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: “Dangerous... to take shelter under a tree, during a thunder-gust. It has been fatal to many, both men and beasts.”
more quiz questions >>
Home > Category Index for Science Quotations > Category Index Y > Category: Youth

Youth Quotes (109 quotes)

...the need for a garden of rare palms and vines and ornamental trees and shrubs which would be near enough to a growing city to form a quiet place where children with their elders could peer, as it were, into those fascinating jungles and palm glades of the tropics which have for generations stimulated the imaginations of American youth.
Science quotes on:  |  Children (201)  |  City (87)  |  Elder (9)  |  Enough (341)  |  Fascinating (38)  |  Form (976)  |  Garden (64)  |  Generation (256)  |  Growing (99)  |  Horticulture (10)  |  Imagination (349)  |  Jungle (24)  |  Quiet (37)  |  Rare (94)  |  Shrub (5)  |  Tree (269)

[Alchemists] finde out men so covetous of so much happiness, whom they easily perswade that they shall finde greater Riches in Hydargyrie [mercury], than Nature affords in Gold. Such, whom although they have twice or thrice already been deluded, yet they have still a new Device wherewith to deceive um again; there being no greater Madness…. So that the smells of Coles, Sulphur, Dung, Poyson, and Piss, are to them a greater pleasure than the taste of Honey; till their Farms, Goods, and Patrimonies being wasted, and converted into Ashes and Smoak, when they expect the rewards of their Labours, births of Gold, Youth, and Immortality, after all their Time and Expences; at length, old, ragged, famisht, with the continual use of Quicksilver [mercury] paralytick, onely rich in misery, … a laughing-stock to the people: … compell’d to live in the lowest degree of poverty, and … at length compell’d thereto by Penury, they fall to Ill Courses, as Counterfeiting of Money.
In The Vanity of the Arts and Sciences (1530), translation (1676), 313.
Science quotes on:  |  Alchemist (23)  |  Already (226)  |  Being (1276)  |  Birth (154)  |  Coal (64)  |  Continual (44)  |  Counterfeit (2)  |  Course (413)  |  Covetous (2)  |  Deceive (26)  |  Degree (277)  |  Delude (3)  |  Deluded (7)  |  Device (71)  |  Dung (10)  |  Expect (203)  |  Fall (243)  |  Farm (28)  |  Gold (101)  |  Good (906)  |  Greater (288)  |  Happiness (126)  |  Honey (15)  |  Labor (200)  |  Live (650)  |  Madness (33)  |  Mercury (54)  |  Misery (31)  |  Money (178)  |  Nature (2017)  |  New (1273)  |  Old (499)  |  Penury (3)  |  People (1031)  |  Persuade (11)  |  Piss (3)  |  Pleasure (191)  |  Poison (46)  |  Poverty (40)  |  Quicksilver (8)  |  Reward (72)  |  Smell (29)  |  Smoke (32)  |  Still (614)  |  Sulphur (19)  |  Taste (93)  |  Time (1911)  |  Use (771)

[As a youth, fiddling in my home laboratory] I discovered a formula for the frequency of a resonant circuit which was 2π x sqrt(LC) where L is the inductance and C the capacitance of the circuit. And there was π, and where was the circle? … I still don’t quite know where that circle is, where that π comes from.
From address to the National Science Teachers’ Association convention (Apr 1966), 'What Is Science?', collected in Richard Phillips Feynman and Jeffrey Robbins (ed.), The Pleasure of Finding Things Out: The Best Short Works of Richard P. Feynman (1999, 2005), 177.
Science quotes on:  |  Circle (117)  |  Circuit (29)  |  Discover (571)  |  Discovery (837)  |  Formula (102)  |  Frequency (25)  |  Home (184)  |  Know (1538)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Laboratory (214)  |  Pi (14)  |  Still (614)

[In my early youth, walking with my father,] “See that bird?” he says. “It’s a Spencer’s warbler.” (I knew he didn’t know the real name.) “Well, in Italian, it’s a Chutto Lapittida. In Portuguese, it’s a Bom da Peida. In Chinese, it’s a Chung-long-tah, and in Japanese, it’s a Katano Tekeda. You can know the name of that bird in all the languages of the world, but when you’re finished, you’ll know absolutely nothing whatever about the bird. You’ll only know about humans in different places, and what they call the bird. So let’s look at the bird and see what it’s doing—that’s what counts.” (I learned very early the difference between knowing the name of something and knowing something.)
In 'The Making of a Scientist', What Do You Care What Other People Think?": Further Adventures of a Curious Character (2001), 13-14.
Science quotes on:  |  Absolutely (41)  |  Bird (163)  |  Call (781)  |  Chinese (22)  |  Count (107)  |  Difference (355)  |  Different (595)  |  Doing (277)  |  Early (196)  |  Father (113)  |  Finish (62)  |  Human (1512)  |  Italian (13)  |  Japanese (7)  |  Know (1538)  |  Knowing (137)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Language (308)  |  Learn (672)  |  Learned (235)  |  Long (778)  |  Look (584)  |  Name (359)  |  Nothing (1000)  |  Observation (593)  |  Say (989)  |  See (1094)  |  Something (718)  |  Warbler (2)  |  Whatever (234)  |  World (1850)

[L]et us not overlook the further great fact, that not only does science underlie sculpture, painting, music, poetry, but that science is itself poetic. The current opinion that science and poetry are opposed is a delusion. … On the contrary science opens up realms of poetry where to the unscientific all is a blank. Those engaged in scientific researches constantly show us that they realize not less vividly, but more vividly, than others, the poetry of their subjects. Whoever will dip into Hugh Miller’s works on geology, or read Mr. Lewes's “Seaside Studies,” will perceive that science excites poetry rather than extinguishes it. And whoever will contemplate the life of Goethe will see that the poet and the man of science can co-exist in equal activity. Is it not, indeed, an absurd and almost a sacrilegious belief that the more a man studies Nature the less he reveres it? Think you that a drop of water, which to the vulgar eye is but a drop of water, loses anything in the eye of the physicist who knows that its elements are held together by a force which, if suddenly liberated, would produce a flash of lightning? Think you that what is carelessly looked upon by the uninitiated as a mere snow-flake, does not suggest higher associations to one who has seen through a microscope the wondrously varied and elegant forms of snow-crystals? Think you that the rounded rock marked with parallel scratches calls up as much poetry in an ignorant mind as in the mind of a geologist, who knows that over this rock a glacier slid a million years ago? The truth is, that those who have never entered upon scientific pursuits know not a tithe of the poetry by which they are surrounded. Whoever has not in youth collected plants and insects, knows not half the halo of interest which lanes and hedge-rows can assume. Whoever has not sought for fossils, has little idea of the poetical associations that surround the places where imbedded treasures were found. Whoever at the seaside has not had a microscope and aquarium, has yet to learn what the highest pleasures of the seaside are. Sad, indeed, is it to see how men occupy themselves with trivialities, and are indifferent to the grandest phenomena—care not to understand the architecture of the Heavens, but are deeply interested in some contemptible controversy about the intrigues of Mary Queen of Scots!—are learnedly critical over a Greek ode, and pass by without a glance that grand epic written by the finger of God upon the strata of the Earth!
In Education: Intellectual, Moral, and Physical (1889), 82-83.
Science quotes on:  |  Absurd (60)  |  Absurdity (34)  |  Activity (218)  |  Aquarium (2)  |  Architecture (50)  |  Association (49)  |  Belief (615)  |  Blank (14)  |  Call (781)  |  Care (203)  |  Collection (68)  |  Contemplation (75)  |  Contrary (143)  |  Controversy (30)  |  Critical (73)  |  Crystal (71)  |  Current (122)  |  Delusion (26)  |  Drop (77)  |  Earth (1076)  |  Elegant (37)  |  Element (322)  |  Enter (145)  |  Epic (12)  |  Excitation (9)  |  Exist (458)  |  Eye (440)  |  Fact (1257)  |  Flash (49)  |  Force (497)  |  Form (976)  |  Fossil (143)  |  Geologist (82)  |  Geology (240)  |  Glacier (17)  |  Glance (36)  |  God (776)  |  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (150)  |  Grandest (10)  |  Great (1610)  |  Greek (109)  |  Halo (7)  |  Heaven (266)  |  Heavens (125)  |  Hedgerow (2)  |  Idea (881)  |  Ignorant (91)  |  Indeed (323)  |  Insect (89)  |  Interest (416)  |  Know (1538)  |  Learn (672)  |  George Henry Lewes (22)  |  Life (1870)  |  Lightning (49)  |  Little (717)  |  Look (584)  |  Lose (165)  |  Man (2252)  |  Marked (55)  |  Microscope (85)  |  Hugh Miller (18)  |  Mind (1377)  |  More (2558)  |  Music (133)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Never (1089)  |  Ode (3)  |  Open (277)  |  Opinion (291)  |  Opposition (49)  |  Other (2233)  |  Overlook (33)  |  Painting (46)  |  Parallel (46)  |  Pass (241)  |  Physicist (270)  |  Plant (320)  |  Pleasure (191)  |  Poetry (150)  |  Pursuit (128)  |  Read (308)  |  Realize (157)  |  Realm (87)  |  Research (753)  |  Rock (176)  |  Science And Art (195)  |  Science And Poetry (17)  |  Scientific (955)  |  Sculpture (12)  |  Seaside (2)  |  See (1094)  |  Show (353)  |  Snow (39)  |  Snowflake (15)  |  Strata (37)  |  Subject (543)  |  Suddenly (91)  |  Themselves (433)  |  Think (1122)  |  Through (846)  |  Together (392)  |  Treasure (59)  |  Truth (1109)  |  Underlie (19)  |  Understand (648)  |  Unscientific (13)  |  Vividly (11)  |  Vulgar (33)  |  Water (503)  |  Whoever (42)  |  Work (1402)  |  Year (963)

[Science moves] with the spirit of an adventure characterized both by youthful arrogance and by the belief that the truth, once found, would be simple as well as pretty.
In The Double Helix: A Personal Account of the Discovery of the Structure of DNA (1968, 2001), Preface, xi.
Science quotes on:  |  Adventure (69)  |  Arrogance (22)  |  Belief (615)  |  Both (496)  |  Characterization (8)  |  Move (223)  |  Pretty (21)  |  Simple (426)  |  Simplicity (175)  |  Spirit (278)  |  Truth (1109)

[Two college boys on the Flambeau River in a canoe]…their first…taste of freedom … The elemental simplicities of wilderness travel were thrills not only because of their novelty, but because they represented complete freedom to make mistakes. The wilderness gave them their first taste of those rewards and penalties for wise and foolish acts which every woodsman faces daily, but against which civilization has built a thousand buffers. These boys were “on their own” in this particular sense. Perhaps every youth needs an occasional wilderness trip, in order to learn the meaning of this particular freedom.
In 'Wisconsin: Flambeau', A Sand County Almanac, and Sketches Here and There (1949, 1987), 112-113.
Science quotes on:  |  Adventure (69)  |  Boy (100)  |  Buffer (2)  |  Canoe (6)  |  Civilization (220)  |  Foolish (41)  |  Freedom (145)  |  Learn (672)  |  Meaning (244)  |  Mistake (180)  |  Need (320)  |  Novelty (31)  |  Occasional (23)  |  Particular (80)  |  Penalty (7)  |  Reward (72)  |  River (140)  |  Sense (785)  |  Simplicity (175)  |  Thrill (26)  |  Travel (125)  |  Trip (11)  |  Wilderness (57)  |  Wise (143)  |  Woodsman (2)

La jeunesse est une ivresse continuelle: c’est la fièvre de la raison.
Youth is continual intoxication; it is a fever of reason.
Original French from Maximes et Réflexions Morales (1796), 40, Maxim 279. This English translation in Maxims and Moral Reflexions: An Improved Edition (1797), 126, Maxim 503.
Science quotes on:  |  Continual (44)  |  Drunkenness (3)  |  Fever (34)  |  Intoxication (7)  |  Mind (1377)  |  Reason (766)

To the Memory of Fourier
Fourier! with solemn and profound delight,
Joy born of awe, but kindling momently
To an intense and thrilling ecstacy,
I gaze upon thy glory and grow bright:
As if irradiate with beholden light;
As if the immortal that remains of thee
Attuned me to thy spirit’s harmony,
Breathing serene resolve and tranquil might.
Revealed appear thy silent thoughts of youth,
As if to consciousness, and all that view
Prophetic, of the heritage of truth
To thy majestic years of manhood due:
Darkness and error fleeing far away,
And the pure mind enthroned in perfect day.
In R. Graves, Life of W. R. Hamilton (1882), Vol. l, 696.
Science quotes on:  |  Appear (122)  |  Attune (2)  |  Awe (43)  |  Bear (162)  |  Breathe (49)  |  Breathing (23)  |  Bright (81)  |  Consciousness (132)  |  Darkness (72)  |  Delight (111)  |  Due (143)  |  Error (339)  |  Flee (9)  |  Fourier (5)  |  Gaze (23)  |  Glory (66)  |  Grow (247)  |  Harmony (105)  |  Heritage (22)  |  Immortal (35)  |  Intense (22)  |  Joy (117)  |  Kindle (9)  |  Light (635)  |  Majestic (17)  |  Manhood (3)  |  Mathematicians and Anecdotes (141)  |  Memory (144)  |  Mind (1377)  |  Perfect (223)  |  Profound (105)  |  Prophetic (4)  |  Pure (299)  |  Remain (355)  |  Resolve (43)  |  Reveal (152)  |  Revealed (59)  |  Serene (5)  |  Silent (31)  |  Solemn (20)  |  Spirit (278)  |  Thought (995)  |  Thrill (26)  |  Tranquil (2)  |  Truth (1109)  |  View (496)  |  Year (963)

