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 P > Category: Positive

Positive Quotes (98 quotes)

... every chemical combination is wholly and solely dependent on two opposing forces, positive and negative electricity, and every chemical compound must be composed of two parts combined by the agency of their electrochemical reaction, since there is no third force. Hence it follows that every compound body, whatever the number of its constituents, can be divided into two parts, one of which is positively and the other negatively electrical.
Essai sur la théorie des proportions chemiques (1819), 98. Quoted by Henry M. Leicester in article on Bessel in Charles Coulston Gillespie (editor), Dictionary of Scientific Biography (1981), Vol. 2, 94.
Science quotes on:  |  Body (557)  |  Chemical (303)  |  Combination (150)  |  Compound (117)  |  Constituent (47)  |  Divided (50)  |  Electrical (57)  |  Electricity (168)  |  Electrochemical (4)  |  Follow (389)  |  Force (497)  |  Ion (21)  |  Must (1525)  |  Negative (66)  |  Number (710)  |  Other (2233)  |  Reaction (106)  |  Two (936)  |  Whatever (234)  |  Wholly (88)

… the three positive characteristics that distinguish mathematical knowledge from other knowledge … may be briefly expressed as follows: first, mathematical knowledge bears more distinctly the imprint of truth on all its results than any other kind of knowledge; secondly, it is always a sure preliminary step to the attainment of other correct knowledge; thirdly, it has no need of other knowledge.
In Mathematical Essays and Recreations (1898), 35.
Science quotes on:  |  Attain (126)  |  Attainment (48)  |  Bear (162)  |  Characteristic (154)  |  Correct (95)  |  Distinct (98)  |  Distinguish (168)  |  Express (192)  |  First (1302)  |  Follow (389)  |  Imprint (6)  |  Kind (564)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Mathematics (1395)  |  More (2558)  |  Nature Of Mathematics (80)  |  Need (320)  |  Other (2233)  |  Preliminary (6)  |  Result (700)  |  Step (234)  |  Truth (1109)

[In the Royal Society, there] has been, a constant Resolution, to reject all the amplifications, digressions, and swellings of style: to return back to the primitive purity, and shortness, when men deliver'd so many things, almost in an equal number of words. They have exacted from all their members, a close, naked, natural way of speaking; positive expressions; clear senses; a native easiness: bringing all things as near the Mathematical plainness, as they can: and preferring the language of Artizans, Countrymen, and Merchants, before that, of Wits, or Scholars.
The History of the Royal Society (1667), 113.
Science quotes on:  |  Amplification (3)  |  Back (395)  |  Clarity (49)  |  Constant (148)  |  Countryman (4)  |  Deliver (30)  |  Digression (3)  |  Easiness (4)  |  Expression (181)  |  Language (308)  |  Mathematics (1395)  |  Member (42)  |  Merchant (7)  |  Native (41)  |  Natural (810)  |  Number (710)  |  Plainness (2)  |  Primitive (79)  |  Purity (15)  |  Reject (67)  |  Rejection (36)  |  Resolution (24)  |  Return (133)  |  Royal (56)  |  Royal Society (17)  |  Scholar (52)  |  Sense (785)  |  Society (350)  |  Speaking (118)  |  Style (24)  |  Swelling (5)  |  Thing (1914)  |  Way (1214)  |  Wit (61)  |  Word (650)

[On Oxygen, Chlorine, Iodine, Fluorine:] The most important division of ponderable substances seems to be that which represents their electrical energies or their respective inherent states. When the poles of a voltaic apparatus are introduced into a mixture of the simple substances, it is found that four of them go to the positive, while the rest evince their state by passing to the negative pole. As this division coincides with one resulting from a consideration of their most important properties, it is that which I shall adopt as the first.
From 5th Lecture in 1816, in Bence Jones, The Life and Letters of Faraday (1870), Vol. 1, 217-218.
Science quotes on:  |  Adopt (22)  |  Apparatus (70)  |  Chlorine (15)  |  Consideration (143)  |  Division (67)  |  Electrical (57)  |  First (1302)  |  Fluorine (5)  |  Importance (299)  |  Inherent (43)  |  Introduce (63)  |  Iodine (7)  |  Mixture (44)  |  Most (1728)  |  Negative (66)  |  Oxygen (77)  |  Passing (76)  |  Polarity (5)  |  Pole (49)  |  Ponderable (4)  |  Property (177)  |  Represent (157)  |  Rest (287)  |  Simple (426)  |  State (505)  |  Substance (253)  |  Voltaic (9)

Between the frontiers of the three super-states Eurasia, Oceania, and Eastasia, and not permanently in possession of any of them, there lies a rough quadrilateral with its corners at Tangier, Brazzaville, Darwin, and Hongkong. These territories contain a bottomless reserve of cheap labour. Whichever power controls equatorial Africa, or the Middle East or Southern India or the Indonesian Archipelago, disposes also of the bodies of hundreds of millions of ill-paid and hardworking coolies, expended by their conquerors like so much coal or oil in the race to turn out more armaments, to capture more territory, to control more labour, to turn out more armaments, to capture more territory, to control…
Thus George Orwell—in his only reference to the less-developed world.
I wish I could disagree with him. Orwell may have erred in not anticipating the withering of direct colonial controls within the “quadrilateral” he speaks about; he may not quite have gauged the vehemence of urges to political self-assertion. Nor, dare I hope, was he right in the sombre picture of conscious and heartless exploitation he has painted. But he did not err in predicting persisting poverty and hunger and overcrowding in 1984 among the less privileged nations.
I would like to live to regret my words but twenty years from now, I am positive, the less-developed world will be as hungry, as relatively undeveloped, and as desperately poor, as today.
'The Less-Developed World: How Can We be Optimists?' (1964). Reprinted in Ideals and Realities (1984), xv-xvi. Referencing a misquote from George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty Four (1949), Ch. 9.
Science quotes on:  |  Africa (38)  |  Archipelago (7)  |  Armament (6)  |  Bottomless (7)  |  Coal (64)  |  Conqueror (8)  |  Control (182)  |  Corner (59)  |  Dare (55)  |  Develop (278)  |  Direct (228)  |  Exploitation (14)  |  Frontier (41)  |  Heartless (3)  |  Hope (321)  |  Hundred (240)  |  Hunger (23)  |  Labor (200)  |  Lie (370)  |  Live (650)  |  More (2558)  |  Nation (208)  |  Oil (67)  |   George Orwell (4)  |  Persisting (2)  |  Picture (148)  |  Political (124)  |  Poor (139)  |  Possession (68)  |  Poverty (40)  |  Power (771)  |  Race (278)  |  Regret (31)  |  Reserve (26)  |  Right (473)  |  Self (268)  |  Speak (240)  |  State (505)  |  Territory (25)  |  Today (321)  |  Turn (454)  |  Undeveloped (6)  |  Will (2350)  |  Wish (216)  |  Word (650)  |  World (1850)  |  Year (963)

A drop of old tuberculin, which is an extract of tubercle bacilli, is put on the skin and then a small superficial scarification is made by turning, with some pressure, a vaccination lancet on the surface of the skin. The next day only those individuals show an inflammatory reaction at the point of vaccination who have already been infected with tuberculosis, whereas the healthy individuals show no reaction at all. Every time we find a positive reaction, we can say with certainty that the child is tuberculous.
'The Relation of Tuberculosis to Infant Mortality', read at the third mid-year meeting of the American Academy of Medicine, New Haven, Conn, (4 Nov 1909). In Bulletin of the American Academy of Medicine (1910), 11, 75.
Science quotes on:  |  Already (226)  |  Bacillus (9)  |  Certainty (180)  |  Child (333)  |  Drop (77)  |  Extract (40)  |  Find (1014)  |  Healthy (70)  |  Individual (420)  |  Infection (27)  |  Inflammation (7)  |  Next (238)  |  Old (499)  |  Point (584)  |  Pressure (69)  |  Reaction (106)  |  Say (989)  |  Show (353)  |  Skin (48)  |  Small (489)  |  Superficial (12)  |  Surface (223)  |  Test (221)  |  Time (1911)  |  Tuberculosis (9)  |  Vaccination (7)

A hot topic of late, expressed most notably in Bernie Siegel’s best-selling books, has emphasized the role of positive attitude in combating such serious diseases as cancer. From the depths of my skeptical and rationalist soul, I ask the Lord to protect me from California touchie-feeliedom.
…...
Science quotes on:  |  Ask (420)  |  Attitude (84)  |  Best (467)  |  Book (413)  |  California (9)  |  Cancer (61)  |  Combat (16)  |  Depth (97)  |  Disease (340)  |  Emphasize (25)  |  Express (192)  |  Hot (63)  |  Late (119)  |  Lord (97)  |  Most (1728)  |  Protect (65)  |  Rationalist (5)  |  Role (86)  |  Selling (6)  |  Serious (98)  |  Skeptical (21)  |  Soul (235)  |  Topic (23)

Any physician who advertises a positive cure for any disease, who issues nostrum testimonials, who sells his services to a secret remedy, or who diagnoses and treats by mail patients he has never seen, is a quack.
'The Sure-Cure School,' Collier’s Weekly (14 Jul 1906). Reprinted in The Great American Fraud (1907), 84.
Science quotes on:  |  Advertising (9)  |  Cure (124)  |  Disease (340)  |  Medicine (392)  |  Never (1089)  |  Patient (209)  |  Physician (284)  |  Quack (18)  |  Remedy (63)  |  Secret (216)  |  Service (110)

Applied research generates improvements, not breakthroughs. Great scientific advances spring from pure research. Even scientists renowned for their “useful” applied discoveries often achieved success only when they abandoned their ostensible applied-science goal and allowed their minds to soar—as when Alexander Fleming, “just playing about,” refrained from throwing away green molds that had ruined his experiment, studied them, and discovered penicillin. Or when C. A. Clarke, a physician affiliated with the University of Liverpool, became intrigued in the 1950s by genetically created color patterns that emerged when he cross-bred butterflies as a hobby. His fascination led him—“by the pleasant route of pursuing idle curiosity”—to the successful idea for preventing the sometimes fatal anemia that threatened babies born of a positive-Rhesus-factor father and a negative-Rhesus-factor mother.
In Jacques Cousteau and Susan Schiefelbein, The Human, the Orchid, and the Octopus: Exploring and Conserving Our Natural World (2007), 214-215.
Science quotes on:  |  Abandon (73)  |  Advance (298)  |  Anemia (4)  |  Applied (176)  |  Applied Research (3)  |  Applied Science (36)  |  Breakthrough (18)  |  Butterfly (26)  |  Color (155)  |  Curiosity (138)  |  Discover (571)  |  Discovery (837)  |  Experiment (736)  |  Fascination (35)  |  Father (113)  |  Sir Alexander Fleming (19)  |  Genetics (105)  |  Goal (155)  |  Great (1610)  |  Green (65)  |  Idea (881)  |  Idle (34)  |  Improvement (117)  |  Intrigued (4)  |  Mind (1377)  |  Mold (37)  |  Mother (116)  |  Negative (66)  |  Pattern (116)  |  Penicillin (18)  |  Physician (284)  |  Playing (42)  |  Pure (299)  |  Pursuing (27)  |  Refrain (9)  |  Research (753)  |  Ruin (44)  |  Scientific (955)  |  Scientist (881)  |  Serendipity (17)  |  Soar (23)  |  Spring (140)  |  Success (327)  |  Successful (134)  |  Threaten (33)  |  Throwing (17)  |  University (130)  |  Useful (260)

As I strayed into the study of an eminent physicist, I observed hanging against the wall, framed like a choice engraving, several dingy, ribbon-like strips of, I knew not what... My curiosity was at once aroused. What were they? ... They might be shreds of mummy-wraps or bits of friable bark-cloth from the Pacific, ... [or] remnants from a grandmother’s wedding dress... They were none of these... He explained that they were carefully-prepared photographs of portions of the Solar Spectrum. I stood and mused, absorbed in the varying yet significant intensities of light and shade, bordered by mystic letters and symbolic numbers. As I mused, the pale legend began to glow with life. Every line became luminous with meaning. Every shadow was suffused with light shining from behind, suggesting some mighty achievement of knowledge; of knowledge growing more daring in proportion to the remoteness of the object known; of knowledge becoming more positive in its answers, as the questions which were asked seemed unanswerable. No Runic legend, no Babylonish arrowhead, no Egyptian hieroglyph, no Moabite stone, could present a history like this, or suggest thoughts of such weighty import or so stimulate and exalt the imagination.
The Sciences of Nature Versus the Science of Man: A Plea for the Science of Man (1871), 7-9.
Science quotes on:  |  Absorb (54)  |  Achievement (187)  |  Against (332)  |  Answer (389)  |  Arrowhead (4)  |  Ask (420)  |  Bark (19)  |  Becoming (96)  |  Behind (139)  |  Carefully (65)  |  Choice (114)  |  Curiosity (138)  |  Daring (17)  |  Engraving (4)  |  Exalt (29)  |  Explain (334)  |  Growing (99)  |  Hieroglyph (3)  |  History (716)  |  Imagination (349)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Known (453)  |  Legend (18)  |  Letter (117)  |  Life (1870)  |  Light (635)  |  Luminous (19)  |  Meaning (244)  |  More (2558)  |  Mummy (7)  |  Mystic (23)  |  Number (710)  |  Object (438)  |  Observed (149)  |  Physicist (270)  |  Portion (86)  |  Present (630)  |  Proportion (140)  |  Question (649)  |  Remnant (7)  |  Remoteness (9)  |  Shade (35)  |  Shadow (73)  |  Shining (35)  |  Significant (78)  |  Solar Spectrum (4)  |  Spectrum (35)  |  Stone (168)  |  Study (701)  |  Thought (995)  |  Wall (71)  |  Wedding (7)

