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Home > Category Index for Science Quotations > Category Index F > Category: Folly

Folly Quotes (9 quotes)

As evolutionary time is measured, we have only just turned up and have hardly had time to catch breath, still marveling at our thumbs, still learning to use the brand-new gift of language. Being so young, we can be excused all sorts of folly and can permit ourselves the hope that someday, as a species, we will begin to grow up.
— Lewis Thomas
In Lewis Thomas, 'Introduction', from Horace Freeland Judson, The Search for Solutions (1980, 1987), xvii.
Science quotes on:  |  Beginning (55)  |  Breath (14)  |  Catch (7)  |  Evolution (313)  |  Excuse (3)  |  Gift (22)  |  Growth (54)  |  Hope (33)  |  Language (60)  |  Learning (114)  |  Marvel (14)  |  Measurement (102)  |  New (77)  |  Ourselves (5)  |  Permission (3)  |  Someday (3)  |  Species (79)  |  Thumb (3)  |  Time (129)  |  Turn (16)  |  Young (13)

I grow increasingly aware, and in more ways than expected that I am at the center of my own field; and whether it be folly or wisdom, it is a very pleasant feeling.
— Heinrich Hertz
In Davis Baird, R.I.G. Hughes and Alfred Nordmann, Heinrich Hertz: Classical Physicist, Modern Philosopher (1998), 1.
Science quotes on:  |  Awareness (8)  |  Feeling (35)  |  Field (52)  |  Pleasure (45)  |  Wisdom (73)

I have been branded with folly and madness for attempting what the world calls impossibilities, and even from the great engineer, the late James Watt, who said ... that I deserved hanging for bringing into use the high-pressure engine. This has so far been my reward from the public; but should this be all, I shall be satisfied by the great secret pleasure and laudable pride that I feel in my own breast from having been the instrument of bringing forward new principles and new arrangements of boundless value to my country, and however much I may be straitened in pecuniary circumstances, the great honour of being a useful subject can never be taken from me, which far exceeds riches.
— Richard Trevithick
From letter to Davies Gilbert, written a few months before Trevithick's last illness. Quoted in Francis Trevithick, Life of Richard Trevithick: With an Account of his Inventions (1872), Vol. 2, 395-6.
Science quotes on:  |  Attempt (31)  |  Biography (196)  |  Boundless (3)  |  Engineer (25)  |  Hanging (2)  |  Honour (19)  |  Impossibility (29)  |  Invention (143)  |  Madness (11)  |  Pleasure (45)  |  Poverty (18)  |  Pressure (17)  |  Pride (12)  |  Public (21)  |  Reward (15)  |  Riches (5)  |  Satisfaction (25)  |  Steam Engine (20)  |  Use (41)  |  Value (50)  |  James Watt (6)

If the [Vestiges] be true, the labours of sober induction are in vain; religion is a lie; human law is a mass of folly, and a base injustice; morality is moonshine; our labours for the black people of Africa were works of madmen; and man and woman are only better beasts!
— Adam Sedgwick
Letter to Charles Lyell (9 Apr 1845). In John Willis Clark and Thomas McKenny Hughes (eds.), The Life and Letters of the Reverend Adam Sedgwick (1890), Vol. 2, 84.
Science quotes on:  |  Africa (5)  |  Beast (12)  |  Black (5)  |  Human (131)  |  Induction (20)  |  Labor (13)  |  Law (243)  |  Lie (17)  |  Man (239)  |  Moonshine (2)  |  Morality (18)  |  People (64)  |  Religion (101)  |  Sober (3)  |  Vain (10)  |  Vestiges (2)  |  Woman (28)

It is a curious and painful fact that almost all the completely futile treatments that have been believed in during the long history of medical folly have been such as caused acute suffering to the patient. When anesthetics were discovered, pious people considered them an attempt to evade the will of God. It was pointed out, however, that when God extracted Adam's rib He put him into a deep sleep. This proved that anesthetics are all right for men; women, however, ought to suffer, because of the curse of Eve.
— Bertrand Russell
In An Outline of Intellectual Rubbish (1943), 13.
Science quotes on:  |  Acute (3)  |  Adam And Eve (3)  |  Anesthetic (2)  |  Curse (3)  |  Futile (3)  |  Medicine (183)  |  Pain (47)  |  Patient (48)  |  Rib (2)  |  Science And Religion (129)  |  Sleep (23)  |  Suffering (17)  |  Treatment (53)