A man that is young in years may be old in hours, if he has lost no time.
‘Of Youth and Age’, Essays.
Science quotes on:  |  Hour (192)  |  Man (2252)  |  Old (499)  |  Time (1911)  |  Year (963)  |  Young (253)

A young doctor makes a humpy churchyard.
In H. Pullar-Strecker, Proverbs for Pleasure (1954), 193.
Science quotes on:  |  Doctor (191)  |  Hump (3)  |  Young (253)

All of us are interested in our roots. Generally this interest is latent in youth, and grows with age. Until I reached fifty I thought that history of science was a refuge for old scientists whose creative juices had dried up. Now of course I know that I was wrong! As we grow older, we become more interested in the past, in family history, local history, etc. Astronomy is, or was when I started in it, almost a family.
In Organizations and Strategies in Astronomy (2002), Vol. 3, 206.
Science quotes on:  |  Age (509)  |  Astronomy (251)  |  Become (821)  |  Course (413)  |  Creative (144)  |  Dried (2)  |  Family (101)  |  Fifty (17)  |  Grow (247)  |  History (716)  |  History Of Science (80)  |  Interest (416)  |  Juice (7)  |  Know (1538)  |  Latent (13)  |  Local (25)  |  More (2558)  |  Old (499)  |  Older (7)  |  Past (355)  |  Reach (286)  |  Refuge (15)  |  Root (121)  |  Scientist (881)  |  Start (237)  |  Thought (995)  |  Wrong (246)

Almost always the men who achieve these fundamental inventions of a new paradigm have been either very young or very new to the field whose paradigm they change.
The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962), 89-90.
Science quotes on:  |  Change (639)  |  Field (378)  |  Fundamental (264)  |  Invention (400)  |  New (1273)  |  Paradigm (16)  |  Young (253)

An astronomer must be the wisest of men; his mind must be duly disciplined in youth; especially is mathematical study necessary; both an acquaintance with the doctrine of number, and also with that other branch of mathematics, which, closely connected as it is with the science of the heavens, we very absurdly call geometry, the measurement of the earth.
Plato
From the 'Epilogue to the Laws' (Epinomis), 988-990. As quoted in William Whewell, History of the Inductive Sciences from the Earliest to the Present Time (1837), Vol. 1, 161. (Although referenced to Plato’s Laws, the Epinomis is regarded as a later addition, not by Plato himself.)
Science quotes on:  |  Absurd (60)  |  Acquaintance (38)  |  Astronomer (97)  |  Both (496)  |  Branch (155)  |  Call (781)  |  Connect (126)  |  Discipline (85)  |  Doctrine (81)  |  Earth (1076)  |  Geometry (271)  |  Heaven (266)  |  Heavens (125)  |  Mathematics (1395)  |  Measurement (178)  |  Mind (1377)  |  Must (1525)  |  Necessary (370)  |  Nomenclature (159)  |  Number (710)  |  Other (2233)  |  Study (701)  |  Wise (143)

An extra-terrestrial philosopher, who had watched a single youth up to the age of twenty-one and had never come across any other human being, might conclude that it is the nature of human beings to grow continually taller and wiser in an indefinite progress towards perfection; and this generalization would be just as well founded as the generalization which evolutionists base upon the previous history of this planet.
Scientific Method in Philosophy (1914), 12.
Science quotes on:  |  Age (509)  |  Base (120)  |  Being (1276)  |  Conclude (66)  |  Earth (1076)  |  Evolution (635)  |  Generalization (61)  |  Grow (247)  |  Growth (200)  |  History (716)  |  Human (1512)  |  Human Being (185)  |  Indefinite (21)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Never (1089)  |  Other (2233)  |  Perfection (131)  |  Philosopher (269)  |  Planet (402)  |  Progress (492)  |  Single (365)  |  Terrestrial (62)  |  Watch (118)

As few subjects are more interesting to society, so few have been more frequently written upon than the education of youth.
Essay No. VI, 'On Education', first published in The Bee (10 Nov 1759), collected in The Works of Oliver Goldsmith (1900), Vol. 5, 95. Reprinted as Essay VII under the title 'On the Education of Youth', (1765). The Bee was a weekly paper wholly the work of Goldsmith.
Science quotes on:  |  Education (423)  |  Frequently (21)  |  Interesting (153)  |  More (2558)  |  Society (350)  |  Subject (543)  |  Writing (192)

As there is no study which may be so advantageously entered upon with a less stock of preparatory knowledge than mathematics, so there is none in which a greater number of uneducated men have raised themselves, by their own exertions, to distinction and eminence. … Many of the intellectual defects which, in such cases, are commonly placed to the account of mathematical studies, ought to be ascribed to the want of a liberal education in early youth.
In Elements of the Philosophy of the Human Mind (1827), Vol. 3, Chap. 1, Sec. 3, 183.
Science quotes on:  |  Account (195)  |  Advantage (144)  |  Defect (31)  |  Distinction (72)  |  Early (196)  |  Education (423)  |  Eminence (25)  |  Enter (145)  |  Exertion (17)  |  Greater (288)  |  Intellectual (258)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Liberal Education (2)  |  Mathematics (1395)  |  Number (710)  |  Preparation (60)  |  Study (701)  |  Themselves (433)  |  Uneducated (9)  |  Want (504)

But nothing is more estimable than a physician who, having studied nature from his youth, knows the properties of the human body, the diseases which assail it, the remedies which will benefit it, exercises his art with caution, and pays equal attention to the rich and the poor.
A Philosophical Dictionary: from the French? (2nd Ed.,1824), Vol. 5, 239-240.
Science quotes on:  |  Art (680)  |  Attention (196)  |  Benefit (123)  |  Body (557)  |  Caution (24)  |  Disease (340)  |  Equal (88)  |  Estimable (2)  |  Exercise (113)  |  Human (1512)  |  Human Body (34)  |  Know (1538)  |  Medicine (392)  |  More (2558)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Nothing (1000)  |  Physician (284)  |  Poor (139)  |  Property (177)  |  Remedy (63)  |  Rich (66)  |  Study (701)  |  Will (2350)

During my span of life science has become a matter of public concern and the l'art pour l'art standpoint of my youth is now obsolete. Science has become an integral and most important part of our civilization, and scientific work means contributing to its development. Science in our technical age has social, economic, and political functions, and however remote one's own work is from technical application it is a link in the chain of actions and decisions which determine the fate of the human race. I realized this aspect of science in its full impact only after Hiroshima.
Max Born
My Life & My Views (1968), 49.
Science quotes on:  |  Action (342)  |  Age (509)  |  Application (257)  |  Art (680)  |  Aspect (129)  |  Become (821)  |  Civilization (220)  |  Concern (239)  |  Decision (98)  |  Determine (152)  |  Development (441)  |  Economic (84)  |  Fate (76)  |  Function (235)  |  Hiroshima (18)  |  Human (1512)  |  Human Race (104)  |  Impact (45)  |  Integral (26)  |  Life (1870)  |  Matter (821)  |  Mean (810)  |  Means (587)  |  Most (1728)  |  Obsolete (15)  |  Political (124)  |  Politics (122)  |  Race (278)  |  Remote (86)  |  Scientific (955)  |  Social (261)  |  Standpoint (28)  |  Work (1402)

Every new theory as it arises believes in the flush of youth that it has the long sought goal; it sees no limits to its applicability, and believes that at last it is the fortunate theory to achieve the 'right' answer. This was true of electron theory—perhaps some readers will remember a book called The Electrical Theory of the Universe by de Tunzelman. It is true of general relativity theory with its belief that we can formulate a mathematical scheme that will extrapolate to all past and future time and the unfathomed depths of space. It has been true of wave mechanics, with its first enthusiastic claim a brief ten years ago that no problem had successfully resisted its attack provided the attack was properly made, and now the disillusionment of age when confronted by the problems of the proton and the neutron. When will we learn that logic, mathematics, physical theory, are all only inventions for formulating in compact and manageable form what we already know, like all inventions do not achieve complete success in accomplishing what they were designed to do, much less complete success in fields beyond the scope of the original design, and that our only justification for hoping to penetrate at all into the unknown with these inventions is our past experience that sometimes we have been fortunate enough to be able to push on a short distance by acquired momentum.
The Nature of Physical Theory (1936), 136.
Science quotes on:  |  Acquired (77)  |  Age (509)  |  Already (226)  |  Answer (389)  |  Arise (162)  |  Attack (86)  |  Belief (615)  |  Beyond (316)  |  Book (413)  |  Brief (37)  |  Call (781)  |  Claim (154)  |  Compact (13)  |  Complete (209)  |  Depth (97)  |  Design (203)  |  Disillusionment (2)  |  Distance (171)  |  Do (1905)  |  Electrical (57)  |  Electron (96)  |  Enough (341)  |  Experience (494)  |  Field (378)  |  First (1302)  |  Form (976)  |  Fortunate (31)  |  Future (467)  |  General (521)  |  General Relativity (10)  |  Goal (155)  |  Invention (400)  |  Justification (52)  |  Know (1538)  |  Last (425)  |  Learn (672)  |  Limit (294)  |  Logic (311)  |  Long (778)  |  Mathematics (1395)  |  Mechanic (120)  |  Mechanics (137)  |  Momentum (10)  |  Neutron (23)  |  New (1273)  |  Past (355)  |  Penetrate (68)  |  Physical (518)  |  Problem (731)  |  Proton (23)  |  Push (66)  |  Quantum Theory (67)  |  Relativity (91)  |  Remember (189)  |  Right (473)  |  Scheme (62)  |  Scope (44)  |  See (1094)  |  Short (200)  |  Space (523)  |  Success (327)  |  Theory (1015)  |  Time (1911)  |  Universe (900)  |  Unknown (195)  |  Wave (112)  |  Will (2350)  |  Year (963)

Experience hobbles progress and leads to abandonment of difficult problems; it encourages the initiated to walk on the shady side of the street in the direction of experiences that have been pleasant. Youth without experience attacks the unsolved problems which maturer age with experience avoids, and from the labors of youth comes progress. Youth has dreams and visions, and will not be denied.
From speech 'In the Time of Henry Jacob Bigelow', given to the Boston Surgical Society, Medalist Meeting (6 Jun 1921). Printed in Journal of the Medical Association (1921), 77, 599.
Science quotes on:  |  Abandon (73)  |  Age (509)  |  Attack (86)  |  Avoid (123)  |  Denial (20)  |  Difficult (263)  |  Direction (185)  |  Dream (222)  |  Encourage (43)  |  Encouragement (27)  |  Experience (494)  |  Initiated (2)  |  Labor (200)  |  Lead (391)  |  Mature (17)  |  Pleasant (22)  |  Problem (731)  |  Progress (492)  |  Side (236)  |  Street (25)  |  Unsolved (15)  |  Vision (127)  |  Walk (138)  |  Will (2350)

Faraday, who had no narrow views in regard to education, deplored the future of our youth in the competition of the world, because, as he said with sadness, “our school-boys, when they come out of school, are ignorant of their ignorance at the end of all that education.”
In Inaugural Presidential Address (9 Sep 1885) to the British Association for the Advancement of Science, Aberdeen, Scotland, 'Relations of Science to the Public Weal', Report to the Fifty-Fifth Meeting of the British Association (1886), 11.
Science quotes on:  |  Boy (100)  |  Competition (45)  |  Education (423)  |  End (603)  |  Michael Faraday (91)  |  Future (467)  |  Ignorance (254)  |  Ignorant (91)  |  Narrow (85)  |  Regard (312)  |  Sadness (36)  |  School (227)  |  Schoolboy (9)  |  View (496)  |  World (1850)

Follow Descartes! Do not give up the religion of your youth until you get a better one.
Science quotes on:  |  Better (493)  |  René Descartes (83)  |  Do (1905)  |  Follow (389)  |  Religion (369)

For those [observations] that I made in Leipzig in my youth and up to my 21st year, I usually call childish and of doubtful value. Those that I took later until my 28th year [i.e., until 1574] I call juvenile and fairly serviceable. The third group, however, which I made at Uraniborg during approximately the last 21 years with the greatest care and with very accurate instruments at a more mature age, until I was fifty years of age, those I call the observations of my manhood, completely valid and absolutely certain, and this is my opinion of them.
In H. Raeder, E. and B. Stromgren (eds. and trans.), Tycho Brahe’s Description of his Instruments and Scientific Work: as given in Astronomiae Instauratae Mechanica, Wandesburgi 1598 (1946), 110.
Science quotes on:  |  Accurate (88)  |  Age (509)  |  Call (781)  |  Care (203)  |  Certain (557)  |  Childish (20)  |  Completely (137)  |  Doubtful (30)  |  Greatest (330)  |  Instrument (158)  |  Last (425)  |  Mature (17)  |  More (2558)  |  Observation (593)  |  Opinion (291)  |  Usually (176)  |  Value (393)  |  Year (963)

Geometry seems to stand for all that is practical, poetry for all that is visionary, but in the kingdom of the imagination you will find them close akin, and they should go together as a precious heritage to every youth.
From The Proceedings of the Michigan Schoolmasters’ Club, reprinted in School Review (1898), 6 114.
Science quotes on:  |  Find (1014)  |  Geometry (271)  |  Heritage (22)  |  Imagination (349)  |  Kingdom (80)  |  Poetry (150)  |  Practical (225)  |  Precious (43)  |  Stand (284)  |  Together (392)  |  Visionary (6)  |  Will (2350)

Given one has before oneself a strong, healthy, youth rich in spirited blood and a powerless, weak, cachectic old man scarcely capable of breathing. If now the physician wishes to practise the rejuvenating art on the latter, he should make silver tubes which fit into each other: open then the artery of the healthy person and introduce one of the tubes into it and fasten it into the artery; thereupon he opens also the artery of the ill person...
[First detailed description of blood transfusion (1615)]
In N.S.R. Maluf, 'History of Blood Transfusion', Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences (1954), 9, No. 1, 59.
Science quotes on:  |  Art (680)  |  Artery (10)  |  Blood (144)  |  Breathing (23)  |  Capable (174)  |  Detail (150)  |  First (1302)  |  Fit (139)  |  Healthy (70)  |  Introduce (63)  |  Man (2252)  |  Old (499)  |  Oneself (33)  |  Open (277)  |  Other (2233)  |  Person (366)  |  Physician (284)  |  Scarcely (75)  |  Silver (49)  |  Spirit (278)  |  Strong (182)  |  Transfusion (2)  |  Weak (73)