As mineralogy constitutes a part of chemistry, it is clear that this arrangement [of minerals] must derive its principles from chemistry. The most perfect mode of arrangement would certainly be to allow bodies to follow each other according to the order of their electro-chemical properties, from the most electro-negative, oxygen, to the most electro-positive, potassium; and to place every compound body according to its most electro-positive ingredient.
An Attempt to Establish a Pure Scientific System of Mineralogy (1814), trans. J. Black, 48.
Science quotes on:  |  According (236)  |  Arrangement (93)  |  Body (557)  |  Certainly (185)  |  Chemical (303)  |  Chemistry (376)  |  Classification (102)  |  Compound (117)  |  Constitute (99)  |  Derive (70)  |  Electrochemistry (5)  |  Follow (389)  |  Ingredient (16)  |  Mineral (66)  |  Mineralogy (24)  |  Most (1728)  |  Must (1525)  |  Negative (66)  |  Order (638)  |  Other (2233)  |  Oxygen (77)  |  Perfect (223)  |  Potassium (12)  |  Principle (530)

Atoms have a nucleus, made of protons and neutrons bound together. Around this nucleus shells of electrons spin, and each shell is either full or trying to get full, to balance with the number of protons—to balance the number of positive and negative charges. An atom is like a human heart, you see.
The Lunatics (1988). In Gary Westfahl, Science Fiction Quotations: From the Inner Mind to the Outer Limits (2006), 323.
Science quotes on:  |  Atom (381)  |  Balance (82)  |  Bound (120)  |  Charge (63)  |  Electron (96)  |  Heart (243)  |  Human (1512)  |  Negative (66)  |  Neutron (23)  |  Nucleus (54)  |  Number (710)  |  Proton (23)  |  See (1094)  |  Shell (69)  |  Spin (26)  |  Together (392)  |  Trying (144)

But I shall certainly admit a system as empirical or scientific only if it is capable of being tested by experience. These considerations suggest that not the verifiability but the falsifiability of a system is to be taken as a criterion of demarcation. In other words: I shall not require of a scientific system that it shall be capable of being singled out, once and for all, in a positive sense; but I shall require that its logical form shall be such that it can be singled out, by means of empirical tests, in a negative sense: it must be possible for an empirical scientific system to be refuted by experience. (1959)
The Logic of Scientific Discovery: Logik Der Forschung (1959, 2002), 18.
Science quotes on:  |  Being (1276)  |  Capable (174)  |  Certainly (185)  |  Consideration (143)  |  Criterion (28)  |  Empirical (58)  |  Empirical Science (9)  |  Experience (494)  |  Form (976)  |  Mean (810)  |  Means (587)  |  Must (1525)  |  Negative (66)  |  Other (2233)  |  Possible (560)  |  Require (229)  |  Scientific (955)  |  Sense (785)  |  System (545)  |  Test (221)  |  Word (650)

But Medicine is a demonstrative Science, and all its processes should be proved by established principles, and be based on positive inductions. That the proceedings of Medicine are not of this character, in to be attributed to the manner of its cultivation, and not to the nature of the Science itself.
Samuel Jackson, Principles of Medicine (1832). Quoted in Alva Curtis, A Fair Examination and Criticism of All the Medical Systems in Vogue (1855), 1.
Science quotes on:  |  Character (259)  |  Cultivation (36)  |  Demonstrative (14)  |  Induction (81)  |  Medicine (392)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Principle (530)  |  Proceeding (38)

Chemistry is not a primitive science like geometry and astronomy; it is constructed from the debris of a previous scientific formation; a formation half chimerical and half positive, itself found on the treasure slowly amassed by the practical discoveries of metallurgy, medicine, industry and domestic economy. It has to do with alchemy, which pretended to enrich its adepts by teaching them to manufacture gold and silver, to shield them from diseases by the preparation of the panacea, and, finally, to obtain for them perfect felicity by identifying them with the soul of the world and the universal spirit.
From Les Origines de l’Alchimie (1885), 1-2. Translation as quoted in Harry Shipley Fry, 'An Outline of the History of Chemistry Symbolically Represented in a Rookwood Fountain', The Journal of Industrial and Engineering Chemistry (1 Sep 1922), 14, No. 9, 868. From the original French, “La Chimie n’est pas une science primitive, comme la géométrie ou l’astronomie; elle s’est constituée sur les débris d’une formation scientifique antérieure; formation demi-chimérique et demi-positive, fondée elle-même sur le trésor lentement amassé des découvertes pratiques de la métallurgie, de la médecine, de l’industrie et de l’économie domestique. Il s’agit de l’alchimie, qui prétendait à la fois enrichir ses adeptes en leur apprenant à fabriquer l’or et l’argent, les mettre à l’abri des maladies par la préparation de la panacée, enfin leur procurer le bonheur parfait en les identifiant avec l’âme du monde et l’esprit universel.”
Science quotes on:  |  Adept (3)  |  Alchemy (31)  |  Amass (6)  |  Amassed (2)  |  Astronomy (251)  |  Chemistry (376)  |  Chimerical (2)  |  Construct (129)  |  Constructed (3)  |  Debris (7)  |  Discovery (837)  |  Disease (340)  |  Do (1905)  |  Domestic (27)  |  Economy (59)  |  Enrich (27)  |  Felicity (4)  |  Finally (26)  |  Formation (100)  |  Found (11)  |  Geometry (271)  |  Gold (101)  |  Half (63)  |  Identifying (2)  |  Industry (159)  |  Manufacture (30)  |  Medicine (392)  |  Metallurgy (3)  |  Obtain (164)  |  Panacea (2)  |  Perfect (223)  |  Practical (225)  |  Preparation (60)  |  Previous (17)  |  Primitive (79)  |  Scientific (955)  |  Shield (8)  |  Silver (49)  |  Slowly (19)  |  Soul (235)  |  Spirit (278)  |  Teaching (190)  |  Treasure (59)  |  Universal (198)  |  World (1850)

Concentrate only on the achievements, and ignore the mistakes. When judging a mathematician you should only integrate f+ (the positive part of his function) and ignore the negative part. Perhaps this should apply more generally to all evaluations of your fellow men.
On his philosophy of writing letters of recommendation. As given in essay, Ronald Coifman and Robert S. Strichartz, 'The School of Antoni Zygmund', collected in Peter Duren (ed.), A Century of Mathematics in America (1989), 348. The authors acknowledge students of Zygmund provided personal recollections to them for the essay in general. Webmaster speculates the quote is from a student recollection, and not necessarily verbatim.
Science quotes on:  |  Achievement (187)  |  Apply (170)  |  Concentrate (28)  |  Evaluation (10)  |  Fellow (88)  |  Function (235)  |  General (521)  |  Ignore (52)  |  Integrate (8)  |  Judge (114)  |  Mathematician (407)  |  Mistake (180)  |  More (2558)  |  Negative (66)

Confined to its true domain, mathematical reasoning is admirably adapted to perform the universal office of sound logic: to induce in order to deduce, in order to construct. … It contents itself to furnish, in the most favorable domain, a model of clearness, of precision, and consistency, the close contemplation of which is alone able to prepare the mind to render other conceptions also as perfect as their nature permits. Its general reaction, more negative than positive, must consist, above all, in inspiring us everywhere with an invincible aversion for vagueness, inconsistency, and obscurity, which may always be really avoided in any reasoning whatsoever, if we make sufficient effort.
In Synthèse Subjective (1856), 98. As translated in Robert Édouard Moritz, Memorabilia Mathematica; Or, The Philomath’s Quotation-Book (1914), 202-203. From the original French, “Bornée à son vrai domaine, la raison mathématique y peut admirablement remplir l’office universel de la saine logique: induire pour déduire, afin de construire. … Elle se contente de former, dans le domaine le plus favorable, un type de clarté, de précision, et de consistance, dont la contemplation familière peut seule disposer l’esprit à rendre les autres conceptions aussi parfaites que le comporte leur nature. Sa réaction générale, plus négative que positive, doit surtout consister à nous inspirer partout une invincible répugnance pour le vague, l’incohérence, et l’obscurité, que nous pouvons réellement éviter envers des pensées quelconques, si nous y faisons assez d’efforts.”
Science quotes on:  |  Adapt (70)  |  Alone (324)  |  Aversion (9)  |  Avoid (123)  |  Clearness (11)  |  Close (77)  |  Conception (160)  |  Confine (26)  |  Consist (223)  |  Consistency (31)  |  Consistent (50)  |  Construct (129)  |  Contemplation (75)  |  Content (75)  |  Deduce (27)  |  Domain (72)  |  Effort (243)  |  Everywhere (98)  |  Favorable (24)  |  Furnish (97)  |  General (521)  |  Inconsistent (9)  |  Induce (24)  |  Inspire (58)  |  Invincible (6)  |  Logic (311)  |  Mathematics (1395)  |  Mathematics And Logic (27)  |  Mind (1377)  |  Model (106)  |  More (2558)  |  Most (1728)  |  Must (1525)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Negative (66)  |  Obscurity (28)  |  Office (71)  |  Order (638)  |  Other (2233)  |  Perfect (223)  |  Perform (123)  |  Permit (61)  |  Precision (72)  |  Prepare (44)  |  Reaction (106)  |  Reasoning (212)  |  Render (96)  |  Sound (187)  |  Sufficient (133)  |  True (239)  |  Universal (198)  |  Vagueness (15)  |  Whatsoever (41)

Crooked things may be as stiff and unflexible as streight: and Men may be as positive and peremptory in Error as in Truth.
An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690). Edited by Peter Nidditch (1975), Book 4, Chapter 19, Section 11, 703.
Science quotes on:  |  Error (339)  |  Thing (1914)  |  Truth (1109)

Debate is an art form. It is about the winning of arguments. It is not about the discovery of truth. There are certain rules and procedures to debate that really have nothing to do with establishing fact–which creationists have mastered. Some of those rules are: never say anything positive about your own position because it can be attacked, but chip away at what appear to be the weaknesses in your opponent’s position. They are good at that. I don’t think I could beat the creationists at debate. I can tie them. But in courtrooms they are terrible, because in courtrooms you cannot give speeches. In a courtroom you have to answer direct questions about the positive status of your belief. We destroyed them in Arkansas. On the second day of the two-week trial we had our victory party!
…...
Science quotes on:  |  Answer (389)  |  Appear (122)  |  Argument (145)  |  Arkansas (2)  |  Art (680)  |  Attack (86)  |  Beat (42)  |  Belief (615)  |  Certain (557)  |  Chip (4)  |  Creationist (16)  |  Debate (40)  |  Destroy (189)  |  Direct (228)  |  Discovery (837)  |  Do (1905)  |  Establish (63)  |  Fact (1257)  |  Form (976)  |  Give (208)  |  Good (906)  |  Master (182)  |  Never (1089)  |  Nothing (1000)  |  Opponent (23)  |  Party (19)  |  Position (83)  |  Procedure (48)  |  Question (649)  |  Really (77)  |  Rule (307)  |  Say (989)  |  Second (66)  |  Speech (66)  |  Status (35)  |  Terrible (41)  |  Think (1122)  |  Tie (42)  |  Trial (59)  |  Truth (1109)  |  Two (936)  |  Victory (40)  |  Weakness (50)  |  Week (73)  |  Win (53)  |  Winning (19)

Everything in nature is bipolar, or has a positive and a negative pole.
From essay, 'Character', collected in Ralph Waldo Emerson and J.E. Cabot (ed.), Emerson's Complete Works: Essays, Second Series (1884), Vol. 3, 96.
Science quotes on:  |  Everything (489)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Negative (66)  |  Pole (49)

God help the teacher, if a man of sensibility and genius, when a booby father presents him with his booby son, and insists on lighting up the rays of science in a fellow's head whose skull is impervious and inaccessible by any other way than a positive fracture with a cudgel.
In a letter to Mr. Cunningham, 11 Jun 1791. Quoted in James Wood Dictionary of Quotations from Ancient and Modern, English and Foreign Sources (1893), 126:18.
Science quotes on:  |  Father (113)  |  Fellow (88)  |  Fracture (7)  |  Genius (301)  |  God (776)  |  Impervious (5)  |  Inaccessible (18)  |  Man (2252)  |  Other (2233)  |  Present (630)  |  Ray (115)  |  Teacher (154)  |  Teaching (190)  |  Way (1214)

He [Samuel Johnson] bid me always remember this, that after a system is well settled upon positive evidence, a few objections ought not to shake it. “The human mind is so limited that it cannot take in all parts of a subject; so that there may be objections raised against anything. There are objections against a plenum, and objections against a vacuum. Yet one of them must certainly be true.”
Note: Whereas vacuum means devoid of matter, plenum regards a space with matter throughout.
Science quotes on:  |  Against (332)  |  Certainly (185)  |  Evidence (267)  |  Human (1512)  |  Human Mind (133)  |  Samuel Johnson (51)  |  Limit (294)  |  Limited (102)  |  Mind (1377)  |  Must (1525)  |  Objection (34)  |  Remember (189)  |  Settled (34)  |  Shake (43)  |  Subject (543)  |  System (545)  |  Theory (1015)  |  Vacuum (41)

Hurrah for positive science! long live exact demonstration!
In Leaves of Grass (1855), 28.
Science quotes on:  |  Demonstration (120)  |  Exact (75)  |  Live (650)  |  Long (778)  |  Scientific Method (200)

I cannot separate land and sea: to me they interfinger like a pattern in a moss agate, positive and negative shapes irrevocably interlocked. My knowledge of this peninsula depends on that understanding: of underwater canyons that are continuations of the land, of the shell fossils far inland that measure continuations of the sea in eons past.
…...
Science quotes on:  |  Agate (2)  |  Canyon (9)  |  Continuation (20)  |  Depend (238)  |  Eon (12)  |  Far (158)  |  Fossil (143)  |  Inland (3)  |  Interlock (4)  |  Irrevocably (2)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Land (131)  |  Measure (241)  |  Moss (14)  |  Negative (66)  |  Past (355)  |  Pattern (116)  |  Peninsula (2)  |  Sea (326)  |  Separate (151)  |  Shape (77)  |  Shell (69)  |  Understand (648)  |  Understanding (527)  |  Underwater (5)

