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: “As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain; and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality.”
more quiz questions >>
Home > Category Index for Science Quotations > Category Index W > Category: Widen

Widen Quotes (10 quotes)

A human being is part of the whole, called by us “Universe”; a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest—a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty. Nobody is able to achieve this completely but the striving for such achievement is, in itself, a part of the liberation and a foundation for inner security.
In Letter (4 Mar 1950), replying to a grieving father over the loss of a young son. In Dear Professor Einstein: Albert Einstein’s Letters to and from Children (2002), 184.
Science quotes on:  |  Achieve (75)  |  Achievement (187)  |  Affection (44)  |  Beauty (313)  |  Being (1276)  |  Call (781)  |  Circle (117)  |  Compassion (12)  |  Completely (137)  |  Consciousness (132)  |  Creature (242)  |  Delusion (26)  |  Desire (212)  |  Embrace (47)  |  Experience (494)  |  Feeling (259)  |  Feelings (52)  |  Foundation (177)  |  Free (239)  |  Himself (461)  |  Human (1512)  |  Human Being (185)  |  Inner (72)  |  Kind (564)  |  Liberation (12)  |  Limit (294)  |  Limited (102)  |  Live (650)  |  Living (492)  |  Must (1525)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Nobody (103)  |  Optical (11)  |  Ourselves (247)  |  Part (235)  |  Person (366)  |  Personal (75)  |  Prison (13)  |  Rest (287)  |  Restrict (13)  |  Security (51)  |  Separate (151)  |  Something (718)  |  Space (523)  |  Strive (53)  |  Task (152)  |  Thought (995)  |  Time (1911)  |  Time And Space (39)  |  Universe (900)  |  Whole (756)

It is of priceless value to the human race to know that the sun will supply the needs of the earth, as to light and heat, for millions of years; that the stars are not lanterns hung out at night, but are suns like our own; and that numbers of them probably have planets revolving around them, perhaps in many cases with inhabitants adapted to the conditions existing there. In a sentence, the main purpose of the science is to learn the truth about the stellar universe; to increase human knowledge concerning our surroundings, and to widen the limits of intellectual life.
In 'The Nature of the Astronomer’s Work', North American Review (Jun 1908), 187, No. 631, 915.
Science quotes on:  |  Adapt (70)  |  Condition (362)  |  Earth (1076)  |  Hang (46)  |  Heat (180)  |  Human (1512)  |  Human Race (104)  |  Increase (225)  |  Inhabitant (50)  |  Intellectual (258)  |  Know (1538)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Lantern (8)  |  Learn (672)  |  Life (1870)  |  Light (635)  |  Limit (294)  |  Million (124)  |  Need (320)  |  Night (133)  |  Number (710)  |  Planet (402)  |  Priceless (9)  |  Probability (135)  |  Purpose (336)  |  Race (278)  |  Research (753)  |  Revolve (26)  |  Star (460)  |  Stars (304)  |  Stellar (4)  |  Sun (407)  |  Supply (100)  |  Surrounding (13)  |  Truth (1109)  |  Universe (900)  |  Value (393)  |  Will (2350)  |  Year (963)

