Vocation Quotes (10 quotes)
Give me a dozen healthy infants, well-formed, and my own specified world to bring them up in and I’ll guarantee to take any one at random and train him to become any type of specialist I might select—doctor, lawyer, artist, merchant-chief and, yes, even beggar-man and thief, regardless of his talents, penchants, tendencies, abilities, vocations, and race of his ancestors. (1930)
Behaviorism (1998), 82.
Happiness lies in the absorption in some vocation which satisfies the soul.
From graduating address (4 Jun 1891) at Nurses Training School, Johns Hopkins Hospital, published as 'Doctor and Nurse', in Aequanimitas and Other Addresses (1904, 1906), 20.
His [Henry Cavendish’s] Theory of the Universe seems to have been, that it consisted solely of a multitude of objects which could be weighed, numbered, and measured; and the vocation to which he considered himself called was, to weigh, number and measure as many of those objects as his allotted three-score years and ten would permit. This conviction biased all his doings, alike his great scientific enterprises, and the petty details of his daily life.
In George Wilson, The Life of the Honourable Henry Cavendish: Including the Abstracts of his Important Scientific Papers (1851), 186.
Immediately south of nitrogen is phosphorus, which was first isolated by the distillation and treatment of urine—an indication of the lengths to which chemists are prepared to go, or perhaps only a sign of the obsessive, scatological origins of their vocation.
In The Periodic Kingdom: A Journey Into the Land of the Chemical Elements (1995), 20. [On the Periodic Table, nitrogen and phosphorus are in the same Group, a column headed by nitrogen. Phosphorus is located immediately below, or “south” if the Periodic Table is viewed as analogous to a map. —Webmaster]
Tell me of what plant-birthday a man takes notice, and I shall tell you a good deal about his vocation, his hobbies, his hay fever, and the general level of his ecological education.
In 'Prairie Birthday', A Sand County Almanac, and Sketches Here and There (1949, 1987), 44. [Birthday refers to the time of first blooming.]
The engineer who counts cost as nothing as compared to the result, who holds himself above the consideration of dollars and cents, has missed his vocation.
Presidents Address (1886), Transactions of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (1887), 8, 678.
The participation in the general development of the mental powers without special reference to his future vocation must be recognized as the essential aim of mathematical instruction.
In Anleitung zum Mathematischen Unterricht an höheren Schulen (1906), 12.
The reformer [of the body of law] who would seek to improve such a system in any material degree, mistakes his vocation. That task had better be left to time and experience. He will often find it impossible to know what to eradicate and what to spare, and in plucking up the tares, the wheat may sometimes be destroyed. “The pound of flesh” may be removed, indeed, but with it will come, gushing forth, the blood of life.
From biographical preface by T. Bigelow to Austin Abbott (ed.), Official Report of the Trial of Henry Ward Beecher (1875), Vol. 1, xii.
There is, however, no genius so gifted as not to need control and verification. ... [T]he brightest flashes in the world of thought are incomplete until they have been proved to have their counterparts in the world of fact. Thus the vocation of the true experimentalist may be defined as the continued exercise of spiritual insight, and its incessant correction and realisation. His experiments constitute a body, of which his purified intuitions are, as it were, the soul.
In 'Vitality', Scientific Use of the Imagination and Other Essays (1872), 43.
While medicine is to be your vocation, or calling, see to it that you have also an avocation—some intellectual pastime which may serve to keep you in touch with the world of art, of science, or of letters. Begin at once the cultivation of some interest other than the purely professional. … No matter what it is—but have an outside hobby.
From address at McGill College, Montreal (1899), 'After Twenty-Five Years', No. 11 in Aequanimitas and other Addresses (1904, 1906), 213.
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) -- 