I do not maintain that the chief value of the study of arithmetic consists in the lessons of morality that arise from this study. I claim only that, to be impressed from day to day, that there is something that is right as an answer to the questions with which one is able to grapple, and that there is a wrong answer—that there are ways in which the right answer can be established as right, that these ways automatically reject error and slovenliness, and that the learner is able himself to manipulate these ways and to arrive at the establishment of the true as opposed to the untrue, this relentless hewing to the line and stopping at the line, must color distinctly the thought life of the pupil with more than a tinge of morality. … To be neighborly with truth, to feel one’s self somewhat facile in ways of recognizing and establishing what is right, what is correct, to find the wrong persistently and unfailingly rejected as of no value, to feel that one can apply these ways for himself, that one can think and work independently, have a real, a positive, and a purifying effect upon moral character. They are the quiet, steady undertones of the work that always appeal to the learner for the sanction of his best judgment, and these are the really significant matters in school work. It is not the noise and bluster, not even the dramatics or the polemics from the teacher’s desk, that abide longest and leave the deepest and stablest imprint upon character. It is these still, small voices that speak unmistakably for the right and against the wrong and the erroneous that really form human character. When the school subjects are arranged on the basis of the degree to which they contribute to the moral upbuilding of human character good arithmetic will be well up the list.
In Arithmetic in Public Education (1909), 18. As quoted and cited in Robert Édouard Moritz, Memorabilia Mathematica; Or, The Philomath’s Quotation-book (1914), 69.
Science quotes on:  |  Against (332)  |  Answer (389)  |  Apply (170)  |  Arise (162)  |  Arithmetic (144)  |  Arrange (33)  |  Arrive (40)  |  Automatic (16)  |  Basis (180)  |  Best (467)  |  Bluster (2)  |  Build (211)  |  Character (259)  |  Chief (99)  |  Claim (154)  |  Color (155)  |  Consist (223)  |  Contribute (30)  |  Degree (277)  |  Desk (13)  |  Do (1905)  |  Dramatic (19)  |  Effect (414)  |  Erroneous (31)  |  Error (339)  |  Establish (63)  |  Establishment (47)  |  Facile (4)  |  Feel (371)  |  Find (1014)  |  Form (976)  |  Good (906)  |  Grapple (11)  |  Himself (461)  |  Human (1512)  |  Impress (66)  |  Impressed (39)  |  Imprint (6)  |  Independently (24)  |  Judgment (140)  |  Learner (10)  |  Lesson (58)  |  Life (1870)  |  List (10)  |  Maintain (105)  |  Manipulate (11)  |  Matter (821)  |  Moral (203)  |  Morality (55)  |  More (2558)  |  Must (1525)  |  Noise (40)  |  Oppose (27)  |  Polemic (3)  |  Pupil (62)  |  Question (649)  |  Quiet (37)  |  Reject (67)  |  Rejected (26)  |  Relentless (9)  |  Right (473)  |  Sanction (8)  |  School (227)  |  Self (268)  |  Significant (78)  |  Slovenliness (2)  |  Small (489)  |  Something (718)  |  Speak (240)  |  Stable (32)  |  Steady (45)  |  Still (614)  |  Study (701)  |  Subject (543)  |  Teacher (154)  |  Think (1122)  |  Thought (995)  |  True (239)  |  Truth (1109)  |  Undertone (2)  |  Unmistakable (6)  |  Untrue (12)  |  Value (393)  |  Value Of Mathematics (60)  |  Voice (54)  |  Way (1214)  |  Will (2350)  |  Work (1402)  |  Wrong (246)

I have now reached the point where I may indicate briefly what to me constitutes the essence of the crisis of our time. It concerns the relationship of the individual to society. The individual has become more conscious than ever of his dependence upon society. But he does not experience this dependence as a positive asset, as an organic tie, as a protective force, but rather as a threat to his natural rights, or even to his economic existence. Moreover, his position in society is such that the egotistical drives of his make-up are constantly being accentuated, while his social drives, which are by nature weaker, progressively deteriorate. All human beings, whatever their position in society, are suffering from this process of deterioration. Unknowingly prisoners of their own egotism, they feel insecure, lonely, and deprived of the naive, simple, and unsophisticated enjoyment of life. Man can find meaning in life, short and perilous as it is, only through devoting himself to society.
…...
Science quotes on:  |  Accentuate (2)  |  Asset (6)  |  Become (821)  |  Being (1276)  |  Briefly (5)  |  Concern (239)  |  Conscious (46)  |  Constantly (27)  |  Constitute (99)  |  Crisis (25)  |  Dependence (46)  |  Deprive (14)  |  Deteriorate (3)  |  Deterioration (10)  |  Devote (45)  |  Drive (61)  |  Economic (84)  |  Egotistical (2)  |  Enjoyment (37)  |  Essence (85)  |  Existence (481)  |  Experience (494)  |  Feel (371)  |  Find (1014)  |  Force (497)  |  Himself (461)  |  Human (1512)  |  Human Being (185)  |  Indicate (62)  |  Individual (420)  |  Insecure (5)  |  Life (1870)  |  Lonely (24)  |  Man (2252)  |  Mean (810)  |  Meaning (244)  |  More (2558)  |  Moreover (3)  |  Naive (13)  |  Natural (810)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Organic (161)  |  Perilous (4)  |  Point (584)  |  Position (83)  |  Prisoner (8)  |  Process (439)  |  Progressively (4)  |  Protective (5)  |  Reach (286)  |  Relationship (114)  |  Right (473)  |  Short (200)  |  Simple (426)  |  Social (261)  |  Society (350)  |  Suffer (43)  |  Suffering (68)  |  Threat (36)  |  Through (846)  |  Tie (42)  |  Time (1911)  |  Unsophisticated (2)  |  Weak (73)  |  Whatever (234)

I have often pondered over the roles of knowledge or experience, on the one hand, and imagination or intuition, on the other, in the process of discovery. I believe that there is a certain fundamental conflict between the two, and knowledge, by advocating caution, tends to inhibit the flight of imagination. Therefore, a certain naivete, unburdened by conventional wisdom, can sometimes be a positive asset.
In R. Langlands, 'Harish-Chandra', Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society (1985), Vol. 31, 206.
Science quotes on:  |  Advocate (20)  |  Asset (6)  |  Belief (615)  |  Caution (24)  |  Certain (557)  |  Conflict (77)  |  Conventional (31)  |  Conventional Wisdom (3)  |  Discovery (837)  |  Experience (494)  |  Flight (101)  |  Fundamental (264)  |  Hand (149)  |  Imagination (349)  |  Inhibit (4)  |  Intuition (82)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Naivete (2)  |  Other (2233)  |  Ponder (15)  |  Process (439)  |  Role (86)  |  Tend (124)  |  Two (936)  |  Wisdom (235)

I have paid special attention to those Properties of the Positive Rays which seem to throw light on the problems of the structure of molecules and atoms and the question of chemical combination … I am convinced that as yet we are only at the beginning of the harvest of results which will elucidate the process of chemical combination, and thus bridge over the most serious gap which now exists between Physics and Chemistry.
Rays of Positive Electricity and their Application to Chemical Analyses (1921), v.
Science quotes on:  |  Atom (381)  |  Attention (196)  |  Beginning (312)  |  Bridge (49)  |  Chemical (303)  |  Chemistry (376)  |  Combination (150)  |  Exist (458)  |  Gap (36)  |  Harvest (28)  |  Light (635)  |  Molecule (185)  |  Most (1728)  |  Physic (515)  |  Physics (564)  |  Problem (731)  |  Process (439)  |  Question (649)  |  Ray (115)  |  Result (700)  |  Serious (98)  |  Special (188)  |  Structure (365)  |  Will (2350)

I love to read the dedications of old books written in monarchies—for they invariably honor some (usually insignificant) knight or duke with fulsome words of sycophantic insincerity, praising him as the light of the universe (in hopes, no doubt, for a few ducats to support future work); this old practice makes me feel like such an honest and upright man, by comparison, when I put a positive spin, perhaps ever so slightly exaggerated, on a grant proposal.
From essay 'The Razumovsky Duet', collected in The Dinosaur in a Haystack: Reflections in Natural History (1995, 1997), 263.
Science quotes on:  |  Book (413)  |  Comparison (108)  |  Dedication (12)  |  Doubt (314)  |  Duke (2)  |  Exaggerate (7)  |  Feel (371)  |  Future (467)  |  Grant (76)  |  Honest (53)  |  Honor (57)  |  Hope (321)  |  Insignificant (33)  |  Insincerity (2)  |  Invariably (35)  |  Knight (6)  |  Light (635)  |  Love (328)  |  Man (2252)  |  Old (499)  |  Practice (212)  |  Praise (28)  |  Proposal (21)  |  Read (308)  |  Slightly (3)  |  Spin (26)  |  Support (151)  |  Universe (900)  |  Upright (2)  |  Usually (176)  |  Word (650)  |  Work (1402)  |  Write (250)

I read in the proof sheets of Hardy on Ramanujan: “As someone said, each of the positive integers was one of his personal friends.” My reaction was, “I wonder who said that; I wish I had.” In the next proof-sheets I read (what now stands), “It was Littlewood who said…”. What had happened was that Hardy had received the remark in silence and with poker face, and I wrote it off as a dud.
In Béla Bollobás (ed.), Littlewood’s Miscellany, (1986), 61.
Science quotes on:  |  Face (214)  |  Friend (180)  |  Happen (282)  |  Happened (88)  |  G. H. Hardy (71)  |  Integer (12)  |  Next (238)  |  Personal (75)  |  Proof (304)  |  Srinivasa Ramanujan (17)  |  Reaction (106)  |  Read (308)  |  Remark (28)  |  Say (989)  |  Sheet (8)  |  Silence (62)  |  Stand (284)  |  Wish (216)  |  Wonder (251)

I remember one occasion when I tried to add a little seasoning to a review, but I wasn’t allowed to. The paper was by Dorothy Maharam, and it was a perfectly sound contribution to abstract measure theory. The domains of the underlying measures were not sets but elements of more general Boolean algebras, and their range consisted not of positive numbers but of certain abstract equivalence classes. My proposed first sentence was: “The author discusses valueless measures in pointless spaces.”
In I Want to be a Mathematician: An Automathography (1985), 120.
Science quotes on:  |  Abstract (141)  |  Algebra (117)  |  Allow (51)  |  Author (175)  |  Boolean Algebra (2)  |  Certain (557)  |  Class (168)  |  Consist (223)  |  Contribution (93)  |  Discuss (26)  |  Domain (72)  |  Element (322)  |  Equivalence (7)  |  First (1302)  |  General (521)  |  Little (717)  |  Measure (241)  |  More (2558)  |  Number (710)  |  Occasion (87)  |  Paper (192)  |  Pointless (7)  |  Propose (24)  |  Range (104)  |  Remember (189)  |  Review (27)  |  Sentence (35)  |  Set (400)  |  Sound (187)  |  Space (523)  |  Theory (1015)  |  Underlying (33)  |  Valueless (3)

I require a term to express those bodies which can pass to the electrodes, or, as they are usually called, the poles. Substances are frequently spoken of as being electro-negative, or electro-positive, according as they go under the supposed influence of a direct attraction to the positive or negative pole. But these terms are much too significant for the use to which I should have to put them; for though the meanings are perhaps right, they are only hypothetical, and may be wrong; and then, through a very imperceptible, but still very dangerous, because continual, influence, they do great injury to science, by contracting and limiting the habitual view of those engaged in pursuing it. I propose to distinguish these bodies by calling those anions which go to the anode of the decomposing body; and those passing to the cathode, cations; and when I have occasion to speak of these together, I shall call them ions.
Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, 1834, 124, 79.
Science quotes on:  |  According (236)  |  Anion (3)  |  Anode (4)  |  Attraction (61)  |  Being (1276)  |  Body (557)  |  Call (781)  |  Cation (3)  |  Continual (44)  |  Dangerous (108)  |  Direct (228)  |  Distinguish (168)  |  Do (1905)  |  Electrolysis (8)  |  Express (192)  |  Great (1610)  |  Influence (231)  |  Injury (36)  |  Ion (21)  |  Meaning (244)  |  Negative (66)  |  Nomenclature (159)  |  Occasion (87)  |  Pass (241)  |  Passing (76)  |  Pole (49)  |  Pursuing (27)  |  Require (229)  |  Right (473)  |  Significant (78)  |  Speak (240)  |  Still (614)  |  Substance (253)  |  Term (357)  |  Terms (184)  |  Through (846)  |  Together (392)  |  Use (771)  |  Usually (176)  |  View (496)  |  Wrong (246)

I think that harping on [earthquake] prediction is something between a will-o’-the-wisp and a red herring. Attention is thereby diverted away from positive measures to eliminate earthquake risk.
From interview in the Earthquake Information Bulletin (Jul-Aug 1971), 3, No. 4, as abridged in article on USGS website.
Science quotes on:  |  Attention (196)  |  Divert (3)  |  Earthquake (37)  |  Eliminate (25)  |  Herring (4)  |  Measure (241)  |  Prediction (89)  |  Red (38)  |  Risk (68)  |  Something (718)  |  Think (1122)  |  Will (2350)

I thought it was a miracle that I got this faculty appointment and was so happy to be there for a few years that I just wanted to follow what was exciting for me. I didn’t have expectations of getting tenure. So this was an aspect of gender inequality that was extremely positive. It allowed me to be fearless.
As quoted in Anna Azvolinsky, 'Fearless About Folding', The Scientist (Jan 2016).
Science quotes on:  |  Allow (51)  |  Appointment (12)  |  Aspect (129)  |  Exciting (50)  |  Expectation (67)  |  Extreme (78)  |  Faculty (76)  |  Fearless (7)  |  Follow (389)  |  Gender (3)  |  Happy (108)  |  Inequality (9)  |  Miracle (85)  |  Tenure (8)  |  Thought (995)  |  Want (504)  |  Year (963)

