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: “Environmental extremists ... wouldn�t let you build a house unless it looked like a bird�s nest.”
more quiz questions >>
Home > Category Index for Science Quotations > Category Index R > Category: Reconcile

Reconcile Quotes (19 quotes)

A physician is an unfortunate gentleman who is every day required to perform a miracle; namely to reconcile health with intemperance.
In Great Thoughts from Master Minds (1887), 8, 49.
Science quotes on:  |  Gentleman (26)  |  Health (210)  |  Intemperance (3)  |  Miracle (85)  |  Perform (123)  |  Physician (284)  |  Required (108)  |  Requirement (66)  |  Unfortunate (19)

Common-sense contents itself with the unreconciled contradiction, laughs when it can, and weeps when it must, and makes, in short, a practical compromise, without trying a theoretical solution.
From Essay, 'German Pessimism', a book review (of Der Modern Pessimismus by Edmund Pfleiderer) in Nation (7 Oct 1875), 21, No. 536, 233. Reprinted in Ralph Barton Perry (ed.), Collected Essays and Reviews by William James (1920), 17.
Science quotes on:  |  Common (447)  |  Compromise (12)  |  Content (75)  |  Contradiction (69)  |  Laugh (50)  |  Must (1525)  |  Practical (225)  |  Sense (785)  |  Short (200)  |  Solution (282)  |  Theoretical (27)  |  Try (296)  |  Trying (144)  |  Weep (5)

Every writer must reconcile, as best he may, the conflicting claims of consistency and variety, of rigour in detail and elegance in the whole. The present author humbly confesses that, to him, geometry is nothing at all, if not a branch of art.
Concluding remark in preface to Treatise on Algebraic Plane Curves (1931), x.
Science quotes on:  |  Art (680)  |  Author (175)  |  Best (467)  |  Branch (155)  |  Claim (154)  |  Conflicting (13)  |  Consistency (31)  |  Detail (150)  |  Elegance (40)  |  Geometry (271)  |  Humbly (8)  |  Must (1525)  |  Nothing (1000)  |  Present (630)  |  Rigour (21)  |  Science And Art (195)  |  Variety (138)  |  Whole (756)  |  Writer (90)

I do not believe in freedom of the will. Schopenhauer’s words: ‘Man can do what he wants, but he cannot will what he wills’ accompany me in all situations throughout my life and reconcile me with the actions of others even if they are rather painful to me. This awareness of the lack of freedom of will preserves me from taking too seriously myself and my fellow men as acting and deciding individuals and from losing my temper.
…...
Science quotes on:  |  Accompany (22)  |  Act (278)  |  Action (342)  |  Awareness (42)  |  Belief (615)  |  Decide (50)  |  Do (1905)  |  Fellow (88)  |  Freedom (145)  |  Individual (420)  |  Lack (127)  |  Life (1870)  |  Lose (165)  |  Man (2252)  |  Myself (211)  |  Other (2233)  |  Painful (12)  |  Preserve (91)  |  Schopenhauer (6)  |  Schopenhauers (2)  |  Seriously (20)  |  Situation (117)  |  Temper (12)  |  Throughout (98)  |  Want (504)  |  Will (2350)  |  Word (650)

I was there when Abbe Georges Lemaître first proposed this [Big Bang] theory. ... There is no rational reason to doubt that the universe has existed indefinitely, for an infinite time. .... It is only myth that attempts to say how the universe came to be, either four thousand or twenty billion years ago.
[Expressing his belief that the Big Bang is a myth devised to explain creation. He said he heard Lemaître (who was, at the time both a member of the Catholic hierarchy and an accomplished scientist) say in private that this theory was a way to reconcile science with St. Thomas Aquinas' theological dictum of creatio ex nihilo—creation out of nothing.]
Quoted in Anthony L. Peratt, 'Dean of the Plasma Dissidents', Washington Times, supplement: The World and I (May 1988),196.
Science quotes on:  |  Saint Thomas Aquinas (18)  |  Attempt (266)  |  Bang (29)  |  Belief (615)  |  Big Bang (45)  |  Billion (104)  |  Both (496)  |  Catholic (18)  |  Creatio Ex Nihilo (2)  |  Creation (350)  |  Dictum (10)  |  Doubt (314)  |  Exist (458)  |  Explain (334)  |  First (1302)  |  Hierarchy (17)  |  Indefinitely (10)  |  Infinite (243)  |  Monsignor Georges Lemaître (7)  |  Myth (58)  |  Nothing (1000)  |  Rational (95)  |  Reason (766)  |  Say (989)  |  Scientist (881)  |  Theology (54)  |  Theory (1015)  |  Thousand (340)  |  Time (1911)  |  Universe (900)  |  Way (1214)  |  Year (963)

