Science Quotes - Page 270

Andrade [who was looking after wartime inventions] is like an inverted Micawber, waiting for something to turn down.

The actions of bad men produce only temporary evil, the actions of good men only temporary good ; and eventually the good and the evil altogether subside, are neutralized by subsequent generations, absorbed by the incessant movements of future ages. But the discoveries of great men never leave us; they are immortal; they contain those eternal truths which survive the shock of empires, outlive the struggles of rival creeds, and witness the decay of successive religions.

Because a child of one doubles its age after the passage of a single year, it can be said to be aging rapidly.

Belief is no substitute for arithmetic.

The Engineer is one who, in the world of physics and applied sciences, begets new things, or adapts old things to new and better uses; above all, one who, in that field, attains new results in the best way and at lowest cost.

The King saw them with no common satisfaction, expressing his desire in no particular to have yt Stellar fish engraven and printed. We wish very much, Sir, yt you could procure for us a particular description of yesd Fish, viz. whether it be common there; what is observable in it when alive; what colour it then hath; what kind of motion in the water; what use it maketh of all that curious workmanship, wch Nature hath adorn'd it with?

[Thomas Henry] Huxley is a very genial, comfortable being-yet with none of the noisy and windy geniality of some folks here, whom you find with their backs turned when you are responding to the remarks that they have made you.

After all, we scientific workers ... like women, are the victims of fashion: at one time we wear dissociated ions, at another electrons; and we are always loth to don rational clothing; some fixed belief we must have manufactured for us: we are high or low church, of this or that degree of nonconformity, according to the school in which we are brought up-but the agnostic is always rare of us and of late years the critic has been taboo.

It surely can be no offence to state, that the progress of science has led to new views, and that the consequences that can be deduced from the knowledge of a hundred facts may be very different from those deducible from five. It is also possible that the facts first known may be the exceptions to a rule and not the rule itself, and generalisations from these first-known facts, though useful at the time, may be highly mischievous, and impede the progress of the science if retained when it has made some advance.

Long enough I had heard of irrelevant things; now at length I was glad to make acquaintance with the light that dwells in rotten wood. Where is all your knowledge gone to? It evaporates completely, for it has no depth.

He is not a true man of science who does not bring some sympathy to his studies, and expect to learn something by behaviour as well as application.

Our science, so called, is always more barren and mixed with error than our sympathies.

What an admirable training is science for the more active warfare of life! Indeed, the unchallenged bravery which these studies imply, is far more impressive than the trumpeted valor of the warrior.

If all were as it seems, and men made the elements their servants for noble ends!

It will be seen that we contemplate a time when man's will shall be law to the physical world, and he shall no longer be deterredby such abstractions as time and space, height and depth, weight and hardness, but shall indeed be the lord of creation.

Let us consider under what disadvantages Science has hitherto labored before we pronounce thus confidently on her progress.

There is a chasm between knowledge and ignorance which the arches of science can never span.

The eye which can appreciate the naked and absolute beauty of a scientific truth is far more rare than that which is attracted by a moral one.

He who is conversant with the supernal powers will not worship these inferior deities of the wind, waves, tide, and sunshine. Butwe would not disparage the importance of such calculations as we have described. They are truths in physics because they are true in ethics.

The next day the Indian told me their name for this light,--artoosoq',--and on my inquiring concerning the will-o'-the-wisp, and the like phenomena, he said that his "folks" sometimes saw fires passing along at various heights, even as high as the trees, and making a noise. I was prepared after this to hear of the most startling and unimagined phenomena, witnessed by "his folks"; they are abroad at all hours and seasons in scenes so unfrequented by white men. Nature must have made a thousand revelations to them which are still secrets to us.

Man cannot afford to be a naturalist, to look at Nature directly, but only with the side of his eye. He must look through and beyond her.

What are the libraries of science but files of newspapers?

The fact which interests us most is the life of the naturalist. The purest science is still biographical. Nothing will dignify and elevate science while it is sundered so wholly from the moral life of its devotee.

Fishing has been styled 'a contemplative man's recreation,' ... and science is only a more contemplative man's recreation.

The process of discovery is very simple. An unwearied and systematic application of known laws to nature, causes the unknown to reveal themselves. Almost any mode of observation will be successful at last, for what is most wanted is method.