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 R > Category: Restlessness

Restlessness Quotes (8 quotes)

I have no objection to restlessness. Dissatisfaction with possession and achievement is one of the requisites to further achievement.
John Hope
As quoted in Ridgely Torrence, The Story of John Hope (1948), 144.
Science quotes on:  |  Achievement (187)  |  Dissatisfaction (13)  |  Objection (34)  |  Possession (68)  |  Requisite (12)

I recall my own emotions: I had just been initiated into the mysteries of the complex number. I remember my bewilderment: here were magnitudes patently impossible and yet susceptible of manipulations which lead to concrete results. It was a feeling of dissatisfaction, of restlessness, a desire to fill these illusory creatures, these empty symbols, with substance. Then I was taught to interpret these beings in a concrete geometrical way. There came then an immediate feeling of relief, as though I had solved an enigma, as though a ghost which had been causing me apprehension turned out to be no ghost at all, but a familiar part of my environment.
In Tobias Dantzig and Joseph Mazur (ed.), 'The Two Realities', Number: The Language of Science (1930, ed. by Joseph Mazur 2007), 254.
Science quotes on:  |  Apprehension (26)  |  Being (1276)  |  Bewilderment (8)  |  Cause (561)  |  Complex (202)  |  Complex Number (3)  |  Concrete (55)  |  Creature (242)  |  Desire (212)  |  Dissatisfaction (13)  |  Emotion (106)  |  Empty (82)  |  Enigma (16)  |  Environment (239)  |  Familiar (47)  |  Feeling (259)  |  Fill (67)  |  Geometry (271)  |  Ghost (36)  |  Illusory (2)  |  Immediate (98)  |  Impossible (263)  |  Initiate (13)  |  Interpret (25)  |  Lead (391)  |  Magnitude (88)  |  Manipulation (19)  |  Mystery (188)  |  Number (710)  |  Patently (4)  |  Recall (11)  |  Relief (30)  |  Remember (189)  |  Restless (13)  |  Result (700)  |  Solve (145)  |  Substance (253)  |  Susceptible (8)  |  Symbol (100)  |  Teach (299)  |  Turn (454)  |  Turn Out (9)  |  Way (1214)

In science, self-satisfaction is death. Personal self-satisfaction is the death of the scientist. Collective self-satisfaction is the death of the research. It is restlessness, anxiety, dissatisfaction, agony of mind that nourish science.
Quoted in 'Ariadne', New Scientist (17 Jun 1976) 70, 680, which states it comes from Le Nouvel Observateur which revived the quote, “from an earlier interview.” If you know this primary source, please contact Webmaster.
Science quotes on:  |  Agony (7)  |  Anxiety (30)  |  Death (406)  |  Dissatisfaction (13)  |  Doubt (314)  |  Enquiry (89)  |  Mind (1377)  |  Research (753)  |  Satisfaction (76)  |  Scientist (881)  |  Self (268)

Invention is an Heroic thing, and plac'd above the reach of a low, and vulgar Genius. It requires an active, a bold, a nimble, a restless mind: a thousand difficulties must be contemn'd with which a mean heart would be broken: many attempts must be made to no purpose: much Treasure must sometimes be scatter'd without any return: much violence, and vigour of thoughts must attend it: some irregularities, and excesses must be granted it, that would hardly be pardon'd by the severe Rules of Prudence.
The History of the Royal Society (1667), 392.
Science quotes on:  |  Active (80)  |  Activity (218)  |  Attempt (266)  |  Attend (67)  |  Attention (196)  |  Bold (22)  |  Boldness (11)  |  Broken (56)  |  Difficulty (201)  |  Excess (23)  |  Genius (301)  |  Grant (76)  |  Heart (243)  |  Heroism (7)  |  Invention (400)  |  Irregularity (12)  |  Low (86)  |  Mean (810)  |  Mind (1377)  |  Must (1525)  |  Pardon (7)  |  Prudence (4)  |  Purpose (336)  |  Reach (286)  |  Require (229)  |  Return (133)  |  Rule (307)  |  Thing (1914)  |  Thought (995)  |  Thousand (340)  |  Treasure (59)  |  Vigour (18)  |  Violence (37)  |  Vulgar (33)

Looking back over the geological record it would seem that Nature made nearly every possible mistake before she reached her greatest achievement Man—or perhaps some would say her worst mistake of all. ... At last she tried a being of no great size, almost defenseless, defective in at least one of the more important sense organs; one gift she bestowed to save him from threatened extinction—a certain stirring, a restlessness, in the organ called the brain.
…...
Science quotes on:  |  Achievement (187)  |  Back (395)  |  Bad (185)  |  Being (1276)  |  Bestow (18)  |  Brain (281)  |  Call (781)  |  Certain (557)  |  Defective (4)  |  Defenseless (3)  |  Extinction (80)  |  Geological Record (2)  |  Gift (105)  |  Great (1610)  |  Greatest (330)  |  Important (229)  |  Last (425)  |  Least (75)  |  Looking (191)  |  Man (2252)  |  Mistake (180)  |  More (2558)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Nearly (137)  |  Organ (118)  |  Possible (560)  |  Reach (286)  |  Record (161)  |  Save (126)  |  Say (989)  |  Seem (150)  |  Sense (785)  |  Size (62)  |  Stir (23)  |  Threaten (33)  |  Try (296)  |  Worst (57)

Restlessness and discontent are the first necessities of Progress.
In Dagobert David Runes (ed.), The Diary and Sundry Observations of Thomas Alva Edison (1948), 110.
Science quotes on:  |  Discontent (6)  |  First (1302)  |  Necessity (197)  |  Progress (492)

Science has its being in a perpetual mental restlessness.
From 'Poetry and Science', in W.H. Harlow, Essays and Studies by Members of the English Association (1932), Vol. 17, 12.
Science quotes on:  |  Being (1276)  |  Mental (179)  |  Perpetual (59)  |  Perpetuity (9)

The variety of minds served the economy of nature in many ways. The Creator, who designed the human brain for activity, had insured the restlessness of all minds by enabling no single one to envisage all the qualities of the creation. Since no one by himself could aspire to a serene knowledge of the whole truth, all men had been drawn into an active, exploratory and cooperative attitude.
In The Lost World of Thomas Jefferson (1948, 1993), 125.
Science quotes on:  |  Active (80)  |  Activity (218)  |  Aspire (15)  |  Attitude (84)  |  Brain (281)  |  Creation (350)  |  Creator (97)  |  Design (203)  |  Himself (461)  |  Human (1512)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Mind (1377)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Single (365)  |  Truth (1109)  |  Variety (138)  |  Way (1214)  |  Whole (756)


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.