TODAY IN SCIENCE HISTORY ®  •  TODAYINSCI ®
Celebrating 24 Years on the Web
Find science on or your birthday

Today in Science History - Quickie Quiz
Who said: “I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, ... finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell ... whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.”
more quiz questions >>
Home > Category Index for Science Quotations > Category Index R > Category: Rarity

Rarity Quotes (11 quotes)

Anaximenes ... also says that the underlying nature is one and infinite ... but not undefined as Anaximander said but definite, for he identifies it as air; and it differs in its substantial nature by rarity and density. Being made finer it becomes fire; being made thicker it becomes wind, then cloud, then (when thickened still more) water, then earth, then stones; and the rest come into being from these.
Simplicius, Commentary on Aristotle’s Physics, 24, 26-31, quoting Theophrastus on Anaximenes. In G. S. Kirk, J. E. Raven and M.Schofield (eds), The Presocratic Philosophers: A Critical History with a Selection of Texts (1983), p. 145.
Science quotes on:  |  Air (366)  |  Anaximenes (5)  |  Become (821)  |  Being (1276)  |  Cloud (111)  |  Definite (114)  |  Density (25)  |  Differ (88)  |  Earth (1076)  |  Fire (203)  |  Infinite (243)  |  Matter (821)  |  More (2558)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Rest (287)  |  Say (989)  |  Still (614)  |  Stone (168)  |  Substantial (24)  |  Underlying (33)  |  Water (503)  |  Wind (141)

And how admirable and rare an ornament, O good God, is mildenesse in a divine? And how much is it to be wished in this age, that all divines were mathematicians? that is men gentle and meeke.
Trigonometria (1595), trans. R. Handson (1614), Epistle Dedicatorie.
Science quotes on:  |  Admiration (61)  |  Age (509)  |  Divine (112)  |  God (776)  |  Good (906)  |  Mathematician (407)  |  Mildness (2)  |  Ornament (20)  |  Rare (94)  |  Wish (216)

For example, there are numbers of chemists who occupy themselves exclusively with the study of dyestuffs. They discover facts that are useful to scientific chemistry; but they do not rank as genuine scientific men. The genuine scientific chemist cares just as much to learn about erbium—the extreme rarity of which renders it commercially unimportant—as he does about iron. He is more eager to learn about erbium if the knowledge of it would do more to complete his conception of the Periodic Law, which expresses the mutual relations of the elements.
From 'Lessons from the History of Science: The Scientific Attitude' (c.1896), in Collected Papers (1931), Vol. 1, 20.
Science quotes on:  |  Care (203)  |  Chemist (169)  |  Chemistry (376)  |  Commercially (3)  |  Complete (209)  |  Conception (160)  |  Discover (571)  |  Do (1905)  |  Dye (10)  |  Eager (17)  |  Element (322)  |  Erbium (2)  |  Express (192)  |  Extreme (78)  |  Fact (1257)  |  Facts (553)  |  Genuine (54)  |  Iron (99)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Law (913)  |  Learn (672)  |  More (2558)  |  Mutual (54)  |  Number (710)  |  Occupy (27)  |  Periodic Law (6)  |  Periodic Table (19)  |  Rank (69)  |  Relation (166)  |  Render (96)  |  Scientific (955)  |  Study (701)  |  Themselves (433)  |  Unimportant (6)  |  Useful (260)

Genius is less rare than the touchstone by which to test it.
Maxim 319 in Maxims for a Modern Man (1965), 47.
Science quotes on:  |  Genius (301)  |  Rare (94)  |  Test (221)  |  Touchstone (5)

I wish people would more generally bring back the seeds of pleasing foreign plants and introduce them broadcast, sowing them by our waysides and in our fields, or in whatever situation is most likely to suit them. It is true, this would puzzle botanists, but there is no reason why botanists should not be puzzled. A botanist is a person whose aim is to uproot, kill and exterminate every plant that is at all remarkable for rarity or any special virtue, and the rarer it is the more bitterly he will hunt it down.
Samuel Butler, Henry Festing Jones (ed.), The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1917), 281.
Science quotes on:  |  Aim (175)  |  Back (395)  |  Bitterly (2)  |  Botanist (25)  |  Down (455)  |  Exterminate (10)  |  Field (378)  |  Foreign (45)  |  Hunt (32)  |  Introduce (63)  |  Kill (100)  |  More (2558)  |  Most (1728)  |  People (1031)  |  Person (366)  |  Plant (320)  |  Puzzle (46)  |  Reason (766)  |  Seed (97)  |  Situation (117)  |  Sowing (9)  |  Special (188)  |  Uproot (2)  |  Virtue (117)  |  Wayside (4)  |  Whatever (234)  |  Why (491)  |  Will (2350)  |  Wish (216)