The folly of mistaking a paradox for a discovery, a metaphor for a proof, a torrent of verbiage for a spring of capital truths, and oneself for an oracle, is inborn in us.
— Paul Valéry
In John Bartlett, Familiar Quotations: A Collection of Passages, Phrases, and Proverbs Traced (1968), 857.
Science quotes on:  |  Discovery (318)  |  Metaphor (7)  |  Oracle (3)  |  Paradox (22)  |  Proof (120)  |  Torrent (2)  |  Truth (399)  |  Verbiage (2)

The worst thing that will probably happen—in fact is already well underway—is not energy depletion, economic collapse, conventional war, or the expansion of totalitarian governments. As terrible as these catastrophes would be for us, they can be repaired in a few generations. The one process now going on that will take millions of years to correct is loss of genetic and species diversity by the destruction of natural habitats. This is the folly our descendants are least likely to forgive us.
— Edward O. Wilson
Biophilia (1984), 121.(1990), 182.
Science quotes on:  |  Catastrophe (7)  |  Collapse (6)  |  Depletion (3)  |  Descendant (4)  |  Destruction (37)  |  Diversity (29)  |  Economics (18)  |  Energy (89)  |  Extinction (35)  |  Forgive (3)  |  Generation (39)  |  Genetics (75)  |  Government (42)  |  Habitat (2)  |  Happen (3)  |  Process (79)  |  Repair (4)  |  Totalitarian (3)  |  Worst (5)

There is a moral or metaphysical part of nature as well as a physical. A man who denies this is deep in the mire of folly. 'Tis the crown and glory of organic science that it does through final cause, link material and moral; and yet does not allow us to mingle them in our first conception of laws, and our classification of such laws, whether we consider one side of nature or the other. You have ignored this link; and, if I do not mistake your meaning, you have done your best in one or two pregnant cases to break it. Were it possible (which, thank God, it is not) to break it, humanity, in my mind, would suffer a damage that might brutalize it, and sink the human race into a lower grade of degradation than any into which it has fallen since its written records tell us of its history.
— Adam Sedgwick
Letter to Charles Darwin (Nov 1859). In Charles Darwin and Francis Darwin (ed.), Charles Darwin: His Life Told in an Autobiographical Chapter, and in a Selected Series of His Published Letters (1892), 217.
Science quotes on:  |  Cause (101)  |  Classification (53)  |  Crown (10)  |  Degradation (6)  |  Glory (14)  |  History (135)  |  Human Race (27)  |  Humanity (37)  |  Ignore (6)  |  Law (243)  |  Meaning (46)  |  Mingle (2)  |  Mistake (32)  |  Moral (32)  |  Nature (475)  |  Organic (14)  |  Record (15)  |  Science (754)

[Vestiges begins] from principles which are at variance with all sober inductive truth. The sober facts of geology shuffled, so as to play a rogue's game; phrenology (that sinkhole of human folly and prating coxcombry); spontaneous generation; transmutation of species; and I know not what; all to be swallowed, without tasting and trying, like so much horse-physic!! Gross credulity and rank infidelity joined in unlawful marriage, and breeding a deformed progeny of unnatural conclusions!
— Adam Sedgwick
Letter to Charles Lyell (9 Apr 1845). In John Willis Clark and Thomas McKenny Hughes (eds.), The Life and Letters of the Reverend Adam Sedgwick (1890), Vol. 2, 83.
Science quotes on:  |  Breeding (5)  |  Conclusion (67)  |  Credulity (4)  |  Deformation (3)  |  Fact (277)  |  Game (25)  |  Generation (39)  |  Geology (135)  |  Human (131)  |  Induction (20)  |  Infidelity (2)  |  Marriage (17)  |  Phrenology (4)  |  Principle (87)  |  Progeny (4)  |  Shuffle (3)  |  Sober (3)  |  Species (79)  |  Spontaneous (3)  |  Swallow (5)  |  Taste (16)  |  Transmutation (10)  |  Truth (399)  |  Try (22)  |  Unnatural (6)  |  Variance (2)  |  Vestiges (2)



Carl Sagan Thumbnail At the heart of science is an essential balance between two seemingly contradictory attitudes--an openness to new ideas, no matter how bizarre or counterintuitive they may be, and the most ruthless skeptical scrutiny of all ideas, old and new. This is how deep truths are winnowed from deep nonsense. -- Carl Sagan

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