I told him that for a modern scientist, practicing experimental research, the least that could be said, is that we do not know. But I felt that such a negative answer was only part of the truth. I told him that in this universe in which we live, unbounded in space, infinite in stored energy and, who knows, unlimited in time, the adequate and positive answer, according to my belief, is that this universe may, also, possess infinite potentialities.
Nobel Lecture, The Coming Age of the Cell, 12 Dec 1974
Science quotes on:  |  According (236)  |  Adequate (50)  |  Answer (389)  |  Belief (615)  |  Do (1905)  |  Energy (373)  |  Experimental (193)  |  Infinite (243)  |  Know (1538)  |  Live (650)  |  Modern (402)  |  Negative (66)  |  Possess (157)  |  Research (753)  |  Scientist (881)  |  Space (523)  |  Time (1911)  |  Truth (1109)  |  Universe (900)  |  Unlimited (24)

I used to wonder how it comes about that the electron is negative. Negative-positive—these are perfectly symmetric in physics. There is no reason whatever to prefer one to the other. Then why is the electron negative? I thought about this for a long time and at last all I could think was 'It won the fight!'
Quoted in George Wald, 'The Origin of Optical Activity', Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences (1957), 60, 352-68.
Science quotes on:  |  Charge (63)  |  Electron (96)  |  Last (425)  |  Long (778)  |  Negative (66)  |  Other (2233)  |  Physic (515)  |  Physics (564)  |  Reason (766)  |  Think (1122)  |  Thought (995)  |  Time (1911)  |  Whatever (234)  |  Why (491)  |  Wonder (251)

I was suffering from a sharp attack of intermittent fever, and every day during the cold and succeeding hot fits had to lie down for several hours, during which time I had nothing to do but to think over any subjects then particularly interesting me. One day something brought to my recollection Malthus's 'Principles of Population', which I had read about twelve years before. I thought of his clear exposition of 'the positive checks to increase'—disease, accidents, war, and famine—which keep down the population of savage races to so much lower an average than that of more civilized peoples. It then occurred to me that these causes or their equivalents are continually acting in the case of animals also; and as animals usually breed much more rapidly than does mankind, the destruction every year from these causes must be enormous in order to keep down the numbers of each species, since they evidently do not increase regularly from year to year, as otherwise the world would long ago have been densely crowded with those that breed most quickly. Vaguely thinking over the enormous and constant destruction which this implied, it occurred to me to ask the question, Why do some die and some live? The answer was clearly, that on the whole the best fitted live. From the effects of disease the most healthy escaped; from enemies, the strongest, swiftest, or the most cunning; from famine, the best hunters or those with the best digestion; and so on. Then it suddenly flashed upon me that this self-acting process would necessarily improve the race, because in every generation the inferior would inevitably be killed off and the superior would remain—that is, the fittest would survive.
[The phrase 'survival of the fittest,' suggested by the writings of Thomas Robert Malthus, was expressed in those words by Herbert Spencer in 1865. Wallace saw the term in correspondence from Charles Darwin the following year, 1866. However, Wallace did not publish anything on his use of the expression until very much later, and his recollection is likely flawed.]
My Life: A Record of Events and Opinions (1905), Vol. 1, 361-362, or in reprint (2004), 190.
Science quotes on:  |  Accident (92)  |  Animal (651)  |  Answer (389)  |  Ask (420)  |  Attack (86)  |  Average (89)  |  Best (467)  |  Cause (561)  |  Cold (115)  |  Constant (148)  |  Correspondence (24)  |  Cunning (17)  |  Destruction (135)  |  Digestion (29)  |  Disease (340)  |  Do (1905)  |  Down (455)  |  Effect (414)  |  Equivalent (46)  |  Evidently (26)  |  Evolution (635)  |  Express (192)  |  Expression (181)  |  Extinction (80)  |  Famine (18)  |  Fever (34)  |  Fit (139)  |  Flash (49)  |  Flaw (18)  |  Generation (256)  |  Healthy (70)  |  Hot (63)  |  Hour (192)  |  Hunter (28)  |  Increase (225)  |  Inferior (37)  |  Interesting (153)  |  Kill (100)  |  Lie (370)  |  Live (650)  |  Long (778)  |  Thomas Robert Malthus (13)  |  Mankind (356)  |  More (2558)  |  Most (1728)  |  Must (1525)  |  Necessarily (137)  |  Nothing (1000)  |  Number (710)  |  Order (638)  |  People (1031)  |  Phrase (61)  |  Population (115)  |  Principle (530)  |  Process (439)  |  Question (649)  |  Race (278)  |  Rapidly (67)  |  Read (308)  |  Remain (355)  |  Saw (160)  |  Self (268)  |  Small (489)  |  Something (718)  |  Species (435)  |  Strongest (38)  |  Subject (543)  |  Succeeding (14)  |  Suddenly (91)  |  Suffering (68)  |  Superior (88)  |  Survival (105)  |  Survival Of The Fittest (43)  |  Survive (87)  |  Term (357)  |  Think (1122)  |  Thinking (425)  |  Thought (995)  |  Time (1911)  |  Use (771)  |  Usually (176)  |  War (233)  |  Whole (756)  |  Why (491)  |  Word (650)  |  World (1850)  |  Writing (192)  |  Year (963)

I’m very intense in my work. At any given moment, I think I know the answer to some problem, and that I’m right. Since science is the only self-correcting human institution I know of, you should not be frightened to take an extreme stand, if that causes the stand to be examined more thoroughly than it might be if you are circumspect. I’ve always been positive about the value of the Hubble constant, knowing full well that it probably isn’t solved.
As quoted in John Noble Wilford, 'Sizing up the Cosmos: An Astronomers Quest', New York Times (12 Mar 1991), C10.
Science quotes on:  |  Answer (389)  |  Cause (561)  |  Circumspect (2)  |  Constant (148)  |  Correct (95)  |  Examine (84)  |  Extreme (78)  |  Hubble Constant (2)  |  Human (1512)  |  Institution (73)  |  Intense (22)  |  Know (1538)  |  Know The Answer (9)  |  Knowing (137)  |  Moment (260)  |  More (2558)  |  Probably (50)  |  Problem (731)  |  Right (473)  |  Self (268)  |  Self-Correcting (5)  |  Solved (2)  |  Stand (284)  |  Think (1122)  |  Thorough (40)  |  Thoroughly (67)  |  Value (393)  |  Work (1402)

If we work, it is less to obtain those positive results the common people think are our only interest, than to feel that aesthetic emotion and communicate it to those able to experience it.
From the original French, “Si nous travaillons, c’est moins pour obtenir ces résultats auxquels le vulgaire nous croit uniquement attachés, que pour ressentir cette émotion esthétique et la communiquer à ceux qui sont capables de l’éprouver,” quoted in Henri Poincaré,'Notice sur Halphen', Journal de l’École Polytechnique (1890), 60, 143, cited in Oeuvres de G.H. Halphen (1916), Vol. 1, xxiv. As translated in Armand Borel, 'On the Place of Mathematics in Culture', in Armand Borel: Œvres: Collected Papers (1983), Vol. 4, 421.
Science quotes on:  |  Aesthetic (48)  |  Common (447)  |  Common People (2)  |  Communicate (39)  |  Emotion (106)  |  Experience (494)  |  Feel (371)  |  Interest (416)  |  Obtain (164)  |  People (1031)  |  Result (700)  |  Think (1122)  |  Work (1402)

In both social and natural sciences, the body of positive knowledge grows by the failure of a tentative hypothesis to predict phenomena the hypothesis professes to explain; by the patching up of that hypothesis until someone suggests a new hypothesis that more elegantly or simply embodies the troublesome phenomena, and so on ad infinitum. In both, experiment is sometimes possible, sometimes not (witness meteorology). In both, no experiment is ever completely controlled, and experience often offers evidence that is the equivalent of controlled experiment. In both, there is no way to have a self-contained closed system or to avoid interaction between the observer and the observed. The Gödel theorem in mathematics, the Heisenberg uncertainty principle in physics, the self-fulfilling or self-defeating prophecy in the social sciences all exemplify these limitations.
Inflation and Unemployment (1976), 348.
Science quotes on:  |  Ad Infinitum (5)  |  Avoid (123)  |  Body (557)  |  Both (496)  |  Closed (38)  |  Completely (137)  |  Equivalent (46)  |  Evidence (267)  |  Experience (494)  |  Experiment (736)  |  Explain (334)  |  Failure (176)  |  Kurt Gödel (8)  |  Grow (247)  |  Werner Heisenberg (43)  |  Hypothesis (314)  |  Interaction (47)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Limitation (52)  |  Mathematics (1395)  |  Meteorology (36)  |  More (2558)  |  Natural (810)  |  Natural Science (133)  |  New (1273)  |  Observed (149)  |  Offer (142)  |  Physic (515)  |  Physics (564)  |  Possible (560)  |  Predict (86)  |  Principle (530)  |  Prophecy (14)  |  Scientific Method (200)  |  Self (268)  |  Social (261)  |  Social Science (37)  |  System (545)  |  Tentative (18)  |  Theorem (116)  |  Uncertainty (58)  |  Uncertainty Principle (9)  |  Way (1214)  |  Witness (57)

In diagnosis, the young are positive and the middle-aged tentative; only the old have flair.
Anonymous
Lancet (1951), 1, 795.
Science quotes on:  |  Diagnosis (65)  |  Old (499)  |  Physician (284)  |  Tentative (18)  |  Young (253)

In the final, the positive, state, the mind has given over the vain search after absolute notions, the origin and destination of the universe, and the causes of phenomena, and applies itself to the study of their laws—that is, their invariable relations of succession and resemblance. Reasoning and observation, duly combined, are the means of this knowledge. What is now understood when we speak of an explanation of facts is simply the establishment of a connection between single phenomena and some general facts.
The Positive Philosophy, trans. Harriet Martineau (1853), Vol. 1, 2.
Science quotes on:  |  Absolute (153)  |  Cause (561)  |  Connection (171)  |  Destination (16)  |  Establishment (47)  |  Explanation (246)  |  Fact (1257)  |  Facts (553)  |  Final (121)  |  General (521)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Law (913)  |  Mean (810)  |  Means (587)  |  Mind (1377)  |  Notion (120)  |  Observation (593)  |  Origin (250)  |  Reasoning (212)  |  Resemblance (39)  |  Search (175)  |  Single (365)  |  Speak (240)  |  State (505)  |  Study (701)  |  Succession (80)  |  Understood (155)  |  Universe (900)  |  Vain (86)

In the tissues generally, and in such a cavity as the abdomen, the pressure is everywhere and practically always very nearly atmospheric, and must be so, because the integuments give way very easily to any excess of pressure, whether positive or negative.
In The Anatomy and Physiology of Capillaries (1922), 244.
Science quotes on:  |  Abdomen (6)  |  Atmospheric Pressure (2)  |  Cavity (9)  |  Damage (38)  |  Excess (23)  |  Integument (4)  |  Negative (66)  |  Pressure (69)  |  Tissue (51)

In the year 1902 (while I was attempting to explain to an elementary class in chemistry some of the ideas involved in the periodic law) becoming interested in the new theory of the electron, and combining this idea with those which are implied in the periodic classification, I formed an idea of the inner structure of the atom which, although it contained certain crudities, I have ever since regarded as representing essentially the arrangement of electrons in the atom ... In accordance with the idea of Mendeleef, that hydrogen is the first member of a full period, I erroneously assumed helium to have a shell of eight electrons. Regarding the disposition in the positive charge which balanced the electrons in the neutral atom, my ideas were very vague; I believed I inclined at that time toward the idea that the positive charge was also made up of discrete particles, the localization of which determined the localization of the electrons.
Valence and the Structure of Atoms and Molecules (1923), 29-30.
Science quotes on:  |  Arrangement (93)  |  Atom (381)  |  Atomic Structure (4)  |  Becoming (96)  |  Certain (557)  |  Charge (63)  |  Chemistry (376)  |  Class (168)  |  Classification (102)  |  Discrete (11)  |  Disposition (44)  |  Electron (96)  |  Elementary (98)  |  Explain (334)  |  First (1302)  |  Form (976)  |  Helium (11)  |  Hydrogen (80)  |  Idea (881)  |  Inclined (41)  |  Inner (72)  |  Interest (416)  |  Involved (90)  |  Law (913)  |  Localization (3)  |  Neutral (15)  |  New (1273)  |  Particle (200)  |  Period (200)  |  Periodic Law (6)  |  Regard (312)  |  Shell (69)  |  Structure (365)  |  Theory (1015)  |  Time (1911)  |  Vague (50)  |  Year (963)

Indeed, nothing more beautifully simplifying has ever happened in the history of science than the whole series of discoveries culminating about 1914 which finally brought practically universal acceptance to the theory that the material world contains but two fundamental entities, namely, positive and negative electrons, exactly alike in charge, but differing widely in mass, the positive electron—now usually called a proton—being 1850 times heavier than the negative, now usually called simply the electron.
Time, Matter and Values (1932), 46. Cited in Karl Raimund Popper and William Warren Bartley (ed.), Quantum Theory and theSchism in Physics (1992), 37.
Science quotes on:  |  Acceptance (56)  |  Alike (60)  |  Being (1276)  |  Call (781)  |  Charge (63)  |  Discovery (837)  |  Electron (96)  |  Fundamental (264)  |  Happen (282)  |  Happened (88)  |  History (716)  |  History Of Science (80)  |  Indeed (323)  |  Mass (160)  |  Material (366)  |  Matter (821)  |  More (2558)  |  Negative (66)  |  Nothing (1000)  |  Proton (23)  |  Series (153)  |  Simplification (20)  |  Theory (1015)  |  Time (1911)  |  Two (936)  |  Universal (198)  |  Usually (176)  |  Whole (756)  |  World (1850)

