Slightly Quotes (3 quotes)
An old paleontological in joke proclaims that mammalian evolution is a tale told by teeth mating to produce slightly altered descendant teeth.
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I love to read the dedications of old books written in monarchies—for they invariably honor some (usually insignificant) knight or duke with fulsome words of sycophantic insincerity, praising him as the light of the universe (in hopes, no doubt, for a few ducats to support future work); this old practice makes me feel like such an honest and upright man, by comparison, when I put a positive spin, perhaps ever so slightly exaggerated, on a grant proposal.
From essay 'The Razumovsky Duet', collected in The Dinosaur in a Haystack: Reflections in Natural History (1995, 1997), 263.
Teaching thermal physics
Is as easy as a song:
You think you make it simpler
When you make it slightly wrong!
Is as easy as a song:
You think you make it simpler
When you make it slightly wrong!
In The Physics Teacher (Sep 1970). As quoted and cited in Clifford Swartz, Cliff's Nodes: Editorials from The Physics Teacher (2006), 192.
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) -- 
