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 was going to record talking... the foil was put on; I then shouted 'Mary had a little lamb',... and the machine reproduced it perfectly.”
more quiz questions >>
Home > Category Index for Science Quotations > Category Index S > Category: Stationary

Stationary Quotes (11 quotes)

As an individual opinion of mine, perhaps not as yet shared by many, I may be permitted to state, by the way, that I consider pure Mathematics to be only one branch of general Logic, the branch originating from the creation of Number, to the economical virtues of which is due the enormous development that particular branch has been favored with in comparison with the other branches of Logic that until of late almost remained stationary.
In Lecture (10 Aug 1898) present in German to the First International Congress of Mathematicians in Zürich, 'On Pasigraphy: Its Present State and the Pasigraphic Movement in Italy'. As translated and published in The Monist (1899), 9, No. 1, 46.
Science quotes on:  |  Branch (155)  |  Comparison (108)  |  Creation (350)  |  Development (441)  |  Economical (11)  |  Logic (311)  |  Mathematics And Logic (27)  |  Number (710)  |  Opinion (291)  |  Originate (39)  |  Pure Mathematics (72)  |  Virtue (117)

But indeed, the English generally have been very stationary in latter times, and the French, on the contrary, so active and successful, particularly in preparing elementary books, in the mathematical and natural sciences, that those who wish for instruction, without caring from what nation they get it, resort universally to the latter language.
Letter (29 Jan 1824) to Patrick K. Rodgers. Collected in Andrew A. Lipscomb (ed.), The Writings of Thomas Jefferson (1904), Vol. 16, 2.
Science quotes on:  |  Active (80)  |  Book (413)  |  Caring (6)  |  Contrary (143)  |  Elementary (98)  |  English (35)  |  French (21)  |  Indeed (323)  |  Instruction (101)  |  Language (308)  |  Mathematics (1395)  |  Nation (208)  |  Natural (810)  |  Natural Science (133)  |  Preparing (21)  |  Successful (134)  |  Time (1911)  |  Wish (216)

How would we express in terms of the statistical theory the marvellous faculty of a living organism, by which it delays the decay into thermodynamical equilibrium (death)? … It feeds upon negative entropy … Thus the device by which an organism maintains itself stationary at a fairly high level of orderliness (= fairly low level of entropy) really consists in continually sucking orderliness from its environment.
In 'Organization Maintained by Extracting “Order” from the Environment', What is Life? : The Physical Aspect of the Living Cell (1944), 74.
Science quotes on:  |  Consist (223)  |  Death (406)  |  Decay (59)  |  Delay (21)  |  Device (71)  |  Entropy (46)  |  Environment (239)  |  Equilibrium (34)  |  Express (192)  |  High (370)  |  Level (69)  |  Living (492)  |  Low (86)  |  Maintain (105)  |  Marvellous (25)  |  Negative (66)  |  Orderliness (9)  |  Organism (231)  |  Suck (8)  |  Term (357)  |  Terms (184)  |  Theory (1015)

However much we may enlarge our ideas of the time which has elapsed since the Niagara first began to drain the waters of the upper lakes, we have seen that this period was one only of a series, all belonging to the present zoological epoch; or that in which the living testaceous fauna, whether freshwater or marine, had already come into being. If such events can take place while the zoology of the earth remains almost stationary and unaltered, what ages may not be comprehended in those successive tertiary periods during which the Flora and Fauna of the globe have been almost entirely changed. Yet how subordinate a place in the long calendar of geological chronology do the successive tertiary periods themselves occupy! How much more enormous a duration must we assign to many antecedent revolutions of the earth and its inhabitants! No analogy can be found in the natural world to the immense scale of these divisions of past time, unless we contemplate the celestial spaces which have been measured by the astronomer.
Travels in North America (1845), Vol. 1, 51-2.
Science quotes on:  |  Age (509)  |  Already (226)  |  Analogy (76)  |  Astronomer (97)  |  Being (1276)  |  Belonging (36)  |  Calendar (9)  |  Celestial (53)  |  Chronology (9)  |  Division (67)  |  Do (1905)  |  Drain (12)  |  Earth (1076)  |  Enlarge (37)  |  Epoch (46)  |  Event (222)  |  First (1302)  |  Freshwater (3)  |  Idea (881)  |  Immense (89)  |  Inhabitant (50)  |  Lake (36)  |  Living (492)  |  Long (778)  |  Marine Biology (24)  |  Marine Geology (2)  |  More (2558)  |  Must (1525)  |  Natural (810)  |  Niagara (8)  |  Niagara Falls (4)  |  Past (355)  |  Period (200)  |  Present (630)  |  Remain (355)  |  Revolution (133)  |  Scale (122)  |  Series (153)  |  Space (523)  |  Successive (73)  |  Themselves (433)  |  Time (1911)  |  Water (503)  |  World (1850)  |  Zoology (38)

