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Who said: “The conservation of natural resources is the fundamental problem. Unless we solve that problem it will avail us little to solve all others.”
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Home > Category Index for Science Quotations > Category Index T > Category: Talk

Talk Quotes (108 quotes)

“The time has come,” the Walrus said, “To talk of many things”…
In Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There (1871, 1897), 80.
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[A key to success] is being able to talk to camera without a teleprompter. … If you believe something and want to make clear what you are talking about, you ought to be able to articulate it without a teleprompter.
From interview with Michael Bond, 'It’s a Wonderful Life', New Scientist (14 Dec 2002), 176, No. 2373, 48.
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[American] Fathers are spending too much time taking care of babies. No other civilization ever let responsible and important men spend their time in this way. They should not be involved in household details. They should take the children on trips, explore with them and talk things over. Men today have lost something by turning towards the home instead of going out of it.
As quoted in interview with Frances Glennon, 'Student and Teacher of Human Ways', Life (14 Sep 1959), 147.
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[De Morgan relates that some person had made up 800 anagrams on his name, of which he had seen about 650. Commenting on these he says:]
Two of these I have joined in the title-page:
[Ut agendo surgamus arguendo gustamus.]
A few of the others are personal remarks.
Great gun! do us a sum!
is a sneer at my pursuit; but,
Go! great sum! [integral of a to the power u to the power n with respect to u] is more dignified. …
Adsum, nugator, suge!
is addressed to a student who continues talking after the lecture has commenced: …
Graduatus sum! nego
applies to one who declined to subscribe for an M.A. degree.
In Budget of Paradoxes (1872), 82. [The Latin phrases translate as, respectively, “Such action will start arguing with taste”, “Here babbler suck!” and “I graduate! I reject.” —Webmaster]
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[T]he explosive development of our intellect, … I personally think was at least partly triggered by the fact we developed this way of talking with words. … We can bring people from different disciplines together to discuss a problem. That’s because of words. We now have developed a moral code with our words. And we know perfectly well what we should and shouldn’t do.
From huffpost.com webpage interview by Alexander C. Kaufman, 'Jane Goodall: If We Don’t Make Peace With Nature, Expect More Deadly Pandemics' (28 May 2021).
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Die Mathematiker sind eine Art Franzosen. Spricht man zu ihnen, so übersetzen sie alles in ihre eigene Sprache, und so wird es alsobald etwas ganz anderes.
Mathematicians are a kind of Frenchmen. Whenever you say anything or talk to them, they translate it into their own language, and right away it is something completely different.
Quoted by Christiane Senn-Fennell, 'Oral and Written Communication', in Ian Westbury et al. (eds.), Teaching as a Reflective Practice (2000), 225.
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Every teacher certainly should know something of non-euclidean geometry. Thus, it forms one of the few parts of mathematics which, at least in scattered catch-words, is talked about in wide circles, so that any teacher may be asked about it at any moment. … Imagine a teacher of physics who is unable to say anything about Röntgen rays, or about radium. A teacher of mathematics who could give no answer to questions about non-euclidean geometry would not make a better impression.
On the other hand, I should like to advise emphatically against bringing non-euclidean into regular school instruction (i.e., beyond occasional suggestions, upon inquiry by interested pupils), as enthusiasts are always recommending. Let us be satisfied if the preceding advice is followed and if the pupils learn to really understand euclidean geometry. After all, it is in order for the teacher to know a little more than the average pupil.
In George Edward Martin, The Foundations of Geometry and the Non-Euclidean Plane (1982), 72.
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~~[No source found]~~ There’s no sense in being precise when you don't even know what you're talking about.
Webmaster has looked for, but so far has been unable to find, a primary source with this wording. Please help if you can. Meanwhile it is included here to note its status.
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A friend called me up the other day and talked about investing in a dot-com that sells lobsters. Internet lobsters. Where will this end? The next day he sent me a huge package of lobsters on ice. How low can you stoop?
…...
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A sick man talks obsessively about his illness; a healthy man never talks about his health; for as Pirandello points out, we take happiness for granted, and only begin to question life when we are unhappy.
In Introduction to the New Existentialism (1966), 15.
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All talk about science purely for its practical and wealth-producing results is … idle. … Practical results will follow right enough. No real knowledge is sterile. … With this faith in the ultimate usefulness of all real knowledge a man may proceed to devote himself to a study of first causes without apology, and without hope of immediate return.
A.V. Hill
Quoted in Larry R. Squire (ed.), The History of Neuroscience in Autobiography (1996), Vol. 1, 350-351. The above is a highlight excerpted from a longer quote beginning “To prove to an indignant questioner ….” in this same collection for A. V. Hill.
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An engineer passing a pond heard a frog say, “If you kiss me, I’ll turn into a beautiful princess.” He picked up the frog, looked at it, and put it in his pocket. The frog said, “Why didn’t you kiss me?” Replied the engineer, “Look, I’m an engineer. I don’t have time for a girlfriend, but a talking frog is cool.”
Anonymous
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Are you aware that humanity is just a blip? Not even a blip. Just a fraction of a fraction of what the universe has been and will become? Talk about perspective. I figure I can’t feel so entirely stupid about saying what I said because, first of all, it’s true. And second of all, there will be no remnant of me or my stupidity. No fossil or geographical shift that can document, really, even the most important historical human beings, let alone my paltry admissions.
In novel, The Rug Merchant (2006), 119.