Gradually the sunken land begins to rise again, and falls perhaps again, and rises again after that, more and more gently each time, till as it were the panting earth, worn out with the fierce passions of her fiery youth, has sobbed herself to sleep once more, and this new world of man is made.
'Thoughts in a Gravel Pit', a lecture delivered at the Mechanics' Institute, Odiham (1857). The Works of Charles Kingsley (1880), 282.
Science quotes on:  |  Begin (275)  |  Earth (1076)  |  Fall (243)  |  Geology (240)  |  Gradually (102)  |  Man (2252)  |  More (2558)  |  Mountain (202)  |  New (1273)  |  Passion (121)  |  Rise (169)  |  Sleep (81)  |  Time (1911)  |  World (1850)

He who neglects learning in his youth loses the past and is dead for the future
Euripides
…...
Science quotes on:  |  Dead (65)  |  Future (467)  |  Learn (672)  |  Learning (291)  |  Lose (165)  |  Neglect (63)  |  Past (355)

Here about the beach I wandered, nourishing a youth sublime
With the fairy tales of science, and the long result of Time.
'Locksley Hall' (1842), collected in Alfred Tennyson and William James Rolfe (ed.) The Poetic and Dramatic Works of Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1898), 90.
Science quotes on:  |  Beach (23)  |  Fairy Tale (7)  |  Long (778)  |  Nourishment (26)  |  Result (700)  |  Sublime (50)  |  Time (1911)  |  Wander (44)  |  Wandering (6)

I believe that the useful methods of mathematics are easily to be learned by quite young persons, just as languages are easily learned in youth. What a wondrous philosophy and history underlie the use of almost every word in every language—yet the child learns to use the word unconsciously. No doubt when such a word was first invented it was studied over and lectured upon, just as one might lecture now upon the idea of a rate, or the use of Cartesian co-ordinates, and we may depend upon it that children of the future will use the idea of the calculus, and use squared paper as readily as they now cipher. … When Egyptian and Chaldean philosophers spent years in difficult calculations, which would now be thought easy by young children, doubtless they had the same notions of the depth of their knowledge that Sir William Thomson might now have of his. How is it, then, that Thomson gained his immense knowledge in the time taken by a Chaldean philosopher to acquire a simple knowledge of arithmetic? The reason is plain. Thomson, when a child, was taught in a few years more than all that was known three thousand years ago of the properties of numbers. When it is found essential to a boy’s future that machinery should be given to his brain, it is given to him; he is taught to use it, and his bright memory makes the use of it a second nature to him; but it is not till after-life that he makes a close investigation of what there actually is in his brain which has enabled him to do so much. It is taken because the child has much faith. In after years he will accept nothing without careful consideration. The machinery given to the brain of children is getting more and more complicated as time goes on; but there is really no reason why it should not be taken in as early, and used as readily, as were the axioms of childish education in ancient Chaldea.
In Teaching of Mathematics (1902), 14.
Science quotes on:  |  Accept (198)  |  Acquire (46)  |  Actually (27)  |  Afterlife (3)  |  Ancient (198)  |  Arithmetic (144)  |  Axiom (65)  |  Belief (615)  |  Boy (100)  |  Brain (281)  |  Bright (81)  |  Calculation (134)  |  Calculus (65)  |  Careful (28)  |  Cartesian (3)  |  Chaldea (4)  |  Child (333)  |  Childish (20)  |  Children (201)  |  Cipher (3)  |  Close (77)  |  Complicated (117)  |  Consideration (143)  |  Coordinate (5)  |  Depend (238)  |  Depth (97)  |  Difficult (263)  |  Do (1905)  |  Doubt (314)  |  Doubtless (8)  |  Early (196)  |  Easily (36)  |  Easy (213)  |  Education (423)  |  Egyptian (5)  |  Enable (122)  |  Essential (210)  |  Faith (209)  |  Find (1014)  |  First (1302)  |  Future (467)  |  Gain (146)  |  Give (208)  |  History (716)  |  Idea (881)  |  Immense (89)  |  Invent (57)  |  Investigation (250)  |  Baron William Thomson Kelvin (74)  |  Know (1538)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Known (453)  |  Language (308)  |  Learn (672)  |  Learned (235)  |  Lecture (111)  |  Life (1870)  |  Machinery (59)  |  Mathematics (1395)  |  Memory (144)  |  Method (531)  |  More (2558)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Nothing (1000)  |  Notion (120)  |  Number (710)  |  Paper (192)  |  Person (366)  |  Philosopher (269)  |  Philosophy (409)  |  Plain (34)  |  Property (177)  |  Rate (31)  |  Readily (10)  |  Reason (766)  |  Same (166)  |  Second Nature (3)  |  Simple (426)  |  Spend (97)  |  Spent (85)  |  Square (73)  |  Study (701)  |  Teach (299)  |  Teaching of Mathematics (39)  |  Thought (995)  |  Thousand (340)  |  Time (1911)  |  Unconsciously (9)  |  Underlie (19)  |  Use (771)  |  Useful (260)  |  Why (491)  |  Will (2350)  |  Wondrous (22)  |  Word (650)  |  Year (963)  |  Young (253)

I have been especially fortunate for about 50 years in having two memory banks available—whenever I can't remember something I ask my wife, and thus I am able to draw on this auxiliary memory bank. Moreover, there is a second way In which I get ideas ... I listen carefully to what my wife says, and in this way I often get a good idea. I recommend to ... young people ... that you make a permanent acquisition of an auxiliary memory bank that you can become familiar with and draw upon throughout your lives.
T. Goertzel and B. Goertzel, Linus Pauling (1995), 240.
Science quotes on:  |  Acquisition (46)  |  Ask (420)  |  Auxiliary (11)  |  Available (80)  |  Bank (31)  |  Become (821)  |  Carefully (65)  |  Draw (140)  |  Familiarity (21)  |  Fortunate (31)  |  Fortune (50)  |  Good (906)  |  Idea (881)  |  Life (1870)  |  Listen (81)  |  Listening (26)  |  Live (650)  |  Memory (144)  |  People (1031)  |  Permanence (26)  |  Permanent (67)  |  Recommend (27)  |  Recommendation (12)  |  Remember (189)  |  Remembering (7)  |  Say (989)  |  Something (718)  |  Throughout (98)  |  Two (936)  |  Way (1214)  |  Whenever (81)  |  Wife (41)  |  Year (963)  |  Young (253)

I have said that mathematics is the oldest of the sciences; a glance at its more recent history will show that it has the energy of perpetual youth. The output of contributions to the advance of the science during the last century and more has been so enormous that it is difficult to say whether pride in the greatness of achievement in this subject, or despair at his inability to cope with the multiplicity of its detailed developments, should be the dominant feeling of the mathematician. Few people outside of the small circle of mathematical specialists have any idea of the vast growth of mathematical literature. The Royal Society Catalogue contains a list of nearly thirty- nine thousand papers on subjects of Pure Mathematics alone, which have appeared in seven hundred serials during the nineteenth century. This represents only a portion of the total output, the very large number of treatises, dissertations, and monographs published during the century being omitted.
In Presidential Address British Association for the Advancement of Science, Sheffield, Section A, Nature (1 Sep 1910), 84, 285.
Science quotes on:  |  Achievement (187)  |  Advance (298)  |  Alone (324)  |  Appear (122)  |  Being (1276)  |  Catalogue (5)  |  Century (319)  |  Circle (117)  |  Contain (68)  |  Contribution (93)  |  Cope (9)  |  Despair (40)  |  Detail (150)  |  Development (441)  |  Difficult (263)  |  Dissertation (2)  |  Dominant (26)  |  Energy (373)  |  Enormous (44)  |  Feel (371)  |  Feeling (259)  |  Glance (36)  |  Greatness (55)  |  Growth (200)  |  History (716)  |  Hundred (240)  |  Idea (881)  |  Inability (11)  |  Large (398)  |  Last (425)  |  List (10)  |  Literature (116)  |  Mathematician (407)  |  Mathematics (1395)  |  Modern Mathematics (50)  |  Monograph (5)  |  More (2558)  |  Multiplicity (14)  |  Nearly (137)  |  Nineteenth (5)  |  Number (710)  |  Oldest (9)  |  Omit (12)  |  Output (12)  |  Outside (141)  |  Paper (192)  |  People (1031)  |  Perpetual (59)  |  Portion (86)  |  Pride (84)  |  Publish (42)  |  Pure (299)  |  Pure Mathematics (72)  |  Recent (78)  |  Represent (157)  |  Royal (56)  |  Royal Society (17)  |  Say (989)  |  Serial (4)  |  Show (353)  |  Small (489)  |  Society (350)  |  Specialist (33)  |  Subject (543)  |  Thirty (6)  |  Thousand (340)  |  Total (95)  |  Treatise (46)  |  Vast (188)  |  Will (2350)

I live in that solitude which is painful in youth, but delicious in the years of maturity.
…...
Science quotes on:  |  Delicious (3)  |  Live (650)  |  Maturity (14)  |  Painful (12)  |  Solitude (20)  |  Year (963)

I suppose that the first chemists seemed to be very hard-hearted and unpoetical persons when they scouted the glorious dream of the alchemists that there must be some process for turning base metals into gold. I suppose that the men who first said, in plain, cold assertion, there is no fountain of eternal youth, seemed to be the most cruel and cold-hearted adversaries of human happiness. I know that the economists who say that if we could transmute lead into gold, it would certainly do us no good and might do great harm, are still regarded as unworthy of belief. Do not the money articles of the newspapers yet ring with the doctrine that we are getting rich when we give cotton and wheat for gold rather than when we give cotton and wheat for iron?
'The Forgotten Man' (1883). In The Forgotten Man and Other Essays (1918), 468.
Science quotes on:  |  Alchemist (23)  |  Article (22)  |  Assertion (35)  |  Base (120)  |  Base Metal (3)  |  Belief (615)  |  Certainly (185)  |  Chemist (169)  |  Cold (115)  |  Cotton (8)  |  Cruel (25)  |  Cruelty (24)  |  Do (1905)  |  Doctrine (81)  |  Dream (222)  |  Economist (20)  |  Eternal (113)  |  Eternity (64)  |  First (1302)  |  Fountain (18)  |  Glorious (49)  |  Glory (66)  |  Gold (101)  |  Good (906)  |  Great (1610)  |  Happiness (126)  |  Hard (246)  |  Harm (43)  |  Heart (243)  |  Human (1512)  |  Iron (99)  |  Know (1538)  |  Lead (391)  |  Metal (88)  |  Money (178)  |  Most (1728)  |  Must (1525)  |  Newspaper (39)  |  Person (366)  |  Process (439)  |  Regard (312)  |  Richness (15)  |  Ring (18)  |  Say (989)  |  Scout (3)  |  Still (614)  |  Suppose (158)  |  Supposition (50)  |  Transmutation (24)  |  Unworthy (18)  |  Wheat (10)

If education really educates, there will, in time, be more and more citizens who understand that relics of the old West add meaning and value to the new. Youth yet unborn will pole up the Missouri with Lewis and Clark, or climb the Sierras with James Capen Adams, and each generation in turn will ask: Where is the big white bear? It will be a sorry answer to say he went under while conservationists weren’t looking.
Conclusion from article 'The Grizzly—A Problem in Land Planning', in Outdoor America (6 Apr 1942), 7, 12.
Science quotes on:  |  Answer (389)  |  Bear (162)  |  Climb (39)  |  Conservationist (5)  |  Education (423)  |  Endangered Species (6)  |  Generation (256)  |  Looking (191)  |  Meaning (244)  |  Missouri (2)  |  New (1273)  |  Old West (2)  |  Relic (8)  |  Sorry (31)  |  Understand (648)  |  Value (393)  |  White (132)

If I had been taught from my youth all the truths of which I have since sought out demonstrations, and had thus learned them without labour, I should never, perhaps, have known any beyond these; at least, I should never have acquired the habit and the facility which I think I possess in always discovering new truths in proportion as I give myself to the search.
In Discours de la Méthode (1637). In English from John Veitch (trans.), A Discourse on Method (1912), 57.
Science quotes on:  |  Acquire (46)  |  Acquired (77)  |  Beyond (316)  |  Demonstration (120)  |  Discover (571)  |  Facility (14)  |  Habit (174)  |  Know (1538)  |  Known (453)  |  Labor (200)  |  Learn (672)  |  Learned (235)  |  Myself (211)  |  Never (1089)  |  New (1273)  |  Possess (157)  |  Proportion (140)  |  Search (175)  |  Seek (218)  |  Teach (299)  |  Think (1122)  |  Truth (1109)

If I would be a young man again and had to decide how to make my living, I would not try to become a scientist or scholar or teacher. I would rather choose to be a plumber or a peddler in the hope to find that modest degree of independence still available under present circumstances.
According to Ralph Keyes, The Quote Verifier: Who Said What, Where, and When (2006), 53, on other occasions Einstein said “he might rather have been a musician, or light-house keeper”; however it is a “popular misquotation” that refers to being a watchmaker.
Science quotes on:  |  Available (80)  |  Become (821)  |  Biography (254)  |  Career (86)  |  Choose (116)  |  Circumstance (139)  |  Circumstances (108)  |  Degree (277)  |  Find (1014)  |  Hope (321)  |  Independence (37)  |  Living (492)  |  Man (2252)  |  Modest (19)  |  Plumber (10)  |  Present (630)  |  Scholar (52)  |  Scientist (881)  |  Still (614)  |  Teacher (154)  |  Try (296)  |  Young (253)