It is both a sad and a happy fact of engineering history that disasters have been powerful instruments of change. Designers learn from failure. Industrial society did not invent grand works of engineering, and it was not the first to know design failure. What it did do was develop powerful techniques for learning from the experience of past disasters. It is extremely rare today for an apartment house in North America, Europe, or Japan to fall down. Ancient Rome had large apartment buildings too, but while its public baths, bridges and aqueducts have lasted for two thousand years, its big residential blocks collapsed with appalling regularity. Not one is left in modern Rome, even as ruin.
In Why Things Bite Back: Technology and the Revenge of Unintended Consequences (1997), 23.
Science quotes on:  |  America (143)  |  Ancient (198)  |  Apartment (4)  |  Appalling (10)  |  Aqueduct (4)  |  Bath (11)  |  Both (496)  |  Bridge (49)  |  Bridge Engineering (8)  |  Building (158)  |  Change (639)  |  Collapse (19)  |  Design (203)  |  Designer (7)  |  Develop (278)  |  Disaster (58)  |  Do (1905)  |  Down (455)  |  Engineering (188)  |  Experience (494)  |  Fact (1257)  |  Failure (176)  |  Fall (243)  |  First (1302)  |  Grand (29)  |  Happiness (126)  |  Happy (108)  |  History (716)  |  House (143)  |  Industry (159)  |  Instrument (158)  |  Invention (400)  |  Know (1538)  |  Large (398)  |  Last (425)  |  Lasting (7)  |  Learn (672)  |  Learning (291)  |  Modern (402)  |  Past (355)  |  Powerful (145)  |  Rare (94)  |  Regularity (40)  |  Residence (3)  |  Rome (19)  |  Ruin (44)  |  Sadness (36)  |  Society (350)  |  Technique (84)  |  Thousand (340)  |  Today (321)  |  Two (936)  |  Work (1402)  |  Year (963)

Nowhere is water so beautiful as in the desert for nowhere else is it so scarce. By definition. Water, like a human being or a tree or a bird or a song gains value by rarity, singularity, isolation. In a humid climate water is common. In the desert each drop is precious.
Essay in Desert Images, collected in Beyond the Wall: Essays from the Outside (1984), 82.
Science quotes on:  |  Beautiful (271)  |  Being (1276)  |  Bird (163)  |  Climate (102)  |  Common (447)  |  Definition (238)  |  Desert (59)  |  Drop (77)  |  Gain (146)  |  Human (1512)  |  Human Being (185)  |  Isolation (32)  |  Nowhere (28)  |  Precious (43)  |  Scarce (11)  |  Singularity (4)  |  Song (41)  |  Tree (269)  |  Value (393)  |  Water (503)

Simultaneous discovery is utterly commonplace, and it was only the rarity of scientists, not the inherent improbability of the phenomenon, that made it remarkable in the past. Scientists on the same road may be expected to arrive at the same destination, often not far apart.
From review '[Arthur] Koestler’s Theory of the Creative Act: “The Act of Creation”', in New Statesman (19 Jun 1964). According to Michael Scammell in his biography (Koestler: The Literary and Political Odyssey of a Twentieth-Century Skeptic (2009), 491 and 654), Medawar eviscerated the book as “amateurish” with “overstretched metaphors” and “fatuous epigrams” while Koestler’s psychological insights were “in the style of the nineteenth century.” The review, with follow-ups, were reprinted in Medawar’s The Art of the Soluble: Creativity and Originality in Science (1967), 85-98.
Science quotes on:  |  Apart (7)  |  Arriving (2)  |  Commonplace (24)  |  Destination (16)  |  Discovery (837)  |  Expect (203)  |  Expectation (67)  |  Far (158)  |  Improbability (11)  |  Inherent (43)  |  Past (355)  |  Phenomenon (334)  |  Remarkable (50)  |  Road (71)  |  Same (166)  |  Scientist (881)  |  Simultaneous (23)  |  Utterly (15)

The anatomy of a little child, representing all parts thereof, is accounted a greater rarity than the skeleton of a man in full stature.
In The Church History of Britain (1842), Vol. 1, 165. Fuller’s context was to compare being studious in antiquity with after-ages when perfected.
Science quotes on:  |  Account (195)  |  Adult (24)  |  Anatomy (75)  |  Child (333)  |  Greater (288)  |  Little (717)  |  Man (2252)  |  Rare (94)  |  Represent (157)  |  Skeleton (25)

The business of their weekly Meetings shall be, To order, take account, consider, and discourse of Philosophical Experiments, and Observations: to read, hear, and discourse upon Letters, Reports, and other Papers containing Philosophical matters, as also to view, and discourse upon the productions and rarities of Nature, and Art: and to consider what to deduce from them, or how they may be improv'd for use, or discovery.
'An Abstract of the Statutes of the Royal Society', in Thomas Sprat, History of the Royal Society (1667), 145.
Science quotes on:  |  Account (195)  |  Art (680)  |  Business (156)  |  Consider (428)  |  Deduction (90)  |  Discourse (19)  |  Discovery (837)  |  Experiment (736)  |  Hear (144)  |  Improvement (117)  |  Letter (117)  |  Matter (821)  |  Meeting (22)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Observation (593)  |  Order (638)  |  Other (2233)  |  Paper (192)  |  Production (190)  |  Read (308)  |  Use (771)  |  View (496)

The largest land animal is the elephant, and it is the nearest to man in intelligence: it understands the language of its country and obeys orders, remembers duties that it has been taught, is pleased by affection and by marks of honour, nay more it possesses virtues rare even in man, honesty, wisdom, justice, also respect for the stars and reverence for the sun and moon.
Natural History, 8, I. Trans. H. Rackham, Pliny: Natural History (1947), Vol. 3, 3.
Science quotes on:  |  Affection (44)  |  Animal (651)  |  Country (269)  |  Duty (71)  |  Elephant (35)  |  Honesty (29)  |  Honour (58)  |  Intelligence (218)  |  Justice (40)  |  Language (308)  |  Largest (39)  |  Man (2252)  |  Mark (47)  |  Moon (252)  |  More (2558)  |  Obedience (20)  |  Obey (46)  |  Order (638)  |  Pleasure (191)  |  Possession (68)  |  Rare (94)  |  Remember (189)  |  Remembering (7)  |  Respect (212)  |  Reverence (29)  |  Star (460)  |  Stars (304)  |  Sun (407)  |  Teaching (190)  |  Understand (648)  |  Understanding (527)  |  Virtue (117)  |  Wisdom (235)


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.