Saturate Quotes (2 quotes)
The production of heat alone is not sufficient to give birth to the impelling power: it is necessary that there should also be cold; without it the heat would be useless. And in fact, if we should find about us only bodies as hot as our furnaces, how can we condense steam? What should we do with it if once produced? We should not presume that we might discharge it into the atmosphere, as is done in some engines; the atmosphere would not receive it. It does receive it under the actual condition of things only because…it is at a lower temperature, otherwise it…would be already saturated.
As translated in Reflections on the Motive Power of Heat and on Machines Fitted to Develop Power (1890, Rev. 1897), 46-47. Edited by R. H. Thurston, from the original French, Réflexions sur la Puissance Motrice du Feu (1824).
Understanding … must begin by saturating itself with facts and realities. … Besides, we only understand that which is already within us. To understand is to possess the thing understood, first by sympathy and then by intelligence. Instead of first dismembering and dissecting the object to be conceived, we should begin by laying hold of it in its ensemble. The procedure is the same, whether we study a watch or a plant, a work of art or a character.
(7 Apr 1886). In Mary A. Ward (trans.), Amiel’s Journal: The Journal Intime of Henri-Frédéric Amiel (1889), 119.
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) -- 