It needs scarcely be pointed out that in placing Mathematics at the head of Positive Philosophy, we are only extending the application of the principle which has governed our whole Classification. We are simply carrying back our principle to its first manifestation. Geometrical and Mechanical phenomena are the most general, the most simple, the most abstract of all,— the most irreducible to others, the most independent of them; serving, in fact, as a basis to all others. It follows that the study of them is an indispensable preliminary to that of all others. Therefore must Mathematics hold the first place in the hierarchy of the sciences, and be the point of departure of all Education whether general or special.
In Auguste Comte and Harriet Martineau (trans.), The Positive Philosophy (1858), Introduction, Chap. 2, 50.
Science quotes on:  |  Abstract (141)  |  Application (257)  |  Back (395)  |  Basis (180)  |  Carry (130)  |  Classification (102)  |  Departure (9)  |  Education (423)  |  Estimates of Mathematics (30)  |  Extend (129)  |  Fact (1257)  |  First (1302)  |  Follow (389)  |  General (521)  |  Geometrical (11)  |  Govern (66)  |  Head (87)  |  Hierarchy (17)  |  Hold (96)  |  Independent (74)  |  Indispensable (31)  |  Irreducible (7)  |  Manifestation (61)  |  Mathematics (1395)  |  Mechanical (145)  |  Most (1728)  |  Must (1525)  |  Need (320)  |  Other (2233)  |  Phenomenon (334)  |  Philosophy (409)  |  Place (192)  |  Point (584)  |  Preliminary (6)  |  Principle (530)  |  Scarcely (75)  |  Serve (64)  |  Serving (15)  |  Simple (426)  |  Simply (53)  |  Special (188)  |  Study (701)  |  Whole (756)

Mathematics had never had more than a secondary interest for him [her husband, George Boole]; and even logic he cared for chiefly as a means of clearing the ground of doctrines imagined to be proved, by showing that the evidence on which they were supposed to give rest had no tendency to prove them. But he had been endeavoring to give a more active and positive help than this to the cause of what he deemed pure religion.
In Eleanor Meredith Cobham, Mary Everest Boole: Collected Works (1931), 40.
Science quotes on:  |  Active (80)  |  George Boole (12)  |  Car (75)  |  Cause (561)  |  Chiefly (47)  |  Doctrine (81)  |  Evidence (267)  |  Ground (222)  |  Interest (416)  |  Logic (311)  |  Mathematics (1395)  |  Mean (810)  |  Means (587)  |  More (2558)  |  Never (1089)  |  Proof (304)  |  Prove (261)  |  Pure (299)  |  Religion (369)  |  Rest (287)  |  Secondary (15)  |  Tendency (110)

Metaphysical ghosts cannot be killed, because they cannot be touched; but they may be dispelled by dispelling the twilight in which shadows and solidities are easily confounded. The Vital Principle is an entity of this ghostly kind; and although the daylight has dissipated it, and positive Biology is no longer vexed with its visitations, it nevertheless reappears in another shape in the shadowy region of mystery which surrounds biological and all other questions.
The History of Philosophy from Thales to Comte (1867), lxxxiv.
Science quotes on:  |  Biological (137)  |  Biology (232)  |  Confound (21)  |  Daylight (23)  |  Dispelling (4)  |  Entity (37)  |  Ghost (36)  |  Kill (100)  |  Kind (564)  |  Metaphysical (38)  |  Metaphysics (53)  |  Mystery (188)  |  Nevertheless (90)  |  Other (2233)  |  Principle (530)  |  Question (649)  |  Shadow (73)  |  Touch (146)  |  Vex (10)  |  Vital (89)

Natural Science treats of motion and force. Many of its teachings remain as part of an educated man's permanent equipment in life.
Such are:
(a) The harder you shove a bicycle the faster it will go. This is because of natural science.
(b) If you fall from a high tower, you fall quicker and quicker and quicker; a judicious selection of a tower will ensure any rate of speed.(c) If you put your thumb in between two cogs it will go on and on, until the wheels are arrested, by your suspenders. This is machinery.
(d) Electricity is of two kinds, positive and negative. The difference is, I presume, that one kind comes a little more expensive, but is more durable; the other is a cheaper thing, but the moths get into it.
In Literary Lapses (1918), 130.
Science quotes on:  |  Acceleration (12)  |  Bicycle (10)  |  Cog (7)  |  Difference (355)  |  Durable (7)  |  Electricity (168)  |  Ensure (27)  |  Equipment (45)  |  Fall (243)  |  Faster (50)  |  Force (497)  |  High (370)  |  Kind (564)  |  Life (1870)  |  Little (717)  |  Machinery (59)  |  Man (2252)  |  More (2558)  |  Motion (320)  |  Natural (810)  |  Natural Science (133)  |  Negative (66)  |  Other (2233)  |  Permanent (67)  |  Remain (355)  |  Selection (130)  |  Speed (66)  |  Teaching (190)  |  Teachings (11)  |  Thing (1914)  |  Thumb (18)  |  Tower (45)  |  Two (936)  |  Wheel (51)  |  Will (2350)

No history of civilization can be tolerably complete which does not give considerable space to the explanation of scientific progress. If we had any doubts about this, it would suffice to ask ourselves what constitutes the essential difference between our and earlier civilizations. Throughout the course of history, in every period, and in almost every country, we find a small number of saints, of great artists, of men of science. The saints of to-day are not necessarily more saintly than those of a thousand years ago; our artists are not necessarily greater than those of early Greece; they are more likely to be inferior; and of course, our men of science are not necessarily more intelligent than those of old; yet one thing is certain, their knowledge is at once more extensive and more accurate. The acquisition and systematization of positive knowledge is the only human activity which is truly cumulative and progressive. Our civilization is essentially different from earlier ones, because our knowledge of the world and of ourselves is deeper, more precise, and more certain, because we have gradually learned to disentangle the forces of nature, and because we have contrived, by strict obedience to their laws, to capture them and to divert them to the gratification of our own needs.
Introduction to the History of Science (1927), Vol. 1, 3-4.
Science quotes on:  |  Accurate (88)  |  Acquisition (46)  |  Activity (218)  |  Artist (97)  |  Ask (420)  |  Capture (11)  |  Certain (557)  |  Certainty (180)  |  Civilization (220)  |  Complete (209)  |  Completion (23)  |  Considerable (75)  |  Constitute (99)  |  Country (269)  |  Course (413)  |  Cumulative (14)  |  Difference (355)  |  Different (595)  |  Disentangle (4)  |  Doubt (314)  |  Early (196)  |  Essential (210)  |  Explanation (246)  |  Extensive (34)  |  Find (1014)  |  Force (497)  |  Gradually (102)  |  Gratification (22)  |  Great (1610)  |  Greater (288)  |  Greece (9)  |  History (716)  |  Human (1512)  |  Inferior (37)  |  Intelligence (218)  |  Intelligent (108)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Law (913)  |  Learn (672)  |  Learned (235)  |  Men Of Science (147)  |  More (2558)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Necessarily (137)  |  Need (320)  |  Number (710)  |  Obedience (20)  |  Old (499)  |  Ourselves (247)  |  Period (200)  |  Precise (71)  |  Precision (72)  |  Progress (492)  |  Saint (17)  |  Scientific (955)  |  Scientific Progress (14)  |  Small (489)  |  Space (523)  |  Thing (1914)  |  Thousand (340)  |  Throughout (98)  |  Truly (118)  |  World (1850)  |  Year (963)

One never finds fossil bones bearing no resemblance to human bones. Egyptian mummies, which are at least three thousand years old, show that men were the same then. The same applies to other mummified animals such as cats, dogs, crocodiles, falcons, vultures, oxen, ibises, etc. Species, therefore, do not change by degrees, but emerged after the new world was formed. Nor do we find intermediate species between those of the earlier world and those of today's. For example, there is no intermediate bear between our bear and the very different cave bear. To our knowledge, no spontaneous generation occurs in the present-day world. All organized beings owe their life to their fathers. Thus all records corroborate the globe's modernity. Negative proof: the barbaritY of the human species four thousand years ago. Positive proof: the great revolutions and the floods preserved in the traditions of all peoples.
'Note prese al Corso di Cuvier. Corso di Geologia all'Ateneo nel 1805', quoted in Pietro Corsi, The Age of Lamarck, trans. J. Mandelbaum (1988), 183.
Science quotes on:  |  Animal (651)  |  Bear (162)  |  Being (1276)  |  Bone (101)  |  Cat (52)  |  Change (639)  |  Crocodile (14)  |  Degree (277)  |  Different (595)  |  Do (1905)  |  Dog (70)  |  Egypt (31)  |  Emergence (35)  |  Falcon (2)  |  Father (113)  |  Find (1014)  |  Flood (52)  |  Form (976)  |  Fossil (143)  |  Generation (256)  |  Great (1610)  |  Human (1512)  |  Human Species (11)  |  Intermediate (38)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Life (1870)  |  Men (20)  |  Mummy (7)  |  Negative (66)  |  Never (1089)  |  New (1273)  |  Occur (151)  |  Old (499)  |  Other (2233)  |  Owe (71)  |  Ox (5)  |  Oxen (8)  |  People (1031)  |  Present (630)  |  Present Day (5)  |  Preservation (39)  |  Proof (304)  |  Record (161)  |  Resemblance (39)  |  Revolution (133)  |  Same (166)  |  Show (353)  |  Species (435)  |  Spontaneity (7)  |  Spontaneous (29)  |  Spontaneous Generation (9)  |  Thousand (340)  |  Today (321)  |  Tradition (76)  |  Vulture (5)  |  World (1850)  |  Year (963)

One of the most immediate consequences of the electrochemical theory is the necessity of regarding all chemical compounds as binary substances. It is necessary to discover in each of them the positive and negative constituents... No view was ever more fitted to retard the progress of organic chemistry. Where the theory of substitution and the theory of types assume similar molecules, in which some of the elements can be replaced by others without the edifice becoming modified either in form or outward behaviour, the electrochemical theory divides these same molecules, simply and solely, it may be said, in order to find in them two opposite groups, which it then supposes to be combined with each other in virtue of their mutual electrical activity... I have tried to show that in organic chemistry there exist types which are capable, without destruction, of undergoing the most singular transformations according to the nature of the elements.
Traité de Chemie Appliquée aux Arts, Vol. I (1828), 53. Trans. J. R. Partington, A History of Chemistry, Vol. 4, 366.
Science quotes on:  |  According (236)  |  Activity (218)  |  Becoming (96)  |  Behaviour (42)  |  Binary (12)  |  Capable (174)  |  Chemical (303)  |  Chemistry (376)  |  Compound (117)  |  Consequence (220)  |  Constituent (47)  |  Destruction (135)  |  Discover (571)  |  Divide (77)  |  Edifice (26)  |  Electrical (57)  |  Electrochemical (4)  |  Electrochemistry (5)  |  Element (322)  |  Exist (458)  |  Find (1014)  |  Form (976)  |  Immediate (98)  |  Molecule (185)  |  More (2558)  |  Most (1728)  |  Mutual (54)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Necessary (370)  |  Necessity (197)  |  Negative (66)  |  Opposite (110)  |  Order (638)  |  Organic (161)  |  Organic Chemistry (41)  |  Other (2233)  |  Progress (492)  |  Show (353)  |  Singular (24)  |  Substance (253)  |  Suppose (158)  |  Theory (1015)  |  Transformation (72)  |  Two (936)  |  Type (171)  |  View (496)  |  Virtue (117)

Our science is a drop, our ignorance a sea. Whatever else be certain, this at least is certain—that the world of our present natural knowledge is enveloped in a larger world of some sort of whose residual properties we at present can frame no positive idea.
In Address to Harvard Young Men’s Christian Association, 'Is Life Worth Living?', collected in The Will to Believe and other Essays in Popular Philosophy, (1897, 2006), 54. Published earlier in International Journal of Ethics (Oct 1895).
Science quotes on:  |  Certain (557)  |  Drop (77)  |  Idea (881)  |  Ignorance (254)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Larger (14)  |  Natural (810)  |  Present (630)  |  Property (177)  |  Residual (5)  |  Sea (326)  |  Sort (50)  |  Whatever (234)  |  World (1850)

Positive, objective knowledge is public property. It can be transmitted directly from one person to another, it can be pooled, and it can be passed on from one generation to the next. Consequently, knowledge accumulates through the ages, each generation adding its contribution. Values are quite different. By values, I mean the standards by which we judge the significance of life. The meaning of good and evil, of joy and sorrow, of beauty, justice, success-all these are purely private convictions, and they constitute our store of wisdom. They are peculiar to the individual, and no methods exist by which universal agreement can be obtained. Therefore, wisdom cannot be readily transmitted from person to person, and there is no great accumulation through the ages. Each man starts from scratch and acquires his own wisdom from his own experience. About all that can be done in the way of communication is to expose others to vicarious experience in the hope of a favorable response.
The Nature of Science and Other Lectures (1954), 7.
Science quotes on:  |  Accumulation (51)  |  Age (509)  |  Agreement (55)  |  Beauty (313)  |  Communication (101)  |  Constitute (99)  |  Contribution (93)  |  Conviction (100)  |  Different (595)  |  Evil (122)  |  Exist (458)  |  Experience (494)  |  Expose (28)  |  Favorable (24)  |  Generation (256)  |  Good (906)  |  Great (1610)  |  Hope (321)  |  Individual (420)  |  Joy (117)  |  Judge (114)  |  Justice (40)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Life (1870)  |  Man (2252)  |  Mean (810)  |  Meaning (244)  |  Method (531)  |  Next (238)  |  Objective (96)  |  Obtain (164)  |  Other (2233)  |  Pass (241)  |  Peculiar (115)  |  Person (366)  |  Property (177)  |  Purely (111)  |  Response (56)  |  Scratch (14)  |  Significance (114)  |  Sorrow (21)  |  Start (237)  |  Store (49)  |  Success (327)  |  Through (846)  |  Universal (198)  |  Value (393)  |  Way (1214)  |  Wisdom (235)

Psychologists must cease to be content with the sterile and narrow conception of their science as the science of consciousness, and must boldly assert its claim to be the positive science of mind in all its aspects and modes of functining, or, as I would prefer to say, the positive science of conduct or behavior.
An Introduction to Social Psychology (1928), 13.
Science quotes on:  |  Aspect (129)  |  Assert (69)  |  Behavior (95)  |  Behaviour (42)  |  Cease (81)  |  Claim (154)  |  Conception (160)  |  Conduct (70)  |  Consciousness (132)  |  Mind (1377)  |  Must (1525)  |  Narrow (85)  |  Nomenclature (159)  |  Say (989)  |  Sterile (24)

