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 believe that this Nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to earth.”
more quiz questions >>
Home > Category Index for Science Quotations > Category Index W > Category: Whither

Whither Quotes (11 quotes)

Apart from its healthful mental training as a branch of ordinary education, geology as an open-air pursuit affords an admirable training in habits of observation, furnishes a delightful relief from the cares and routine of everyday life, takes us into the open fields and the free fresh face of nature, leads us into all manner of sequestered nooks, whither hardly any other occupation or interest would be likely to send us, sets before us problems of the highest interest regarding the history of the ground beneath our feet, and thus gives a new charm to scenery which may be already replete with attractions.
Outlines of Field-Geology (1900), 251-2.
Science quotes on:  |  Air (366)  |  Already (226)  |  Attraction (61)  |  Beneath (68)  |  Branch (155)  |  Care (203)  |  Charm (54)  |  Delightful (18)  |  Education (423)  |  Everyday (32)  |  Everyday Life (15)  |  Face (214)  |  Field (378)  |  Free (239)  |  Fresh (69)  |  Geology (240)  |  Ground (222)  |  Habit (174)  |  History (716)  |  Interest (416)  |  Lead (391)  |  Life (1870)  |  Mental (179)  |  Nature (2017)  |  New (1273)  |  Observation (593)  |  Occupation (51)  |  Open (277)  |  Ordinary (167)  |  Other (2233)  |  Problem (731)  |  Pursuit (128)  |  Relief (30)  |  Routine (26)  |  Sequester (2)  |  Set (400)  |  Training (92)

Dissections daily convince us of our ignorance of disease, and cause us to blush at our prescriptions. What mischief have we done under the belief of false facts and false theories! We have assisted in multiplying diseases; we have done more; we have increased their mortality. ... I am pursuing Truth, and am indifferent whither I am led, if she is my only leader.
From a public lecture by Rush. Quoted by Isaac Jennings, in Medical Reform; a Treatise on Man's Physical Being and Disorders (1847), 33.
Science quotes on:  |  Belief (615)  |  Cause (561)  |  Convince (43)  |  Daily (91)  |  Disease (340)  |  Dissection (35)  |  Drug (61)  |  Error (339)  |  Fact (1257)  |  Facts (553)  |  Ignorance (254)  |  Leader (51)  |  Mischief (13)  |  More (2558)  |  Prescription (18)  |  Pursuing (27)  |  Truth (1109)

For the most part we humans live with the false impression of security and a feeling of being at home in a seemingly trustworthy physical and human environment. But when the expected course of everyday life is interrupted, we are like shipwrecked people on a miserable plank in the open sea, having forgotten where they came from and not knowing whither they are drifting. But once we fully accept this, life becomes easier and there is no longer any disappointment.
…...
Science quotes on:  |  Accept (198)  |  Become (821)  |  Being (1276)  |  Course (413)  |  Disappointment (18)  |  Drift (14)  |  Easier (53)  |  Easy (213)  |  Environment (239)  |  Everyday (32)  |  Everyday Life (15)  |  Expect (203)  |  False (105)  |  Feel (371)  |  Feeling (259)  |  Forget (125)  |  Forgotten (53)  |  Fully (20)  |  Home (184)  |  Human (1512)  |  Impression (118)  |  Interrupt (6)  |  Know (1538)  |  Knowing (137)  |  Life (1870)  |  Live (650)  |  Long (778)  |  Miserable (8)  |  Most (1728)  |  Open (277)  |  Part (235)  |  People (1031)  |  Physical (518)  |  Plank (4)  |  Sea (326)  |  Security (51)  |  Seemingly (28)  |  Shipwreck (8)  |  Trustworthy (14)

I am born into an environment–I know not whence I came nor whither I go nor who I am. This is my situation as yours, every single one of you. The fact that everyone always was in this same situation, and always will be, tells me nothing. Our burning question as to the whence and whither–all we can ourselves observe about it is the present environment. That is why we are eager to find out about it as much as we can. That is science, learning, knowledge; it is the true source of every spiritual endeavour of man. We try to find out as much as we can about the spatial and temporal surroundings of the place in which we find ourselves put by birth.
…...
Science quotes on:  |  Bear (162)  |  Birth (154)  |  Burn (99)  |  Burning (49)  |  Eager (17)  |  Endeavor (74)  |  Endeavour (63)  |  Environment (239)  |  Everyone (35)  |  Fact (1257)  |  Find (1014)  |  Find Out (25)  |  Know (1538)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Learn (672)  |  Learning (291)  |  Man (2252)  |  Nothing (1000)  |  Observe (179)  |  Ourselves (247)  |  Place (192)  |  Present (630)  |  Question (649)  |  Same (166)  |  Single (365)  |  Situation (117)  |  Source (101)  |  Spatial (10)  |  Spiritual (94)  |  Surroundings (6)  |  Tell (344)  |  Temporal (4)  |  True (239)  |  Try (296)  |  Why (491)  |  Will (2350)