If we wish to imitate the physical sciences, we must not imitate them in their contemporary, most developed form; we must imitate them in their historical youth, when their state of development was comparable to our own at the present time. Otherwise we should behave like boys who try to copy the imposing manners of full-grown men without understanding their raison d’être, also without seeing that in development one cannot jump over intermediate and preliminary phases.
Gestalt Psychology (1929), 32.
Science quotes on:  |  Boy (100)  |  Copy (34)  |  Develop (278)  |  Development (441)  |  Form (976)  |  Historical (70)  |  Imitate (18)  |  Intermediate (38)  |  Jump (31)  |  Most (1728)  |  Must (1525)  |  Phase (37)  |  Physical (518)  |  Physical Science (104)  |  Present (630)  |  Psychology (166)  |  Seeing (143)  |  State (505)  |  Time (1911)  |  Try (296)  |  Understanding (527)  |  Wish (216)

If you wish to die young, make your physician your heir.
In H. Pullar-Strecker, Proverbs for Pleasure (1954), 193.
Science quotes on:  |  Death (406)  |  Heir (12)  |  Making (300)  |  Physician (284)  |  Wish (216)  |  Young (253)

In a lot of scientists, the ratio of wonder to skepticism declines in time. That may be connected with the fact that in some fields—mathematics, physics, some others—the great discoveries are almost entirely made by youngsters.
Quoted in interview with magazine staff, Psychology Today (Jan 1996).
Science quotes on:  |  Connect (126)  |  Connection (171)  |  Decline (28)  |  Discovery (837)  |  Enthusiasm (59)  |  Fact (1257)  |  Field (378)  |  Great (1610)  |  Lot (151)  |  Mathematics (1395)  |  Other (2233)  |  Physic (515)  |  Physics (564)  |  Ratio (41)  |  Scientist (881)  |  Skepticism (31)  |  Time (1911)  |  Wonder (251)

In human freedom in the philosophical sense I am definitely a disbeliever. Everybody acts not only under external compulsion but also in accordance with inner necessity. Schopenhauer’s saying, that ‘a man can do what he wants, but not want what he wants,’ has been an inspiration to me since my youth up, and a continual consolation and unfailing well-spring of patience in the face of the hardships of life, my own and others. This feeling mercifully not only mitigates the sense of responsibility which so easily becomes paralysing, and it prevents us from taking ourselves and other people too seriously; it conduces to a view of life in which humour, above all, has its due place.
In The World As I See It (1934), 238.
Science quotes on:  |  Accordance (10)  |  Act (278)  |  Become (821)  |  Compulsion (19)  |  Conduce (2)  |  Consolation (9)  |  Continual (44)  |  Definitely (5)  |  Do (1905)  |  Due (143)  |  Easily (36)  |  Everybody (72)  |  External (62)  |  Face (214)  |  Feel (371)  |  Feeling (259)  |  Freedom (145)  |  Hardship (4)  |  Human (1512)  |  Humour (116)  |  Inner (72)  |  Inspiration (80)  |  Life (1870)  |  Man (2252)  |  Mitigate (5)  |  Necessity (197)  |  Other (2233)  |  Ourselves (247)  |  Patience (58)  |  People (1031)  |  Philosophical (24)  |  Place (192)  |  Prevent (98)  |  Responsibility (71)  |  Say (989)  |  Schopenhauer (6)  |  Schopenhauers (2)  |  Sense (785)  |  Seriously (20)  |  Spring (140)  |  Unfailing (6)  |  View (496)  |  View Of Life (7)  |  Will (2350)

In my youth I often asked what could be the use and necessity of smelting by putting powdered charcoal at the bottom of the furnace. Nobody could give me any other reason except that the metal and especially lead, could bury itself in the charcoal and so be protected against the action of the bellows which would calcine or dissipate it. Nevertheless it is evident that this does not answer the question. I accordingly examined the operation of a metallurgical furnace and how it was used. In assaying some litharge [lead oxide], I noticed each time a little charcoal fell into the crucible, I always obtained a bit of lead … I do not think up to the present time foundry-men ever surmised that in the operation of founding with charcoal there was something [phlogiston] which became corporeally united with the metal.
Traité de Soufre (1766), 64. French translation published 1766, first published in German in 1718.
Science quotes on:  |  Action (342)  |  Against (332)  |  Answer (389)  |  Ask (420)  |  Asking (74)  |  Bellows (5)  |  Calcination (4)  |  Charcoal (10)  |  Crucible (8)  |  Dissipate (8)  |  Dissipation (2)  |  Do (1905)  |  Evidence (267)  |  Evident (92)  |  Examination (102)  |  Furnace (13)  |  Lead (391)  |  Litharge (2)  |  Little (717)  |  Metal (88)  |  Necessity (197)  |  Nevertheless (90)  |  Nobody (103)  |  Obtain (164)  |  Operation (221)  |  Other (2233)  |  Phlogiston (9)  |  Powder (9)  |  Present (630)  |  Protect (65)  |  Question (649)  |  Reason (766)  |  Reduction (52)  |  Something (718)  |  Think (1122)  |  Time (1911)  |  Use (771)

In my youth I regarded the universe as an open book, printed in the language of physical equations, whereas now it appears to me as a text written in invisible ink, of which in our rare moments of grace we are able to decipher a small fragment.
From Epilogue in Bricks to Babel (1980).
Science quotes on:  |  Appear (122)  |  Book (413)  |  Decipher (7)  |  Equation (138)  |  Fragment (58)  |  Grace (31)  |  Ink (11)  |  Invisible (66)  |  Language (308)  |  Moment (260)  |  Open (277)  |  Physical (518)  |  Printed (3)  |  Rare (94)  |  Regard (312)  |  Small (489)  |  Text (16)  |  Universe (900)  |  Written (6)

In my youth scarcely anyone mentioned Wegener’s ideas of a mobile earth and moving continents. … The great impediment was that geologists only studied that one quarter of the earth’s surface not covered by ice or water; at that time no one had any means for exploring the great interior or the ocean floors.
In 'Early Days in University Geophysics', Annual Review of Earth and Planetary Sciences (1982), 10, 6.
Science quotes on:  |  Anyone (38)  |  Continental Drift (15)  |  Cover (40)  |  Earth (1076)  |  Exploration (161)  |  Geologist (82)  |  Great (1610)  |  Ice (58)  |  Idea (881)  |  Impediment (12)  |  Interior (35)  |  Means (587)  |  Mention (84)  |  Mobile (4)  |  Ocean Floor (6)  |  Quarter (6)  |  Scarcely (75)  |  Study (701)  |  Surface (223)  |  Water (503)  |  Alfred L. Wegener (12)

In old age, you realise that while you're divided from your youth by decades, you can close your eyes and summon it at will. As a writer it puts one at a distinct advantage.
Interview with Sarah Crown, in The Guardian (25 Jul 2009).
Science quotes on:  |  Advantage (144)  |  Age (509)  |  Close (77)  |  Decade (66)  |  Distinct (98)  |  Divided (50)  |  Eye (440)  |  Old (499)  |  Old Age (35)  |  Summon (11)  |  Will (2350)  |  Writer (90)

It is a happy world after all. The air, the earth, the water teem with delighted existence. In a spring noon, or a summer evening, on whichever side I turn my eyes, myriads of happy beings crowd upon my view. “The insect youth are on the wing.” Swarms of new-born flies are trying their pinions in the air. Their sportive motions, their wanton mazes, their gratuitous activity testify their joy and the exultation they feel in their lately discovered faculties … The whole winged insect tribe, it is probable, are equally intent upon their proper employments, and under every variety of constitution, gratified, and perhaps equally gratified, by the offices which the author of their nature has assigned to them.
Natural Theology: or, Evidences of the Existence and Attributes of The Deity, Collected from the Appearances of Nature (1802), 490-1.
Science quotes on:  |  Activity (218)  |  Air (366)  |  Assignment (12)  |  Author (175)  |  Being (1276)  |  Constitution (78)  |  Crowd (25)  |  Delight (111)  |  Discover (571)  |  Discovery (837)  |  Earth (1076)  |  Employment (34)  |  Equality (34)  |  Equally (129)  |  Evening (12)  |  Existence (481)  |  Exultation (4)  |  Eye (440)  |  Faculty (76)  |  Feel (371)  |  Feeling (259)  |  Fly (153)  |  Gratification (22)  |  Happy (108)  |  Insect (89)  |  Intent (9)  |  Joy (117)  |  Lateness (4)  |  Maze (11)  |  Motion (320)  |  Myriad (32)  |  Nature (2017)  |  New (1273)  |  New-born (2)  |  Noon (14)  |  Office (71)  |  Probability (135)  |  Proper (150)  |  Properness (2)  |  Side (236)  |  Sport (23)  |  Spring (140)  |  Summer (56)  |  Swarm (15)  |  Teeming (5)  |  Testament (4)  |  Tribe (26)  |  Try (296)  |  Trying (144)  |  Turn (454)  |  Variety (138)  |  View (496)  |  Water (503)  |  Whole (756)  |  Wing (79)  |  World (1850)

It is inevitable that those to whom is vouchsafed a long life of usefulness should outlive the friends of their youth.
In 'Charles Anthony Scott', Biographical Memoirs: Vol. VIII (1919), 87.
Science quotes on:  |  Friend (180)  |  Inevitable (53)  |  Life (1870)  |  Long (778)  |  Outlive (4)  |  Usefulness (92)  |  Vouchsafe (3)

It is only by introducing the young to great literature, drama and music, and to the excitement of great science that we open to them the possibilities that lie within the human spirit—enable them to see visions and dream dreams.
Quoted, without citation in Reader's Digest Quotable Quotes (1997), 144. This quote, usually seen attributed as 'Eric Anderson' is here tentatively linked to Sir Eric Anderson. If you can confirm this with a primary source, please contact Webmaster.
Science quotes on:  |  Drama (24)  |  Dream (222)  |  Enable (122)  |  Excitement (61)  |  Great (1610)  |  Human (1512)  |  Human Spirit (12)  |  Lie (370)  |  Literature (116)  |  Music (133)  |  Open (277)  |  Possibility (172)  |  See (1094)  |  Spirit (278)  |  Vision (127)  |  Young (253)

It is only those who know a little of nature, who fancy they know much. I have heard a young man say, after hearing a few popular chemical lectures, and seeing a few bottle and squirt experiments: Oh, water—water is only oxygen and hydrogen!—as if he knew all about it. While the true chemist would smile sadly enough at the the youth's hasty conceit, and say in his heart: 'Well, he is a lucky fellow.'
'Thoughts in a Gravel Pit', a lecture delivered at the Mechanics' Institute, Odiham (1857). The Works of Charles Kingsley (1880), 284.
Science quotes on:  |  Chemical (303)  |  Chemist (169)  |  Chemistry (376)  |  Conceit (15)  |  Enough (341)  |  Experiment (736)  |  Fancy (50)  |  Fellow (88)  |  Hearing (50)  |  Heart (243)  |  Hydrogen (80)  |  Know (1538)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Lecture (111)  |  Little (717)  |  Man (2252)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Oxygen (77)  |  Say (989)  |  Seeing (143)  |  Smile (34)  |  Water (503)  |  Young (253)

It is the perennial youthfulness of mathematics itself which marks it off with a disconcerting immortality from the other sciences.
In The Queen of the Sciences (1938), 5.
Science quotes on:  |  Disconcerting (3)  |  Immortality (11)  |  Mathematics (1395)  |  Other (2233)  |  Perennial (9)

Jim and I hit it off immediately, partly because our interests were astonishingly similar and partly, I suspect, because a certain youthful arrogance, a ruthlessness, an impatience with sloppy thinking can naturally to both of us.
In What Mad Pursuit (1990), 64.
Science quotes on:  |  Arrogance (22)  |  Autobiography (58)  |  Both (496)  |  Certain (557)  |  Immediately (115)  |  Impatience (13)  |  Interest (416)  |  Ruthlessness (3)  |  Thinking (425)  |  James Watson (33)

Learning acquired in youth arrests the evil of old age; and if you understand that old age has wisdom for its food, you will so conduct yourself in youth that your old age will not lack for nourishment.
…...
Science quotes on:  |  Acquire (46)  |  Acquired (77)  |  Age (509)  |  Arrest (9)  |  Conduct (70)  |  Evil (122)  |  Food (213)  |  Lack (127)  |  Learn (672)  |  Learning (291)  |  Nourishment (26)  |  Old (499)  |  Old Age (35)  |  Understand (648)  |  Will (2350)  |  Wisdom (235)

Learning is ever in the freshness of its youth, even for the old.
Aeschylus
Agamemnon, 584. In John Bartlett, Familar Quotations: A Collection of Passages, Phrases, and Proverbs (1891), 695.
Science quotes on:  |  Freshness (8)  |  Learning (291)  |  Old (499)  |  Old Age (35)

Leave your home, O youth, and seek out alien shores. A wider range of life has been ordained for you.
…...
Science quotes on:  |  Alien (35)  |  Home (184)  |  Leave (138)  |  Life (1870)  |  Ordain (4)  |  Range (104)  |  Seek (218)  |  Shore (25)  |  Wide (97)

Mathematics is like childhood diseases. The younger you get it, the better.
Quoted by Dudley Herschbach in 'Einstein as a Student', collected in Peter Galison (ed.), Gerald James Holton (ed.), Silvan S. Schweber (ed.), Einstein for the 21st Century: His Legacy in Science, Srt, and Modern Culture (2008), 236. The remark quoted was footnoted as heard by Dudley Herschbach many years earlier in a class by George Polya, but not found in print.
Science quotes on:  |  Better (493)  |  Child (333)  |  Childhood (42)  |  Disease (340)  |  Mathematics (1395)  |  Younger (21)