Research programmes, besides their negative heuristic, are also characterized by their positive heuristic.
In 'Falsification and the Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes', in I. Lakatos and A. Musgrave (eds.), Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge: Proceedings of the International Colloquium in the Philosophy of Science, London 1965 (1970), Vol. 4, 134.
Science quotes on:  |  Characterize (22)  |  Heuristic (6)  |  Negative (66)  |  Program (57)  |  Research (753)

Science deals with judgments on which it is possible to obtain universal agreement. These judgments do not concern individual facts and events, but the invariable association of facts and events known as the laws of science. Agreement is secured by observation and experiment—impartial courts of appeal to which all men must submit if they wish to survive. The laws are grouped and explained by theories of ever increasing generality. The theories at first are ex post facto—merely plausible interpretations of existing bodies of data. However, they frequently lead to predictions that can be tested by experiments and observations in new fields, and, if the interpretations are verified, the theories are accepted as working hypotheses until they prove untenable. The essential requirements are agreement on the subject matter and the verification of predictions. These features insure a body of positive knowledge that can be transmitted from person to person, and that accumulates from generation to generation.
From manuscript on English Science in the Renaissance (1937), Edwin Hubble collection, Box 2, Huntington Library, San Marino, California. As cited by Norriss S. Hetherington in 'Philosophical Values and Observation in Edwin Hubble's Choice of a Model of the Universe', Historical Studies in the Physical Sciences (1982), 13, No. 1, 41. (Hetherington comments parenthetically that the references to court, judgment and appeal may be attributable to his prior experiences as a Rhodes Scholar reading Roman law at Oxford, and to a year's practice as an attorney in Louisville, Kentucky.)
Science quotes on:  |  Accept (198)  |  Accumulation (51)  |  Agreement (55)  |  Appeal (46)  |  Association (49)  |  Body (557)  |  Concern (239)  |  Court (35)  |  Data (162)  |  Deal (192)  |  Do (1905)  |  Essential (210)  |  Event (222)  |  Experiment (736)  |  Explain (334)  |  Fact (1257)  |  Facts (553)  |  Field (378)  |  First (1302)  |  Generality (45)  |  Generation (256)  |  Impartiality (7)  |  Individual (420)  |  Interpretation (89)  |  Judgment (140)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Known (453)  |  Law (913)  |  Law Of Science (2)  |  Lead (391)  |  Matter (821)  |  Merely (315)  |  Must (1525)  |  New (1273)  |  Obervation (4)  |  Observation (593)  |  Obtain (164)  |  Person (366)  |  Plausibility (7)  |  Plausible (24)  |  Possible (560)  |  Prediction (89)  |  Prove (261)  |  Requirement (66)  |  Scientific Method (200)  |  Secured (18)  |  Subject (543)  |  Survival (105)  |  Survive (87)  |  Test (221)  |  Theory (1015)  |  Transmission (34)  |  Universal (198)  |  Untenable (5)  |  Verification (32)  |  Wish (216)

Science is the one human activity that is truly progressive. The body of positive knowledge is transmitted from generation to generation.
In The Realm of the Nebulae (1936), 1.
Science quotes on:  |  Activity (218)  |  Body (557)  |  Generation (256)  |  Human (1512)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Progression (23)  |  Truly (118)

Surely something is wanting in our conception of the universe. We know positive and negative electricity, north and south magnetism, and why not some extra terrestrial matter related to terrestrial matter, as the source is to the sink. … Worlds may have formed of this stuff, with element and compounds possessing identical properties with our own, indistinguishable from them until they are brought into each other’s vicinity. … Astronomy, the oldest and most juvenile of the sciences, may still have some surprises in store. May anti-matter be commended to its care! … Do dreams ever come true?
[Purely whimsical prediction long before the 1932 discovery of the positron, the antiparticle of the electron.]
'Potential Matter—A Holiday Dream', Letter to the Editor, Nature (18 Aug 1898), 58, No. 1503, 367. Quoted in Edward Robert Harrison, Cosmology: the Science of the Universe (2000), 433.
Science quotes on:  |  Anti-Matter (4)  |  Antiparticle (4)  |  Astronomy (251)  |  Care (203)  |  Commend (7)  |  Commendation (3)  |  Compound (117)  |  Conception (160)  |  Discovery (837)  |  Do (1905)  |  Dream (222)  |  Electricity (168)  |  Electron (96)  |  Element (322)  |  Form (976)  |  Identical (55)  |  Juvenile (4)  |  Know (1538)  |  Long (778)  |  Magnetism (43)  |  Matter (821)  |  Most (1728)  |  Negative (66)  |  Nomenclature (159)  |  Oldest (9)  |  Other (2233)  |  Positron (4)  |  Prediction (89)  |  Purely (111)  |  Sink (38)  |  Something (718)  |  Source (101)  |  South (39)  |  Still (614)  |  Store (49)  |  Surely (101)  |  Surprise (91)  |  Terrestrial (62)  |  Universe (900)  |  Why (491)  |  World (1850)

Talent deals with the actual, with discovered and realized truths, any analyzing, arranging, combining, applying positive knowledge, and, in action, looking to precedents. Genius deals with the possible, creates new combinations, discovers new laws, and acts from an insight into new principles.
In 'Genius', Wellman’s Miscellany (Dec 1871), 4, No. 6, 203.
Science quotes on:  |  Act (278)  |  Action (342)  |  Actual (118)  |  Analysis (244)  |  Applying (3)  |  Arranging (3)  |  Combination (150)  |  Create (245)  |  Deal (192)  |  Discover (571)  |  Discovery (837)  |  Genius (301)  |  Insight (107)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Law (913)  |  Looking (191)  |  New (1273)  |  Possibility (172)  |  Possible (560)  |  Precedent (9)  |  Principle (530)  |  Realize (157)  |  Talent (99)  |  Truth (1109)

That this subject [of imaginary magnitudes] has hitherto been considered from the wrong point of view and surrounded by a mysterious obscurity, is to be attributed largely to an ill-adapted notation. If, for example, +1, -1, and the square root of -1 had been called direct, inverse and lateral units, instead of positive, negative and imaginary (or even impossible), such an obscurity would have been out of the question.
Theoria Residiorum Biquadraticorum, Commentario secunda', Werke (1863), Vol. 2. Quoted in Robert Edouard Moritz, Memorabilia Mathematica (1914), 282.
Science quotes on:  |  Adapt (70)  |  Call (781)  |  Consider (428)  |  Direct (228)  |  Impossible (263)  |  Magnitude (88)  |  Mysterious (83)  |  Negative (66)  |  Notation (28)  |  Number (710)  |  Point (584)  |  Point Of View (85)  |  Question (649)  |  Root (121)  |  Square (73)  |  Square Root (12)  |  Subject (543)  |  View (496)  |  Wrong (246)

The authority of those who profess to teach is often a positive hindrance to those who desire to learn.
In De Natura Deorum: Academica (c. 45 B.C.), as translated to English (1933), 13.
Science quotes on:  |  Authority (99)  |  Desire (212)  |  Hindrance (9)  |  Learn (672)  |  Often (109)  |  Profess (21)  |  Teach (299)

The barrenness of doubt had to make itself felt before it could be supplanted by knowledge. It was not until Hume, by carrying scepticism to its uttermost extent, had shown its unsatisfactory character and vain results, that the germs of scientific method, implanted by Bacon and Descartes, could develop and bear fruit in the positive philosophy of Comte.
In 'Mr. Buckle’s Fallacies', Darwinism and Other Essays (1893), 190.
Science quotes on:  |  Sir Francis Bacon (188)  |  Barren (33)  |  Character (259)  |  Auguste Comte (24)  |  René Descartes (83)  |  Develop (278)  |  Doubt (314)  |  Germ (54)  |   David Hume (34)  |  Implant (5)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Philosophy (409)  |  Result (700)  |  Scepticism (17)  |  Scientific Method (200)  |  Unsatisfactory (4)  |  Vain (86)

The best patient is a millionaire with a positive Wassermann [antibody test for syphilis]. In Carl Malmberg , 140 Million Patients (1947), 30. Medical proverb before the discovery of antibiotics.
Anonymous
Science quotes on:  |  Antibody (6)  |  Best (467)  |  Discovery (837)  |  Money (178)  |  Patient (209)  |  Proverb (29)  |  Syphilis (6)  |  Test (221)

The cause, then, philosophically speaking, is the sum total of the conditions, positive and negative, taken together; the whole of the contingencies of every description, which being realized, the consequent invariably follows.
A System of Logic, Ratiocinative and Inductive (1858), 200.
Science quotes on:  |  Being (1276)  |  Cause (561)  |  Condition (362)  |  Consequent (19)  |  Definition (238)  |  Follow (389)  |  Invariably (35)  |  Negative (66)  |  Speaking (118)  |  Sum (103)  |  Together (392)  |  Total (95)  |  Whole (756)

The experiments made on the mutual electrical relations of bodies have taught us that they can be divided into two classes: electropositive and electronegative. The simple bodies which belong to the first class, as well as their oxides, always take up positive electricity when they meet simple bodies or oxides belonging to the second class; and the oxides of the first class always behave with the oxides of the other like salifiable bases with acids.
Essai sur le théorie des proportions chimiques (1819). Translated in Henry M. Leicester and Herbert S. Klickstein, A Source Book in Chemistry 1400-1900 (1952), 260.
Science quotes on:  |  Acid (83)  |  Base (120)  |  Belong (168)  |  Belonging (36)  |  Class (168)  |  Divided (50)  |  Electrical (57)  |  Electricity (168)  |  Electrochemistry (5)  |  Experiment (736)  |  First (1302)  |  Mutual (54)  |  Other (2233)  |  Oxygen (77)  |  Simple (426)  |  Two (936)

The law is this: that each of our leading conceptions—each branch of our knowledge—passes successively through three different theoretical conditions: the Theological, or fictitious; the Metaphysical, or abstract; and the Scientific, or positive.
The Positive Philosophy, trans. Harriet Martineau (1853), Vol. 1, 1-2.
Science quotes on:  |  Abstract (141)  |  Branch (155)  |  Conception (160)  |  Condition (362)  |  Different (595)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Law (913)  |  Metaphysical (38)  |  Scientific (955)  |  Through (846)

The layman, taught to revere scientists for their absolute respect for the observed facts, and for the judiciously detached and purely provisional manner in which they hold scientific theories (always ready to abandon a theory at the sight of any contradictory evidence) might well have thought that, at [Dayton C.] Miller's announcement of this overwhelming evidence of a “positive effect” [indicating that the speed of light is not independent from the motion of the observer, as Einstein's theory of relativity demands] in his presidential address to the American Physical Society on December 29th, 1925, his audience would have instantly abandoned the theory of relativity. Or, at the very least, that scientists—wont to look down from the pinnacle of their intellectual humility upon the rest of dogmatic mankind—might suspend judgment in this matter until Miller's results could be accounted for without impairing the theory of relativity. But no: by that time they had so well closed their minds to any suggestion which threatened the new rationality achieved by Einstein's world-picture, that it was almost impossible for them to think again in different terms. Little attention was paid to the experiments, the evidence being set aside in the hope that it would one day turn out to be wrong.
Personal Knowledge: Towards a Post-Critical Philosophy (1958, 1998), 13. Miller had earlier presented his evidence against the validity of the relativity theory at the annual meeting, 28 Apr 1925, of the National Academy of Sciences. Miller believed he had, by a much-refined and improved repetition of the so-called Michelson-Morley experiment, shown that there is a definite and measurable motion of the earth through the ether. In 1955, a paper by R.S. Shankland, et al., in Rev. Modern Phys. (1955), 27, 167, concluded that statistical fluctuations and temperature effects in the data had simulated what Miller had taken to be he apparent ether drift.
Science quotes on:  |  Abandon (73)  |  Absolute (153)  |  Account (195)  |  Announcement (15)  |  Attention (196)  |  Audience (28)  |  Being (1276)  |  Closed (38)  |  Demand (131)  |  Different (595)  |  Down (455)  |  Effect (414)  |  Einstein (101)  |  Albert Einstein (624)  |  Evidence (267)  |  Experiment (736)  |  Fact (1257)  |  Facts (553)  |  Hope (321)  |  Humility (31)  |  Impossible (263)  |  Instantly (20)  |  Intellectual (258)  |  Judgment (140)  |  Layman (21)  |  Light (635)  |  Little (717)  |  Look (584)  |  Mankind (356)  |  Matter (821)  |  Mind (1377)  |  Motion (320)  |  New (1273)  |  Objectivity (17)  |  Observation (593)  |  Observed (149)  |  Overwhelming (30)  |  Physical (518)  |  Picture (148)  |  Provisional (7)  |  Purely (111)  |  Rationality (25)  |  Relativity (91)  |  Respect (212)  |  Rest (287)  |  Result (700)  |  Reverence (29)  |  Scientific (955)  |  Scientific Theory (24)  |  Scientist (881)  |  Set (400)  |  Sight (135)  |  Society (350)  |  Speed (66)  |  Speed Of Light (18)  |  Suggestion (49)  |  Term (357)  |  Terms (184)  |  Theory (1015)  |  Theory Of Relativity (33)  |  Think (1122)  |  Thought (995)  |  Threaten (33)  |  Time (1911)  |  Turn (454)  |  World (1850)  |  Wrong (246)

The letter e may now no longer be used to denote anything other than this positive universal constant.
In Differential and Integral Calculus (1951), 44. This is Landau’s comment after he writes “Definition 13: “e is the solution of log y= 1”.
Science quotes on:  |  Constant (148)  |  Denote (6)  |  Letter (117)  |  Long (778)  |  Other (2233)  |  Universal (198)

