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: “God does not care about our mathematical difficulties. He integrates empirically.”
more quiz questions >>
Home > Category Index for Science Quotations > Category Index P > Category: Parliament

Parliament Quotes (8 quotes)

Because I was less tied to Parliament, because I was freer to travel and investigate and explore, I found myself often with the odd jobs which nobody else wanted or had time for. One of these, I remember, was a study of the myxomatosis problem. Myxomatosis was a disease fatal to rabbits and without a cure—there had been prolonged examination of it on the Continent where there were dreams of eradicating or anyway reducing the rabbit population. A French chemical scientist carried out a series of experiments in the park of his chateau, with a view to rabbit control. He let the virus loose, apparently unaware that it could be carried by birds and insects. Very soon myxomatosis had spread like wildfire through France.
In Reflect on Things Past: The Memoirs of Lord Carrington (1089), 97.
Science quotes on:  |  Bird (163)  |  Carrier (6)  |  Chemist (169)  |  Control (182)  |  Disease (340)  |  Eradicate (6)  |  Fatal (14)  |  Insect (89)  |  Investigate (106)  |  Rabbit (10)  |  Spread (86)  |  Virus (32)

Governments and parliaments must find that astronomy is one of the sciences which cost most dear: the least instrument costs hundreds of thousands of dollars, the least observatory costs millions; each eclipse carries with it supplementary appropriations. And all that for stars which are so far away, which are complete strangers to our electoral contests, and in all probability will never take any part in them. It must be that our politicians have retained a remnant of idealism, a vague instinct for what is grand; truly, I think they have been calumniated; they should be encouraged and shown that this instinct does not deceive them, that they are not dupes of that idealism.
In Henri Poincaré and George Bruce Halsted (trans.), The Value of Science: Essential Writings of Henri Poincare (1907), 84.
Science quotes on:  |  Appropriation (5)  |  Astronomy (251)  |  Complete (209)  |  Cost (94)  |  Deceive (26)  |  Dollar (22)  |  Dupe (5)  |  Eclipse (25)  |  Election (7)  |  Encourage (43)  |  Far (158)  |  Find (1014)  |  Government (116)  |  Grand (29)  |  Hundred (240)  |  Idealism (4)  |  Instinct (91)  |  Instrument (158)  |  Millions (17)  |  Most (1728)  |  Must (1525)  |  Never (1089)  |  Observatory (18)  |  Politician (40)  |  Probability (135)  |  Remnant (7)  |  Retain (57)  |  Show (353)  |  Star (460)  |  Stars (304)  |  Stranger (16)  |  Supplementary (4)  |  Think (1122)  |  Thousand (340)  |  Truly (118)  |  Vague (50)  |  Will (2350)

Mental events proceeding beneath the threshold of consciousness are the substrate upon which all conscious experience depends. To argue that all we need of our mental equipment is that part of which we are conscious is about as helpful as equating the United States with the Senate or England with the Houses of Parliament.
Quoted in 'Anthony (George) Stevens' in Gale, Contemporary Authors Online (2005).
Science quotes on:  |  Argue (25)  |  Beneath (68)  |  Conscious (46)  |  Consciousness (132)  |  Depend (238)  |  England (43)  |  Equating (2)  |  Equipment (45)  |  Event (222)  |  Experience (494)  |  Helpful (16)  |  House (143)  |  Mental (179)  |  Need (320)  |  Part (235)  |  Proceeding (38)  |  State (505)  |  Substrate (2)  |  Threshold (11)  |  United States (31)

