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 T > Category: Tenacity

Tenacity Quotes (10 quotes)

Again and again in reading even his [William Thomson] most abstract writings one is struck by the tenacity with which physical ideas control in him the mathematical form in which he expressed them. An instance of this is afforded by … an example of a mathematical result that is, in his own words, “not instantly obvious from the analytical form of my solution, but which we immediately see must be the case by thinking of the physical meaning of the result.”
As given in Life of Lord Kelvin (1910), Vol. 2, 1136. The ellipsis gives the reference to the quoted footnote, to a passage in his Mathematical and Physical Papers, Vol. 1, 457. [Note: William Thomson, later became Lord Kelvin. —Webmaster]
Science quotes on:  |  Abstract (141)  |  Afford (19)  |  Analysis (244)  |  Control (182)  |  Express (192)  |  Form (976)  |  Idea (881)  |  Immediately (115)  |  Instantly (20)  |  Baron William Thomson Kelvin (74)  |  Mathematicians and Anecdotes (141)  |  Mathematics (1395)  |  Meaning (244)  |  Most (1728)  |  Must (1525)  |  Obvious (128)  |  Physical (518)  |  Reading (136)  |  Result (700)  |  See (1094)  |  Solution (282)  |  Think (1122)  |  Thinking (425)  |  Understand (648)  |  Word (650)  |  Writing (192)

For I am actually not at all a man of science, not an observer, nor an experimenter, not a thinker. I am by temperament nothing but a conquistador—an adventurer... with all the curiosity, daring, and tenacity characteristic of a man of this sort.
Letter to Wilhelm Fliess, 1 Feb 1900. In Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson (ed.), The Complete Letters of Sigmund Freud to Wilhelm Fliess (1985), 398.
Science quotes on:  |  Autobiography (58)  |  Characteristic (154)  |  Curiosity (138)  |  Daring (17)  |  Experimenter (40)  |  Man (2252)  |  Nothing (1000)  |  Temperament (18)  |  Thinker (41)

I am a great believer in the simplicity of things and as you probably know I am inclined to hang on to broad & simple ideas like grim death until evidence is too strong for my tenacity.
Letter to Irving Langmuir (10 Jun 1919). Quoted in Nathan Reingold and Ida H. Reingold, Science in America: A Documentary History 1900-1939 (1981), 354.
Science quotes on:  |  Belief (615)  |  Believer (26)  |  Broad (28)  |  Death (406)  |  Evidence (267)  |  Great (1610)  |  Grim (6)  |  Hang (46)  |  Idea (881)  |  Inclination (36)  |  Inclined (41)  |  Know (1538)  |  Simple (426)  |  Simplicity (175)  |  Strong (182)  |  Thing (1914)

I am very fond of the oyster shell. It is humble and awkward and ugly. It is slate-colored and unsymmetrical. Its form is not primarily beautiful but functional. I make fun of its knobbiness. Sometimes I resent its burdens and excrescences. But its tireless adaptability and tenacity draw my astonished admiration and sometimes even my tears. And it is comfortable in its familiarity, its homeliness, like old garden gloves when have molded themselves perfectly to the shape of the hand.
In 'Oyster Bed', Gift From the Sea (1955), 77.
Science quotes on:  |  Adaptability (7)  |  Admiration (61)  |  Astonish (39)  |  Awkward (11)  |  Beautiful (271)  |  Color (155)  |  Draw (140)  |  Familiarity (21)  |  Fond (13)  |  Form (976)  |  Functional (10)  |  Garden (64)  |  Humble (54)  |  Mold (37)  |  Old (499)  |  Oyster (12)  |  Primarily (12)  |  Shell (69)  |  Slate (6)  |  Tear (48)  |  Themselves (433)  |  Tireless (5)  |  Ugly (14)