In the history of physics, there have been three great revolutions in thought that first seemed absurd yet proved to be true. The first proposed that the earth, instead of being stationary, was moving around at a great and variable speed in a universe that is much bigger than it appears to our immediate perception. That proposal, I believe, was first made by Aristarchos two millenia ago ... Remarkably enough, the name Aristarchos in Greek means best beginning.
[The next two revolutions occurred ... in the early part of the twentieth century: the theory of relativity and the science of quantum mechanics...]
Edward Teller with Judith L. Shoolery, Memoirs: A Twentieth-Century Journey in Science and Politics (2001), 562.
Science quotes on:  |  Absurd (60)  |  Beginning (312)  |  Being (1276)  |  Best (467)  |  Century (319)  |  Discovery (837)  |  Early (196)  |  Earth (1076)  |  Enough (341)  |  First (1302)  |  Great (1610)  |  Greek (109)  |  History (716)  |  Immediate (98)  |  Mean (810)  |  Means (587)  |  Mechanic (120)  |  Mechanics (137)  |  Name (359)  |  Next (238)  |  Perception (97)  |  Physic (515)  |  Physics (564)  |  Proposal (21)  |  Quantum (118)  |  Quantum Mechanics (47)  |  Quantum Theory (67)  |  Relativity (91)  |  Revolution (133)  |  Speed (66)  |  Theory (1015)  |  Theory Of Relativity (33)  |  Thought (995)  |  Two (936)  |  Universe (900)  |  Variable (37)

It is not, indeed, strange that the Greeks and Romans should not have carried ... any ... experimental science, so far as it has been carried in our time; for the experimental sciences are generally in a state of progression. They were better understood in the seventeenth century than in the sixteenth, and in the eighteenth century than in the seventeenth. But this constant improvement, this natural growth of knowledge, will not altogether account for the immense superiority of the modern writers. The difference is a difference not in degree, but of kind. It is not merely that new principles have been discovered, but that new faculties seem to be exerted. It is not that at one time the human intellect should have made but small progress, and at another time have advanced far; but that at one time it should have been stationary, and at another time constantly proceeding. In taste and imagination, in the graces of style, in the arts of persuasion, in the magnificence of public works, the ancients were at least our equals. They reasoned as justly as ourselves on subjects which required pure demonstration.
History (May 1828). In Samuel Austin Allibone, Prose Quotations from Socrates to Macaulay (1880), 36.
Science quotes on:  |  16th Century (3)  |  17th Century (20)  |  18th Century (21)  |  Account (195)  |  Ancient (198)  |  Art (680)  |  Better (493)  |  Century (319)  |  Constant (148)  |  Degree (277)  |  Demonstration (120)  |  Difference (355)  |  Discover (571)  |  Discovery (837)  |  Exert (40)  |  Experimental (193)  |  Faculty (76)  |  Grace (31)  |  Greek (109)  |  Growth (200)  |  History (716)  |  Human (1512)  |  Human Intellect (32)  |  Imagination (349)  |  Immense (89)  |  Improvement (117)  |  Indeed (323)  |  Intellect (251)  |  Kind (564)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Magnificence (14)  |  Merely (315)  |  Modern (402)  |  Natural (810)  |  New (1273)  |  Ourselves (247)  |  Persuasion (9)  |  Principle (530)  |  Proceeding (38)  |  Progress (492)  |  Progression (23)  |  Pure (299)  |  Reason (766)  |  Required (108)  |  Roman (39)  |  Science And Art (195)  |  Small (489)  |  State (505)  |  Strange (160)  |  Subject (543)  |  Superiority (19)  |  Taste (93)  |  Time (1911)  |  Understood (155)  |  Will (2350)  |  Work (1402)  |  Writer (90)