Now that we know nature thoroughly, a child can see that in making experiments we are simply paying nature compliments. It is no more than a ceremonial ritual. We know the answers in advance. We consult nature in the same way as great rulers consult their parliaments.
Aphorism 67 in Notebook E (1775-1776), as translated by R.J. Hollingdale in Aphorisms (1990). Reprinted as The Waste Books (2000), 73.
Science quotes on:  |  Advance (298)  |  Answer (389)  |  Ceremony (6)  |  Child (333)  |  Compliment (2)  |  Consulting (13)  |  Experiment (736)  |  Great (1610)  |  Know (1538)  |  Know The Answer (9)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Making (300)  |  More (2558)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Ritual (9)  |  Ruler (21)  |  See (1094)  |  Thoroughly (67)  |  Way (1214)

On two occasions I have been asked [by members of Parliament], “Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?” I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question.
In 'Difference Engine No. 1', Passages from the Life of a Philosopher (1864), Chap. 5, 59.
Science quotes on:  |  Answer (389)  |  Ask (420)  |  Confusion (61)  |  Figure (162)  |  Idea (881)  |  Kind (564)  |  Machine (271)  |  Occasion (87)  |  Provoke (9)  |  Question (649)  |  Right (473)  |  Two (936)  |  Will (2350)  |  Wrong (246)

The understanding between a non-technical writer and his reader is that he shall talk more or less like a human being and not like an Act of Parliament. I take it that the aim of such books must be to convey exact thought in inexact language... he can never succeed without the co-operation of the reader.
Messenger Lectures (1934), New Pathways in Science (1935), 279.
Science quotes on:  |  Act (278)  |  Aim (175)  |  Being (1276)  |  Book (413)  |  Human (1512)  |  Human Being (185)  |  Inexact (3)  |  Language (308)  |  More (2558)  |  More Or Less (71)  |  Must (1525)  |  Never (1089)  |  Operation (221)  |  Publication (102)  |  Succeed (114)  |  Thought (995)  |  Understanding (527)  |  Writer (90)

To find fault with our ancestors for not having annual parliaments, universal suffrage, and vote by ballot, would be like quarrelling with the Greeks and Romans for not using steam navigation, when we know it is so safe and expeditious; which would be, in short, simply finding fault with the third century before Christ for not being the eighteenth century after. It was necessary that many other things should be thought and done, before, according to the laws of human affairs, it was possible that steam navigation should be thought of. Human nature must proceed step by step, in politics as well as in physics.
The Spirit of the Age (1831). Ed. Frederick A. von Hayek (1942), 48.
Science quotes on:  |  18th Century (21)  |  According (236)  |  Ancestor (63)  |  Being (1276)  |  Century (319)  |  Christ (17)  |  Fault (58)  |  Find (1014)  |  Greek (109)  |  Human (1512)  |  Human Nature (71)  |  Know (1538)  |  Law (913)  |  Must (1525)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Navigation (26)  |  Necessary (370)  |  Other (2233)  |  Physic (515)  |  Physics (564)  |  Politics (122)  |  Possible (560)  |  Proceed (134)  |  Quarrel (10)  |  Roman (39)  |  Safe (61)  |  Safety (58)  |  Short (200)  |  Steam (81)  |  Step (234)  |  Step By Step (11)  |  Suffrage (4)  |  Thing (1914)  |  Thought (995)  |  Universal (198)  |  Vote (16)

When a Parliament, acting against the declared Sense of the Nation, would have appeared as surprising a phœnomenon in the moral World, as a retrograde Motion of the Sun, or any other signal Deviation of Things from their ordinary Course in the natural World.
In A Dissertation Upon Parties: In Several Letters to Caleb D’Anvers, Esq. (1733, 1735), 39.
Science quotes on:  |  Acting (6)  |  Against (332)  |  Appeared (4)  |  Course (413)  |  Declare (48)  |  Declared (24)  |  Deviation (21)  |  Moral (203)  |  Motion (320)  |  Nation (208)  |  Natural (810)  |  Ordinary (167)  |  Other (2233)  |  Phenomenon (334)  |  Retrograde (8)  |  Sense (785)  |  Signal (29)  |  Sun (407)  |  Surprising (4)  |  Thing (1914)  |  World (1850)


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.