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As to Bell’s talking telegraph, it only creates interest in scientific circles, and, as a toy it is beautiful; but … its commercial value will be limited.
Letter to William D. Baldwin, his attorney (1 Nov 1876). Telephone Investigating Committee, House of Representatives, United States 49th Congress, 1st Session, Miscellaneous Documents (1886), No. 355, 1186.
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At first, the people talking about ecology were only defending the fishes, the animals, the forest, and the river. They didn’t realize that human beings were in the forest—and that these humans were the real ecologists, because they couldn’t live without the forest and the forest couldn’t be saved without them.
Quoted in Andrew Revkin, The Burning Season
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Bahn’s Law of Rocketry: Amateurs talk Propulsion, Professionals Talk Insurance.
Pat Bahn
As quoted by Braddock Gaskill, 'TGV Rockets ‘Walking before they can run’', on web page of nasaspaceflight.com (Sep 2005). Confirmed by email from Pat Bahn (7 Jul 09).
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Before we talk about ecosystem design, we have to talk about ego-system management.
As quoted in John King, 'Green Pioneer William McDonough', SFGate (13 Nov 2012).
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Civilized people can talk about anything. For them no subject is taboo…. In civilized societies there will be no intellectual bogeys at sight of which great grown-up babies are expected to hide their eyes
In Civilization: An Essay (1928), 138.
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Common sense is not wrong in the view that is meaningful, appropriate and necessary to talk about the large objects of our daily experience …. Common sense is wrong only if it insists that what is familiar must reappear in what is unfamiliar.
In 'Uncommon Sense', collected in J. Robert Oppenheimer, Nicholas Metropolis (ed.) and ‎Gian-Carlo Rota (ed.), Uncommon Sense (1984), 61.
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Don’t let me catch anyone talking about the Universe in my department.
Quoted in Sage: A Life of J. D. Bernal (1980), 160.
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Don’t talk to me of your Archimedes’ lever. He was an absent-minded person with a mathematical imagination. Mathematics commands all my respect, but I have no use for engines. Give me the right word and the right accent and I will move the world.
In 'Preface', A Personal Record (1912), 2.
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Early in my school career, I turned out to be an incorrigible disciplinary problem. I could understand what the teacher was saying as fast as she could say it, I found time hanging heavy, so I would occasionally talk to my neighbor. That was my great crime, I talked in school.
In In Memory Yet Green: the Autobiography of Isaac Asimov, 1920-1954 (1979), 73.
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For the evolution of science by societies the main requisite is the perfect freedom of communication between each member and anyone of the others who may act as a reagent.
The gaseous condition is exemplified in the soiree, where the members rush about confusedly, and the only communication is during a collision, which in some instances may be prolonged by button-holing.
The opposite condition, the crystalline, is shown in the lecture, where the members sit in rows, while science flows in an uninterrupted stream from a source which we take as the origin. This is radiation of science. Conduction takes place along the series of members seated round a dinner table, and fixed there for several hours, with flowers in the middle to prevent any cross currents.
The condition most favourable to life is an intermediate plastic or colloidal condition, where the order of business is (1) Greetings and confused talk; (2) A short communication from one who has something to say and to show; (3) Remarks on the communication addressed to the Chair, introducing matters irrelevant to the communication but interesting to the members; (4) This lets each member see who is interested in his special hobby, and who is likely to help him; and leads to (5) Confused conversation and examination of objects on the table.
I have not indicated how this programme is to be combined with eating.
Letter to William Grylls Adams (3 Dec 1873). In P. M. Harman (ed.), The Scientific Letters and Papers of James Clerk Maxwell (1995), Vol. 2, 1862-1873, 949-50.
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Four years ago nobody but nuclear physicists had ever heard of the Internet. Today even my cat, Socks, has his own web page. I’m amazed at that. I meet kids all the time, been talking to my cat on the Internet.
Referring to the Next Generation Internet initiative in Remarks at Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio (29 Oct 1996). American Presidency Project web page. [Clinton took office 20 Jan 1993, and signed the Next Generation Internet Research Act of 1998 on 28 Oct 1998.]
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Gel’fand amazed me by talking of mathematics as though it were poetry. He once said about a long paper bristling with formulas that it contained the vague beginnings of an idea which could only hint at and which he had never managed to bring out more clearly. I had always thought of mathematics as being much more straightforward: a formula is a formula, and an algebra is an algebra, but Gel’fand found hedgehogs lurking in the rows of his spectral sequences!
In '1991 Ruth Lyttle Satter Prize', Notices of the American Mathematical Society (Mar 1991), 38, No. 3, 186. This is from her acceptance of the 1991 Ruth Lyttle Satter Prize.
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Having always observed that most of them who constantly took in the weekly Bills of Mortality made little other use of them than to look at the foot how the burials increased or decreased, and among the Casualties what had happened, rare and extraordinary, in the week current; so as they might take the same as a Text to talk upon in the next company, and withal in the Plague-time, how the Sickness increased or decreased, that the Rich might judg of the necessity of their removal, and Trades-men might conjecture what doings they were likely to have in their respective dealings.
From Natural and Political Observations Mentioned in a Following Index and Made upon Bills of Mortality (1662), Preface. Reproduced in Cornelius Walford, The Insurance Cyclopaedia (1871), Vol. 1, 286. Italicizations from another source.
