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: “Science without religion is lame; religion without science is blind.”
more quiz questions >>
Home > Category Index for Science Quotations > Category Index R > Category: Rough

Rough Quotes (5 quotes)

At the sea shore you pick up a pebble, fashioned after a law of nature, in the exact form that best resists pressure, and worn as smooth as glass. It is so perfect that you take it as a keepsake. But could you know its history from the time when a rough fragment of rock fell from the overhanging cliff into the sea, to be taken possession of by the under currents, and dragged from one ocean to another, perhaps around the world, for a hundred years, until in reduced and perfect form it was cast upon the beach as you find it, you would have a fit illustration of what many principles, now in familiar use, have endured, thus tried, tortured and fashioned during the ages.
From Address (1 Aug 1875), 'The Growth of Principles' at Saratoga. Collected in William L. Snyder (ed.), Great Speeches by Great Lawyers: A Collection of Arguments and Speeches (1901), 246.
Science quotes on:  |  Age (509)  |  Beach (23)  |  Best (467)  |  Cast (69)  |  Cliff (22)  |  Current (122)  |  Familiar (47)  |  Find (1014)  |  Fit (139)  |  Form (976)  |  Fragment (58)  |  Glass (94)  |  History (716)  |  Hundred (240)  |  Illustration (51)  |  Know (1538)  |  Law (913)  |  Law Of Nature (80)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Ocean (216)  |  Pebble (27)  |  Perfect (223)  |  Possession (68)  |  Pressure (69)  |  Principle (530)  |  Reduced (3)  |  Rock (176)  |  Sea (326)  |  Seashore (7)  |  Smooth (34)  |  Time (1911)  |  Use (771)  |  Wear (20)  |  World (1850)  |  Year (963)

Germs of a theory, though in their present condition they are vague and formless … may be said to resemble stones in the quarry, rough and unhewn, but which may some time become corner-stones, columns, and entablatures in the future edifice.
In Report on the Geology of the High Plateaus of Utah (1880), 114.
Science quotes on:  |  Become (821)  |  Column (15)  |  Condition (362)  |  Corner (59)  |  Cornerstone (8)  |  Edifice (26)  |  Formless (4)  |  Future (467)  |  Germ (54)  |  Hypothesis (314)  |  Present (630)  |  Quarry (14)  |  Resemble (65)  |  Stone (168)  |  Theory (1015)  |  Time (1911)  |  Vague (50)

Science progresses by a series of combinations in which chance plays not the least role. Its life is rough and resembles that of minerals which grow by juxtaposition [accretion]. This applies not only to science such as it emerges [results] from the work of a series of scientists, but also to the particular research of each one of them. In vain would analysts dissimulate: (however abstract it may be, analysis is no more our power than that of others); they do not deduce, they combine, they compare: (it must be sought out, sounded out, solicited.) When they arrive at the truth it is by cannoning from one side to another that they come across it.
English translation from manuscript, in Évariste Galois and Peter M. Neumann, 'Dossier 12: On the progress of pure analysis', The Mathematical Writings of Évariste Galois (2011), 263. A transcription of the original French is on page 262. In the following quote from that page, indicated deletions are omitted, and Webmaster uses parentheses to enclose indications of insertions above the original written line. “La science progresse par une série de combinaisons où le hazard ne joue pas le moindre rôle; sa vie est brute et ressemble à celle des minéraux qui croissent par juxtà position. Cela s’applique non seulement à la science telle qu’elle résulte des travaux d’une série de savants, mais aussi aux recherches particulières à chacun d’eux. En vain les analystes voudraient-ils se le dissimuler: (toute immatérielle qu’elle wst analyse n’est pas pas plus en notre pouvoir que des autres); ils ne déduisent pas, ils combinent, ils comparent: (il faut l’epier, la sonder, la solliciter) quand ils arrivent à la vérité, c’est en heurtant de côté et d’autre qu’il y sont tombés.” Webmaster corrected from typo “put” to “but” in the English text.
Science quotes on:  |  Abstract (141)  |  Abstract Mathematics (9)  |  Accretion (5)  |  Across (32)  |  Analysis (244)  |  Analyst (8)  |  Apply (170)  |  Arrive (40)  |  Chance (244)  |  Combination (150)  |  Combine (58)  |  Compare (76)  |  Deduce (27)  |  Do (1905)  |  Emerge (24)  |  Grow (247)  |  In Vain (12)  |  Juxtaposition (3)  |  Least (75)  |  Life (1870)  |  Mineral (66)  |  More (2558)  |  Must (1525)  |  Other (2233)  |  Particular (80)  |  Play (116)  |  Power (771)  |  Progress (492)  |  Research (753)  |  Resemble (65)  |  Result (700)  |  Role (86)  |  Scientist (881)  |  Seek (218)  |  Series (153)  |  Side (236)  |  Solicit (2)  |  Sound (187)  |  Truth (1109)  |  Vain (86)  |  Work (1402)

The mountains too, at a distance, appear airy masses and smooth, but seen near at hand they are rough.
Diogenes Laertius, trans. Charles Duke Yonge, The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers (1901), 411.
Science quotes on:  |  Appearance (145)  |  Distance (171)  |  Mountain (202)  |  Smooth (34)

This is the excellent foppery of the world: that when we are sick in fortune—often the surfeits of our own behaviour—we make guilty of our disasters the sun, the moon, and stars, as if we were villains on necessity, fools by heavenly compulsion, knaves, thieves, and treachers by spherical predominance, drunkards, liars, and adulterers, by an enforced obedience of planetary influence, and all that we are evil in, by a divine thrusting on. An admirable evasion of whoremaster man, to lay his goatish disposition on the charge of a star! My father compounded with my mother under the Dragon's tail and my nativity was under Ursa Major, so that it follows that I am rough and lecherous. Fut! I should have been that I am had the maidenliest star in the firmament twinkled on my bastardizing.
King Lear (1605-6), I, ii.
Science quotes on:  |  Astrology (46)  |  Bastard (2)  |  Behavior (95)  |  Behaviour (42)  |  Charge (63)  |  Compound (117)  |  Compulsion (19)  |  Disaster (58)  |  Disposition (44)  |  Divine (112)  |  Dragon (6)  |  Drunkard (8)  |  Evil (122)  |  Father (113)  |  Firmament (18)  |  Follow (389)  |  Fool (121)  |  Fortune (50)  |  Heaven (266)  |  Influence (231)  |  Liar (8)  |  Major (88)  |  Man (2252)  |  Moon (252)  |  Mother (116)  |  Necessity (197)  |  Obedience (20)  |  Planet (402)  |  Planetary (29)  |  Sick (83)  |  Star (460)  |  Stars (304)  |  Sun (407)  |  Thief (6)  |  Twinkling (2)  |  Villain (5)  |  World (1850)


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.