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: “Every body perseveres in its state of being at rest or of moving uniformly straight forward, except insofar as it is compelled to change its state by forces impressed.”
more quiz questions >>
Home > Category Index for Science Quotations > Category Index S > Category: Sow

Sow Quotes (11 quotes)

The Redwoods

Here, sown by the Creator's hand,
In serried ranks, the Redwoods stand;
No other clime is honored so,
No other lands their glory know.

The greatest of Earth's living forms,
Tall conquerors that laugh at storms;
Their challenge still unanswered rings,
Through fifty centuries of kings.

The nations that with them were young,
Rich empires, with their forts far-flung,
Lie buried now—their splendor gone;
But these proud monarchs still live on.

So shall they live, when ends our day,
When our crude citadels decay;
For brief the years allotted man,
But infinite perennials' span.

This is their temple, vaulted high,
And here we pause with reverent eye,
With silent tongue and awe-struck soul;
For here we sense life's proper goal;

To be like these, straight, true and fine,
To make our world, like theirs, a shrine;
Sink down, oh traveler, on your knees,
God stands before you in these trees.
In The Record: Volumes 60-61 (1938), 39.
Science quotes on:  |  Awe (43)  |  Brief (37)  |  Challenge (91)  |  Citadel (4)  |  Conqueror (8)  |  Creator (97)  |  Crude (32)  |  Decay (59)  |  Down (455)  |  Earth (1076)  |  End (603)  |  Eye (440)  |  Form (976)  |  Glory (66)  |  Goal (155)  |  God (776)  |  Greatest (330)  |  High (370)  |  Honor (57)  |  Infinite (243)  |  King (39)  |  Know (1538)  |  Laugh (50)  |  Lie (370)  |  Life (1870)  |  Live (650)  |  Living (492)  |  Man (2252)  |  Nation (208)  |  Other (2233)  |  Perennial (9)  |  Poem (104)  |  Proper (150)  |  Rank (69)  |  Redwood (8)  |  Sense (785)  |  Shrine (8)  |  Sink (38)  |  Soul (235)  |  Splendor (20)  |  Stand (284)  |  Still (614)  |  Storm (56)  |  Storms (18)  |  Straight (75)  |  Tall (11)  |  Temple (45)  |  Through (846)  |  Tongue (44)  |  Traveler (33)  |  Tree (269)  |  Unanswered (8)  |  World (1850)  |  Year (963)  |  Young (253)

As we discern a fine line between crank and genius, so also (and unfortunately) we must acknowledge an equally graded trajectory from crank to demagogue. When people learn no tools of judgment and merely follow their hopes, the seeds of political manipulation are sown.
…...
Science quotes on:  |  Acknowledge (33)  |  Crank (18)  |  Discern (35)  |  Equally (129)  |  Fine (37)  |  Follow (389)  |  Genius (301)  |  Grade (12)  |  Hope (321)  |  Judgment (140)  |  Learn (672)  |  Line (100)  |  Manipulation (19)  |  Merely (315)  |  Must (1525)  |  People (1031)  |  Political (124)  |  Seed (97)  |  Tool (129)  |  Trajectory (5)  |  Unfortunately (40)

By the fruit one judges the tree; the tree of science grows exceedingly slowly; centuries elapse before one can pluck the ripe fruits; even today it is hardly possible for us to shell and appraise the kernel of the teachings that blossomed in the seventeenth century. He who sows cannot therefore judge the worth of the corn. He must have faith in the fruitfulness of the seed in order that he may follow untiringly his chosen furrow when he casts his ideas to the four winds of heaven.
As quoted in Philipp Frank, Modern Science and its Philosophy (1949), 62, which cites Évolution de la Mécanique (1903).
Science quotes on:  |  17th Century (20)  |  Appraise (2)  |  Blossom (22)  |  Cast (69)  |  Century (319)  |  Choose (116)  |  Chosen (48)  |  Corn (20)  |  Elapse (3)  |  Exceedingly (28)  |  Faith (209)  |  Follow (389)  |  Fruit (108)  |  Fruitfulness (2)  |  Furrow (5)  |  Grow (247)  |  Heaven (266)  |  Idea (881)  |  Judge (114)  |  Kernel (4)  |  Must (1525)  |  Order (638)  |  Pluck (5)  |  Possible (560)  |  Ripe (5)  |  Seed (97)  |  Shell (69)  |  Slowly (19)  |  Teaching (190)  |  Teachings (11)  |  Today (321)  |  Tree (269)  |  Wind (141)  |  Worth (172)

Education is not a matter of getting facts and sowing them within brains, but that it is an attitude of mind that you teach children to find out for themselves
Interview with David Barrett, 'Attenborough: Children Don’t Know Enough About Nature', Daily Telegraph (17 Apr 2011).
Science quotes on:  |  Attitude (84)  |  Brain (281)  |  Child (333)  |  Children (201)  |  Education (423)  |  Fact (1257)  |  Facts (553)  |  Find (1014)  |  Matter (821)  |  Mind (1377)  |  Sowing (9)  |  Teach (299)  |  Themselves (433)

For they have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind.
Bible
Hosea, 9:7. In Robert Andrews Famous Lines: a Columbia Dictionary of Familiar Quotations (1997), 340.
Science quotes on:  |  Atomic Bomb (115)  |  Reap (19)  |  Wind (141)

