Men Quotes - Page 40

• Since Copernicus, man seems to have got himself on an inclined plane-now he is slipping faster and faster away from the center into-what? into nothingness? into a 'penetrating sense of his nothingness?' ... all science, natural as well as unnatural-which is what I call the self-critique of knowledge-has at present the object of dissuading man from his former respect for himself, as if this had been but a piece of bizarre conceit.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Science, Self, Slipping

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• The classification of facts and the formation of absolute judgments upon the basis of this classification-judgments independent of the idiosyncrasies of the individual mind-essentially sum up the aim and method of modern science. The scientific man has above all things to strive at self-elimination in his judgments, to provide an argument which is as true for each individual mind as for his own.

  Karl Pearson

  Independent, Science, Self

  Karl Pearson (2007). “The Grammar of Science”, p.6, Cosimo, Inc.

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• The Good Spirit never cared for the colleges, and though all men and boys were now drilled in Greek, Latin, and Mathematics, it had quite left these shells high on the beach, and was creating and feeding other matters [science] at other ends of the world.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Beach, Latin, Science

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• The study of science teaches young men to think, while study of the classics teaches them to express thought.

  John Stuart Mill

  Science, Thinking, Study

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• There prevails among men of letters, an opinion, that all appearance of science is particularly hateful to Women; and that therefore whoever desires to be well received in female assemblies, must qualify himself by a total rejection of all that is serious, rational, or important; must consider argument or criticism as perpetually interdicted; and devote all his attention to trifles, and all his eloquence to compliment.

  Samuel Johnson

  Science, Rejection, Criticism

  Samuel Johnson, Elizabeth Carter, Samuel Richardson, Catherine Talbot (1825). “The Rambler: A Periodical Paper, Published in 1750, 1751, 1752”, p.297

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• Though the parallel is not complete, it is safe to say that science will never touch them unaided by its practical applications. Its wonders may be catalogued for purposes of education, they may be illustrated by arresting experiments, by numbers and magnitudes which startle or fatigue the imagination but they will form no familiar portion of the intellectual furniture of ordinary men unless they be connected, however remotely, with the conduct of ordinary life.

  Arthur Balfour

  Education, Science, Numbers

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• Through it [Science] we believe that man will be saved from misery and degradation, not merely acquiring new material powers, but learning to use and to guide his life with understanding. Through Science he will be freed from the fetters of superstition; through faith in Science he will acquire a new and enduring delight in the exercise of his capacities; he will gain a zest and interest in life such as the present phase of culture fails to supply.

  Ray Lankester

  Faith, Believe, Science

  "The Advancement of Science: Occasional Essays & Addresses". Book by Ray Lankester, p. 108-9, "Biology and the State", 1890.

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• Thus science strips off, one after the other, the more or less gross materialisations by which we endeavour to form an objective image of the soul, till men of science, speculating, in their non-scientific intervals, like other men on what science may possibly lead to, have prophesied that we shall soon have to confess that the soul is nothing else than a function of certain complex material systems.

  James Clerk Maxwell

  Science, Soul, May

  James Clerk Maxwell, W. D. Niven (2003). “The Scientific Papers of James Clerk Maxwell”, p.760, Courier Corporation

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• True science is distinctively the study of useless things. For the useful things will get studied without the aid of scientific men. To employ these rare minds on such work is like running a steam engine by burning diamonds.

  Charles Sanders Peirce

  Running, Science, Useless Things

  Charles Sanders Peirce (1974). “Collected Papers”, p.32, Harvard University Press

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• Very few [doctors] are men of science in any very serious sense; they're men of technique.

  Robertson Davies

  Science, Doctors, Technique

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• We know only a single science, the science of history. History can be contemplated from two sides, it can be divided into the history of nature and the history of mankind. However, the two sides are not to be divided off; as long as men exist the history of nature and the history of men are mutually conditioned.

  Karl Marx

  Nature, Science, Two Sides

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• When science, art, literature, and philosophy are simply the manifestation of personality, they are on a level where glorious and dazzling achievements are possible, which can make a man's name live for thousands of years. But above this level, far above, separated by an abyss, is the level where the highest things are achieved. These things are essentially anonymous.