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He that knows the secrets of nature with Albertus Magnus, or the motions of the heavens with Galileo, or the cosmography of the moon with Hevelius, or the body of man with Galen, or the nature of diseases with Hippocrates, or the harmonies in melody with Orpheus, or of poesy with Homer, or of grammar with Lilly, or of whatever else with the greatest artist; he is nothing if he knows them merely for talk or idle speculation, or transient and external use. But he that knows them for value, and knows them his own, shall profit infinitely.
In Bertram Doben (ed.), Centuries of Meditations (1908), The Third Century, No. 41, 189-190.
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His [J.J. Sylvester’s] lectures were generally the result of his thought for the preceding day or two, and often were suggested by ideas that came to him while talking. The one great advantage that this method had for his students was that everything was fresh, and we saw, as it were, the very genesis of his ideas. One could not help being inspired by such teaching.
As quoted by Florian Cajori, in Teaching and History of Mathematics in the United States (1890), 267-268.
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Human language is in some ways similar to, but in other ways vastly different from, other kinds of animal communication. We simply have no idea about its evolutionary history, though many people have speculated about its possible origins. There is, for instance, the “bow-bow” theory, that language started from attempts to imitate animal sounds. Or the “ding-dong” theory, that it arose from natural sound-producing responses. Or the “pooh-pooh” theory, that it began with violent outcries and exclamations.
We have no way of knowing whether the kinds of men represented by the earliest fossils could talk or not…
Language does not leave fossils, at least not until it has become written.
Man in Nature (1961), 10.
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I am entitled to say, if I like, that awareness exists in all the individual creatures on the planet—worms, sea urchins, gnats, whales, subhuman primates, superprimate humans, the lot. I can say this because we do not know what we are talking about: consciousness is so much a total mystery for our own species that we cannot begin to guess about its existence in others.
In Late Night Thoughts on Listening to Mahler's Ninth Symphony(1984), 223.
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I can see him [Sylvester] now, with his white beard and few locks of gray hair, his forehead wrinkled o’er with thoughts, writing rapidly his figures and formulae on the board, sometimes explaining as he wrote, while we, his listeners, caught the reflected sounds from the board. But stop, something is not right, he pauses, his hand goes to his forehead to help his thought, he goes over the work again, emphasizes the leading points, and finally discovers his difficulty. Perhaps it is some error in his figures, perhaps an oversight in the reasoning. Sometimes, however, the difficulty is not elucidated, and then there is not much to the rest of the lecture. But at the next lecture we would hear of some new discovery that was the outcome of that difficulty, and of some article for the Journal, which he had begun. If a text-book had been taken up at the beginning, with the intention of following it, that text-book was most likely doomed to oblivion for the rest of the term, or until the class had been made listeners to every new thought and principle that had sprung from the laboratory of his mind, in consequence of that first difficulty. Other difficulties would soon appear, so that no text-book could last more than half of the term. In this way his class listened to almost all of the work that subsequently appeared in the Journal. It seemed to be the quality of his mind that he must adhere to one subject. He would think about it, talk about it to his class, and finally write about it for the Journal. The merest accident might start him, but once started, every moment, every thought was given to it, and, as much as possible, he read what others had done in the same direction; but this last seemed to be his real point; he could not read without finding difficulties in the way of understanding the author. Thus, often his own work reproduced what had been done by others, and he did not find it out until too late.
A notable example of this is in his theory of cyclotomic functions, which he had reproduced in several foreign journals, only to find that he had been greatly anticipated by foreign authors. It was manifest, one of the critics said, that the learned professor had not read Rummer’s elementary results in the theory of ideal primes. Yet Professor Smith’s report on the theory of numbers, which contained a full synopsis of Kummer’s theory, was Professor Sylvester’s constant companion.
This weakness of Professor Sylvester, in not being able to read what others had done, is perhaps a concomitant of his peculiar genius. Other minds could pass over little difficulties and not be troubled by them, and so go on to a final understanding of the results of the author. But not so with him. A difficulty, however small, worried him, and he was sure to have difficulties until the subject had been worked over in his own way, to correspond with his own mode of thought. To read the work of others, meant therefore to him an almost independent development of it. Like the man whose pleasure in life is to pioneer the way for society into the forests, his rugged mind could derive satisfaction only in hewing out its own paths; and only when his efforts brought him into the uncleared fields of mathematics did he find his place in the Universe.
In Florian Cajori, Teaching and History of Mathematics in the United States (1890), 266-267.
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I know, indeed, and can conceive of no pursuit so antagonistic to the cultivation of the oratorical faculty … as the study of Mathematics. An eloquent mathematician must, from the nature of things, ever remain as rare a phenomenon as a talking fish, and it is certain that the more anyone gives himself up to the study of oratorical effect the less will he find himself in a fit state to mathematicize.
In Address (22 Feb 1877) for Commemoration Day at Johns Hopkins University. Published as a pamphlet, and reprinted in The Collected Mathematical Papers of James Joseph Sylvester: (1870-1883) (1909), Vol. 3, 72. https://books.google.com/books?id=wgVbAAAAQAAJ James Joseph Sylvester - 1877
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I never said a word against eminent men of science. What I complain of is a vague popular philosophy which supposes itself to be scientific when it is really nothing but a sort of new religion and an uncommonly nasty one. When people talked about the fall of man, they knew they were talking about a mystery, a thing they didn’t understand. Now they talk about the survival of the fittest: they think they do understand it, whereas they have not merely no notion, they have an elaborately false notion of what the words mean.
In The Club of Queer Trades (1903, 1905), 241.