He sows hurry and reaps indigestion.
In 'An Apology For Idlers', The Living Age (1877), 134, 436.
Science quotes on:  |  Hurry (16)  |  Indigestion (5)  |  Reap (19)

In Cairo, I secured a few grains of wheat that had slumbered for more than thirty centuries in an Egyptian tomb. As I looked at them this thought came into my mind: If one of those grains had been planted on the banks of the Nile the year after it grew, and all its lineal descendants had been planted and replanted from that time until now, its progeny would to-day be sufficiently numerous to feed the teeming millions of the world. An unbroken chain of life connects the earliest grains of wheat with the grains that we sow and reap. There is in the grain of wheat an invisible something which has power to discard the body that we see, and from earth and air fashion a new body so much like the old one that we cannot tell the one from the other.…This invisible germ of life can thus pass through three thousand resurrections.
In In His Image (1922), 33.
Science quotes on:  |  Air (366)  |  Bank (31)  |  Body (557)  |  Century (319)  |  Chain (51)  |  Connect (126)  |  Descendant (18)  |  Discard (32)  |  DNA (81)  |  Earth (1076)  |  Egypt (31)  |  Fashion (34)  |  Feeding (7)  |  Germ (54)  |  Grain (50)  |  Growth (200)  |  Invisible (66)  |  Life (1870)  |  Look (584)  |  Million (124)  |  Mind (1377)  |  More (2558)  |  New (1273)  |  Nile (5)  |  Numerous (70)  |  Old (499)  |  Other (2233)  |  Pass (241)  |  Plant (320)  |  Planting (4)  |  Power (771)  |  Progeny (16)  |  Reap (19)  |  Resurrection (4)  |  Secured (18)  |  See (1094)  |  Slumber (6)  |  Something (718)  |  Sufficient (133)  |  Teeming (5)  |  Tell (344)  |  Thought (995)  |  Thousand (340)  |  Through (846)  |  Time (1911)  |  Today (321)  |  Tomb (15)  |  Unbroken (10)  |  Wheat (10)  |  World (1850)  |  Year (963)

Science and common sense differ as cultivated fruits differ from wild fruits. Science sows its seeds of inquiry, and gathers the fruit. Common sense picks the fruit, such as it, is by the wayside. Common sense has no fields or orchards of knowledge.
In Sir William Withey Gull and Theodore Dyke Acland (ed.), A Collection of the Published Writings of William Withey Gull (1896), lvi.
Science quotes on:  |  Common (447)  |  Common Sense (136)  |  Cultivate (24)  |  Differ (88)  |  Difference (355)  |  Field (378)  |  Fruit (108)  |  Gather (76)  |  Inquiry (88)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Orchard (4)  |  Pick (16)  |  Seed (97)  |  Sense (785)  |  Wayside (4)  |  Wild (96)

The discovery that these soccer-ball-like molecules can be made in large quantities will have an effect on chemistry like the sowing of a bucket of flower seeds—the results will spring up everywhere from now on. I’d be surprised if we don’t see thousands of new fullerene compounds in the next few years, some of which are almost certain to have important uses.
As quoted in Malcolm W. Browne, 'Bizarre New Class of Molecules Spawns Its Own Branch of Chemistry', New York Times (25 Dec 1990), Late Edition (East Coast), L37.
Science quotes on:  |  Ball (64)  |  Bucket (4)  |  Buckyball (5)  |  Certain (557)  |  Chemistry (376)  |  Compound (117)  |  Discovery (837)  |  Effect (414)  |  Everywhere (98)  |  Flower (112)  |  Fullerene (4)  |  Important (229)  |  Large (398)  |  Molecule (185)  |  New (1273)  |  Next (238)  |  Quantity (136)  |  Result (700)  |  See (1094)  |  Seed (97)  |  Soccer (3)  |  Sowing (9)  |  Spring (140)  |  Thousand (340)  |  Use (771)  |  Will (2350)  |  Year (963)

There are two kinds of physician - those who work for love, and those who work for their own profit. They are both known by their works; the true and just physician is known by his love and by his unfailing love for his neighbor. The unjust physicians are known for their transgressions against the commandment; for they reap, although they have not sown, and they are like ravening wolves; they reap because they want to reap, in order to increase their profit, and they are heedless of the commandment of love.
…...
Science quotes on:  |  Against (332)  |  Both (496)  |  Commandment (8)  |  Heedless (2)  |  Increase (225)  |  Kind (564)  |  Know (1538)  |  Known (453)  |  Love (328)  |  Medicine (392)  |  Neighbor (14)  |  Order (638)  |  Physician (284)  |  Profit (56)  |  Raven (2)  |  Reap (19)  |  Transgression (3)  |  True (239)  |  Two (936)  |  Unfailing (6)  |  Unjust (6)  |  Want (504)  |  Wolf (11)  |  Work (1402)

To teach one who has no curiosity to learn, is to sow a field without ploughing it.
From Annotation to Essay 50, 'Of Studies', in Bacon’s Essays: With Annotations (1856), 446.
Science quotes on:  |  Curiosity (138)  |  Field (378)  |  Learn (672)  |  Ploughing (3)  |  Teach (299)


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.