If faith cannot be reconciled with rational thinking, it has to be eliminated as an anachronistic remnant of earlier stages of culture and replaced by science dealing with facts and theories which are intelligible and can be validated.
…...
Science quotes on:  |  Culture (157)  |  Deal (192)  |  Early (196)  |  Eliminate (25)  |  Fact (1257)  |  Facts (553)  |  Faith (209)  |  Intelligible (35)  |  Rational (95)  |  Remnant (7)  |  Replace (32)  |  Stage (152)  |  Theory (1015)  |  Think (1122)  |  Thinking (425)

If there is anything that can bind the heavenly mind of man to this dreary exile of our earthly home and can reconcile us with our fate so that one can enjoy living,—then it is verily the enjoyment of the mathematical sciences and astronomy.
In a letter to his son-in-law, Jakob Bartsch. Quoted in Norman Davidson, Sky Phenomena (2004), 131. Also see Johannes Kepler and Carola Baumgardt (ed.), Johannes Kepler: Life and Letters (1951), 190.
Science quotes on:  |  Astronomy (251)  |  Bind (26)  |  Dreary (6)  |  Earth (1076)  |  Enjoyment (37)  |  Exile (6)  |  Fate (76)  |  Home (184)  |  Living (492)  |  Man (2252)  |  Mathematics (1395)  |  Mind (1377)

In this great celestial creation, the catastrophy of a world, such as ours, or even the total dissolution of a system of worlds, may possibly be no more to the great Author of Nature, than the most common accident in life with us, and in all probability such final and general Doomsdays may be as frequent there, as even Birthdays or mortality with us upon the earth. This idea has something so cheerful in it, that I know I can never look upon the stars without wondering why the whole world does not become astronomers; and that men endowed with sense and reason should neglect a science they are naturally so much interested in, and so capable of enlarging their understanding, as next to a demonstration must convince them of their immortality, and reconcile them to all those little difficulties incident to human nature, without the least anxiety. All this the vast apparent provision in the starry mansions seem to promise: What ought we then not to do, to preserve our natural birthright to it and to merit such inheritance, which alas we think created all to gratify alone a race of vain-glorious gigantic beings, while they are confined to this world, chained like so many atoms to a grain of sand.
In The Universe and the Stars: Being an Original Theory on the Visible Creation, Founded on the Laws of Nature (1750, 1837), 132.
Science quotes on:  |  Accident (92)  |  Alone (324)  |  Anxiety (30)  |  Apparent (85)  |  Astronomer (97)  |  Atom (381)  |  Author (175)  |  Become (821)  |  Being (1276)  |  Birthday (9)  |  Birthright (5)  |  Capable (174)  |  Celestial (53)  |  Cheerful (10)  |  Common (447)  |  Convince (43)  |  Creation (350)  |  Demonstration (120)  |  Dissolution (11)  |  Do (1905)  |  Doomsday (5)  |  Earth (1076)  |  Endowed (52)  |  Final (121)  |  General (521)  |  Gigantic (40)  |  Glorious (49)  |  Grain (50)  |  Great (1610)  |  Human (1512)  |  Human Nature (71)  |  Idea (881)  |  Inheritance (35)  |  Interest (416)  |  Know (1538)  |  Life (1870)  |  Little (717)  |  Look (584)  |  Merit (51)  |  More (2558)  |  Most (1728)  |  Must (1525)  |  Natural (810)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Neglect (63)  |  Never (1089)  |  Next (238)  |  Possibly (111)  |  Preserve (91)  |  Probability (135)  |  Promise (72)  |  Race (278)  |  Reason (766)  |  Sand (63)  |  Sense (785)  |  Something (718)  |  Star (460)  |  Stars (304)  |  System (545)  |  Think (1122)  |  Total (95)  |  Understanding (527)  |  Vain (86)  |  Vast (188)  |  Whole (756)  |  Whole World (29)  |  Why (491)  |  World (1850)