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I regard consciousness as fundamental. I regard matter as derivative from consciousness. We cannot get behind consciousness. Everything that we talk about, everything that we regard as existing, postulates consciousness.
Quoted in The Observer (25 Jan 1931), 17. Cited in Joseph H. Fussell, 'Where is Science Going?: Review and Comment', Theosophical Path Magazine, January to December 1933 (2003), 199.
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I try to make a point not to talk about things I don’t understand—at least the things I do not understand at all.
As quoted in Robert Coughlan, 'Dr. Edward Teller’s Magnificent Obsession', Life (6 Sep 1954), 74.
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I’ve never consciously tried to keep myself out of anything I write, and I’ve always talked clearly when people interview me. I don’t think my life is too interesting. It’s lived mainly inside my brain.
As quoted by Lawrence Toppman, 'Mastermind', The Charlotte Observer (20 Jun 1993), 1E, 6E. As quoted and cited in Dana Richards, 'Martin Gardner: A “Documentary”', collected in Elwyn R. Berlekamp and Tom Rodgers (ed.) The Mathemagician and Pied Puzzler: A Collection in Tribute to Martin Gardner (1999), 3.
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If all sentient beings in the universe disappeared, there would remain a sense in which mathematical objects and theorems would continue to exist even though there would be no one around to write or talk about them. Huge prime numbers would continue to be prime, even if no one had proved them prime.
In When You Were a Tadpole and I Was a Fish: And Other Speculations About This and That (), 124.
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If I exist, God exists. With me it is a necessity of my being as it is with millions. They may not be able to talk about it, but from their life you can see that it is a part of their life.
Quoted in Kim Lim (ed.), 1,001 Pearls of Spiritual Wisdom: Words to Enrich, Inspire, and Guide Your Life (2014), 141
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If we can get kids talking about conservation and doing it, they can have a great influence on their parents by lecturing them and pointing the finger.
…...
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If you ask me whether science has solved, or is likely to solve, the problem of this universe, I must shake my head in doubt. We have been talking of matter and force; but whence came matter, and whence came force? You remember the first Napoleon’s question, when the savans who accompanied him to Egypt discussed in his presence the problem of the universe, and solved it to their apparent satisfaction. He looked aloft to the starry heavens, and said—“It is all very well, gentlemen, but who made all these!” That question still remains unanswered, and science makes no attempt to answer it.
Lecture 'On Matter and Force', to nearly 3,000 working men, at the Dundee Meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science (Sep 1867), reported in 'Dundee Meeting, 1867', Chemical News and Journal of Physical Science (Nov 1867)
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If you talk to your children, you can help them to keep their lives together. If you talk to them skillfully, you can help them to build future dreams.
Jim Rohn
…...
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If you were to make little fishes talk, they would talk like whales.
Commenting how the animals in fables should talk in character. As quoted in James Boswell, The Life of Johnson (1785), 229.
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In design, people like Buckminster Fuller amazed me at the levels at which he could think. He could think molecularly. And he could think at the almost galactic scale. And the idea that somebody could actually talk about molecules and talk about buildings and structures and talk about space just amazed me. As I get older–I’ll be 60 next year–what I’ve discovered is that I find myself in those three realms too.
In interview with Kerry A. Dolan, 'William McDonough On Cradle-to-Cradle Design', Forbes (4 Aug 2010)
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In practical talk, a man’s common sense means his good judgement, his freedom from eccentricity, his gumption.
In Lecture (1907/1908), 'Pragmatism and Common Sense', collected in 'Lecture 5: Pragmatism and Common Sense', Pragmatism: A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking (1907, 1910), 171.
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In recent years it has become impossible to talk about man’s relation to nature without referring to “ecology” … such leading scientists in this area as Rachel Carson, Barry Commoner, Eugene Odum, Paul Ehrlich and others, have become our new delphic voices … so influential has their branch of science become that our time might well be called the “Age of Ecology”.
In opening paragraph of Preface, Nature’s Economy: A History of Ecological Ideas (1994), 14.
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In the information age, you don’t teach philosophy as they did after feudalism. You perform it. If Aristotle were alive today he’d have a talk show.
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In this country all a man need to do is to attain a little eminence and immediately he begins to talk. Usually his eminence is financial, and the greater this eminence the more he talks and the further his voice reaches. I don't blame the rich people for talking; many of them don’t know what else to do with themselves. The fault is with these who listen. If no one would listen no harm would he done. But the American people are willing to listen to any one who has attained prominence. The main fact is that we've heard a man's name a great many times; that makes us ready to accept whatever he says. … We listen to the one who talks the most and loudest.
As quoted in 'Electricity Will Keep The World From Freezing Up', New York Times (12 Nov 1911), SM4.
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In university, people spend their time talking about how they can raise money. In the drug company, they talk about their research.
By an unnamed pharmacologist comparing changing jobs from academia for industry, as given in 'Feedback', New Scientist (7 May 1987), 65.
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Isn’t it better to talk about the relative merits of washing machines than the relative strength of rockets? Isn’t this the kind of competition you want?
Speaking as US Vice-President to Soviet premier Nikita Krushchev at the American National Exhibition in Moscow, while viewing a display of a typical American kitchen, hence known as the “Kitchen Debate” (24 Jul 1959).
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It doesn’t matter whether you’re talking about bombs or the intelligence quotients of one race as against another; if a man is a scientist, like me, he’ll always say “Publish and be damned.”