It would seem at first sight as if the rapid expansion of the region of mathematics must be a source of danger to its future progress. Not only does the area widen but the subjects of study increase rapidly in number, and the work of the mathematician tends to become more and more specialized. It is, of course, merely a brilliant exaggeration to say that no mathematician is able to understand the work of any other mathematician, but it is certainly true that it is daily becoming more and more difficult for a mathematician to keep himself acquainted, even in a general way, with the progress of any of the branches of mathematics except those which form the field of his own labours. I believe, however, that the increasing extent of the territory of mathematics will always be counteracted by increased facilities in the means of communication. Additional knowledge opens to us new principles and methods which may conduct us with the greatest ease to results which previously were most difficult of access; and improvements in notation may exercise the most powerful effects both in the simplification and accessibility of a subject. It rests with the worker in mathematics not only to explore new truths, but to devise the language by which they may be discovered and expressed; and the genius of a great mathematician displays itself no less in the notation he invents for deciphering his subject than in the results attained. … I have great faith in the power of well-chosen notation to simplify complicated theories and to bring remote ones near and I think it is safe to predict that the increased knowledge of principles and the resulting improvements in the symbolic language of mathematics will always enable us to grapple satisfactorily with the difficulties arising from the mere extent of the subject.
In Presidential Address British Association for the Advancement of Science, Section A., (1890), Nature, 42, 466.
Science quotes on:  |  Access (21)  |  Accessibility (3)  |  Acquaint (11)  |  Additional (6)  |  Area (33)  |  Arise (162)  |  Arising (22)  |  Attain (126)  |  Become (821)  |  Becoming (96)  |  Belief (615)  |  Both (496)  |  Branch (155)  |  Brilliant (57)  |  Bring (95)  |  Certainly (185)  |  Chosen (48)  |  Communication (101)  |  Complicated (117)  |  Conduct (70)  |  Counteract (5)  |  Course (413)  |  Daily (91)  |  Danger (127)  |  Decipher (7)  |  Devise (16)  |  Difficult (263)  |  Difficulty (201)  |  Discover (571)  |  Display (59)  |  Ease (40)  |  Effect (414)  |  Enable (122)  |  Exaggeration (16)  |  Exercise (113)  |  Expansion (43)  |  Exploration (161)  |  Express (192)  |  Extent (142)  |  Facility (14)  |  Faith (209)  |  Field (378)  |  First (1302)  |  First Sight (6)  |  Form (976)  |  Future (467)  |  General (521)  |  Genius (301)  |  Grapple (11)  |  Great (1610)  |  Greatest (330)  |  Himself (461)  |  Improvement (117)  |  Increase (225)  |  Invent (57)  |  Keep (104)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Labor (200)  |  Language (308)  |  Less (105)  |  Mathematician (407)  |  Mathematics (1395)  |  Mean (810)  |  Means (587)  |  Mere (86)  |  Merely (315)  |  Method (531)  |  More (2558)  |  Most (1728)  |  Must (1525)  |  New (1273)  |  Notation (28)  |  Number (710)  |  Of Course (22)  |  Open (277)  |  Other (2233)  |  Power (771)  |  Powerful (145)  |  Predict (86)  |  Previously (12)  |  Principle (530)  |  Progress (492)  |  Rapid (37)  |  Rapidly (67)  |  Region (40)  |  Remote (86)  |  Rest (287)  |  Result (700)  |  Safe (61)  |  Satisfactory (19)  |  Say (989)  |  Seem (150)  |  Sight (135)  |  Simplification (20)  |  Simplify (14)  |  Source (101)  |  Specialized (9)  |  Study (701)  |  Study And Research In Mathematics (61)  |  Subject (543)  |  Symbolic (16)  |  Tend (124)  |  Territory (25)  |  Theory (1015)  |  Think (1122)  |  True (239)  |  Truth (1109)  |  Understand (648)  |  Way (1214)  |  Well-Chosen (2)  |  Will (2350)  |  Work (1402)  |  Worker (34)

Science moves, but slowly, slowly, creeping on from point to point. ...
Yet I doubt not through the ages one increasing purpose runs,
And the thoughts of men are widened with the process of the suns.…
Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers…
In poem, 'Locksley Hall', collected in Poems by Alfred Tennyson (1842), Vol. 1, 105-106.
Science quotes on:  |  Age (509)  |  Creep (15)  |  Doubt (314)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Linger (14)  |  Move (223)  |  Movement (162)  |  Point (584)  |  Process (439)  |  Purpose (336)  |  Run (158)  |  Slowly (19)  |  Sun (407)  |  Thought (995)  |  Through (846)  |  Wisdom (235)

The final result of our researches has widened the class of substances sensitive to light vibrations, until we can propound the fact of such sensitiveness being a general property of all matter.
In Paper (27 Aug 1880) read to the American Association for the Advancement of Science, 'On the Production and Reproduction of Sound by Light'. Printed in The American Journal of Science (Oct 1880), 20, 3rd Ser., No. 118, 305.
Science quotes on:  |  Being (1276)  |  Class (168)  |  Fact (1257)  |  Final (121)  |  General (521)  |  Light (635)  |  Matter (821)  |  Property (177)  |  Research (753)  |  Result (700)  |  Selenium (2)  |  Sensitivity (10)  |  Substance (253)  |  Vibration (26)

The Grand Canyon is carven deep by the master hand; it is the gulf of silence, widened in the desert; it is all time inscribing the naked rock; it is the book of earth.
In The Road of a Naturalist (1941), 206.
Science quotes on:  |  Arizona (2)  |  Book (413)  |  Deep (241)  |  Desert (59)  |  Earth (1076)  |  Grand Canyon (11)  |  Gulf (18)  |  Master (182)  |  Naked (10)  |  Rock (176)  |  Silence (62)  |  Time (1911)

