  Know (1538)  |  Learn (672)  |  Lie (370)  |  Must (1525)  |  Prize (13)  |  Prove (261)  |  Research (753)  |  Truth (1109)  |  Wise (143)  |  World (1850)

Hunting, fishing, drawing, and music occupied my every moment. ... Cares I knew not, and cared naught about them.
[Recalling his time spent at his father's property, Mill Grove, during his first visit to America.]
In John James Audubon and Lucy Audubon (editor), The Life of John James Audubon: the Naturalist (1869), 17.
Science quotes on:  |  America (143)  |  Car (75)  |  Care (203)  |  Drawing (56)  |  Father (113)  |  First (1302)  |  Fishing (20)  |  Hunting (23)  |  Mill (16)  |  Moment (260)  |  Music (133)  |  Occupation (51)  |  Occupied (45)  |  Property (177)  |  Spent (85)  |  Time (1911)

I’ll change my state with any wretch
Thou canst from gaol of dunghill fetch.
My pain’s past cure, another hell;
I may not in this torment dwell.
Now desperate I hate my life,
Lend me a halter or a knife!
All my griefs to this are jolly,
Naught so damned as melancholy.
Science quotes on:  |  Change (639)  |  Cure (124)  |  Grief (20)  |  Hate (68)  |  Jail (4)  |  Knife (24)  |  Life (1870)  |  Melancholy (17)  |  Pain (144)  |  Past (355)  |  Psychology (166)  |  State (505)  |  Torment (18)  |  Wretch (5)

In an enterprise such as the building of the atomic bomb the difference between ideas, hopes, suggestions and theoretical calculations, and solid numbers based on measurement, is paramount. All the committees, the politicking and the plans would have come to naught if a few unpredictable nuclear cross sections had been different from what they are by a factor of two.
Epigraph in Richard Rhodes, The Making of the Atomic Bomb (1986), 8.
Science quotes on:  |  Atomic Bomb (115)  |  Building (158)  |  Calculation (134)  |  Committee (16)  |  Difference (355)  |  Different (595)  |  Enterprise (56)  |  Factor (47)  |  Hope (321)  |  Idea (881)  |  Measurement (178)  |  Nuclear (110)  |  Number (710)  |  Paramount (11)  |  Plan (122)  |  Politics (122)  |  Solid (119)  |  Suggestion (49)  |  Theory (1015)  |  Two (936)  |  Unpredictable (18)

You know the formula m over naught equals infinity, m being any positive number? [m/0 = ∞]. Well, why not reduce the equation to a simpler form by multiplying both sides by naught? In which case you have m equals infinity times naught [m = ∞ × 0]. That is to say, a positive number is the product of zero and infinity. Doesn't that demonstrate the creation of the Universe by an infinite power out of nothing? Doesn't it?
In Point Counter Point (1928), 162.
Science quotes on:  |  Being (1276)  |  Both (496)  |  Creation (350)  |  Demonstrate (79)  |  Equal (88)  |  Equation (138)  |  Form (976)  |  Formula (102)  |  Infinite (243)  |  Infinity (96)  |  Know (1538)  |  Multiply (40)  |  Nothing (1000)  |  Number (710)  |  Positive (98)  |  Power (771)  |  Product (166)  |  Reduce (100)  |  Say (989)  |  Side (236)  |  Simplify (14)  |  Time (1911)  |  Universe (900)  |  Why (491)  |  Zero (38)


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.