Quoted by George Steiner giving the first Bronowski Memorial Lecture, 'Has Truth a Future?' (1978) in London. As cited in Robert Andrews (ed.), The Columbia Dictionary of Quotations (1993), 812.
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It is fashionable nowadays to talk about the endless riches of the sea. The ocean is regarded as a sort of bargain basement, but I don’t agree with that estimate. People don’t realize that water in the liquid state is very rare in the universe. Away from earth it is usually a gas. This moisture is a blessed treasure, and it is our basic duty, if we don’t want to commit suicide, to preserve it.
As quoted by Nancy Hicks in 'Cousteau’s Philosophy of the Sea Helps Him Get Another Medal', New York Times (25 Oct 1970), 54.
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It is hard to know what you are talking about in mathematics, yet no one questions the validity of what you say. There is no other realm of discourse half so queer.
In J.R. Newman (ed.), 'Commentary on The Foundations of Mathematics', The World of Mathematics (1956), Vol. 3, 1614.
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It is ironical that, in the very field in which Science has claimed superiority to Theology, for example—in the abandoning of dogma and the granting of absolute freedom to criticism—the positions are now reversed. Science will not tolerate criticism of special relativity, while Theology talks freely about the death of God, religionless Christianity, and so on.
In 'Preface', Science at the Crossroads (1972), 13.
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It is unsafe to talk mathematics. Folks don’t understand.
Martin H. Fischer, Howard Fabing (ed.) and Ray Marr (ed.), Fischerisms (1944), 3.
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It may be true, that men, who are mere mathematicians, have certain specific shortcomings, but that is not the fault of mathematics, for it is equally true of every other exclusive occupation. So there are mere philologists, mere jurists, mere soldiers, mere merchants, etc. To such idle talk it might further be added: that whenever a certain exclusive occupation is coupled with specific shortcomings, it is likewise almost certainly divorced from certain other shortcomings.
In Gauss-Schumacher Briefwechsel, Bd. 4, (1862), 387.
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It seems to me that there is a good deal of ballyhoo about scientific method. I venture to think that the people who talk most about it are the people who do least about it. Scientific method is what working scientists do, not what other people or even they themselves may say about it. No working scientist, when he plans an experiment in the laboratory, asks himself whether he is being properly scientific, nor is he interested in whatever method he may be using as method.
In Reflections of a Physicist (1955), 81.
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Mathematics may be defined as the the subject in which we never know what we are talking about, not whether what we are saying is true.
In 'Recent Work on the Principles of Mathematics', International Monthly (1901), 4, 84. This sentence is part of a longer quote that begins, “Pure mathematics consists entirely…”, on the Bertrand Russell Quotes page of this website.
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My interest in the biology of tissue and organ transplantation arose from my [WW II] military experience at Valley Forge General Hospital in Pennsylvania … a major plastic surgical center. While there, I spent all my available spare time on the plastic surgical wards which were jammed with hundreds of battle casualties. I enjoyed talking to the patients, helping with dressings, and observing the results of the imaginative reconstructive surgical operations.
As a First Lieutenant with only a nine-month surgical internship, randomly assigned to VFGH to await overseas duty. In Tore Frängsmyr and Jan E. Lindsten (eds.), Nobel Lectures: Physiology Or Medicine: 1981-1990 (1993), 556.
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Richard M. Nixon quote: Because of what you have done, the heavens have become a part of
Neil and Buzz, I am talking to you by telephone from the Oval Office at the White House, and this certainly has to be the most historic telephone call ever made. Because of what you have done, the heavens have become a part of man’s world. As you talk to us from the Sea of Tranquility, it inspires us to redouble our efforts to bring peace and tranquility to Earth.
Speaking to the first astronauts while they were standing on the Moon (20 Jul 1969).
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Now, at Suiattle Pass, Brower was still talking about butterflies. He said he had raised them from time to time and had often watched them emerge from the chrysalis—first a crack in the case, then a feeler, and in an hour a butterfly. He said he had felt that he wanted to help, to speed them through the long and awkward procedure; and he had once tried. The butterflies came out with extended abdomens, and their wings were balled together like miniature clenched fists. Nothing happened. They sat there until they died. ‘I have never gotten over that,’ he said. ‘That kind of information is all over in the country, but it’s not in town.”
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People make the mistake of talking about “natural laws.” There are no natural laws. There are only temporary habits of nature.
In Alfred North Whitehead and ‎Lucien Price (ed.), Dialogues of Alfred North Whitehead (1954), 267.
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People say Richard Feynman had one of these extraordinary minds that could grapple with ideas of which I have no concept. And you hear all the ancillary bits—like he was a good bongo player—that make him human. So I admire this man who could not only deal with string theory but also play the bongos. But he is beyond me. I have no idea what he was talking of.
From 'Interview: Of Mind and Matter: David Attenborough Meets Richard Dawkins', The Guardian (11 Sep 2010). When asked, “Which living scientist do you most admire, and why?”, Attenborough first replied, “I don’t know.” He continued with the quote above. [String theory pioneer John H. Schwarz of Caltech, in a 2018 interview said that Feynman, who died in 1988, was also at Caltech at the time of the 1984 to 1985 breakthroughs in understanding superstring theory; but Feynman held a “skepticism of superstring theory … based mostly on the concern that it could not be tested experimentally.”]
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People who know little talk much; people who know much talk little.
In Wolfgang Mieder, Wolfgang Mieder, Stewart A. Kingsbury (eds.), A Dictionary of American Proverbs (1992), 22.