If at this moment I am not a worn-out, debauched, useless carcass of a man, if it has been or will be my fate to advance the cause of science, if I feel that I have a shadow of a claim on the love of those about me, if in the supreme moment when I looked down into my boy’s grave my sorrow was full of submission and without bitterness, it is because these agencies have worked upon me, and not because I have ever cared whether my poor personality shall remain distinct forever from the All from whence it came and whither it goes.
And thus, my dear Kingsley, you will understand what my position is. I may be quite wrong, and in that case I know I shall have to pay the penalty for being wrong. But I can only say with Luther, “Gott helfe mir, ich kann nichts anders [God help me, I cannot do otherwise].”
In Letter (23 Sep 1860) to Charles Kingsley, Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley (1901), 237.
Science quotes on:  |  Advance (298)  |  Being (1276)  |  Boy (100)  |  Car (75)  |  Carcass (2)  |  Cause (561)  |  Claim (154)  |  Debauched (2)  |  Distinct (98)  |  Do (1905)  |  Down (455)  |  Fate (76)  |  Feel (371)  |  Forever (111)  |  God (776)  |  Grave (52)  |  Know (1538)  |  Look (584)  |  Love (328)  |  Man (2252)  |  Moment (260)  |  Personality (66)  |  Poor (139)  |  Remain (355)  |  Say (989)  |  Shadow (73)  |  Sorrow (21)  |  Supreme (73)  |  Understand (648)  |  Will (2350)  |  Work (1402)  |  Wrong (246)

In particular, and most importantly, this is the reason why the scientific worldview contains of itself no ethical values, no esthetical values, not a word about our own ultimate scope or destination, and no God, if you please. Whence came I and whither go I?
…...
Science quotes on:  |  Aesthetics (12)  |  Contain (68)  |  Destination (16)  |  Ethical (34)  |  God (776)  |  Importantly (3)  |  Most (1728)  |  Particular (80)  |  Please (68)  |  Reason (766)  |  Scientific (955)  |  Scope (44)  |  Ultimate (152)  |  Value (393)  |  Why (491)  |  Word (650)  |  WorldView (5)

Nature! … She tosses her creatures out of nothingness, and tells them not whence they came, nor whither they go. It is their business to run, she knows the road.
As quoted by T.H. Huxley, in Norman Lockyer (ed.), 'Nature: Aphorisms by Goethe', Nature (1870), 1, 9.
Science quotes on:  |  Business (156)  |  Creature (242)  |  Know (1538)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Nothing (1000)  |  Nothingness (12)  |  Road (71)  |  Run (158)  |  Tell (344)  |  Toss (8)

One of my friends, reading the title of these lectures [The Whence and Whither of Man] said: “Of man's origin you know nothing, of his future you know less.”
From the Introduction to The Whence and Whither of Man; a Brief History of his Origin and Development through Conformity to Environment; being the Morse Lectures of 1895. (1896), ix. The Morse lectureship was founded by Prof. Samuel F.B. Morse in 1865 at Union Theological Seminary, the lectures to deal with “the relation of the Bible to any of the sciences.”
Science quotes on:  |  Friend (180)  |  Future (467)  |  Know (1538)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Lecture (111)  |  Less (105)  |  Man (2252)  |  Nothing (1000)  |  Origin (250)  |  Reading (136)  |  Title (20)

Rivers are roads which move, and which carry us whither we desire to go.
In Pensées. As translated by W.F. Trotter in Blaise Pascal: Thoughts, Letters, and Minor Works (1910), 13.
Science quotes on:  |  Carry (130)  |  Desire (212)  |  Move (223)  |  River (140)  |  Road (71)

The traditional psychology talks like one who should say a river consists of nothing but pailsful, spoonsful, quartpotsful, barrelsful, and other moulded forms of water. Even were the pails and the pots all actually standing in the stream, still between them the free water would continue to flow. It is just this free water of consciousness that psychologists resolutely overlook. Every definite image in the mind is steeped and dyed in the free water that flows round it. With it goes the sense of its relations, near and remote, the dying echo of whence it came to us, the dawning sense of whither it is to lead.
'On Some Omissions of Introspective Psychology', Mind (1884), 9, 16.
Science quotes on:  |  Consciousness (132)  |  Consist (223)  |  Continue (179)  |  Definite (114)  |  Echo (12)  |  Flow (89)  |  Form (976)  |  Free (239)  |  Image (97)  |  Lead (391)  |  Mind (1377)  |  Nothing (1000)  |  Other (2233)  |  Overlook (33)  |  Psychology (166)  |  Remote (86)  |  River (140)  |  Say (989)  |  Sense (785)  |  Still (614)  |  Stream (83)  |  Water (503)

We call that fire of the black thunder-cloud “electricity,” and lecture learnedly about it, and grind the like of it out of glass and silk: but what is it? What made it? Whence comes it? Whither goes it?
The Carlyle Anthology (1876), 230.
Science quotes on:  |  Call (781)  |  Cloud (111)  |  Electricity (168)  |  Electrostatics (6)  |  Enquiry (89)  |  Fire (203)  |  Glass (94)  |  Lecture (111)  |  Lightning (49)  |  Silk (14)  |  Thunder (21)


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.