Mathematics is one of the oldest of the sciences; it is also one of the most active, for its strength is the vigour of perpetual youth.
In Presidential Address British Association for the Advancement of Science, Section A, (1897), Nature, 66, 378.
Science quotes on:  |  Active (80)  |  Mathematics (1395)  |  Modern Mathematics (50)  |  Most (1728)  |  Old (499)  |  Perpetual (59)  |  Strength (139)  |  Vigour (18)

My original decision to devote myself to science was a direct result of the discovery which has never ceased to fill me with enthusiasm since my early youth—the comprehension of the far from obvious fact that the laws of human reasoning coincide with the laws governing the sequences of the impressions we receive from the world about us; that, therefore, pure reasoning can enable man to gain an insight into the mechanism of the latter. In this connection, it is of paramount importance that the outside world is something independent from man, something absolute, and the quest for the laws which apply to this absolute appeared to me as the most sublime scientific pursuit in life.
'A Scientific Autobiography' (1948), in Scientific Autobiography and Other Papers, trans. Frank Gaynor (1950), 13.
Science quotes on:  |  Absolute (153)  |  Appearance (145)  |  Application (257)  |  Apply (170)  |  Comprehension (69)  |  Conincidence (4)  |  Connection (171)  |  Decision (98)  |  Devotion (37)  |  Direct (228)  |  Discovery (837)  |  Early (196)  |  Enable (122)  |  Enthusiasm (59)  |  Fact (1257)  |  Fill (67)  |  Gain (146)  |  Governing (20)  |  Human (1512)  |  Importance (299)  |  Impression (118)  |  Independence (37)  |  Insight (107)  |  Law (913)  |  Life (1870)  |  Man (2252)  |  Mechanism (102)  |  Most (1728)  |  Myself (211)  |  Never (1089)  |  Obvious (128)  |  Original (61)  |  Outside (141)  |  Paramount (11)  |  Pure (299)  |  Pursuit (128)  |  Quest (39)  |  Reasoning (212)  |  Receive (117)  |  Result (700)  |  Scientific (955)  |  Sequence (68)  |  Something (718)  |  Sublime (50)  |  World (1850)

My youth held little forecast of a career in biomedical research.
In 'J. Michael Bishop: Biographical', website of nobelprize.org.
Science quotes on:  |  Biomedicine (5)  |  Career (86)  |  Forecast (15)  |  Research (753)

No mathematician should ever allow him to forget that mathematics, more than any other art or science, is a young man's game. … Galois died at twenty-one, Abel at twenty-seven, Ramanujan at thirty-three, Riemann at forty. There have been men who have done great work later; … [but] I do not know of a single instance of a major mathematical advance initiated by a man past fifty. … A mathematician may still be competent enough at sixty, but it is useless to expect him to have original ideas.
In A Mathematician's Apology (1941, reprint with Foreward by C.P. Snow 1992), 70-71.
Science quotes on:  |  Niels Henrik Abel (15)  |  Advance (298)  |  Age (509)  |  Art (680)  |  Do (1905)  |  Enough (341)  |  Expect (203)  |  Forget (125)  |  Évariste Galois (6)  |  Game (104)  |  Great (1610)  |  Idea (881)  |  Know (1538)  |  Major (88)  |  Man (2252)  |  Mathematician (407)  |  Mathematics (1395)  |  More (2558)  |  Other (2233)  |  Past (355)  |  Srinivasa Ramanujan (17)  |  Single (365)  |  Still (614)  |  Work (1402)  |  Young (253)

Once established, an original river advances through its long life, manifesting certain peculiarities of youth, maturity and old age, by which its successive stages of growth may be recognized without much difficulty.
'The Rivers and Valleys of Pennsylvania', The National Geographic Magazine, 1889, 1, 203.
Science quotes on:  |  Advance (298)  |  Age (509)  |  Certain (557)  |  Difficulty (201)  |  Growth (200)  |  Life (1870)  |  Long (778)  |  Maturity (14)  |  Old (499)  |  Old Age (35)  |  River (140)  |  Stage (152)  |  Successive (73)  |  Through (846)

Once I dipt into the future far as human eye could see,
And I saw the Chief Forecaster, dead as any one can be-
Dead and damned and shut in Hades as a liar from his birth,
With a record of unreason seldom paralleled on earth.
While I looked he reared him solemnly, that incandescent youth,
From the coals that he’s preferred to the advantages of truth.
He cast his eyes about him and above him; then he wrote
On a slab of thin asbestos what I venture here to quote-
For I read it in the rose-light of the everlasting glow:
Cloudy; variable winds, with local showers; cooler; snow.
Science quotes on:  |  Advantage (144)  |  Asbestos (3)  |  Birth (154)  |  Cast (69)  |  Chief (99)  |  Cloud (111)  |  Coal (64)  |  Earth (1076)  |  Eye (440)  |  Future (467)  |  Hades (4)  |  Human (1512)  |  Incandescent (7)  |  Liar (8)  |  Light (635)  |  Look (584)  |  Meteorology (36)  |  Parallel (46)  |  Quote (46)  |  Read (308)  |  Record (161)  |  Rose (36)  |  Saw (160)  |  See (1094)  |  Seldom (68)  |  Shower (7)  |  Shut (41)  |  Snow (39)  |  Truth (1109)  |  Variable (37)  |  Wind (141)

One should guard against preaching to the young man success in the customary sense as the aim in life. ... The most important motive for work in school and in life is pleasure in work, pleasure in its result, and the knowledge of the value of the result to the community.
'On Education', address at the State University of New York, Albany (15 Oct 1936) in celebration of the Tercentenary of Higher Education in America, translation prepared by Lina Arronet. In Albert Einstein, The Einstein Reader (2006), 30.
Science quotes on:  |  Against (332)  |  Aim (175)  |  Community (111)  |  Customary (18)  |  Guard (19)  |  Important (229)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Life (1870)  |  Man (2252)  |  Most (1728)  |  Motive (62)  |  Pleasure (191)  |  Preach (11)  |  Result (700)  |  School (227)  |  Sense (785)  |  Success (327)  |  Value (393)  |  Work (1402)  |  Young (253)

Probably among all the pursuits of the University, mathematics pre-eminently demand self-denial, patience, and perseverance from youth, precisely at that period when they have liberty to act for themselves, and when on account of obvious temptations, habits of restraint and application are peculiarly valuable.
In The Conflict of Studies and other Essays (1873), 12.
Science quotes on:  |  Account (195)  |  Act (278)  |  Application (257)  |  Demand (131)  |  Denial (20)  |  Habit (174)  |  Liberty (29)  |  Mathematics (1395)  |  Obvious (128)  |  Patience (58)  |  Peculiarly (4)  |  Period (200)  |  Perseverance (24)  |  Precisely (93)  |  Preeminent (6)  |  Probably (50)  |  Pursuit (128)  |  Restraint (16)  |  Self (268)  |  Temptation (14)  |  Themselves (433)  |  University (130)  |  Value (393)  |  Value Of Mathematics (60)

Profundity of thought belongs to youth, clarity of thought to old age.
Human, All-To-Human, Vol. 2, Miscellaneous Maxims and Opinions (1879), 140. In Willard Huntington Wright, What Nietzsche Taught? (1917), 78.
Science quotes on:  |  Age (509)  |  Belong (168)  |  Clarity (49)  |  Old (499)  |  Old Age (35)  |  Profundity (6)  |  Thought (995)

Scientists like myself merely use their gifts to show up that which already exists, and we look small compared to the artists who create works of beauty out of themselves. If a good fairy came and offered me back my youth, asking me which gifts I would rather have, those to make visible a thing which exists but which no man has ever seen before, or the genius needed to create, in a style of architecture never imagined before, the great Town Hall in which we are dining tonight, I might be tempted to choose the latter.
Nobel Banquet Speech (10 Dec 1962).
Science quotes on:  |  Already (226)  |  Architecture (50)  |  Artist (97)  |  Asking (74)  |  Back (395)  |  Beauty (313)  |  Choice (114)  |  Choose (116)  |  Comparison (108)  |  Create (245)  |  Creation (350)  |  Exist (458)  |  Existence (481)  |  Fairy (10)  |  Genius (301)  |  Gift (105)  |  Good (906)  |  Great (1610)  |  Look (584)  |  Man (2252)  |  Merely (315)  |  Myself (211)  |  Never (1089)  |  Offer (142)  |  Scientist (881)  |  See (1094)  |  Show (353)  |  Small (489)  |  Temptation (14)  |  Themselves (433)  |  Thing (1914)  |  Tonight (9)  |  Town Hall (2)  |  Use (771)  |  Visibility (6)  |  Visible (87)  |  Work (1402)

Several of my young acquaintances are in their graves who gave promise of making happy and useful citizens and there is no question whatever that cigarettes alone were the cause of their destruction. No boy living would commence the use of cigarettes if he knew what a useless, soulless, worthless thing they would make of him.
Quoted in Henry Ford, The Case Against the Little White Slaver (1914), Vol. 1, 20.
Science quotes on:  |  Acquaintance (38)  |  Alone (324)  |  Boy (100)  |  Cause (561)  |  Cigarette (26)  |  Citizen (52)  |  Commencement (14)  |  Destruction (135)  |  Grave (52)  |  Happy (108)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Life (1870)  |  Living (492)  |  Making (300)  |  Promise (72)  |  Question (649)  |  Soul (235)  |  Thing (1914)  |  Use (771)  |  Useful (260)  |  Usefulness (92)  |  Uselessness (22)  |  Whatever (234)  |  Worthless (22)  |  Young (253)

So erst the Sage [Pythagoras] with scientific truth
In Grecian temples taught the attentive youth;
With ceaseless change how restless atoms pass
From life to life, a transmigrating mass;
How the same organs, which to-day compose
The poisonous henbane, or the fragrant rose,
May with to-morrow's sun new forms compile,
Frown in the Hero, in the Beauty smile.
Whence drew the enlighten'd Sage the moral plan,
That man should ever be the friend of man;
Should eye with tenderness all living forms,
His brother-emmets, and his sister-worms.
The Temple of Nature (1803), canto 4, lines 417-28, page 163.
Science quotes on:  |  Atom (381)  |  Attentive (15)  |  Beauty (313)  |  Brother (47)  |  Change (639)  |  Enlighten (32)  |  Eye (440)  |  Form (976)  |  Friend (180)  |  Hero (45)  |  Life (1870)  |  Living (492)  |  Man (2252)  |  Mass (160)  |  Moral (203)  |  New (1273)  |  Organ (118)  |  Pass (241)  |  Plan (122)  |  Poem (104)  |  Pythagoras (38)  |  Rose (36)  |  Sage (25)  |  Scientific (955)  |  Scientific Truth (23)  |  Smile (34)  |  Sun (407)  |  Temple (45)  |  Truth (1109)  |  Worm (47)

So why fret and care that the actual version of the destined deed was done by an upper class English gentleman who had circumnavigated the globe as a vigorous youth, lost his dearest daughter and his waning faith at the same time, wrote the greatest treatise ever composed on the taxonomy of barnacles, and eventually grew a white beard, lived as a country squire just south of London, and never again traveled far enough even to cross the English Channel? We care for the same reason that we love okapis, delight in the fossil evidence of trilobites, and mourn the passage of the dodo. We care because the broad events that had to happen, happened to happen in a certain particular way. And something unspeakably holy –I don’t know how else to say this–underlies our discovery and confirmation of the actual details that made our world and also, in realms of contingency, assured the minutiae of its construction in the manner we know, and not in any one of a trillion other ways, nearly all of which would not have included the evolution of a scribe to record the beauty, the cruelty, the fascination, and the mystery.
…...
Science quotes on:  |  Actual (118)  |  Assure (16)  |  Beard (8)  |  Beauty (313)  |  Broad (28)  |  Care (203)  |  Certain (557)  |  Channel (23)  |  Class (168)  |  Compose (20)  |  Confirmation (25)  |  Construction (114)  |  Contingency (11)  |  Country (269)  |  Cross (20)  |  Cruelty (24)  |  Daughter (30)  |  Deed (34)  |  Delight (111)  |  Destined (42)  |  Detail (150)  |  Discovery (837)  |  Dodo (7)  |  English (35)  |  Enough (341)  |  Event (222)  |  Eventually (64)  |  Evidence (267)  |  Evolution (635)  |  Faith (209)  |  Far (158)  |  Fascination (35)  |  Fossil (143)  |  Fret (3)  |  Gentleman (26)  |  Globe (51)  |  Great (1610)  |  Greatest (330)  |  Grow (247)  |  Happen (282)  |  Happened (88)  |  Holy (35)  |  Include (93)  |  Know (1538)  |  Live (650)  |  London (15)  |  Lose (165)  |  Love (328)  |  Manner (62)  |  Minutiae (7)  |  Mourn (3)  |  Mystery (188)  |  Nearly (137)  |  Never (1089)  |  Other (2233)  |  Particular (80)  |  Passage (52)  |  Realm (87)  |  Reason (766)  |  Record (161)  |  Same (166)  |  Say (989)  |  Scribe (3)  |  Something (718)  |  South (39)  |  Taxonomy (19)  |  Time (1911)  |  Travel (125)  |  Treatise (46)  |  Trillion (4)  |  Trilobite (6)  |  Underlie (19)  |  Underly (3)  |  Unspeakably (3)  |  Upper (4)  |  Version (7)  |  Vigorous (21)  |  Wane (2)  |  Way (1214)  |  White (132)  |  Why (491)  |  World (1850)  |  Write (250)