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People who wouldn’t think of talking with their mouths full often speak with their heads empty.
In Wolfgang Mieder, Wolfgang Mieder, Stewart A. Kingsbury (eds.), A Dictionary of American Proverbs (1992), 472.
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Physicists are, as a general rule, highbrows. They think and talk in long, Latin words, and when they write anything down they usually include at least one partial differential and three Greek letters.
In 'A Newsman Looks at Physicists', Physics Today (May 1948), 1, No. 1, 15.
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Physicists only talk to physicists, economists to economists—worse still, nuclear physicists only talk to nuclear physicists and econometricians to econometricians. One wonders sometimes if science will not grind to a stop in an assemblage of walled-in hermits, each mumbling to himself words in a private language that only he can understand.
In 'The Skeleton of Science', General Systems Theory (1956). Collected in 'General Systems Theory—The Skeleton of Science', Beyond Economics: Essays on Society, Religion, and Ethics (1968), 85.
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Prayer is when you talk to God; meditation is when you listen to God.
Quoted in Kim Lim (ed.), 1,001 Pearls of Spiritual Wisdom: Words to Enrich, Inspire, and Guide Your Life (2014), 180
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Professors of the Dismal Science, I perceive the length of your tether is now pretty well run; and I must request you to talk a little lower in the future.
'The Present Time', Latter Day Pamphlets (1850), in Collected Works (1850), Vol.19, 54.
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Science fiction is the most important literature in the history of the world, because it’s the history of ideas, the history of our civilization birthing itself; Science fiction is central to everything we’ve ever done, and people who make fun of science fiction writers don’t know what they’’re talking about
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Science fiction writers, I am sorry to say, really do not know anything. We can’t talk about science, because our knowledge of it is limited and unofficial, and usually our fiction is dreadful.
'How to Build a Universe That Doesn't Fall Apart Two Days Later,' introduction, I Hope I Shall Arrive Soon (1986).
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Science is voiceless; it is the scientists who talk.
From 'Reflections on Quantum Theory', as translated in Richard Rees (ed.), On Science, Necessity and the Love of God (1968), 57.
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Louis Agassiz quote: Select such subjects that your pupils cannot walk out without seeing them. Train your pupils to be observer
Select such subjects that your pupils cannot walk out without seeing them. Train your pupils to be observers, and have them provided with the specimens about which you speak. If you can find nothing better, take a house-fly or a cricket, and let each one hold a specimen and examine it as you talk.
Lecture at a teaching laboratory on Penikese Island, Buzzard's Bay. Quoted from the lecture notes by David Starr Jordan, Science Sketches (1911), 146.
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Some writers, rejecting the idea which science had reached, that reefs of rocks could be due in any way to “animalcules,” have talked of electrical forces, the first and last appeal of ignorance.
In Corals and Coral Islands (1879), 17.
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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.
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Standing now in diffused light, with the wind at my back, I experience suddenly a feeling of completeness–not a feeling of having achieved something or of being stronger than everyone who was ever here before, not a feeling of having arrived at the ultimate point, not a feeling of supremacy. Just a breath of happiness deep inside my mind and my breast. The summit seemed suddenly to me to be a refuge, and I had not expected to find any refuge up here. Looking at the steep, sharp ridges below us, I have the impression that to have come later would have been too late. Everything we now say to one another, we only say out of embarrassment. I don’t think anymore. As I pull the tape recorder, trancelike, from my rucksack, and switch it on wanting to record a few appropriate phrases, tears again well into my eyes. “Now we are on the summit of Everest,” I begin, “it is so cold that we cannot take photographs…” I cannot go on, I am immediately shaken with sobs. I can neither talk nor think, feeling only how this momentous experience changes everything. To reach only a few meters below the summit would have required the same amount of effort, the same anxiety and burden of sorrow, but a feeling like this, an eruption of feeling, is only possible on the summit itself.
In Everest: Expedition to the Ultimate (1979), 180.
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Talking to the Monbuttu was very laborious as the conversation required double interpretation. I spoke in Arabic to a Niam Niam and he spoke in his language to a Niam Niam who understood Monbuttu or to a Monbuttu who understood Niam Niam.
On the language barriers. In August Petermann, Petermann’s Geographische Mittheilungen (1871), 13. As quoted and cited in Kathrin Fritsch, '"You Have Everything Confused And Mixed Up…!" Georg Schweinfurth, Knowledge And Cartography Of Africa In The 19th Century', History in Africa (2009), 36, 95.
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Thanks to the freedom of our press and the electronic media, the voices of cranks are often louder and clearer than the voices of genuine scientists. Crank books—on how to lose weight without cutting down on calories, on how to talk to plants, on how to cure your ailments by rubbing your feet, on how to apply horoscopes to your pets, on how to use ESP in making business decisions, on how to sharpen razor blades by putting them under little models of the great Pyramid of Egypt—far outsell many books… I reserve the right of moral indignation.
As quoted, without citation, in obituary by Morton Schatzman, 'Martin Gardner: Scientific and Philosophical Writer Celebrated for his Ingenious Mathematical Puzzles and Games', Independent (28 May 2010).
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The great enemy of communication, we find, is the illusion of it. We have talked enough; but we have not listened. And by not listening we have failed to concede the immense complexity of our society–and thus the great gaps between ourselves and those with whom we seek understanding.
In magazine article, 'Is Anybody Listening?', Fortune magazine (Sep 1950), 174.