Just as in the animal and vegetable kingdoms, an individual comes into being, so to speak, grows, remains in being, declines and passes on, will it not be the same for entire species? If our faith did not teach us that animals left the Creator's hands just as they now appear and, if it were permitted to entertain the slightest doubt as to their beginning and their end, may not a philosopher, left to his own conjectures, suspect that, from time immemorial, animal life had its own constituent elements, scattered and intermingled with the general body of matter, and that it happened when these constituent elements came together because it was possible for them to do so; that the embryo formed from these elements went through innumerable arrangements and developments, successively acquiring movement, feeling, ideas, thought, reflection, consciousness, feelings, emotions, signs, gestures, sounds, articulate sounds, language, laws, arts and sciences; that millions of years passed between each of these developments, and there may be other developments or kinds of growth still to come of which we know nothing; that a stationary point either has been or will be reached; that the embryo either is, or will be, moving away from this point through a process of everlasting decay, during which its faculties will leave it in the same way as they arrived; that it will disappear for ever from nature-or rather, that it will continue to exist there, but in a form and with faculties very different from those it displays at this present point in time? Religion saves us from many deviations, and a good deal of work. Had religion not enlightened us on the origin of the world and the universal system of being, what a multitude of different hypotheses we would have been tempted to take as nature's secret! Since these hypotheses are all equally wrong, they would all have seemed almost equally plausible. The question of why anything exists is the most awkward that philosophy can raise- and Revelation alone provides the answer.
Thoughts on the Interpretation of Nature and Other Philosophical Works (1753/4), ed. D. Adams (1999), Section LVIII, 75-6.
Science quotes on:  |  Alone (324)  |  Animal (651)  |  Animal Life (21)  |  Answer (389)  |  Arrangement (93)  |  Art (680)  |  Awkward (11)  |  Beginning (312)  |  Being (1276)  |  Body (557)  |  Conjecture (51)  |  Consciousness (132)  |  Constituent (47)  |  Continue (179)  |  Creator (97)  |  Deal (192)  |  Decay (59)  |  Decline (28)  |  Development (441)  |  Deviation (21)  |  Different (595)  |  Disappear (84)  |  Display (59)  |  Do (1905)  |  Doubt (314)  |  Element (322)  |  Embryo (30)  |  Emotion (106)  |  End (603)  |  Enlighten (32)  |  Enlightened (25)  |  Entertain (27)  |  Equally (129)  |  Exist (458)  |  Faith (209)  |  Feeling (259)  |  Feelings (52)  |  Form (976)  |  General (521)  |  Good (906)  |  Grow (247)  |  Growth (200)  |  Happen (282)  |  Happened (88)  |  Idea (881)  |  Individual (420)  |  Innumerable (56)  |  Kind (564)  |  Kingdom (80)  |  Know (1538)  |  Language (308)  |  Law (913)  |  Life (1870)  |  Matter (821)  |  Most (1728)  |  Movement (162)  |  Multitude (50)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Nothing (1000)  |  Origin (250)  |  Other (2233)  |  Pass (241)  |  Philosopher (269)  |  Philosophy (409)  |  Plausible (24)  |  Point (584)  |  Possible (560)  |  Present (630)  |  Process (439)  |  Question (649)  |  Reach (286)  |  Reflection (93)  |  Religion (369)  |  Remain (355)  |  Revelation (51)  |  Save (126)  |  Secret (216)  |  Sound (187)  |  Speak (240)  |  Species (435)  |  Still (614)  |  System (545)  |  Teach (299)  |  Thought (995)  |  Through (846)  |  Time (1911)  |  Together (392)  |  Universal (198)  |  Vegetable (49)  |  Way (1214)  |  Why (491)  |  Will (2350)  |  Work (1402)  |  World (1850)  |  Wrong (246)  |  Year (963)