Lord Byron Quote: Newton declared himself “like a youth Picking up shells by the great ocean—Truth.”
Background of ocean and rocky outcrop with kelp on sandy shore in foreground, at Channel Islands NMS, California. , Photo by Claire Fackler, NOAA (source)
Socrates said, our only knowledge was
“To know that nothing could be known;” a pleasant
Science enough, which levels to an ass
Each Man of Wisdom, future, past, or present.
Newton, (that Proverb of the Mind,) alas!
Declared, with all his grand discoveries recent,
That he himself felt only “like a youth
Picking up shells by the great Ocean—Truth.”
From poem, 'Don Juan,' (1822), canto 7, verse V. In Lord Byron, Don Juan: Cantos VI, VII and VIII (1823), 67.
Science quotes on:  |  Ass (5)  |  Declaration (10)  |  Declared (24)  |  Discovery (837)  |  Enough (341)  |  Future (467)  |  Grand (29)  |  Great (1610)  |  Himself (461)  |  Know (1538)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Known (453)  |  Man (2252)  |  Men Of Science (147)  |  Mind (1377)  |  Sir Isaac Newton (363)  |  Nothing (1000)  |  Ocean (216)  |  Past (355)  |  Pick (16)  |  Pleasant (22)  |  Present (630)  |  Proverb (29)  |  Recent (78)  |  Shell (69)  |   Socrates, (17)  |  Truth (1109)  |  Wisdom (235)

Some of my youthful readers are developing wonderful imaginations. This pleases me. Imagination has brought mankind through the Dark Ages to its present state of civilization. Imagination led Columbus to discover America. Imagination led Franklin to discover electricity. Imagination has given us the steam engine, the telephone, the talking-machine and the automobile, for these things had to be dreamed of before they became realities. So I believe that dreams—day dreams, you know, with your eyes wide open and your brain-machinery whizzing—are likely to lead to the betterment of the world. The imaginative child will become the imaginative man or woman most apt to create, to invent, and therefore to foster civilization. A prominent educator tells me that fairy tales are of untold value in developing imagination in the young. I believe it.
Opening paragraph of preface, 'To My Readers', The Lost Princess of Oz (1917), 13.
Science quotes on:  |  Age (509)  |  America (143)  |  Apt (9)  |  Automobile (23)  |  Become (821)  |  Belief (615)  |  Betterment (4)  |  Brain (281)  |  Child (333)  |  Civilization (220)  |  Christopher Columbus (16)  |  Create (245)  |  Dark (145)  |  Dark Ages (10)  |  Day Dream (2)  |  Develop (278)  |  Discover (571)  |  Dream (222)  |  Educator (7)  |  Electricity (168)  |  Engine (99)  |  Eye (440)  |  Fairy Tale (7)  |  Foster (12)  |  Benjamin Franklin (95)  |  Imagination (349)  |  Invent (57)  |  Know (1538)  |  Lead (391)  |  Machine (271)  |  Machinery (59)  |  Man (2252)  |  Mankind (356)  |  Most (1728)  |  Open (277)  |  Please (68)  |  Present (630)  |  Prominent (6)  |  Reader (42)  |  Reality (274)  |  State (505)  |  Steam (81)  |  Steam Engine (47)  |  Talking (76)  |  Telephone (31)  |  Tell (344)  |  Thing (1914)  |  Through (846)  |  Untold (6)  |  Value (393)  |  Whiz (2)  |  Wide (97)  |  Will (2350)  |  Woman (160)  |  Wonderful (155)  |  World (1850)  |  Young (253)

Statistical accounts are to be referred to as a dictionary by men of riper years, and by young men as a grammar, to teach them the relations and proportions of different statistical subjects, and to imprint them on the mind at a time when the memory is capable of being impressed in a lasting and durable manner, thereby laying the foundation for accurate and valuable knowledge.
In The Statistical Breviary: Shewing, on a Principle Entirely New, the Resources of Every State and Kingdom in Europe (1801), 5-6.
Science quotes on:  |  Account (195)  |  Accurate (88)  |  Being (1276)  |  Capability (44)  |  Capable (174)  |  Dictionary (15)  |  Difference (355)  |  Different (595)  |  Durable (7)  |  Foundation (177)  |  Grammar (15)  |  Impress (66)  |  Impressed (39)  |  Imprint (6)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Lasting (7)  |  Manner (62)  |  Memory (144)  |  Mind (1377)  |  Proportion (140)  |  Reference (33)  |  Relation (166)  |  Ripe (5)  |  Statistics (170)  |  Subject (543)  |  Teach (299)  |  Time (1911)  |  Value (393)  |  Year (963)  |  Young (253)

That the enthusiasm which characterizes youth should lift its parricide hands against freedom and science would be such a monstrous phenomenon as I cannot place among possible things in this age and country.
[Expressing confidence in the next generation to preserve the freedom of the human mind, and of the press, which grew out of America's Declaration of Independence.]
Letter to a student, William Green Mumford (18 Jun 1799), In Merrill D. Peterson, Thomas Jefferson and the New Nation (1970), 616.
Science quotes on:  |  Against (332)  |  Age (509)  |  America (143)  |  Characterization (8)  |  Confidence (75)  |  Country (269)  |  Declaration (10)  |  Declaration Of Independence (5)  |  Enthusiasm (59)  |  Freedom (145)  |  Generation (256)  |  Hand (149)  |  Human (1512)  |  Human Mind (133)  |  Impossibility (60)  |  Lift (57)  |  Mind (1377)  |  Monstrous (7)  |  Next (238)  |  Phenomenon (334)  |  Possible (560)  |  Preserve (91)  |  Thing (1914)

The advantage which science gained by Gauss’ long-lingering method of publication is this: What he put into print is as true and important today as when first published; his publications are statutes, superior to other human statutes in this, that nowhere and never has a single error been detected in them. This justifies and makes intelligible the pride with which Gauss said in the evening of his life of the first larger work of his youth: “The Disquisitiones arithmeticae belong to history.”
In Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (1878, 8, 435. As cited and translated in Robert Édouard Moritz, Memorabilia Mathematica; Or, The Philomath’s Quotation-book (1914), 158.
Science quotes on:  |  Advantage (144)  |  Belong (168)  |  Detect (45)  |  Disquisitiones Arithmeticae (2)  |  Error (339)  |  First (1302)  |  Gain (146)  |  Carl Friedrich Gauss (79)  |  History (716)  |  Human (1512)  |  Important (229)  |  Intelligible (35)  |  Justify (26)  |  Larger (14)  |  Life (1870)  |  Lingering (2)  |  Long (778)  |  Mathematicians and Anecdotes (141)  |  Method (531)  |  Never (1089)  |  Nowhere (28)  |  Other (2233)  |  Pride (84)  |  Print (20)  |  Publication (102)  |  Publish (42)  |  Single (365)  |  Statute (4)  |  Superior (88)  |  Today (321)  |  True (239)  |  Work (1402)

The days of my youth extend backward to the dark ages, for I was born when the rush-light, the tallow-dip or the solitary blaze of the hearth were common means of indoor lighting, and an infrequent glass bowl, raised 8 or 10 feet on a wooden post, and containing a cup full of evil-smelling train-oil with a crude cotton wick stuck in it, served to make the darkness visible out of doors. In the chambers of the great, the wax candle or, exceptionally, a multiplicity of them, relieved the gloom on state occasions, but as a rule, the common people, wanting the inducement of indoor brightness such as we enjoy, went to bed soon after sunset.
Reminiscence written by Swan “in his old age”, as quoted in Kenneth Raydon Swan, Sir Joseph Swan (1946), 1-2.
Science quotes on:  |  Age (509)  |  Bed (25)  |  Biography (254)  |  Birth (154)  |  Blaze (14)  |  Brightness (12)  |  Candle (32)  |  Common (447)  |  Crude (32)  |  Dark (145)  |  Dark Ages (10)  |  Darkness (72)  |  Door (94)  |  Evil (122)  |  Extend (129)  |  Glass (94)  |  Gloom (11)  |  Great (1610)  |  Hearth (3)  |  Indoor (2)  |  Light (635)  |  Lighting (5)  |  Mean (810)  |  Means (587)  |  Multiplicity (14)  |  Occasion (87)  |  Oil (67)  |  People (1031)  |  Rule (307)  |  Soon (187)  |  State (505)  |  Sunset (27)  |  Tallow (2)  |  Train (118)  |  Visible (87)  |  Wax (13)  |  Wick (4)

The function of Latin literature is its expression of Rome. When to England and France your imagination can add Rome in the background, you have laid firm the foundations of culture. The understanding of Rome leads back to the Mediterranean civilisation of which Rome was the last phase, and it automatically exhibits the geography of Europe, and the functions of seas and rivers and mountains and plains. The merit of this study in the education of youth is its concreteness, its inspiration to action, and the uniform greatness of persons, in their characters and their staging. Their aims were great, their virtues were great, and their vices were great. They had the saving merit of sinning with cart ropes.
In 'The Place of Classics in Education', The Aims of Education: & Other Essays (1917), 106.
Science quotes on:  |  Action (342)  |  Aim (175)  |  Back (395)  |  Background (44)  |  Character (259)  |  Civilization (220)  |  Concreteness (5)  |  Culture (157)  |  Education (423)  |  England (43)  |  Europe (50)  |  Expression (181)  |  Firm (47)  |  Foundation (177)  |  France (29)  |  Function (235)  |  Geography (39)  |  Great (1610)  |  Greatness (55)  |  Imagination (349)  |  Inspiration (80)  |  Last (425)  |  Latin (44)  |  Lead (391)  |  Literature (116)  |  Mediterranean (9)  |  Merit (51)  |  Mountain (202)  |  Person (366)  |  Phase (37)  |  Plain (34)  |  River (140)  |  Rome (19)  |  Rope (9)  |  Sea (326)  |  Sin (45)  |  Study (701)  |  Understanding (527)  |  Vice (42)  |  Virtue (117)

The great object I desire to accomplish by this institution [the Cooper Institute], is to open the avenues of scientific knowledge to the youth of our country, so unfolding the volume of Nature, that the young may see the beauties of creation.
Speech (17 Sep 1853), laying the foundation stone of the Cooper Institute, in New York Times (19 Sep 1853), 3. The article clarifies that although the ceremony was spoken of as the laying of the corner-stone, the basement stories were already completed at that time.
Science quotes on:  |  Accomplishment (102)  |  Avenue (14)  |  Beauty (313)  |  Country (269)  |  Creation (350)  |  Desire (212)  |  Great (1610)  |  Institution (73)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Object (438)  |  Open (277)  |  Scientific (955)  |  Scientific Knowledge (11)  |  See (1094)  |  Unfolding (16)  |  Volume (25)  |  Young (253)

The influence of the mathematics of Leibnitz upon his philosophy appears chiefly in connection with his law of continuity and his prolonged efforts to establish a Logical Calculus. … To find a Logical Calculus (implying a universal philosophical language or system of signs) is an attempt to apply in theological and philosophical investigations an analytic method analogous to that which had proved so successful in Geometry and Physics. It seemed to Leibnitz that if all the complex and apparently disconnected ideas which make up our knowledge could be analysed into their simple elements, and if these elements could each be represented by a definite sign, we should have a kind of “alphabet of human thoughts.” By the combination of these signs (letters of the alphabet of thought) a system of true knowledge would be built up, in which reality would be more and more adequately represented or symbolized. … In many cases the analysis may result in an infinite series of elements; but the principles of the Infinitesimal Calculus in mathematics have shown that this does not necessarily render calculation impossible or inaccurate. Thus it seemed to Leibnitz that a synthetic calculus, based upon a thorough analysis, would be the most effective instrument of knowledge that could be devised. “I feel,” he says, “that controversies can never be finished, nor silence imposed upon the Sects, unless we give up complicated reasonings in favor of simple calculations, words of vague and uncertain meaning in favor of fixed symbols [characteres].” Thus it will appear that “every paralogism is nothing but an error of calculation.” “When controversies arise, there will be no more necessity of disputation between two philosophers than between two accountants. Nothing will be needed but that they should take pen in hand, sit down with their counting-tables, and (having summoned a friend, if they like) say to one another: Let us calculate.” This sounds like the ungrudging optimism of youth; but Leibniz was optimist enough to cherish the hope of it to his life’s end.
By Robert Latta in 'Introduction' to his translation of Gottfried Leibnitz, The Monadology and Other Philosophical Writings (1898), 85. Also quoted (omitting the last sentence) in Robert Édouard Moritz, Memorabilia Mathematica; Or, The Philomath’s Quotation-Book (1914), 205-206.
Science quotes on:  |  Alphabet (14)  |  Calculation (134)  |  Cherish (25)  |  Controversy (30)  |  Dispute (36)  |  Friend (180)  |  Hope (321)  |  Language (308)  |  Leibnitz_Gottfried (2)  |  Logic (311)  |  Mathematics And Logic (27)  |  Optimism (17)  |  Philosopher (269)  |  Philosophy (409)  |  Sign (63)  |  Symbol (100)  |  Thought (995)

The more efficient causes of progress seem to consist of a good education during youth whilst the brain is impressible, and of a high standard of excellence, inculcated by the ablest and best men, embodied in the laws, customs and traditions of the nation, and enforced by public opinion. It should, however, be borne in mind, that the enforcement of public opinion depends on our appreciation of the approbation and disapprobation of others; and this appreciation is founded on our sympathy, which it can hardly be doubted was originally developed through natural selection as one of the most important elements of the social instincts.
…...
Science quotes on:  |  Appreciation (37)  |  Bear (162)  |  Best (467)  |  Brain (281)  |  Cause (561)  |  Consist (223)  |  Custom (44)  |  Depend (238)  |  Develop (278)  |  Disapprobation (2)  |  Doubt (314)  |  Education (423)  |  Efficient (34)  |  Element (322)  |  Embody (18)  |  Enforce (11)  |  Enforcement (2)  |  Excellence (40)  |  Founded (22)  |  Good (906)  |  Hardly (19)  |  High (370)  |  Important (229)  |  Inculcate (7)  |  Instinct (91)  |  Law (913)  |  Mind (1377)  |  More (2558)  |  Most (1728)  |  Nation (208)  |  Natural (810)  |  Natural Selection (98)  |  Opinion (291)  |  Originally (7)  |  Other (2233)  |  Progress (492)  |  Public (100)  |  Seem (150)  |  Selection (130)  |  Social (261)  |  Standard (64)  |  Sympathy (35)  |  Through (846)  |  Tradition (76)  |  Whilst (3)