The mathematical intellectualism is henceforth a positive doctrine, but one that inverts the usual doctrines of positivism: in place of originating progress in order, dynamics in statics, its goal is to make logical order the product of intellectual progress. The science of the future is not enwombed, as Comte would have had it, as Kant had wished it, in the forms of the science already existing; the structure of these forms reveals an original dynamism whose onward sweep is prolonged by the synthetic generation of more and more complicated forms. No speculation on number considered as a category a priori enables one to account for the questions set by modern mathematics … space affirms only the possibility of applying to a multiplicity of any elements whatever, relations whose type the intellect does not undertake to determine in advance, but, on the contrary, it asserts their existence and nourishes their unlimited development.
As translated in James Byrnie Shaw, Lectures on the Philosophy of Mathematics (1918), 193. From Léon Brunschvicg, Les Étapes de La Philosophie Mathématique (1912), 567-568, “L’intellectualisme mathématique est désormais une doctrine positive, mais qui intervertira les formules habituelles du positivisme: au lieu de faire sortir le progrès de l’ordre, ou le dynamique du statique, il tend à faire de l'ordre logique le produit du progrès intellectuel. La science à venir n'est pas enfermée, comme l’aurait voulu Comte, comme le voulait déjà Kant, dans les formes de la science déjà faite; la constitution de ces formes révèle un dynamisme originel dont l’élan se prolonge par la génération synthétique de notions de plus en plus compliquées. Aucune spéculation sur le nombre, considéré comme catégorie a priori, ne permet de rendre compte des questions qui se sont posées pour la mathématique moderne … … l’espace ne fait qu'affirmer la possibilité d'appliquer sur une multiplicité d’éléments quelconques des relations dont l’intelligence ne cherche pas à déterminer d’avance le type, dont elle constate, au contraire, dont elle suscite le développement illimité.”
Science quotes on:  |  A Priori (26)  |  Account (195)  |  Advance (298)  |  Already (226)  |  Assert (69)  |  Category (19)  |  Complicated (117)  |  Auguste Comte (24)  |  Consider (428)  |  Contrary (143)  |  Determine (152)  |  Development (441)  |  Doctrine (81)  |  Dynamics (11)  |  Element (322)  |  Enable (122)  |  Existence (481)  |  Form (976)  |  Future (467)  |  Generation (256)  |  Goal (155)  |  Intellect (251)  |  Intellectual (258)  |  Immanuel Kant (50)  |  Logic (311)  |  Mathematics (1395)  |  Modern (402)  |  Modern Mathematics (50)  |  More (2558)  |  Multiplicity (14)  |  Number (710)  |  Order (638)  |  Original (61)  |  Positivism (3)  |  Possibility (172)  |  Product (166)  |  Progress (492)  |  Prolong (29)  |  Question (649)  |  Reveal (152)  |  Set (400)  |  Space (523)  |  Speculation (137)  |  Statics (6)  |  Structure (365)  |  Sweep (22)  |  Synthetic (27)  |  Type (171)  |  Undertake (35)  |  Unlimited (24)  |  Whatever (234)  |  Wish (216)

The most startling result of Faraday’s Law is perhaps this. If we accept the hypothesis that the elementary substances are composed of atoms, we cannot avoid concluding that electricity also, positive as well as negative, is divided into definite elementary portions, which behave like atoms of electricity.
Faraday Lecture (1881). In 'On the Modern Development of Faraday's Conception of Electricity', Journal of the Chemical Society 1881, 39, 290. It is also stated in the book by Laurie M. Brown, Abraham Pais and Brian Pippard, Twentieth Century P, Vol. 1, 52, that this is 'a statement which explains why in subsequent years the quantity e was occasionally referred to in German literature as das Helmholtzsche Elementarquantum'.
Science quotes on:  |  Accept (198)  |  Atom (381)  |  Avoid (123)  |  Charge (63)  |  Definite (114)  |  Divided (50)  |  Electricity (168)  |  Electron (96)  |  Elementary (98)  |  Michael Faraday (91)  |  Hypothesis (314)  |  Law (913)  |  Most (1728)  |  Negative (66)  |  Portion (86)  |  Result (700)  |  Startling (15)  |  Substance (253)

The only occasion when Comte
Is known to have romped
Was when the multitude roared “Vive La Philosophie Positive!”
E. C. Bentley, Biography for Beginners (1905). Collected in Complete Clerihews (2008), 32.
Science quotes on:  |  Auguste Comte (24)  |  Known (453)  |  Multitude (50)  |  Occasion (87)

The positive heuristic of the programme saves the scientist from becoming confused by the ocean of anomalies.
In Radio Lecture (30 Jun 1973) broadcast by the Open University, collected in Imre Lakatos, John Worrall (ed.) and Gregory Currie (ed.), 'Introduction: Science and Pseudoscience', The Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes (1978, 1980), Vol. 1, 50.
Science quotes on:  |  Anomaly (11)  |  Becoming (96)  |  Confused (13)  |  Heuristic (6)  |  Ocean (216)  |  Program (57)  |  Save (126)  |  Scientist (881)

The problem [evolution] presented itself to me, and something led me to think of the positive checks described by Malthus in his Essay on Population, a work I had read several years before, and which had made a deep and permanent impression on my mind. These checks—war, disease, famine, and the like—must, it occurred to me, act on animals as well as man. Then I thought of the enormously rapid multiplication of animals, causing these checks to be much more effective in them than in the case of man; and while pondering vaguely on this fact, there suddenly flashed upon me the idea of the survival of the fittest—that the individuals removed by these checks must be on the whole inferior to those that survived. I sketched the draft of my paper … and sent it by the next post to Mr. Darwin.
In 'Introductory Note to Chapter II in Present Edition', Natural Selection and Tropical Nature Essays on Descriptive and Theoretical Biology (1891, New ed. 1895), 20.
Science quotes on:  |  Act (278)  |  Animal (651)  |  Cause (561)  |  Check (26)  |  Charles Darwin (322)  |  Deep (241)  |  Disease (340)  |  Draft (6)  |  Effective (68)  |  Essay (27)  |  Evolution (635)  |  Fact (1257)  |  Famine (18)  |  Flash (49)  |  Idea (881)  |  Impression (118)  |  Individual (420)  |  Inferior (37)  |  Thomas Robert Malthus (13)  |  Man (2252)  |  Mind (1377)  |  More (2558)  |  Multiplication (46)  |  Must (1525)  |  Next (238)  |  Paper (192)  |  Permanent (67)  |  Ponder (15)  |  Population (115)  |  Present (630)  |  Problem (731)  |  Rapid (37)  |  Read (308)  |  Remove (50)  |  Something (718)  |  Suddenly (91)  |  Survival (105)  |  Survival Of The Fittest (43)  |  Survive (87)  |  Think (1122)  |  Thought (995)  |  War (233)  |  Whole (756)  |  Work (1402)  |  Year (963)

The publication in 1859 of the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin made a marked epoch in my own mental development, as it did in that of human thought generally. Its effect was to demolish a multitude of dogmatic barriers by a single stroke, and to arouse a spirit of rebellion against all ancient authorities whose positive and unauthenticated statements were contradicted by modern science.
Memories of My Life (1908), 287.
Science quotes on:  |  Against (332)  |  Ancient (198)  |  Barrier (34)  |  Contradict (42)  |  Charles Darwin (322)  |  Demolish (8)  |  Development (441)  |  Effect (414)  |  Epoch (46)  |  Human (1512)  |  Marked (55)  |  Mental (179)  |  Modern (402)  |  Modern Science (55)  |  Multitude (50)  |  Origin (250)  |  Origin Of Species (42)  |  Publication (102)  |  Rebellion (3)  |  Single (365)  |  Species (435)  |  Spirit (278)  |  Statement (148)  |  Stroke (19)  |  Thought (995)

The realm of science is the public domain of positive knowledge. The world of values is the private domain of personal convictions. These two realms, together, form the universe in which we spend our lives; they do not overlap.
The Nature of Science and Other Lectures (1954), 6-7.
Science quotes on:  |  Conviction (100)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Overlap (9)  |  Personal (75)  |  Private (29)  |  Realm (87)  |  Scientific Method (200)  |  Universe (900)  |  Value (393)  |  World (1850)

The same algebraic sum of positive and negative charges in the nucleus, when the arithmetical sum is different, gives what I call “isotopes” or “isotopic elements,” because they occupy the same place in the periodic table. They are chemically identical, and save only as regards the relatively few physical properties which depend upon atomic mass directly, physically identical also. Unit changes of this nuclear charge, so reckoned algebraically, give the successive places in the periodic table. For any one “place” or any one nuclear charge, more than one number of electrons in the outer-ring system may exist, and in such a case the element exhibits variable valency. But such changes of number, or of valency, concern only the ring and its external environment. There is no in- and out-going of electrons between ring and nucleus.
Concluding paragraph of 'Intra-atomic Charge', Nature (1913), 92, 400. Collected in Alfred Romer, Radiochemistry and the Discovery of Isotopes (1970), 251-252.
Science quotes on:  |  Algebra (117)  |  Arithmetic (144)  |  Call (781)  |  Change (639)  |  Charge (63)  |  Concern (239)  |  Depend (238)  |  Difference (355)  |  Different (595)  |  Electron (96)  |  Element (322)  |  Environment (239)  |  Exist (458)  |  Identical (55)  |  Isotope (4)  |  Mass (160)  |  More (2558)  |  Negative (66)  |  Nomenclature (159)  |  Nuclear (110)  |  Nucleus (54)  |  Number (710)  |  Occupy (27)  |  Periodic Table (19)  |  Physical (518)  |  Place (192)  |  Reckon (31)  |  Regard (312)  |  Save (126)  |  Successive (73)  |  Sum (103)  |  System (545)  |  Table (105)  |  Valency (4)  |  Variable (37)

The story of a theory’s failure often strikes readers as sad and unsatisfying. Since science thrives on self-correction, we who practice this most challenging of human arts do not share such a feeling. We may be unhappy if a favored hypothesis loses or chagrined if theories that we proposed prove inadequate. But refutation almost always contains positive lessons that overwhelm disappointment, even when no new and comprehensive theory has yet filled the void.
…...
Science quotes on:  |  Art (680)  |  Challenge (91)  |  Comprehensive (29)  |  Contain (68)  |  Correction (42)  |  Disappointment (18)  |  Do (1905)  |  Failure (176)  |  Favor (69)  |  Favored (5)  |  Feel (371)  |  Feeling (259)  |  Fill (67)  |  Human (1512)  |  Hypothesis (314)  |  Inadequate (20)  |  Lesson (58)  |  Lose (165)  |  Most (1728)  |  New (1273)  |  Often (109)  |  Overwhelm (5)  |  Practice (212)  |  Propose (24)  |  Prove (261)  |  Reader (42)  |  Refutation (13)  |  Sadness (36)  |  Self (268)  |  Self-Correction (2)  |  Share (82)  |  Story (122)  |  Strike (72)  |  Theory (1015)  |  Thrive (22)  |  Unhappy (16)  |  Unsatisfying (3)  |  Void (31)

The teaching process, as commonly observed, has nothing to do with the investigation and establishment of facts, assuming that actual facts may ever be determined. Its sole purpose is to cram the pupils, as rapidly and as painlessly as possible, with the largest conceivable outfit of current axioms, in all departments of human thought—to make the pupil a good citizen, which is to say, a citizen differing as little as possible, in positive knowledge and habits of mind, from all other citizens.
From Baltimore Evening Sun (12 Mar 1923). Collected in A Mencken Chrestomathy (1949, 1956), 316.
Science quotes on:  |  Actual (118)  |  Axiom (65)  |  Citizen (52)  |  Conceivable (28)  |  Cram (5)  |  Current (122)  |  Department (93)  |  Determined (9)  |  Differing (2)  |  Do (1905)  |  Establishment (47)  |  Fact (1257)  |  Facts (553)  |  Good (906)  |  Habit (174)  |  Human (1512)  |  Human Thought (7)  |  Investigation (250)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Largest (39)  |  Little (717)  |  Mind (1377)  |  Nothing (1000)  |  Observed (149)  |  Other (2233)  |  Outfit (2)  |  Painless (2)  |  Possible (560)  |  Process (439)  |  Pupil (62)  |  Purpose (336)  |  Rapid (37)  |  Rapidly (67)  |  Say (989)  |  Sole (50)  |  Teach (299)  |  Teaching (190)  |  Thought (995)

The trees have not only been regarded by man as his lawful plunder, but he has even seemed to find a positive pleasure in their destruction. He … has been reckless of the future. The supply has seemed to be abundant, and the future has been left to take care of itself.
'What We Owe to the Trees', Harper's New Monthly Magazine (Apr 1882), 46, No. 383, 675.
Science quotes on:  |  Abundance (26)  |  Abundant (23)  |  Care (203)  |  Destruction (135)  |  Find (1014)  |  Future (467)  |  Lawful (7)  |  Man (2252)  |  Pleasure (191)  |  Plunder (6)  |  Reckless (6)  |  Regard (312)  |  Supply (100)  |  Tree (269)

There are something like ten million million million million million million million million million million million million million million (1 with eighty zeroes after it) particles in the region of the universe that we can observe. Where did they all come from? The answer is that, in quantum theory, particles can be created out of energy in the form of particle/antiparticle pairs. But that just raises the question of where the energy came from. The answer is that the total energy of the universe is exactly zero. The matter in the universe is made out of positive energy. However, the matter is all attracting itself by gravity. Two pieces of matter that are close to each other have less energy than the same two pieces a long way apart, because you have to expend energy to separate them against the gravitational force that is pulling them together. Thus, in a sense, the gravitational field has negative energy. In the case of a universe that is approximately uniform in space, one can show that this negative gravitational energy exactly cancels the positive energy represented by the matter. So the total energy of the universe is zero.
A Brief History of Time: From the Big Bang to Black Holes (1988), 129.
Science quotes on:  |  Against (332)  |  Answer (389)  |  Antiparticle (4)  |  Energy (373)  |  Field (378)  |  Force (497)  |  Form (976)  |  Gravity (140)  |  Long (778)  |  Matter (821)  |  Negative (66)  |  Nuclear Particle (2)  |  Observe (179)  |  Other (2233)  |  Particle (200)  |  Quantum (118)  |  Quantum Theory (67)  |  Question (649)  |  Represent (157)  |  Sense (785)  |  Separate (151)  |  Show (353)  |  Something (718)  |  Space (523)  |  Theory (1015)  |  Together (392)  |  Total (95)  |  Two (936)  |  Universe (900)  |  Way (1214)  |  Zero (38)

