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: “Genius is two percent inspiration, ninety-eight percent perspiration.”
more quiz questions >>
Home > Category Index for Science Quotations > Category Index W > Category: Weaving

Weaving Quotes (6 quotes)

A first step in the study of civilization is to dissect it into details, and to classify these in their proper groups. Thus, in examining weapons, they are to be classed under spear, club, sling, bow and arrow, and so forth; among textile arts are to be ranged matting, netting, and several grades of making and weaving threads; myths are divided under such headings as myths of sunrise and sunset, eclipse-myths, earthquake-myths, local myths which account for the names of places by some fanciful tale, eponymic myths which account for the parentage of a tribe by turning its name into the name of an imaginary ancestor; under rites and ceremonies occur such practices as the various kinds of sacrifice to the ghosts of the dead and to other spiritual beings, the turning to the east in worship, the purification of ceremonial or moral uncleanness by means of water or fire. Such are a few miscellaneous examples from a list of hundreds … To the ethnographer, the bow and arrow is the species, the habit of flattening children’s skulls is a species, the practice of reckoning numbers by tens is a species. The geographical distribution of these things, and their transmission from region to region, have to be studied as the naturalist studies the geography of his botanical and zoological species.
In Primitive Culture (1871), Vol. 1, 7.
Science quotes on:  |  Account (195)  |  Ancestor (63)  |  Arrow (22)  |  Art (680)  |  Being (1276)  |  Botany (63)  |  Bow (15)  |  Ceremony (6)  |  Child (333)  |  Children (201)  |  Civilization (220)  |  Class (168)  |  Classification (102)  |  Club (8)  |  Death (406)  |  Detail (150)  |  Distribution (51)  |  Divided (50)  |  Earthquake (37)  |  Eclipse (25)  |  Fanciful (6)  |  Fire (203)  |  First (1302)  |  Geography (39)  |  Ghost (36)  |  Habit (174)  |  Hundred (240)  |  Imagination (349)  |  Kind (564)  |  Making (300)  |  Mean (810)  |  Means (587)  |  Moral (203)  |  Myth (58)  |  Name (359)  |  Naturalist (79)  |  Number (710)  |  Occur (151)  |  Other (2233)  |  Parent (80)  |  Practice (212)  |  Proper (150)  |  Purification (10)  |  Reckoning (19)  |  Rite (3)  |  Sacrifice (58)  |  Skull (5)  |  Sling (4)  |  Spear (8)  |  Species (435)  |  Spiritual (94)  |  Step (234)  |  Study (701)  |  Sunrise (14)  |  Sunset (27)  |  Tale (17)  |  Textile (2)  |  Thing (1914)  |  Thread (36)  |  Transmission (34)  |  Tribe (26)  |  Various (205)  |  Water (503)  |  Weapon (98)  |  Weapons (57)  |  Worship (32)  |  Zoological (5)

Already the steam-engine works our mines, impels our ships, excavates our ports and our rivers, forges iron, fashions wood, grinds grain, spins and weaves our cloths, transports the heaviest burdens, etc. It appears that it must some day serve as a universal motor, and be substituted for animal power, waterfalls, and air currents.
'Réflexions sur la puissance motrice du feu' (1824) translated by R.H. Thurston in Reflections on the Motive Power of Fire, and on Machines Fitted to Develop that Power (1890), 38.
Science quotes on:  |  Air (366)  |  Already (226)  |  Animal (651)  |  Burden (30)  |  Cloth (6)  |  Current (122)  |  Energy (373)  |  Engine (99)  |  Excavation (8)  |  Fashioning (2)  |  Forge (10)  |  Grain (50)  |  Grind (11)  |  Impelling (2)  |  Iron (99)  |  Mine (78)  |  Motor (23)  |  Must (1525)  |  Port (2)  |  Power (771)  |  River (140)  |  Serving (15)  |  Ship (69)  |  Spin (26)  |  Spinning (18)  |  Steam (81)  |  Steam Engine (47)  |  Substitution (16)  |  Transport (31)  |  Universal (198)  |  Waterfall (5)  |  Weave (21)  |  Wood (97)  |  Work (1402)

Learn from the Birds what food the thickets yield;
Learn from the Beasts the physick of the field:
The Arts of building from the Bee receive;
Learn of the Mole to plough, the Worm to weave.
In 'Epistle III', Essay on Man,: Being the First Book of Ethic Epistles (1734), 47.
Science quotes on:  |  Architecture (50)  |  Beast (58)  |  Bee (44)  |  Bird (163)  |  Building (158)  |  Field (378)  |  Food (213)  |  Learning (291)  |  Medicine (392)  |  Mole (5)  |  Natural History (77)  |  Plough (15)  |  Thicket (2)  |  Worm (47)  |  Yield (86)