The most important thing we can do is inspire young minds and to advance the kind of science, math and technology education that will help youngsters take us to the next phase of space travel.
As summarized on a CNN web page - without quotation marks - from a statement by Glenn about the fourth National Space Day (4 May 2000). 'All systems go for National Space Day' on CNN website.
Science quotes on:  |  Advance (298)  |  Do (1905)  |  Education (423)  |  Help (116)  |  Important (229)  |  Inspire (58)  |  Kind (564)  |  Mathematics (1395)  |  Mind (1377)  |  Most (1728)  |  Next (238)  |  Phase (37)  |  Space (523)  |  Space Travel (23)  |  Technology (281)  |  Thing (1914)  |  Travel (125)  |  Will (2350)  |  Young (253)

The only true voyage of discovery, the only fountain of Eternal Youth, would be not to visit strange lands but to possess other eyes, to behold the universe through the eyes of another, of a hundred others, to behold the hundred universes that each of them beholds, that each of them is.
From La Prisonnière (1923), a volume in the series of novels À la Recherche du Temps Perdu (Remembrance of Things Past). Translated by C.K. Moncrief as The Captive (1929, 1949), 70-71. This text is often seen paraphrased as “The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeing new sights, but in looking with new eyes.” [Note that the context refers to the “eyes” of artists (including composers), and their ability to transport the viewer or listener with “a pair of wings, … which would enable us to traverse infinite space” to see new vistas through their art.]
Science quotes on:  |  Art (680)  |  Behold (19)  |  Discovery (837)  |  Eternal (113)  |  Eye (440)  |  Hundred (240)  |  Land (131)  |  Music (133)  |  Other (2233)  |  Possess (157)  |  Strange (160)  |  Through (846)  |  True (239)  |  Universe (900)  |  Visit (27)  |  Voyage (13)

The progress of the individual mind is not only an illustration, but an indirect evidence of that of the general mind. The point of departure of the individual and of the race being the same, the phases of the mind of a man correspond to the epochs of the mind of the race. Now, each of us is aware, if he looks back upon his own history, that he was a theologian in his childhood, a metaphysician in his youth, and a natural philosopher in his manhood. All men who are up to their age can verify this for themselves.
The Positive Philosophy, trans. Harriet Martineau (1853), Vol. 1, 3.
Science quotes on:  |  Age (509)  |  Back (395)  |  Being (1276)  |  Childhood (42)  |  Epoch (46)  |  Evidence (267)  |  General (521)  |  History (716)  |  Illustration (51)  |  Indirect (18)  |  Individual (420)  |  Look (584)  |  Man (2252)  |  Mind (1377)  |  Natural (810)  |  Phase (37)  |  Philosopher (269)  |  Philosophy (409)  |  Point (584)  |  Progress (492)  |  Race (278)  |  Themselves (433)  |  Theologian (23)  |  Verify (24)

The pulse of a newborn during the neonatal period is very rapid … the pulse of old people is rather slow … the pulse is fullest and strongest in the prime years of youth.
As quoted in Fred Rosner, The Medical Legacy of Moses Maimonides (1998), 51.
Science quotes on:  |  Baby (29)  |  Newborn (5)  |  Old (499)  |  People (1031)  |  Period (200)  |  Prime (11)  |  Pulse (22)  |  Rapid (37)  |  Slow (108)  |  Strongest (38)  |  Year (963)

The true way to render age vigorous is to prolong the youth of the mind.
In Mortimer Collins and Frances Cotton Collins, The Village Comedy (1878), Vol. 1, 56.
Science quotes on:  |  Age (509)  |  Mind (1377)  |  Prolong (29)  |  Render (96)  |  True (239)  |  Vigorous (21)  |  Way (1214)

The year that Rutherford died (1938 [sic]) there disappeared forever the happy days of free scientific work which gave us such delight in our youth. Science has lost her freedom. Science has become a productive force. She has become rich but she has become enslaved and part of her is veiled in secrecy. I do not know whether Rutherford would continue to joke and laugh as he used to.
'Notes from Here and There', Science Policy News (1969), 1, No 2, 33.
Science quotes on:  |  Become (821)  |  Continue (179)  |  Delight (111)  |  Disappear (84)  |  Do (1905)  |  Force (497)  |  Forever (111)  |  Free (239)  |  Freedom (145)  |  Happiness (126)  |  Happy (108)  |  Joke (90)  |  Know (1538)  |  Laugh (50)  |  Money (178)  |  Productive (37)  |  Sir Ernest Rutherford (55)  |  Scientific (955)  |  Secret (216)  |  Slave (40)  |  Veil (27)  |  Work (1402)  |  Year (963)

Theorists tend to peak at an early age; the creative juices tend to gush very early and start drying up past the age of fifteen—or so it seems. They need to know just enough; when they’re young they haven’t accumulated the intellectual baggage.
In Leon Lederman and Dick Teresi, The God Particle: If the Universe is the Answer, What is the Question (1993), 16.
Science quotes on:  |  Accumulate (30)  |  Age (509)  |  Creative (144)  |  Creativity (84)  |  Drying (2)  |  Early (196)  |  Enough (341)  |  Intellect (251)  |  Intellectual (258)  |  Juice (7)  |  Know (1538)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Past (355)  |  Peak (20)  |  Start (237)  |  Tend (124)  |  Theoretical Physicist (21)  |  Theorist (44)  |  Young (253)

There is always a strong inclination for a body of professionals to oppose an unorthodox view. Such a group has a considerable investment in orthodoxy: they have learned to interpret a large body of data in terms of the old view, and they have prepared lectures and perhaps written books with the old background. To think the whole subject through again when one is no longer young is not easy and involves admitting a partially misspent youth.
Referring to attitudes such as early opposition to Wegener’s theory of continental drift. In 'The Emergence of Plate Tectonics: a Personal View', Annual Review of Earth and Planetary Sciences, 3, 5.
Science quotes on:  |  Admit (49)  |  Background (44)  |  Book (413)  |  Data (162)  |  Easy (213)  |  Inclination (36)  |  Interpret (25)  |  Investment (15)  |  Involve (93)  |  Lecture (111)  |  Old (499)  |  Opposition (49)  |  Orthodoxy (11)  |  Prepare (44)  |  Professional (77)  |  Subject (543)  |  Think (1122)  |  Unorthodox (2)  |  Whole (756)  |  Write (250)  |  Young (253)

There is one best path to the mountain crest; yet there are other paths, nearly as good. Let Youth be assured that the steeps of success have as many paths as there are stout-hearted climbers.
From chapter 'Jottings from a Note-book', in Canadian Stories (1918), 173-174.
Science quotes on:  |  Assured (4)  |  Best (467)  |  Climber (7)  |  Crest (2)  |  Good (906)  |  Heart (243)  |  Mountain (202)  |  Nearly (137)  |  Other (2233)  |  Path (159)  |  Steep (7)  |  Success (327)

There is probably no other science which presents such different appearances to one who cultivates it and to one who does not, as mathematics. To this person it is ancient, venerable, and complete; a body of dry, irrefutable, unambiguous reasoning. To the mathematician, on the other hand, his science is yet in the purple bloom of vigorous youth, everywhere stretching out after the “attainable but unattained” and full of the excitement of nascent thoughts; its logic is beset with ambiguities, and its analytic processes, like Bunyan’s road, have a quagmire on one side and a deep ditch on the other and branch off into innumerable by-paths that end in a wilderness.
In 'The Theory of Transformation Groups', (A review of Erster Abschnitt, Theorie der Transformationsgruppen (1888)), Bulletin New York Mathematical Society (1893), 2 (First series), 61.
Science quotes on:  |  Ambiguity (17)  |  Analytic (11)  |  Ancient (198)  |  Appearance (145)  |  Attain (126)  |  Bloom (11)  |  Body (557)  |  Branch (155)  |  John Bunyan (5)  |  Complete (209)  |  Cultivate (24)  |  Deep (241)  |  Different (595)  |  Ditch (2)  |  Dry (65)  |  End (603)  |  Everywhere (98)  |  Excitement (61)  |  Innumerable (56)  |  Irrefutable (5)  |  Logic (311)  |  Mathematician (407)  |  Mathematics (1395)  |  Nascent (4)  |  Nature Of Mathematics (80)  |  On The Other Hand (40)  |  Other (2233)  |  Path (159)  |  Person (366)  |  Present (630)  |  Process (439)  |  Purple (4)  |  Reason (766)  |  Reasoning (212)  |  Road (71)  |  Side (236)  |  Stretch (39)  |  Thought (995)  |  Unambiguous (6)  |  Venerable (7)  |  Vigorous (21)  |  Wilderness (57)

There was a young fellow from Trinity,
Who took the square root of infinity.
But the number of digits,
Gave him the fidgets;
He dropped Math and took up Divinity.
Epigraph on title page of One, Two, Three… Infinity: Facts and Speculations of Science (1947, 1988), i. The original text shows symbols instead of the words which appear above as “square root of infinity.”
Science quotes on:  |  Digit (4)  |  Divinity (23)  |  Dropped (17)  |  Fellow (88)  |  Humour (116)  |  Infinity (96)  |  Limerick (7)  |  Mathematics (1395)  |  Number (710)  |  Root (121)  |  Square (73)  |  Square Root (12)  |  Trinity (9)  |  Young (253)

This brings me to the final point of my remarks, the relation between creativity and aging, a topic with which I have had substantial experience. Scientific research, until it has gone through the grueling and sometimes painful process of publication, is just play, and play is characteristic of young vertebrates, particularly young mammals. In some ways, scientific creativity is related to the exuberant behavior of young mammals. Indeed, creativity seems to be a natural characteristic of young humans. If one is fortunate enough to be associated with a university, even as one ages, teaching allows one to contribute to, and vicariously share, in the creativity of youth.”
In 'Integrative Biology: An Organismic Biologist’s Point of View', Integrative and Comparative Biology (2005), 45, 331.
Science quotes on:  |  Age (509)  |  Aging (9)  |  Allow (51)  |  Associate (25)  |  Behavior (95)  |  Bring (95)  |  Characteristic (154)  |  Contribute (30)  |  Creativity (84)  |  Enough (341)  |  Experience (494)  |  Exuberant (2)  |  Final (121)  |  Fortunate (31)  |  Grueling (2)  |  Human (1512)  |  Indeed (323)  |  Mammal (41)  |  Natural (810)  |  Painful (12)  |  Particularly (21)  |  Play (116)  |  Point (584)  |  Process (439)  |  Publication (102)  |  Relate (26)  |  Relation (166)  |  Remark (28)  |  Research (753)  |  Scientific (955)  |  Seem (150)  |  Share (82)  |  Sometimes (46)  |  Substantial (24)  |  Teach (299)  |  Teaching (190)  |  Through (846)  |  Topic (23)  |  University (130)  |  Vertebrate (22)  |  Way (1214)  |  Young (253)

Thou hast nor youth nor age,
But as it were an after-dinner's sleep
Dreaming on both; for all thy blessed youth
Becomes as aged, and doth beg the alms
Of palsied eld.
Measure for Measure (1604), III, i.
Science quotes on:  |  Age (509)  |  Become (821)  |  Bless (25)  |  Blessed (20)  |  Both (496)  |  Dream (222)  |  Palsy (3)  |  Sleep (81)

Thou, youthful seeker after knowledge, investigate and experiment and never desist therefrom, for thou willst harvest, fruits a thousand-fold.
Epigraph, in Paul Walden, Salts, Acids, and Bases: Electrolytes: Stereochemistry (1929), 5.
Science quotes on:  |  Experiment (736)  |  Fruit (108)  |  Harvest (28)  |  Investigate (106)  |  Investigation (250)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Never (1089)  |  Seeker (8)  |  Thousand (340)

Albert Einstein quote: Mistrust of every kind of authority
Through the reading of popular scientific books I soon reached the conviction that much in the stories of the Bible could not be true. The consequence was a positively fanatic [orgy of] freethinking coupled with the impression that youth is intentionally being deceived by the state through lies; it was a crushing impression. Mistrust of every kind of authority grew out of this experience, a skeptical attitude toward the convictions that were alive in any specific social environment–an attitude that has never again left me, even though, later on, it has been tempered by a better insight into the causal connections.
In P. A. Schilpp, (ed.), Part I, 'Autobiographical Notes', Albert Einstein: Philosopher-Scientist (1949, 1959), Vol. 1, 5. Translated by the P.A. Schilpp, from Einstein’s original German manuscript, written at age 67, (p.2, 4): “Durch Lesen populärwissenschaftlicher Bücher kam ich bald zu der Ueberzeugung, dass vieles in den Erzählungen der Bibel nicht wahr sein konnte. Die Folge war eine geradezu fanatische Freigeisterei, verbunden mit dem Eindruck, dass die Jugend vom Staate mit Vorbedacht belogen wird; es war ein niederschmetternder Eindruck. Das Misstrauen gegen jede Art Autorität erwuchs aus diesem Erlebnis, eine skeptische Einstellung gegen die Ueberzeugungen, welche in der jeweiligen sozialen Umwelt lebendig waren—eine Einstellung, die mich nicht wieder verlassen hat, wenn sie auch später durch bessere Einsicht in die kausalen Zusammenhänge ihre ursprünglische Schärfe verloren haben.”.
Science quotes on:  |  Alive (97)  |  Attitude (84)  |  Author (175)  |  Being (1276)  |  Better (493)  |  Bible (105)  |  Book (413)  |  Causal (7)  |  Connection (171)  |  Consequence (220)  |  Conviction (100)  |  Couple (9)  |  Crush (19)  |  Deceive (26)  |  Environment (239)  |  Experience (494)  |  Fanatic (7)  |  Freethinking (2)  |  Grow (247)  |  Impression (118)  |  Insight (107)  |  Intentionally (3)  |  Kind (564)  |  Late (119)  |  Leave (138)  |  Lie (370)  |  Mistrust (4)  |  Never (1089)  |  Orgy (3)  |  Popular (34)  |  Positively (4)  |  Reach (286)  |  Read (308)  |  Reading (136)  |  Scientific (955)  |  Skeptical (21)  |  Social (261)  |  Soon (187)  |  Specific (98)  |  State (505)  |  Story (122)  |  Temper (12)  |  Through (846)  |  Toward (45)  |  True (239)