I hardly know of a great physical truth whose universal reception has not been preceded by an epoch in which the most estimable persons have maintained that the phenomena investigated were directly dependent on the Divine Will, and that the attempt to investigate them was not only futile but blasphemous. And there is a wonderful tenacity of life about this sort of opposition to physical science. Crushed and maimed in every battle, it yet seems never to be slain; and after a hundred defeats it is at this day as rampant, though happily not so mischievous, as in the time of Galileo.
In Address (10 Feb 1860) to weekly evening meeting, 'On Species and Races, and their Origin', Notices of the Proceedings at the Meetings of the Members of the Royal Institution: Vol. III: 1858-1862 (1862), 199.
Science quotes on:  |  Attempt (266)  |  Battle (36)  |  Crush (19)  |  Defeat (31)  |  Divine (112)  |  Epoch (46)  |  Futile (13)  |  Galileo Galilei (134)  |  Great (1610)  |  Hundred (240)  |  Investigate (106)  |  Know (1538)  |  Life (1870)  |  Maim (3)  |  Maintain (105)  |  Mischievous (12)  |  Most (1728)  |  Never (1089)  |  Opposition (49)  |  Person (366)  |  Physical (518)  |  Physical Science (104)  |  Rampant (2)  |  Reception (16)  |  Time (1911)  |  Truth (1109)  |  Universal (198)  |  Will (2350)  |  Wonderful (155)

It was my good fortune to be linked with Mme. Curie through twenty years of sublime and unclouded friendship. I came to admire her human grandeur to an ever growing degree. Her strength, her purity of will, her austerity toward herself, her objectivity, her incorruptible judgement—all these were of a kind seldom found joined in a single individual… The greatest scientific deed of her life—proving the existence of radioactive elements and isolating them—owes its accomplishment not merely to bold intuition but to a devotion and tenacity in execution under the most extreme hardships imaginable, such as the history of experimental science has not often witnessed.
Out of My Later Years (1950), 227-8.
Science quotes on:  |  Accomplishment (102)  |  Austerity (3)  |  Bold (22)  |  Marie Curie (37)  |  Deed (34)  |  Degree (277)  |  Devotion (37)  |  Element (322)  |  Execution (25)  |  Existence (481)  |  Experimental (193)  |  Extreme (78)  |  Fortune (50)  |  Friendship (18)  |  Good (906)  |  Grandeur (35)  |  Greatest (330)  |  Growing (99)  |  History (716)  |  Human (1512)  |  Individual (420)  |  Intuition (82)  |  Kind (564)  |  Life (1870)  |  Merely (315)  |  Most (1728)  |  Objectivity (17)  |  Owe (71)  |  Radioactive (24)  |  Radioactivity (33)  |  Scientific (955)  |  Seldom (68)  |  Single (365)  |  Strength (139)  |  Sublime (50)  |  Through (846)  |  Will (2350)  |  Witness (57)  |  Year (963)

Let me tell you the secret that has led me to my goal. My only strength lies in my tenacity.
Quoted in René Dubos, Louis Pasteur: Freelance of Science (1950). In W.I.B. Beveridge, The Art of Scientific Investigation (1953), 140.
Science quotes on:  |  Goal (155)  |  Lie (370)  |  Secret (216)  |  Strength (139)  |  Success (327)  |  Tell (344)

Memory is to mind as viscosity is to protoplasm it gives a kind of tenacity to thought—a kind of pied à terre from which it can, and without it could not, advance.
Samuel Butler, Henry Festing Jones (ed.), The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1917), 58.
Science quotes on:  |  Advance (298)  |  Advancement (63)  |  Kind (564)  |  Memory (144)  |  Mind (1377)  |  Protoplasm (13)  |  Thought (995)  |  Viscosity (3)

Patience and tenacity of purpose are worth more than twice their weight in cleverness.
…...
Science quotes on:  |  Cleverness (15)  |  More (2558)  |  Patience (58)  |  Purpose (336)  |  Twice (20)  |  Weight (140)  |  Worth (172)

Those who know physicists and mountaineers know the traits they have in common: a “dream-and-drive” spirit, a bulldog tenacity of purpose, and an openness to try any route to the summit.
In obituary 'Albert Einstein', National Academy of Sciences, Biographical Memoirs, Vol. 51, (1980), 98-99.
Science quotes on:  |  Common (447)  |  Dream (222)  |  Drive (61)  |  Know (1538)  |  Mountaineer (3)  |  Openness (8)  |  Physicist (270)  |  Purpose (336)  |  Route (16)  |  Spirit (278)  |  Summit (27)  |  Trait (23)  |  Try (296)


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.