There is little difference in people, but that little difference makes a big difference. The little difference is attitude. The big difference is weather it is positive or negative.
…...
Science quotes on:  |  Attitude (84)  |  Big (55)  |  Difference (355)  |  Little (717)  |  Negative (66)  |  People (1031)  |  Weather (49)

There is no bandit so powerful as Nature. [The interaction of the positive and the negative principles, which produces the visible universe.] In the whole universe there is no escape from it.
Chuang Tzu: Mystic, Moralist and Social Reformer (1889), trans. Herbert A. Giles, 303. The brackets indicate a sentence printed as a paragraph in smaller type size.
Science quotes on:  |  Escape (85)  |  Interaction (47)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Negative (66)  |  Powerful (145)  |  Principle (530)  |  Universe (900)  |  Visible (87)  |  Whole (756)

There was positive, clear-cut, unquestioned direction of the project at all levels. Authority was invariably delegated with responsibility, and this delegation was absolute and without reservation. Only in this way could the many apparently autonomous organizations working on the many apparently independent tasks be pulled together to achieve our final objective.
In And Now It Can Be Told: The Story Of The Manhattan Project (1962), 415.
Science quotes on:  |  Absolute (153)  |  Achievement (187)  |  Authority (99)  |  Autonomy (6)  |  Clear-Cut (10)  |  Cut (116)  |  Direction (185)  |  Final (121)  |  Independent (74)  |  Invariably (35)  |  Level (69)  |  Manhattan Project (15)  |  Objective (96)  |  Organization (120)  |  Project (77)  |  Pull (43)  |  Reservation (7)  |  Responsibility (71)  |  Task (152)  |  Together (392)  |  Unify (7)  |  Unquestioned (7)  |  Way (1214)  |  Working (23)

Think like a proton — always positive.
Science quotes on:  |  Proton (23)  |  Think (1122)  |  Thinking (425)

This is one of the greatest advantages of modern geometry over the ancient, to be able, through the consideration of positive and negative quantities, to include in a single enunciation the several cases which the same theorem may present by a change in the relative position of the different parts of a figure. Thus in our day the nine principal problems and the numerous particular cases, which form the object of eighty-three theorems in the two books De sectione determinata of Appolonius constitute only one problem which is resolved by a single equation.
In Histoire de la Géométrie, chap. 1, sect. 35.
Science quotes on:  |  Advantage (144)  |  Ancient (198)  |  Book (413)  |  Case (102)  |  Change (639)  |  Consideration (143)  |  Constitute (99)  |  Different (595)  |  Enunciation (7)  |  Equation (138)  |  Figure (162)  |  Form (976)  |  Geometry (271)  |  Great (1610)  |  Greatest (330)  |  Include (93)  |  Modern (402)  |  Modern Mathematics (50)  |  Negative (66)  |  Numerous (70)  |  Object (438)  |  Part (235)  |  Particular (80)  |  Position (83)  |  Present (630)  |  Principal (69)  |  Problem (731)  |  Quantity (136)  |  Relative (42)  |  Resolve (43)  |  Same (166)  |  Several (33)  |  Single (365)  |  Theorem (116)  |  Through (846)  |  Two (936)

To regard such a positive mental science [psychology] as rising above the sphere of history, and establishing the permanent and unchanging laws of human nature, is therefore possible only to a person who mistakes the transient conditions of a certain historical age for the permanent conditions of human life.
The Idea of History (1946), 224.
Science quotes on:  |  Age (509)  |  Certain (557)  |  Condition (362)  |  Historical (70)  |  History (716)  |  Human (1512)  |  Human Nature (71)  |  Law (913)  |  Life (1870)  |  Mental (179)  |  Mistake (180)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Permanent (67)  |  Person (366)  |  Possible (560)  |  Psychology (166)  |  Regard (312)  |  Rising (44)  |  Sphere (118)  |  Transient (13)

Tyndall declared that he saw in Matter the promise and potency of all forms of life, and with his Irish graphic lucidity made a picture of a world of magnetic atoms, each atom with a positive and a negative pole, arranging itself by attraction and repulsion in orderly crystalline structure. Such a picture is dangerously fascinating to thinkers oppressed by the bloody disorders of the living world. Craving for purer subjects of thought, they find in the contemplation of crystals and magnets a happiness more dramatic and less childish than the happiness found by mathematicians in abstract numbers, because they see in the crystals beauty and movement without the corrupting appetites of fleshly vitality.
In Back to Methuselah: A Metabiological Pentateuch (1921), lxi-lxii.
Science quotes on:  |  Abstract (141)  |  Appetite (20)  |  Atom (381)  |  Attraction (61)  |  Beauty (313)  |  Childish (20)  |  Contemplation (75)  |  Crystal (71)  |  Declared (24)  |  Disorder (45)  |  Dramatic (19)  |  Fascinating (38)  |  Find (1014)  |  Form (976)  |  Happiness (126)  |  Life (1870)  |  Living (492)  |  Lucidity (7)  |  Magnet (22)  |  Magnetic (44)  |  Magnetism (43)  |  Matter (821)  |  More (2558)  |  Movement (162)  |  Negative (66)  |  Number (710)  |  Orderly (38)  |  Picture (148)  |  Pole (49)  |  Potency (10)  |  Promise (72)  |  Repulsion (7)  |  Saw (160)  |  See (1094)  |  Structure (365)  |  Subject (543)  |  Thinker (41)  |  Thought (995)  |  John Tyndall (53)  |  Vitality (24)  |  World (1850)

We bombarded aluminum with alpha rays … then after a certain period of irradiation, we removed the source of alpha rays. We now observed that the sheet of aluminum continued to emit positive electrons over a period of several minutes.
Describing the crucial experiment made in 1934 that discovered artificial radioactivity. As quoted in John Daintith and Derek Gjertsen, A Dictionary of Scientists (1999), 287.
Science quotes on:  |  Alpha Ray (4)  |  Aluminum (15)  |  Artificial Radioactivity (2)  |  Certain (557)  |  Continued (2)  |  Electron (96)  |  Emit (15)  |  Minute (129)  |  Observed (149)  |  Period (200)  |  Positron (4)  |  Ray (115)  |  Sheet (8)  |  Source (101)

We build our personalities laboriously and through many years, and we cannot order fundamental changes just because we might value their utility; no button reading ‘positive attitude’ protrudes from our hearts, and no finger can coerce positivity into immediate action by a single and painless pressing.
…...
Science quotes on:  |  Action (342)  |  Attitude (84)  |  Build (211)  |  Button (5)  |  Change (639)  |  Coerce (2)  |  Finger (48)  |  Fundamental (264)  |  Heart (243)  |  Immediate (98)  |  Laborious (17)  |  Order (638)  |  Painless (2)  |  Personality (66)  |  Press (21)  |  Read (308)  |  Reading (136)  |  Single (365)  |  Through (846)  |  Utility (52)  |  Value (393)  |  Year (963)

We must regard it rather as an accident that the Earth (and presumably the whole solar system) contains a preponderance of negative electrons and positive protons. It is quite possible that for some of the stars it is the other way about.
(1902)
Science quotes on:  |  Accident (92)  |  Antimatter (4)  |  Earth (1076)  |  Electron (96)  |  Matter (821)  |  Must (1525)  |  Negative (66)  |  Other (2233)  |  Possible (560)  |  Preponderance (2)  |  Proton (23)  |  Regard (312)  |  Solar System (81)  |  Star (460)  |  Stars (304)  |  System (545)  |  Way (1214)  |  Whole (756)

We should have positive expectations of what is in the universe, not fears and dreads. We are made with the realization that we’re not Earthbound, and that our acceptance of the universe offers us room to explore and extend outward. It’s like being in a dark room and imagining all sorts of terrors. But when we turn on the light – technology - suddenly it’s just a room where we can stretch out and explore. If the resources here on Earth are limited, they are not limited in the universe. We are not constrained by the limitations of our planet. As children have to leave the security of family and home life to insure growth into mature adults, so also must humankind leave the security and familiarity of Earth to reach maturity and obtain the highest attainment possible for the human race.
…...
Science quotes on:  |  Acceptance (56)  |  Adult (24)  |  Attainment (48)  |  Being (1276)  |  Child (333)  |  Children (201)  |  Constrain (11)  |  Dark (145)  |  Dread (13)  |  Earth (1076)  |  Earthbound (4)  |  Expectation (67)  |  Exploration (161)  |  Extend (129)  |  Familiarity (21)  |  Family (101)  |  Fear (212)  |  Growth (200)  |  High (370)  |  Home (184)  |  Human (1512)  |  Human Race (104)  |  Humankind (15)  |  Imagine (176)  |  Insure (4)  |  Leave (138)  |  Life (1870)  |  Light (635)  |  Limit (294)  |  Limitation (52)  |  Limited (102)  |  Mature (17)  |  Maturity (14)  |  Must (1525)  |  Obtain (164)  |  Offer (142)  |  Outward (7)  |  Planet (402)  |  Possible (560)  |  Race (278)  |  Reach (286)  |  Realization (44)  |  Resource (74)  |  Room (42)  |  Security (51)  |  Sort (50)  |  Stretch (39)  |  Suddenly (91)  |  Technology (281)  |  Terror (32)  |  Turn (454)  |  Universe (900)

Whatever advantage can be attributed to logic in directing and strengthening the action of the understanding is found in a higher degree in mathematical study, with the immense added advantage of a determinate subject, distinctly circumscribed, admitting of the utmost precision, and free from the danger which is inherent in all abstract logic—of leading to useless and puerile rules, or to vain ontological speculations. The positive method, being everywhere identical, is as much at home in the art of reasoning as anywhere else: and this is why no science, whether biology or any other, can offer any kind of reasoning, of which mathematics does not supply a simpler and purer counterpart. Thus, we are enabled to eliminate the only remaining portion of the old philosophy which could even appear to offer any real utility; the logical part, the value of which is irrevocably absorbed by mathematical science.
In Auguste Comte and Harriet Martineau (trans.), Positive Philosophy (1858), Vol. 1, 326-327.
Science quotes on:  |  Abstract (141)  |  Advantage (144)  |  Biology (232)  |  Circumscribe (3)  |  Counterpart (11)  |  Danger (127)  |  Determinate (7)  |  Eliminate (25)  |  Enable (122)  |  Identical (55)  |  Irrevocable (3)  |  Logic (311)  |  Mathematics (1395)  |  Mathematics And Logic (27)  |  Method (531)  |  Old (499)  |  Ontological (2)  |  Philosophy (409)  |  Precision (72)  |  Puerile (3)  |  Pure (299)  |  Reason (766)  |  Rule (307)  |  Simple (426)  |  Speculation (137)  |  Strengthen (25)  |  Study (701)  |  Subject (543)  |  Understand (648)  |  Useless (38)  |  Utility (52)  |  Value (393)

When I examine myself and my methods of thought, I come to the conclusion that the gift of fantasy has meant more to me that my talent for absorbing positive knowledge.
…...
Science quotes on:  |  Absorb (54)  |  Conclusion (266)  |  Examine (84)  |  Fantasy (15)  |  Gift (105)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Mean (810)  |  Method (531)  |  More (2558)  |  Myself (211)  |  Talent (99)  |  Thought (995)

When we understand how animals are resistant to chemicals, the mechanisms are all independent of whether its natural or synthetic. And in fact, when you look at natural chemicals, half of those tested come out positive.
Paper to the American Chemical Society, 'Pollution, Pesticides and Cancer Misconceptions.' As cited by Art Drysdale, 'Latest Insider News: Natural vs. Synthetic Chemical Pesticides' (14 Feb 1999), on the mitosyfraudes.org website. Bruce Ames has written a similar sentiment in various other publications.
Science quotes on:  |  Animal (651)  |  Chemical (303)  |  Fact (1257)  |  Independent (74)  |  Look (584)  |  Mechanism (102)  |  Natural (810)  |  Resistance (41)  |  Synthetic (27)  |  Test (221)  |  Understand (648)  |  Understanding (527)

Where speculation ends—in real life—there real, positive science begins: the representation of the practical activity, of the practical process of development of men. Empty talk about consciousness ceases, and real knowledge has to take its place.
Karl Marx
In David McLellan (ed.), 'The Premisses of the Material Method', Karl Marx: Selected Writings (2000), 181.
Science quotes on:  |  Activity (218)  |  Begin (275)  |  Cease (81)  |  Consciousness (132)  |  Development (441)  |  Empty (82)  |  End (603)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Life (1870)  |  Practical (225)  |  Process (439)  |  Representation (55)  |  Science And Society (25)  |  Speculation (137)  |  Talk (108)

With respect to those points, on which the declaration of Scripture is positive and decisive, as, for instance, in asserting the low antiquity of the human race; the evidence of all facts that have yet been established in Geology coincides with the records of Sacred History and Profane Tradition to confirm the conclusion that the existence of mankind can on no account be supposed to have taken its beginning before that time which is assigned to it in the Mosaic writings.
Vindiciae Geologicae (1820), 23.
Science quotes on:  |  Account (195)  |  Antiquity (34)  |  Beginning (312)  |  Conclusion (266)  |  Confirm (58)  |  Decisive (25)  |  Declaration (10)  |  Evidence (267)  |  Existence (481)  |  Fact (1257)  |  Facts (553)  |  Geology (240)  |  History (716)  |  Human (1512)  |  Human Race (104)  |  Low (86)  |  Mankind (356)  |  Point (584)  |  Race (278)  |  Record (161)  |  Respect (212)  |  Sacred (48)  |  Time (1911)  |  Tradition (76)  |  Writing (192)

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)  |  Naught (10)  |  Nothing (1000)  |  Number (710)  |  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.