  Simone Weil

  Art, Philosophy, Science

  Simone Weil (2015). “Selected Essays, 1934-1943: Historical, Political, and Moral Writings”, p.13, Wipf and Stock Publishers

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• [John] Dalton was a man of regular habits. For fifty-seven years he walked out of Manchester every day; he measured the rainfall, the temperature-a singularly monotonous enterprise in this climate. Of all that mass of data, nothing whatever came. But of the one searching, almost childlike question about the weights that enter the construction of these simple molecules-out of that came modern atomic theory. That is the essence of science: ask an impertinent question, and you are on the way to the pertinent answer.

  Jacob Bronowski

  Science, Simple, Years

  Ascent of Man (1973) ch. 4

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• [There is] one distinctly human thing - the story. There can be as good science about a turnip as about a man. ... [Or philosophy, or theology] ...There can be, without any question at all, as good higher mathematics about a turnip as about a man. But I do not think, though I speak in a manner somewhat tentative, that there could be as good a novel written about a turnip as a man.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Philosophy, Science, Thinking

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• About two million years ago, man appeared. He has become the dominant species on the earth. All other living things, animal and plant, live by his sufferance. He is the custodian of life on earth, and in the solar system. It's a big responsibility.

  George Wald

  Life, Responsibility, Science

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• All the conditions of happiness are realized in the life of the man of science.

  Bertrand Russell

  Life, Science, He Man

  Bertrand Russell (2013). “The Conquest of Happiness”, p.55, W. W. Norton & Company

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• Business men are to be pitied who do not recognize the fact that the largest side of their secular business is benevolence. ... No man ever manages a legitimate business in this life without doing indirectly far more for other men than he is trying to do for himself.

  Henry Ward Beecher

  Life, Science, Trying

  Henry Ward Beecher, William Drysdale (1887). “Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit”

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• Men will not be content to manufacture life: they will want to improve on it.

  John Desmond Bernal

  Life, Science, Want

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• Now I must take you to a very interesting part of our subject-to the relation between the combustion of a candle and that living kind of combustion which goes on within us. In every one of us there is a living process of combustion going on very similar to that of a candle, and I must try to make that plain to you. For it is not merely true in a poetical sense-the relation of the life of man to a taper; and if you will follow, I think I can make this clear.

  Michael Faraday

  Life, Science, Thinking

  Michael Faraday, Hermann L. F. Von Helmholtz (2010). “Scientific Papers: Physics, Chemistry, Astronomy, Geology”, p.170, Cosimo, Inc.

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• Srinivasa Ramanujan was the strangest man in all of mathematics, probably in the entire history of science. He has been compared to a bursting supernova, illuminating the darkest, most profound corners of mathematics, before being tragically struck down by tuberculosis at the age of 33, like Riemann before him. Working in total isolation from the main currents of his field, he was able to rederive 100 years' worth of Western mathematics on his own. The tragedy of his life is that much of his work was wasted rediscovering known mathematics.

  Michio Kaku

  Life, Science, Years

  "Hyperspace: A Scientific Odyssey Through Parallel Universes, Time Warps, and the 10th Dimension". Book by Michio Kaku, March 24, 1994.

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• Such philosophy as shall not vanish in the fume of subtile, sublime, or delectable speculation but shall be operative to the endowment and betterment of man's life.

  Francis Bacon

  Life, Philosophy, Science

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• The man of true genius never lives before his time, he never undertakes impossibilities, and always embarks on his enterprise at the suitable place and period. Though he may catch a glimpse of the coming light as it gilds the mountain top long before it reaches the eyes of his contemporaries, and he may hazard a prediction as to the future, he acts with the present.

  Joseph Henry

  Life, Future, Eye

  Joseph Henry (1886). “Scientific Writings”

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• The United States pledges before you-and therefore before the world-its determination to help solve the fearful atomic dilemma-to devote its entire heart and mind to find the way by which the miraculous inventiveness of man shall not be dedicated to his death, but consecrated to his life.

  Dwight D. Eisenhower

  Life, Determination, Heart

  Atoms for Peace, delivered 8 December 1953, United Nations General Assembly

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• Through the ages, man's main concern was life after death. Today, for the first time, we find we must ask questions about whether there will be life before death.

  Albert Szent-Gyorgyi

  Life, Death, Science

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• Truth and falsity, indeed understanding, is not necessarily something purely intellectual, remote from feelings and attitudes. ... It is in the total conduct of men rather than in their statements that truth or falsehood lives, more in what a man does, in his real reaction to other men and to things, in his will to do them justice, to live at one with them. Here lies the inner connection between truth and justice. In the realm of behavior and action, the problem recurs as to the difference between piece and part.

  Max Wertheimer

  Life, Attitude, Real

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