Theories are like a stairway; by climbing, science widens its horizon more and more, because theories embody and necessarily include proportionately more facts as they advance.
From An Introduction to the Study of Experimental Medicine (1865), as translated by Henry Copley Greene (1957), 165.
Science quotes on:  |  Advance (298)  |  Advancement (63)  |  Climb (39)  |  Embodiment (9)  |  Fact (1257)  |  Facts (553)  |  Horizon (47)  |  Include (93)  |  Inclusion (5)  |  More (2558)  |  Necessarily (137)  |  Necessity (197)  |  Proportionate (4)  |  Theory (1015)  |  Widening (2)

To stop short in any research that bids fair to widen the gates of knowledge, to recoil from fear of difficulty or adverse criticism, is to bring reproach on science. There is nothing for the investigator to do but go straight on, 'to explore up and down, inch by inch, with the taper his reason;' to follow the light wherever it may lead, even should it at times resemble a will-o'-the-wisp.
Referring to his interest in psychical (spiritual) research.
Presidential address to the British Association (1898). Quoted in Harold Begbie in Pall Mall magazine (Jan 1903). In Albert Shaw, The American Monthly Review of Reviews (1903), 27, 232.
Science quotes on:  |  Criticism (85)  |  Difficulty (201)  |  Do (1905)  |  Down (455)  |  Fear (212)  |  Follow (389)  |  Gate (33)  |  Interest (416)  |  Investigator (71)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Lead (391)  |  Light (635)  |  Nothing (1000)  |  Psychic (15)  |  Reason (766)  |  Research (753)  |  Resemble (65)  |  Short (200)  |  Spiritual (94)  |  Straight (75)  |  Time (1911)  |  Wherever (51)  |  Will (2350)

We stand by the river and admire the great body of water flowing so sweetly on; could you trace it back to its source, you might find a mere rivulet, but meandering on, joined by other streams and by secret springs, and fed by the rains and dews of heaven, it gathers volume and force, makes its way through the gorges of the mountains, plows, widens and deepens its channel through the provinces, and attains its present majesty.
From Address (1 Aug 1875), 'The Growth of Principles' at Saratoga. Collected in William L. Snyder (ed.), Great Speeches by Great Lawyers: A Collection of Arguments and Speeches (1901), 246.
Science quotes on:  |  Attain (126)  |  Back (395)  |  Body (557)  |  Channel (23)  |  Deepen (6)  |  Dew (10)  |  Erosion (20)  |  Find (1014)  |  Force (497)  |  Gather (76)  |  Geology (240)  |  Gorge (3)  |  Great (1610)  |  Heaven (266)  |  Hydrology (10)  |  Majesty (21)  |  Meander (3)  |  Mountain (202)  |  Other (2233)  |  Plow (7)  |  Present (630)  |  Province (37)  |  Rain (70)  |  River (140)  |  Rivulet (5)  |  Secret (216)  |  Source (101)  |  Spring (140)  |  Stand (284)  |  Stream (83)  |  Through (846)  |  Trace (109)  |  Volume (25)  |  Water (503)  |  Way (1214)

When science makes minor mysteries disappear, greater mysteries stand confessed. For one object of delight whose emotional value science has inevitably lessened—as Newton damaged the rainbow for Keats—science gives back double. To the grand primary impressions of the world­power, the immensities, the pervading order, and the universal flux, with which the man of feeling has been nurtured from of old, modern science has added thrilling impressions of manifoldness, intricacy, uniformity, inter-relatedness, and evolution. Science widens and clears the emotional window. There are great vistas to which science alone can lead, and they make for elevation of mind. The opposition between science and feeling is largely a misunderstanding. As one of our philosophers has remarked, science is in a true sense 'one of the humanities.'
J. Arthur Thomson (ed.), The Outline of Science: A Plain Story Simply Told (1921/2), Vol. 2, Science and Modern Thought, 787.
Science quotes on:  |  Alone (324)  |  Back (395)  |  Confess (42)  |  Delight (111)  |  Disappear (84)  |  Elevation (13)  |  Evolution (635)  |  Feeling (259)  |  Flux (21)  |  Great (1610)  |  Greater (288)  |  Humanities (21)  |  Impression (118)  |  Inter (12)  |  Intricacy (8)  |  Lead (391)  |  Man (2252)  |  Mind (1377)  |  Misunderstanding (13)  |  Modern (402)  |  Modern Science (55)  |  Object (438)  |  Old (499)  |  Opposition (49)  |  Order (638)  |  Pervading (7)  |  Philosopher (269)  |  Power (771)  |  Primary (82)  |  Rainbow (17)  |  Sense (785)  |  Stand (284)  |  Uniformity (38)  |  Universal (198)  |  Value (393)  |  Vista (12)  |  Window (59)  |  World (1850)


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.