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The science and technology which have advanced man safely into space have brought about startling medical advances for man on earth. Out of space research have come new knowledge, techniques and instruments which have enabled some bedridden invalids to walk, the totally deaf to hear, the voiceless to talk, and, in the foreseeable future, may even make it possible for the blind to “see.”
'From Outer Space—Advances For Medicine on Earth', contributed in Lillian Levy, Space, Its Impact on Man and Society (1965, reprinted 1973), 117.
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The sea never changes and its works, for all the talks of men, are wrapped in mystery.
In Typhoon, and Other Stories (1902, 1923), 46. Writing started in 1899, and first published serialized in Pall Mall Magazine (Jan–Mar 1902).
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The whole biological community needs to be talking to one another so that people can get a comprehension of the turmoil in which our planet is involved at the moment, which is a biological turmoil above anything else.
In short extract from interview with Alice Roberts for the Biology: Changing the World project, 'Attenborough: The Earth is in “Biological Turmoil”', The Biologist (Apr/May 2015), 62, No. 2, 4.
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There is nothing more mysterious than a TV set left on in an empty room. It is even stranger than a man talking to himself or a woman standing dreaming at her stove. It is as if another planet is communicating with you.
In Jean Baudrillard and Chris Turner (trans.), America (1989), 50.
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This is what nonscientists don’t know, and this is what scientists are too bashful to talk about publicly, at least until they grow old enough to be shameless. Science at its highest level is ultimately the organization of, the systematic pursuit of, and the enjoyment of wonder, awe, and mystery.
In The Psychology of Science: A Reconnaissance (1966), 151.
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Those who have few affairs to attend to are great speakers: the less men think, the more they talk.
As quoted, without citation, in Day's Collacon: an Encyclopaedia of Prose Quotations (1884), 923.
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Through and through the world is infected with quantity: To talk sense is to talk quantities. It is not use saying the nation is large—How large? It is no use saying the radium is scarce—How scarce? You cannot evade quantity. You may fly to poetry and music, and quantity and number will face you in your rhythms and your octaves.
In 'The Aims of Education', The Aims of Education: & Other Essays (1917), 11.
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To arrive at the simplest truth, as Newton knew and practiced, requires years of contemplation. Not activity Not reasoning. Not calculating. Not busy behaviour of any kind. Not reading. Not talking. Not making an effort. Not thinking. Simply bearing in mind what it is one needs to know. And yet those with the courage to tread this path to real discovery are not only offered practically no guidance on how to do so, they are actively discouraged and have to set about it in secret, pretending meanwhile to be diligently engaged in the frantic diversions and to conform with the deadening personal opinions which are continually being thrust upon them.
In 'Appendix 1', The Laws of Form (1969), 110.
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To judge in this [utilitarian] way demonstrates … how small, narrow and indolent our minds are; it shows a disposition always to calculate the reward before the work, a cold heart and a lack of feeling for everything that is great and honours mankind. Unfortunately one cannot deny that such a mode of thinking is common in our age, and I am convinced that this is closely connected with the catastrophes which have befallen many countries in recent times; do not mistake me, I do not talk of the general lack of concern for science, but of the source from which all this has come, of the tendency to look out everywhere for one’s advantage and to relate everything to one’s physical well being, of indifference towards great ideas, of aversion to any effort which derives from pure enthusiasm.
Epigraph before title page, T. W. Körner, The Pleasures of Counting (1996).
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True Agnosticism will not forget that existence, motion, and law-abiding operation in nature are more stupendous miracles than any recounted by the mythologies, and that there may be things, not only in the heavens and earth, but beyond the intelligible universe, which “are not dreamt of in our philosophy.” The theological “gnosis” would have us believe that the world is a conjurer’s house; the anti-theological “gnosis” talks as if it were a “dirt-pie,” made by the two blind children, Law and Force. Agnosticism simply says that we know nothing of what may be behind phenomena.
In Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley (1913), Vol. 3, 98, footnote 3.
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We are a bit of stellar matter gone wrong. We are physical machinery—puppets that strut and talk and laugh and die as the hand of time pulls the strings beneath. But there is one elementary inescapable answer. We are that which asks the question.
…...
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We have to come back to something like ordinary language after all when we want to talk “about” mathematics!
As co-author with Bertha Swirles Jeffreys, in Methods of Mathematical Physics (1946, 1999), 2.
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We knew the world would not be the same. A few people laughed, a few people cried. Most people were silent. I remembered the line from the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad Gita: Vishnu is trying to pursue the Prince that he should do his duty and to impress him takes on his multi-armed form and says, “Now I am become Death, destroyer of worlds.” I suppose we all thought that one way or another. There was a great deal of solemn talk that this was the end of the great wars of the century.
At the first atomic bomb test (16 Jul 1945), in Len Giovanitti and Fred Freed, The Decision to Drop the Bomb (1965), 197
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We no longer can talk of unearned “rights.” We’ll have to get back to working for “rights” to adequate food, housing, education, opportunity, a place in the sun—and not everybody is going to make the grade. I don’t see this obsession with the lowest strata of humanity, against all natural biologic experience. We must accept that life is unfair.
In Raymond Mungo, 'Dixy Lee Ray: How Madame Nuke Took Over Washington', Mother Jones (May 1977), 2, No. 4, 31.
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We talk about our high standard of living in this country. What we have is a high standard of work. Usually the peaks of civilization have been periods when a large proportion of the population had time to live. I don’t think we’re doing this today. I think the people who could live are still spending their time and supplementary resources on making a living.
