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: “I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, ... finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell ... whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.”
more quiz questions >>
Home > Category Index for Science Quotations > Category Index S > Category: Sooner

Sooner Quotes (6 quotes)

Many people would sooner die than think. In fact they do.
…...
Science quotes on:  |  Die (94)  |  Do (1905)  |  Fact (1257)  |  People (1031)  |  Think (1122)

Nothing cools so fast as undue enthusiasm. Water that has boiled freezes sooner than any other.
From chapter 'Jottings from a Note-Book', in Canadian Stories (1918), 171.
Science quotes on:  |  Boil (24)  |  Cool (15)  |  Enthusiasm (59)  |  Fast (49)  |  Freeze (6)  |  Nothing (1000)  |  Other (2233)  |  Undue (4)  |  Water (503)

Sooner or later in every talk, [David] Brower describes the creation of the world. He invites his listeners to consider the six days of Genesis as a figure of speech for what has in fact been 4 billion years. On this scale, one day equals something like six hundred and sixty-six million years, and thus, all day Monday and until Tuesday noon, creation was busy getting the world going. Life began Tuesday noon, and the beautiful organic wholeness of it developed over the next four days. At 4 p.m. Saturday, the big reptiles came on. At three minutes before midnight on the last day, man appeared. At one-fourth of a second before midnight Christ arrived. At one-fortieth of a second before midnight, the Industrial Revolution began. We are surrounded with people who think that what we have been doing for that one-fortieth of a second can go on indefinitely. They are considered normal, but they are stark. raving mad.
In Encounters with the Archdruid (1971), 79-80.
Science quotes on:  |  Appear (122)  |  Arrive (40)  |  Beautiful (271)  |  Begin (275)  |  Big (55)  |  Billion (104)  |  Brower (2)  |  Busy (32)  |  Christ (17)  |  Consider (428)  |  Creation (350)  |  David (6)  |  Describe (132)  |  Develop (278)  |  Doing (277)  |  Equal (88)  |  Fact (1257)  |  Figure (162)  |   Genesis (26)  |  Hundred (240)  |  Indefinitely (10)  |  Industrial Revolution (10)  |  Invite (10)  |  Last (425)  |  Late (119)  |  Life (1870)  |  Listener (7)  |  Mad (54)  |  Man (2252)  |  Midnight (12)  |  Million (124)  |  Minute (129)  |  Monday (3)  |  Next (238)  |  Noon (14)  |  Normal (29)  |  Organic (161)  |  P (2)  |  People (1031)  |  Reptile (33)  |  Revolution (133)  |  Saturday (11)  |  Scale (122)  |  Second (66)  |  Something (718)  |  Speech (66)  |  Stark (3)  |  Surround (33)  |  Talk (108)  |  Think (1122)  |  Tuesday (3)  |  Wholeness (9)  |  World (1850)  |  Year (963)

Sylvester’s writings are flowery and eloquent. He was able to make the dullest subject bright, fresh and interesting. His enthusiasm is evident in every line. He would get quite close up to his subject, so that everything else looked small in comparison, and for the time would think and make others think that the world contained no finer matter for contemplation. His handwriting was bad, and a trouble to his printers. His papers were finished with difficulty. No sooner was the manuscript in the editor’s hands than alterations, corrections, ameliorations and generalizations would suggest themselves to his mind, and every post would carry further directions to the editors and printers.
In Nature (1897), 55, 494.
Science quotes on:  |  Alteration (31)  |  Ameliorate (2)  |  Bad (185)  |  Bright (81)  |  Carry (130)  |  Comparison (108)  |  Contemplation (75)  |  Correction (42)  |  Difficulty (201)  |  Direction (185)  |  Dull (58)  |  Editor (10)  |  Eloquent (2)  |  Enthusiasm (59)  |  Everything (489)  |  Evident (92)  |  Finish (62)  |  Fresh (69)  |  Generalization (61)  |  Hand (149)  |  Handwriting (2)  |  Interest (416)  |  Interesting (153)  |  Look (584)  |  Manuscript (10)  |  Mathematicians and Anecdotes (141)  |  Matter (821)  |  Mind (1377)  |  Other (2233)  |  Paper (192)  |  Post (8)  |  Printer (2)  |  Small (489)  |  Subject (543)  |  Suggest (38)  |  James Joseph Sylvester (58)  |  Themselves (433)  |  Think (1122)  |  Time (1911)  |  Trouble (117)  |  World (1850)  |  Writing (192)

The engineers, working in conjunction with the scientists, can win wars, or decide their outcome, sooner than the soldiers.
Explaining Napoleon’s remark to Gaspard Gourgaud that “Engineers are more clever than artillerymen.” With co-author Harold Orel, in 'How to Make Technical Writing Easy', Professional Engineer (1958), 29, 18.
Science quotes on:  |  Conjunction (12)  |  Decide (50)  |  Engineer (136)  |  Outcome (15)  |  Scientist (881)  |  Soldier (28)  |  War (233)  |  Win (53)  |  Work (1402)

The realization that our small planet is only one of many worlds gives mankind the perspective it needs to realize sooner that our own world belongs to all of its creatures, that the Moon landing marks the end of our childhood as a race and the beginning of a newer and better civilization.
Webmaster, as yet, has not traced a primary source. Although this is widely quoted in print and online, each time is without source cited. An early example is Laurence J. Peter (ed.), Peter’s Quotations (1977, 1979), 539. The moon landing was on 20 Jul 1969, and Clarke may have contributed this quote during an interview after that day. Clarke had previously speculated, in 1951, on the possible words of a historian from the year 3000, “The coming of the rocket brought to an end a million years of isolation. With the landing of the first spaceship on Mars and Venus, the childhood of our race was over and history as we know it began.” In 'Concerning Means and Ends', The Exploration of Space (1951), 195. This is contained in a longer quote on this webpage, beginning: “[What verdict would a historian of the year 3000…].
Science quotes on:  |  Begin (275)  |  Beginning (312)  |  Belong (168)  |  Better (493)  |  Childhood (42)  |  Civilization (220)  |  Creature (242)  |  End (603)  |  Give (208)  |  Mankind (356)  |  Mark (47)  |  Moon (252)  |  Moon Landing (9)  |  Need (320)  |  New (1273)  |  Perspective (28)  |  Planet (402)  |  Race (278)  |  Realization (44)  |  Realize (157)  |  Small (489)  |  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.