One orbit, with a radius of 42,000 kilometers, has a period of exactly 24 hours. A body in such an orbit, if its plane coincided with that of the Earth’s equator, would revolve with the Earth and would thus be stationary above the same spot on the planet. It would remain fixed in the sky of a whole hemisphere ... [to] provide coverage to half the globe, and for a world service three would be required, though more could be readily utilized. (1945) [Predidicting geosynchronous communication satellites]
In 'Can Rocket Stations Give Worldwide Coverage?', Wireless World (Oct 1945). Quoted and cited in Arthur C. Clarke, Greetings, Carbon-Based Bipeds!: Collected Essays, 1934-1998, 22.
Science quotes on:  |  Body (557)  |  Communication (101)  |  Earth (1076)  |  Equator (6)  |  Hemisphere (5)  |  Hour (192)  |  Kilometer (10)  |  More (2558)  |  Orbit (85)  |  Period (200)  |  Planet (402)  |  Remain (355)  |  Required (108)  |  Revolve (26)  |  Satellite (30)  |  Service (110)  |  Sky (174)  |  Whole (756)  |  World (1850)

The stationary state would make fewer demands on our environmental resources, but much greater demands on our moral resources.
In J. Harte and R. Socolow, 'Toward a Stationary-State Economy', Patient Earth (1971), 237.
Science quotes on:  |  Demand (131)  |  Environment (239)  |  Fewer (11)  |  Greater (288)  |  Moral (203)  |  Resource (74)  |  State (505)

To every Form of being is assigned’
Thus calmly spoke the venerable Sage,
An active Principle:—howe’er remove!
From sense and observation, it subsists.
In all things, in all natures; in the stars
Of azure heaven, the unenduring clouds,
In flower and tree, in every pebbly stone
That paves the brooks, the stationary rocks,
The moving waters, and the invisible air.’
In The Excursion (1814). In The Works of William Wordsworth (1994), Book 9, 884.
Science quotes on:  |  Active (80)  |  Air (366)  |  Assignment (12)  |  Being (1276)  |  Brook (6)  |  Cloud (111)  |  Flower (112)  |  Form (976)  |  Heaven (266)  |  Invisible (66)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Observation (593)  |  Pave (8)  |  Pebble (27)  |  Principle (530)  |  Remove (50)  |  Rock (176)  |  Sage (25)  |  Sense (785)  |  Star (460)  |  Stars (304)  |  Stone (168)  |  Thing (1914)  |  Tree (269)  |  Venerable (7)  |  Water (503)

When we look back beyond one hundred years over the long trails of history, we see immediately why the age we live in differs from all other ages in human annals. … It remained stationary in India and in China for thousands of years. But now it is moving very fast. … A priest from Thebes would probably have felt more at home at the council of Trent, two thousand years after Thebes had vanished, than Sir Isaac Newton at a modern undergraduate physical society, or George Stephenson in the Institute of Electrical Engineers. The changes have have been so sudden and so gigantic, that no period in history can be compared with the last century. The past no longer enables us even dimly to measure the future.
From 'Fifty Years Hence', Strand Magazine (Dec 1931). Reprinted in Popular Mechanics (Mar 1932), 57, No. 3, 393.
Science quotes on:  |  19th Century (41)  |  20th Century (40)  |  Age (509)  |  Annal (3)  |  Back (395)  |  Beyond (316)  |  Century (319)  |  Change (639)  |  China (27)  |  Compared (8)  |  Council (9)  |  Differ (88)  |  Dimly (6)  |  Electrical (57)  |  Electrical Engineer (5)  |  Electrical Engineering (12)  |  Enable (122)  |  Engineer (136)  |  Fast (49)  |  Future (467)  |  Gigantic (40)  |  History (716)  |  Home (184)  |  Human (1512)  |  Hundred (240)  |  Immediately (115)  |  India (23)  |  Institute (8)  |  Last (425)  |  Live (650)  |  Long (778)  |  Look (584)  |  Measure (241)  |  Modern (402)  |  More (2558)  |  Moving (11)  |  Sir Isaac Newton (363)  |  Other (2233)  |  Past (355)  |  Period (200)  |  Physical (518)  |  Priest (29)  |  Probably (50)  |  Remain (355)  |  Remained (2)  |  See (1094)  |  Society (350)  |  George Stephenson (10)  |  Sudden (70)  |  Thousand (340)  |  Trail (11)  |  Two (936)  |  Undergraduate (17)  |  Vanished (3)  |  Why (491)  |  Year (963)


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.