To Archimedes once came a youth intent upon knowledge.
Said he “Initiate me into the Science divine,
Which to our country has borne glorious fruits in abundance,
And which the walls of the town ’gainst the Sambuca protects.”
“Callst thou the science divine? It is so,” the wise man responded;
“But so it was, my son, ere the state by her service was blest.
Would’st thou have fruit of her only? Mortals with that can provide thee,
He who the goddess would woo, seek not the woman in her.”
Poem, 'Archimedes und der Schuler', collected in Gedichte von Friedrich Schiller (1807), Vol. 1, 149. English version 'Archimedes and the Student', in Edgar A. Bowring (trans.), The Poems of Schiller (1875), 262-263. From the original German: Zu Archimedes kam einst ein wissbegieriger Jüngling. / “Weihe mich,” sprach er zu ihm, “ein in die gottliche Kunst, / Die so herrliche Frucht dem Vaterlande getragen, / Und die Mauern der Stadt vor der Sambuca beschützt!” / “Gottlieb nennst du die Kunst? Sie ists,” versetzte der Weise; / “Aber das war sie, mein Sohn, eh sie dem Staat noch gedient. / Willst du nur Früchte von ihr, die kann auch die Sterbliche zeugen; / Wer um die Göttin freit, suche in ihr nicht das Weib.” [Note: “Sambuca” is the name of a machine used in sieges, employed by Marcellus against Syracuse.]
Science quotes on:  |  Abundance (26)  |  Archimedes (63)  |  Blessed (20)  |  Country (269)  |  Divine (112)  |  Fruit (108)  |  Glorious (49)  |  Goddess (9)  |  Initiate (13)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Man (2252)  |  Mathematicians and Anecdotes (141)  |  Mortal (55)  |  Protect (65)  |  Seek (218)  |  Service (110)  |  State (505)  |  Town (30)  |  Wall (71)  |  Wise (143)  |  Wise Man (17)  |  Woman (160)

To stay young requires unceasing cultivation of the ability to unlearn old falsehoods.
In Time Enough For Love: the Lives of Lazarus Long (1973), 364.
Science quotes on:  |  Ability (162)  |  Cultivation (36)  |  Falsehood (30)  |  Old (499)  |  Require (229)  |  Requirement (66)  |  Unceasing (3)  |  Unlearn (11)  |  Young (253)

Today the world changes so quickly that in growing up we take leave not just of youth but of the world we were young in. … Fear and resentment of what is new is really a lament for the memories of our childhood.
From 'On The Effecting of All Things Possible', Presidential Address to the British Association for the Advancement of Science, Exeter (3 Sep 1969). In Pluto’s Republic (1982), 336.
Science quotes on:  |  Change (639)  |  Childhood (42)  |  Fear (212)  |  Growing (99)  |  Lament (11)  |  Leaving (10)  |  Memory (144)  |  New (1273)  |  Resentment (6)  |  Today (321)  |  World (1850)  |  Young (253)

Today there remain but a few small areas on the world’s map unmarked by explorers’ trails. Human courage and endurance have conquered the Poles; the secrets of the tropical jungles have been revealed. The highest mountains of the earth have heard the voice of man. But this does not mean that the youth of the future has no new worlds to vanquish. It means only that the explorer must change his methods.
On the Trail of Ancient Man (1926), 5.
Science quotes on:  |  Change (639)  |  Conquer (39)  |  Courage (82)  |  Earth (1076)  |  Endurance (8)  |  Exploration (161)  |  Explorer (30)  |  Future (467)  |  Human (1512)  |  Jungle (24)  |  Man (2252)  |  Map (50)  |  Mean (810)  |  Means (587)  |  Method (531)  |  Mountain (202)  |  Must (1525)  |  New (1273)  |  Pole (49)  |  Remain (355)  |  Reveal (152)  |  Revealed (59)  |  Secret (216)  |  Small (489)  |  Today (321)  |  World (1850)

We have refused to recognize the creativity of youth. We don’t want our children to write poetry or go to the stars. We want them to go steady, get married and have four children.
As quoted in interview with Frances Glennon, 'Student and Teacher of Human Ways', Life (14 Sep 1959), 147.
Science quotes on:  |  Child (333)  |  Children (201)  |  Creativity (84)  |  Marry (11)  |  Poetry (150)  |  Recognize (136)  |  Refuse (45)  |  Star (460)  |  Stars (304)  |  Steady (45)  |  Want (504)  |  Write (250)

We need to engage and inspire today’s youth to do a much better job of protecting the planet and our future than we have. My grandfather raised me believing in the power of youth to change the world. … Education and young people are key to making sure we don’t keep repeating our mistakes.
In 'Gulf Dispatch: Time to Tap Power of Teens', CNN Blog (23 Jul 2010).
Science quotes on:  |  Belief (615)  |  Better (493)  |  Change (639)  |  Do (1905)  |  Education (423)  |  Engage (41)  |  Future (467)  |  Grandfather (14)  |  Inspire (58)  |  Job (86)  |  Key (56)  |  Making (300)  |  Mistake (180)  |  People (1031)  |  Planet (402)  |  Power (771)  |  Protect (65)  |  Repeat (44)  |  Today (321)  |  World (1850)  |  Young (253)

We of an older generation can get along with what we have, though with growing hardship; but in your full manhood and womanhood you will want what nature once so bountifully supplied and man so thoughtlessly destroyed; and because of that want you will reproach us, not for what we have used, but for what we have wasted...So any nation which in its youth lives only for the day, reaps without sowing, and consumes without husbanding, must expect the penalty of the prodigal whose labor could with difficulty find him the bare means of life.
'Arbor Day: A Message to the School-Children of the United States', 15 Apr 1907. In Presidential Addresses and State Papers (1910), Vol. 11, 1207-8.
Science quotes on:  |  Arbor Day (4)  |  Bare (33)  |  Conservation (187)  |  Destroy (189)  |  Difficulty (201)  |  Expect (203)  |  Find (1014)  |  Generation (256)  |  Growing (99)  |  Labor (200)  |  Life (1870)  |  Live (650)  |  Man (2252)  |  Mean (810)  |  Means (587)  |  Must (1525)  |  Nation (208)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Reap (19)  |  Sowing (9)  |  Want (504)  |  Will (2350)

We spend our years as a tale that is told, but the tale varies in a hundred different ways, varies between man and man, between year and year, between youth and age, sorrow and joy, laughter and tears. How different the story of the child’s year from the man’s; how much longer it seems; how far apart seem the vacations, and the Christmases, and the New Years! But let the child become a man, and he will find that he can tell full fast enough these stories of a year; that if he is disposed to make good use of them he has no hours to wish away; the plot develops very rapidly, and the conclusion gallops on the very heels of that first chapter which records the birth of a new year.
In Edward Parsons Day (ed.), Day’s Collacon: An Encyclopaedia of Prose Quotations (1884), 1050.
Science quotes on:  |  Age (509)  |  Become (821)  |  Birth (154)  |  Chapter (11)  |  Child (333)  |  Christmas (13)  |  Conclusion (266)  |  Develop (278)  |  Different (595)  |  Dispose (10)  |  Enough (341)  |  Fast (49)  |  Find (1014)  |  First (1302)  |  Full (68)  |  Good (906)  |  Hour (192)  |  Hundred (240)  |  Joy (117)  |  Laughter (34)  |  Longer (10)  |  Man (2252)  |  New (1273)  |  Plot (11)  |  Rapid (37)  |  Rapidly (67)  |  Record (161)  |  Sorrow (21)  |  Spend (97)  |  Story (122)  |  Tale (17)  |  Tear (48)  |  Tell (344)  |  Use (771)  |  Vacation (4)  |  Vary (27)  |  Way (1214)  |  Will (2350)  |  Wish (216)  |  Year (963)

What I then got hold of, something frightful and dangerous, a problem with horns but not necessarily a bull, in any case a new problem—today I should say that it was the problem of science itself, science considered for the first time as problematic, as questionable. But the book in which my youthful courage and suspicion found an outlet—what an impossible book had to result from a task so uncongenial to youth! Constructed from a lot of immature, overgreen personal experiences, all of them close to the limits of communication, presented in the context of art—for the problem of science cannot be recognized in the context of science—a book perhaps for artists who also have an analytic and retrospective penchant (in other words, an exceptional type of artist for whom one might have to look far and wide and really would not care to look) …
In The Birth of Tragedy (1872). Collected in Friedrich Nietzsche and Walter Kaufmann (trans.), The Birth of Tragedy and The Case of Wagner (1967), 18.
Science quotes on:  |  Analysis (244)  |  Art (680)  |  Artist (97)  |  Book (413)  |  Bull (3)  |  Care (203)  |  Communication (101)  |  Consider (428)  |  Construct (129)  |  Context (31)  |  Courage (82)  |  Dangerous (108)  |  Exceptional (19)  |  Experience (494)  |  First (1302)  |  Frightful (3)  |  Horn (18)  |  Immature (4)  |  Impossible (263)  |  Limit (294)  |  Look (584)  |  Lot (151)  |  Necessarily (137)  |  New (1273)  |  Other (2233)  |  Outlet (3)  |  Present (630)  |  Problem (731)  |  Questionable (3)  |  Result (700)  |  Say (989)  |  Something (718)  |  Suspicion (36)  |  Task (152)  |  Time (1911)  |  Today (321)  |  Type (171)  |  Uncongenial (2)  |  Wide (97)  |  Word (650)

When I was about 13, I cycled from Leicester to the Lake District and back again, collecting fossils and staying in youth hostels. I was away for three weeks, and my mother and father didn’t know where I was. I doubt many parents would let children do that now.
It is about 200 miles each way between his hometown (Leicester) and the Lake District. As reported by Adam Lusher in 'Sir David Attenborough', Daily Mail (28 Feb 2014).
Science quotes on:  |  Back (395)  |  Bicycle (10)  |  Child (333)  |  Children (201)  |  Collect (19)  |  Do (1905)  |  Doubt (314)  |  Father (113)  |  Fossil (143)  |  Know (1538)  |  Lake (36)  |  Lake District (2)  |  Mother (116)  |  Parent (80)  |  Week (73)

When, to the flame that the natural heat of youth kindles, the oil of riches is added, little more than the ashes of the phoenix remains; and only a Goethe has had the forbearance not to singe his phoenix wings at the sun of Fortune.
From 'Autobiography' translated from the original German by Eliza Buckminster Lee, collected in Life of Jean Paul Frederic Richter (1842), Vol. 1, 20-21.
Science quotes on:  |  Ash (21)  |  Flame (44)  |  Forbearance (3)  |  Fortune (50)  |  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (150)  |  Phoenix (2)  |  Riches (14)  |  Singe (2)  |  Wing (79)

Will our Philosophy to later Life
Seem but a crudeness of the planet's youth,
Our Wisdom but a parasite of Truth?
Essay read at the Heretics Club, Cambridge (May 1922), 'Philosophic Ants', collected in Essays of a Biologist (1923), 176.
Science quotes on:  |  Crudeness (2)  |  Life (1870)  |  Parasite (33)  |  Philosophy (409)  |  Planet (402)  |  Seem (150)  |  Truth (1109)  |  Will (2350)  |  Wisdom (235)

Young men should prove theorems, old men should write books.
Quoted by Freeman Dyson as the answer from G.H. Hardy about the book An Introduction to the Theory of Numbers. Dyson, while at Cambridge, had asked him why “he spent so much time and effort writing that marvellous book when he might be doing serious mathematics.” In Freeman Dyson 'A Walk Through Ramanujan's Garden', Lecture by Dyson at Ramanujan Centenary Conference (2 Jun 1987). Collected in Selected Papers of Freeman Dyson with Commentary (1996), 189. Also as quoted in 'Mathematician, Physicist, and Writer.' Interview (Jun 1990) with Donald J. Albers, The College Mathematics Journal (Jan 1994), 25, No. 1, 4.
Science quotes on:  |  Book (413)  |  Old (499)  |  Old Age (35)  |  Prove (261)  |  Theorem (116)  |  Write (250)  |  Young (253)

YOUTH AND AGE
Though leaves are many, the root is one;
Through all the lying days of my youth
I swayed my leaves and flowers in the sun;
Now I may wither into the truth.
In McClure's Magazine (Dec 1910), 36, No. 2, 168.
Science quotes on:  |  Age (509)  |  Flower (112)  |  Leaf (73)  |  Lie (370)  |  Lying (55)  |  Root (121)  |  Sun (407)  |  Sway (5)  |  Through (846)  |  Time (1911)  |  Truth (1109)  |  Wisdom (235)  |  Wither (9)

Youth disserves; middle age conserves; old age preserves.
Science quotes on:  |  Age (509)  |  Conserve (7)  |  Middle Age (19)  |  Old (499)  |  Old Age (35)  |  Preserve (91)

Youth is a circumstance you can’t do anything about. The trick is to grow up without getting old.
Filler quote in Forbes (1975), 115, 94. Webmaster has so far been unable to identify a primary source. Can you help?
Science quotes on:  |  Circumstance (139)  |  Do (1905)  |  Grow (247)  |  Grow Up (9)  |  Old (499)  |  Trick (36)


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.