Recover Quotes (14 quotes)
~~[No known source]~~ Later generations will regard Mengenlehre [set theory] as a disease from which one has recovered.
Webmaster finds zero support for the authenticity of this quote. Speculations on how it may have evolved include reference to a beau cas pathologique (a beautiful pathological case) in a very different quote which begins “I think, and I am not the only one…”. (See the Henri Poincaré Quotes web page of this site.) More details readily available with a Google search (for example): Did Poincaré say “set theory is a disease”. The quote is included here to provide this caution.
All programs on jungles had previously been filmed from the bottom up, with dead leaves and a dead animal or two. Suddenly, I realized that it’s at the top that everything is blossoming and populating and having a ball. So, I wrote it from the top. The director happened to be a young, ludicrously athletic fellow who decided to film me up a 200-foot kapok tree on a rope. Sheer vanity from elder to younger led me to say yes. At 5 feet off the ground it’s interesting. At 10 feet you say, “Hmmm a bit high.” At 50 feet it’s exhausting and at 90 feet terrifying because you realize that no one can get to you if you decide you don’t like it. To get down you have to retie all the ropes. You don’t just come down. I was so petrified I had forgotten I’d left my radio on, so everyone down below was falling about with laughter listening to me praying and swearing to myself in terror. By the time I came down I had recovered my cool and was going around saying it had all been fine without realizing they’d all heard me.
In Justine de Lacy, 'Around the World With Attenborough', New York Times (27 Jan 1985), Sec. 2, 25.
If finally, the science should prove that society at a certain time revert to the church and recover its old foundation of absolute faith in a personal providence and a revealed religion, it commits suicide.
In The Degradation of the Democratic Dogma (1919), 131.
If thou examinest a man having a break in the column of his nose, his nose being disfigured, and a [depression] being in it, while the swelling that is on it protrudes, [and] he had discharged blood from both his nostrils, thou shouldst say concerning him: “One having a break in the column of his nose. An ailment which I will treat. “Thou shouldst cleanse [it] for him [with] two plugs of linen. Thou shouldst place two [other] plugs of linen saturated with grease in the inside of his two nostrils. Thou shouldst put [him] at his mooring stakes until the swelling is drawn out. Thou shouldst apply for him stiff rolls of linen by which his nose is held fast. Thou shouldst treat him afterward [with] lint, every day until he recovers.
(circa 1700 B.C.) From “The Edwin Smith Surgical Papyrus”, an ancient Egyptian document regarded as the earliest known historical record of scientific thought. As translated in James Henry Breasted, The Edwin Smith Surgical Papyrus: Published in Facsimile and Hieroglyphic Transliteration with Translation and Commentary (1930), 440.
Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, one by one.
From Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions (1841), Vol. 1, 3.
On principle no European traveler, especially the natural scientist, should travel otherwise than in the company of a native. This is essential, especially in view of his inability to make himself understood, to threaten to summon reinforcements when molested, or to recover forgotten pieces of clothing.
In Konrad Guenther, Georg Schweinfurth-Lebensbüd eines Afrikaforschers (1954), 317. As quoted and cited in Kathrin Fritsch, '"You Have Everything Confused And Mixed Up…!" Georg Schweinfurth, Knowledge And Cartography Of Africa In The 19th Century', History in Africa (2009), 36, 88.
Our discombobulated lives need to sink some anchors in numerical stability. (I still have not recovered from the rise of a pound of hamburger at the supermarket to more than a buck.)
…...
Revolutions of ages do not oft recover the loss of a rejected truth, for the want of which whole nations fare the worse.
In Areopagitica: A speech of Mr John Milton for the Liberty of Unlicenced printing to the Parliament of England (23 Nov 1644), 4.
The custom of eating the lover after consummation of the nuptials, of making a meal of the exhausted pigmy, who is henceforth good for nothing, is not so difficult to understand, since insects can hardly be accused of sentimentality; but to devour him during the act surpasses anything the most morbid mind could imagine. I have seen the thing with my own eyes, and I have not yet recovered from my surprise.
In Jean-Henri Fabre and B. Miall (trans.), Social Life in the Insect World (1912), 84.
The Earth has recovered after fevers like this, and there are no grounds for thinking that what we are doing will destroy Gaia, but if we continue business as usual, our species may never again enjoy the lush and verdant world we had only a hundred years ago. What is most in danger is civilization; humans are tough enough for breeding pairs to survive, and Gaia is toughest of all. What we are doing weakens her but is unlikely to destroy her. She has survived numerous catastrophes in her three billion years or more of life.
In The Revenge of Gaia: Earth’s Climate Crisis & The Fate of Humanity (2006, 2007), 76-77.
The great secret, known to internists…, but still hidden from the general public, is that most things get better by themselves. Most things, in fact, are better by morning.
In 'Aspects of Biomedical Science Policy', The New England Journal of Medicine (12 Oct 1972), 3. Also published as Occasional Paper of the Institute of Medicine.
The notion that the “balance of nature” is delicately poised and easily upset is nonsense. Nature is extraordinarily tough and resilient, interlaced with checks and balances, with an astonishing capacity for recovering from disturbances in equilibrium. The formula for survival is not power; it is symbiosis.
In Encounter (Mar 1976), 16. As quoted and cited in Alan Lindsay Mackay , A Dictionary of Scientific Quotations (2nd Ed., 1991), 13.
When men die of disease they are said to die from natural causes. When they recover (and mostly they do) the doctor gets the credit of curing them.
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When you recover or discover something that nourishes your soul and brings joy, care enough about yourself to make room for it in your life.
Quoted in Kim Lim (ed.), 1,001 Pearls of Spiritual Wisdom: Words to Enrich, Inspire, and Guide Your Life (2014), 253
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) -- 