Placed as the fossils are in their several tiers of burial-places the one over the other; we have in them true witnesses of successive existences, whilst the historian of man is constantly at fault as to dates and even the sequence of events, to say nothing of the contradicting statements which he is forced to reconcile.
Siluria (1872), 476.
Science quotes on:  |  Burial (8)  |  Contradiction (69)  |  Event (222)  |  Existence (481)  |  Fault (58)  |  Fossil (143)  |  Historian (59)  |  Man (2252)  |  Nothing (1000)  |  Other (2233)  |  Reconciliation (10)  |  Say (989)  |  Sequence (68)  |  Statement (148)  |  Strata (37)  |  Succession (80)  |  Successive (73)  |  Witness (57)

Science and religion cannot be reconciled, and humanity should begin to appreciate the power of its child, and to beat off all attempts at compromise. Religion has failed, and its failures should stand exposed. Science, with its currently successful pursuit of universal competence through the identification of the minimal, the supreme delight of the intellect, should be acknowledged king.
In John Cornwell (ed.), Nature’s Imagination: The Frontiers of Scientific Vision (1995), 132.
Science quotes on:  |  Compromise (12)  |  Failure (176)  |  Humanity (186)  |  Intellect (251)  |  King (39)  |  Science And Religion (337)  |  Success (327)

Science, like life, feeds on its own decay. New facts burst old rules; then newly divined conceptions bind old and new together into a reconciling law.
The Will to Believe and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy, 1910
Science quotes on:  |  Bind (26)  |  Burst (41)  |  Conception (160)  |  Decay (59)  |  Divine (112)  |  Fact (1257)  |  Facts (553)  |  Feed (31)  |  Law (913)  |  Life (1870)  |  New (1273)  |  Newly (4)  |  Old (499)  |  Rule (307)  |  Together (392)

Since religion intrinsically rejects empirical methods, there should never be any attempt to reconcile scientific theories with religion. [An infinitely old universe, always evolving may not be compatible with the Book of Genesis. However, religions such as Buddhism get along without having any explicit creation mythology and are in no way contradicted by a universe without a beginning or end.] Creatio ex nihilo, even as religious doctrine, only dates to around AD 200. The key is not to confuse myth and empirical results, or religion and science.
Quoted in Anthony L. Peratt, 'Dean of the Plasma Dissidents', Washington Times, supplement: The World and I (May 1988),196.
Science quotes on:  |  Attempt (266)  |  Beginning (312)  |  Book (413)  |  Contradict (42)  |  Creatio Ex Nihilo (2)  |  Creation (350)  |  Empirical (58)  |  Empiricism (21)  |  End (603)  |   Genesis (26)  |  Method (531)  |  Myth (58)  |  Mythology (19)  |  Never (1089)  |  Old (499)  |  Reject (67)  |  Religion (369)  |  Religious (134)  |  Result (700)  |  Science And Religion (337)  |  Scientific (955)  |  Scientific Theory (24)  |  Theory (1015)  |  Universe (900)  |  Way (1214)

The effort to reconcile science and religion is almost always made, not by theologians, but by scientists unable to shake off altogether the piety absorbed with their mother’s milk.
In Minority Report: H.L. Mencken’s Notebooks (1956), 166.
Science quotes on:  |  Absorb (54)  |  Effort (243)  |  Milk (23)  |  Mother (116)  |  Piety (5)  |  Religion (369)  |  Science And Religion (337)  |  Scientist (881)  |  Shake (43)  |  Theologian (23)

The harmony of the universe knows only one musical form - the legato; while the symphony of number knows only its opposite - the staccato. All attempts to reconcile this discrepancy are based on the hope that an accelerated staccato may appear to our senses as a legato.
…...
Science quotes on:  |  Accelerate (11)  |  Appear (122)  |  Attempt (266)  |  Base (120)  |  Discrepancy (7)  |  Form (976)  |  Harmony (105)  |  Hope (321)  |  Know (1538)  |  Musical (10)  |  Number (710)  |  Opposite (110)  |  Sense (785)  |  Staccato (2)  |  Symphony (10)  |  Universe (900)

