TODAY IN SCIENCE HISTORY ®  •  TODAYINSCI ®
Celebrating 25 Years on the Web
Find science on or your birthday

Today in Science History - Quickie Quiz
Who said: “The conservation of natural resources is the fundamental problem. Unless we solve that problem it will avail us little to solve all others.”
more quiz questions >>
Home > Category Index for Science Quotations > Category Index P > Category: Pleasantness

Pleasantness Quotes (3 quotes)

Anyone who thinks science is trying to make human life easier or more pleasant is utterly mistaken.
In 'Quotation Marks', New York Times (11 Oct 1931), XX2.
Science quotes on:  |  Anyone (38)  |  Ease (40)  |  Easier (53)  |  Human (1512)  |  Life (1870)  |  Mistaken (3)  |  More (2558)  |  Think (1122)  |  Thinking (425)  |  Try (296)  |  Trying (144)  |  Utterly (15)

But here it may be objected, that the present Earth looks like a heap of Rubbish and Ruines; And that there are no greater examples of confusion in Nature than Mountains singly or jointly considered; and that there appear not the least footsteps of any Art or Counsel either in the Figure and Shape, or Order and Disposition of Mountains and Rocks. Wherefore it is not likely they came so out of God's hands ... To which I answer, That the present face of the Earth with all its Mountains and Hills, its Promontaries and Rocks, as rude and deformed as they appear, seems to me a very beautiful and pleasant object, and with all the variety of Hills, and Valleys, and Inequalities far more grateful to behold, than a perfectly level Countrey without any rising or protuberancy, to terminate the sight: As anyone that hath but seen the Isle of Ely, or any the like Countrey must need acknowledge.
John Ray
Miscellaneous Discourses Concerning the Dissolution and Changes of the World (1692), 165-6.
Science quotes on:  |  Acknowledge (33)  |  Acknowledgment (13)  |  Answer (389)  |  Appearance (145)  |  Art (680)  |  Beautiful (271)  |  Beauty (313)  |  Confusion (61)  |  Consider (428)  |  Consideration (143)  |  Counsel (11)  |  Country (269)  |  Deformation (3)  |  Disposition (44)  |  Earth (1076)  |  Example (98)  |  Face (214)  |  Figure (162)  |  Footstep (5)  |  God (776)  |  Gratitude (14)  |  Greater (288)  |  Hand (149)  |  Heap (15)  |  Hill (23)  |  Inequality (9)  |  Isle (6)  |  Look (584)  |  More (2558)  |  Mountain (202)  |  Must (1525)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Object (438)  |  Objection (34)  |  Order (638)  |  Present (630)  |  Promontory (3)  |  Protuberance (3)  |  Rise (169)  |  Rising (44)  |  Rock (176)  |  Rubbish (12)  |  Rudeness (5)  |  Ruin (44)  |  Shape (77)  |  Sight (135)  |  Termination (4)  |  Valley (37)  |  Variety (138)

Rosalind Franklin quote: In my view, all that is necessary for faith is the belief that by doing our best we shall come nearer
Your theories are those which you and many other people find easiest and pleasantest to believe, but, so far as I can see, they have no foundation other than they lead to a pleasant view of life … I agree that faith is essential to success in life … but I do not accept your definition of faith, i.e. belief in life after death. In my view, all that is necessary for faith is the belief that by doing our best we shall come nearer to success and that success in our aims (the improvement of the lot of mankind, present and future) is worth attaining … I maintain that faith in this world is perfectly possible without faith in another world.
Letter to her father, Ellis Franklin (undated, summer 1940? while she was an undergraduate at Cambridge). Excerpted in Brenda Maddox, The Dark Lady of DNA (2002), 61.
Science quotes on:  |  Accept (198)  |  Aim (175)  |  Belief (615)  |  Best (467)  |  Death (406)  |  Definition (238)  |  Do (1905)  |  Doing (277)  |  Essential (210)  |  Experience (494)  |  Experiment (736)  |  Fact (1257)  |  Faith (209)  |  Find (1014)  |  Foundation (177)  |  Future (467)  |  Improvement (117)  |  Lead (391)  |  Life (1870)  |  Lot (151)  |  Maintain (105)  |  Mankind (356)  |  Nearer (45)  |  Necessary (370)  |  Other (2233)  |  People (1031)  |  Possible (560)  |  Present (630)  |  Science And Religion (337)  |  See (1094)  |  Success (327)  |  Theory (1015)  |  View (496)  |  View Of Life (7)  |  World (1850)  |  Worth (172)


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
on Blue Sky.
Today in Science History
Sign up for Newsletter
with quiz, quotes and more.