As quoted in interview with Frances Glennon, 'Student and Teacher of Human Ways', Life (14 Sep 1959), 147.
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When a man sees a phenomenon before him, his thoughts often range beyond it; when he hears it only talked about, he has no thoughts at all.
In The Maxims and Reflections of Goethe (1906), 188.
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When debts are not paid because they cannot be paid, the best thing to do is not to talk about them, and shuffle the cards again.
In Journey to the Alcarria: Travels Through the Spanish Countryside (1948, 1990), 5.
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When I was living with the Indians, my hostess, a fine looking woman, who wore numberless bracelets, and rings in her ears and on her fingers, and painted her face like a brilliant sunset, one day gave away a very fine horse. I was surprised, for I knew there had been no family talk on the subject, so I asked: “Will your husband like to have you give the horse away?” Her eyes danced, and, breaking into a peal of laughter, she hastened to tell the story to the other women gathered in the tent, and I became the target of many merry eyes. I tried to explain how a white woman would act, but laughter and contempt met my explanation of the white man’s hold upon his wife’s property.
Speech on 'The Legal Conditions of Indian Women', delivered to Evening Session (Thur 29 Mar 1888), collected in Report of the International Council of Women: Assembled by the National Woman Suffrage Association, Washington, D.C., U.S. of America, March 25 to April 1, 1888 (1888), Vol. 1, 240.
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When it comes to scientific matters the ready talkers simply run riot. There are a lot of pseudo-scientists who with a little technical jargon to spatter through their talk are always getting in the limelight. … The less they know the surer they are about it.
As quoted in 'Electricity Will Keep The World From Freezing Up', New York Times (12 Nov 1911), SM4.
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When one talked with M. Hermite, he never evoked a sensuous image, and yet you soon perceived that the most abstract entities were for him like living beings.
From La Valeur de la Science (1904), 32, as translated by George Bruce Halsted (trans.), in The Value of Science (1907), 24. From the French, “Quand on causait avec M. Hermite; jamais il n’évoquait une image sensible, et pourtant vous vous aperceviez bientôt que les entités les plus abstraites étaient, pour lui comme des êtres vivants.” Also as epigraph, “Talk with M. Hermite. He never evokes a concrete image, yet you soon perceive that the more abstract entities are to him like living creatures”, in Eric Temple Bell, Men of Mathematics, (1937), 448.
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When people talk about “the sanctity of the individual” they mean “the sanctity of the statistical norm”.
In The Decline and Fall of Science (1976), 4.
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When people talk of atoms obeying fixed laws, they are either ascribing some kind of intelligence and free will to atoms or they are talking nonsense. There is no obedience unless there is at any rate a potentiality of disobeying.
Samuel Butler, Henry Festing Jones (ed.), The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1917), 72.
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When we talk mathematics, we may be discussing a secondary language built on the primary language of the nervous system.
As quoted in John C. Oxtoby and B. J. Pettis (eds.), 'John von Neumann, 1903-1957', Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society (May 1958), 64, No. 3, Part 2, 128.
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When we think of giving a child a mathematical education we are apt to ask whether he has special aptitudes fitting him to receive it. Do we ask any such questions when we talk of teaching him to read and write?
In 'Mathematics for Children', Popular Science Monthly (Oct 1899), 187, citing “translated for the Popular Science Monthly from the Revue Scientifique. Also seen paraphrased as “To ask whether a child has an aptitude for mathematics is equivalent to asking whether he has an aptitude for reading and writing,” in William L. Schaaf, 'Memorabilia Mathematica', The Mathematics Teacher (Mar 1957), 50, No. 3, 231.
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When we try to pick out anything by itself we find it hitched to everything else in the universe … The whole wilderness is unity and interrelation, is alive and familiar, full of humanity. The very stones seem talkative, sympathetic, brotherly.
John Muir
In My First Summer in the Sierra (1911), 211 and 319. Based on Muir’s original journals and sketches of his 1869 stay in the Sierra.
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Where speculation ends—in real life—there real, positive science begins: the representation of the practical activity, of the practical process of development of men. Empty talk about consciousness ceases, and real knowledge has to take its place.
Karl Marx
In David McLellan (ed.), 'The Premisses of the Material Method', Karl Marx: Selected Writings (2000), 181.
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Wise men talk because they have something to say; fools, because they have to say something.
Anonymous
Often seen attributed to Plato. Please contact Webmaster, who has so far found none, if you know a primary source from Plato's writing. Seen without citation in Tryon Edwards (ed.), A Dictionary of Thoughts: Being a Cyclopedia of Laconic Quotations (1891), 560.
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Words learned by rote a parrot may rehearse,
But talking is not always to converse;
Not more distinct from harmony divine,
The constant creaking of a country sign.
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You must learn to talk clearly. The jargon of scientific terminology which rolls off your tongues is mental garbage
Martin H. Fischer, Howard Fabing (ed.) and Ray Marr (ed.), Fischerisms (1944).
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You’re aware the boy failed my grade school math class, I take it? And not that many years later he’s teaching college. Now I ask you: Is that the sorriest indictment of the American educational system you ever heard? [pauses to light cigarette.] No aptitude at all for long division, but never mind. It’s him they ask to split the atom. How he talked his way into the Nobel prize is beyond me. But then, I suppose it’s like the man says, it’s not what you know...
Karl Arbeiter (former teacher of Albert Einstein)
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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
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- 90 -
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