Nature vibrates with rhythms, climatic and diastrophic, those finding stratigraphic expression ranging in period from the rapid oscillation of surface waters, recorded in ripple-mark, to those long-deferred stirrings of the deep imprisoned titans which have divided earth history into periods and eras. The flight of time is measured by the weaving of composite rhythms- day and night, calm and storm, summer and winter, birth and death such as these are sensed in the brief life of man. But the career of the earth recedes into a remoteness against which these lesser cycles are as unavailing for the measurement of that abyss of time as would be for human history the beating of an insect's wing. We must seek out, then, the nature of those longer rhythms whose very existence was unknown until man by the light of science sought to understand the earth. The larger of these must be measured in terms of the smaller, and the smaller must be measured in terms of years.
'Rhythm and the Measurement of Geologic Time', Bulletin of the Geological Society of America, 1917, 28,746.
Science quotes on:  |  Abyss (30)  |  Against (332)  |  Birth (154)  |  Brief (37)  |  Calm (32)  |  Career (86)  |  Cycle (42)  |  Death (406)  |  Deep (241)  |  Divided (50)  |  Earth (1076)  |  Era (51)  |  Existence (481)  |  Expression (181)  |  Flight (101)  |  Geology (240)  |  History (716)  |  Human (1512)  |  Imprison (11)  |  Insect (89)  |  Life (1870)  |  Light (635)  |  Long (778)  |  Man (2252)  |  Measurement (178)  |  Must (1525)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Oscillation (13)  |  Period (200)  |  Recede (11)  |  Record (161)  |  Remoteness (9)  |  Rhythm (21)  |  Ripple (12)  |  Seek (218)  |  Storm (56)  |  Summer (56)  |  Surface (223)  |  Term (357)  |  Terms (184)  |  Time (1911)  |  Understand (648)  |  Unknown (195)  |  Vibrate (7)  |  Water (503)  |  Wing (79)  |  Winter (46)  |  Year (963)

One will weave the canvas; another will fell a tree by the light of his ax. Yet another will forge nails, and there will be others who observe the stars to learn how to navigate. And yet all will be as one. Building a boat isn’t about weaving canvas, forging nails, or reading the sky. It’s about giving a shared taste for the sea, by the light of which you will see nothing contradictory but rather a community of love.
From the French, “Celui-là tissera des toiles, l’autre dans la forêt par l’éclair de sa hache couchera l’arbre. L’autre, encore, forgera des clous, et il en sera quelque part qui observeront les étoiles afin d’apprendre à gouverner. Et tous cependant ne seront qu’un. Créer le navire ce n’est point tisser les toiles, forger les clous, lire les astres, mais bien donner le goût de la mer qui est un, et à la lumière duquel il n’est plus rien qui soit contradictoire mais communauté dans l’amour.” In Citadelle (1948), Sect. 75, 687. An English edition was published as “Wisdom of the Sands.” The translation in the subject quote is given the website quoteinvestigator.com which discusses how it may have been paraphrased anonymously to yield the commonly seen quote as “If you want to build a ship, don’t recruit the men to gather the wood, divide the work and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for vast and endless sea.”
Science quotes on:  |  Axe (16)  |  Boat (17)  |  Build (211)  |  Building (158)  |  Community (111)  |  Forge (10)  |  Learn (672)  |  Light (635)  |  Love (328)  |  Nail (8)  |  Navigate (4)  |  Nothing (1000)  |  Observe (179)  |  Other (2233)  |  Reading (136)  |  Sail (37)  |  Sea (326)  |  See (1094)  |  Share (82)  |  Sky (174)  |  Star (460)  |  Stars (304)  |  Taste (93)  |  Tree (269)  |  Weave (21)  |  Will (2350)

Our ultimate task is to find interpretative procedures that will uncover each bias and discredit its claims to universality. When this is done the eighteenth century can be formally closed and a new era that has been here a long time can be officially recognised. The individual human being, stripped of his humanity, is of no use as a conceptual base from which to make a picture of human society. No human exists except steeped in the culture of his time and place. The falsely abstracted individual has been sadly misleading to Western political thought. But now we can start again at a point where major streams of thought converge, at the other end, at the making of culture. Cultural analysis sees the whole tapestry as a whole, the picture and the weaving process, before attending to the individual threads.
As co-author with Baron Isherwood, The World of Goods: Towards an Anthropology of Consumption (1979, 2002), 41-42.
Science quotes on:  |  18th Century (21)  |  Abstract (141)  |  Analysis (244)  |  Base (120)  |  Being (1276)  |  Bias (22)  |  Century (319)  |  Claim (154)  |  Closed (38)  |  Conceptual (11)  |  Converge (10)  |  Culture (157)  |  Discredit (8)  |  End (603)  |  Era (51)  |  Exist (458)  |  Find (1014)  |  Human (1512)  |  Human Being (185)  |  Human Society (14)  |  Humanity (186)  |  Individual (420)  |  Interpretation (89)  |  Long (778)  |  Major (88)  |  Making (300)  |  Misleading (21)  |  New (1273)  |  Other (2233)  |  Picture (148)  |  Point (584)  |  Political (124)  |  Procedure (48)  |  Process (439)  |  Recognise (14)  |  See (1094)  |  Society (350)  |  Start (237)  |  Stream (83)  |  Strip (7)  |  Tapestry (5)  |  Task (152)  |  Thought (995)  |  Thread (36)  |  Time (1911)  |  Ultimate (152)  |  Uncover (20)  |  Universality (22)  |  Use (771)  |  Western (45)  |  Whole (756)  |  Will (2350)


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.