There is one great difficulty with a good hypothesis. When it is completed and rounded, the corners smooth and the content cohesive and coherent, it is likely to become a thing in itself, a work of art. It is then like a finished sonnet or a painting completed. One hates to disturb it. Even if subsequent information should shoot a hole in it, one hates to tear it down because it once was beautiful and whole. One of our leading scientists, having reasoned a reef in the Pacific, was unable for a long time to reconcile the lack of a reef, indicated by soundings, with the reef his mind told him was there.
In John Steinbeck and Edward Flanders Ricketts Sea of Cortez: a Leisurely Journal of Travel and Research (1941), 179-80.
Science quotes on:  |  Art (680)  |  Beautiful (271)  |  Become (821)  |  Coherence (13)  |  Cohesion (7)  |  Cohesive (4)  |  Completed (30)  |  Completeness (19)  |  Completion (23)  |  Content (75)  |  Corner (59)  |  Difficulty (201)  |  Disturb (31)  |  Disturbance (34)  |  Down (455)  |  Finish (62)  |  Good (906)  |  Great (1610)  |  Hate (68)  |  Hypothesis (314)  |  Information (173)  |  Lack (127)  |  Long (778)  |  Mind (1377)  |  Painting (46)  |  Proof (304)  |  Reason (766)  |  Reef (7)  |  Rounded (2)  |  Scientific Method (200)  |  Scientist (881)  |  Smooth (34)  |  Smoothness (3)  |  Sonnet (5)  |  Sounding (2)  |  Subsequent (34)  |  Tear (48)  |  Thing (1914)  |  Time (1911)  |  Whole (756)  |  Work (1402)

To the distracting occupations belong especially my lecture courses which I am holding this winter for the first time, and which now cost much more of my time than I like. Meanwhile I hope that the second time this expenditure of time will be much less, otherwise I would never be able to reconcile myself to it, even practical (astronomical) work must give far more satisfaction than if one brings up to B a couple more mediocre heads which otherwise would have stopped at A.
Letter to Friedrich Bessel (4 Dec 1808). Quoted in G. Waldo Dunnington, Carl Friedrich Gauss: Titan of Science (2004), 415.
Science quotes on:  |  Belong (168)  |  Cost (94)  |  Course (413)  |  Education (423)  |  Expenditure (16)  |  First (1302)  |  Hope (321)  |  Lecture (111)  |  Mediocre (14)  |  More (2558)  |  Must (1525)  |  Myself (211)  |  Never (1089)  |  Occupation (51)  |  Practical (225)  |  Satisfaction (76)  |  Time (1911)  |  Will (2350)  |  Winter (46)  |  Work (1402)

When two texts, or two assertions, perhaps two ideas, are in contradiction, be ready to reconcile them rather than cancel one by the other; regard them as two different facets, or two successive stages, of the same reality, a reality convincingly human just because it is too complex.
In Gary William Flake, The Computational Beauty of Nature (2000), 427.
Science quotes on:  |  Assertion (35)  |  Cancel (5)  |  Complex (202)  |  Complexity (121)  |  Contradiction (69)  |  Difference (355)  |  Different (595)  |  Facet (9)  |  Human (1512)  |  Idea (881)  |  Other (2233)  |  Reality (274)  |  Regard (312)  |  Stage (152)  |  Succession (80)  |  Successive (73)  |  Two (936)

Would not [an] uncluttered mind also see the attempts to reconcile science and religion by disparaging the reduction of the complex to the simple as attempts guided by muddle-headed sentiment and intellectually dishonest emotion?
Essay collected in John Cornwell (ed.), 'The Limitless Power of Science', Nature's Imagination: The Frontiers of Scientific Vision (1995), 123.
Science quotes on:  |  Attempt (266)  |  Clutter (6)  |  Complex (202)  |  Dishonest (7)  |  Disparage (5)  |  Emotion (106)  |  Intellectual (258)  |  Mind (1377)  |  Reduction (52)  |  Religion (369)  |  Science And Religion (337)  |  See (1094)  |  Sentiment (16)  |  Simple (426)

You speak to me, in your own fashion, of a strange psychology which is able to reconcile the wonders of a master craftsmanship with aberrations due to unfathomable stupidity.
Science quotes on:  |  Aberration (10)  |  Craftsmanship (4)  |  Due (143)  |  Fashion (34)  |  Master (182)  |  Psychology (166)  |  Speak (240)  |  Strange (160)  |  Stupidity (40)  |  Unfathomable (11)  |  Wonder (251)


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.