• Science
    Quotes
  • What's
    New
  • Science
    Stories
  • Chemistry
    Stories
  • Perpetual
    Motion
  • Newsletter
    Sign-up
  • Search
    search icon
  • Feedback
    email icon
  • Home
  • Text Menu
  • Science Store
  • News
  • Wall Calendar
  • Survey
  • Privacy
  • Terms of Use
TODAYINSCI ®

Find science on your birthday
TODAY IN SCIENCE HISTORY
Follow @todayinsci
Home > Category Index for Science Quotations > Category Index P > Category: Profession

Profession Quotes (23 quotes)

Ars longa, vita brevis.
Art is long, life is short.
— Hippocrates
Aphorisms, i. The original was written in Greek. This Latin translation, by Seneca (De Brevitate Vitae, 1.1), is in John Bartlett, Familiar Quotations (1905), 6, footnote 3. The sense is generally taken to be, 'Life is short, but to learn a profession (an art) takes a long time.'
Science quotes on:  |  Aphorism (13)  |  Learning (114)  |  Life (379)  |  Skill (20)

But nothing of a nature foreign to the duties of my profession [clergyman] engaged my attention while I was at Leeds so much as the, prosecution of my experiments relating to electricity, and especially the doctrine of air. The last I was led into a consequence of inhabiting a house adjoining to a public brewery, where first amused myself with making experiments on fixed air [carbon dioxide] which found ready made in the process of fermentation. When I removed from that house, I was under the necessity making the fixed air for myself; and one experiment leading to another, as I have distinctly and faithfully noted in my various publications on the subject, I by degrees contrived a convenient apparatus for the purpose, but of the cheapest kind. When I began these experiments I knew very little of chemistry, and had in a manner no idea on the subject before I attended a course of chymical lectures delivered in the Academy at Warrington by Dr. Turner of Liverpool. But I have often thought that upon the whole, this circumstance was no disadvantage to me; as in this situation I was led to devise an apparatus and processes of my own, adapted to my peculiar views. Whereas, if I had been previously accustomed to the usual chemical processes, I should not have so easily thought of any other; and without new modes of operation I should hardly have discovered anything materially new.
— Joseph Priestley
Memoirs of Dr. Joseph Priestley, in the Year 1795 (1806), Vol. 1, 61-2.
Science quotes on:  |  Air (75)  |  Apparatus (14)  |  Carbon Dioxide (11)  |  Chemistry (133)  |  Discovery (318)  |  Duty (21)  |  Electricity (69)  |  Experiment (346)  |  Experiment (346)  |  Fermentation (9)  |  Fixed Air (2)  |  Lecture (27)  |  Mode (8)  |  Operation (47)  |  Publication (71)  |  Thought (143)  |  View (41)

But, contrary to the lady's prejudices about the engineering profession, the fact is that quite some time ago the tables were turned between theory and applications in the physical sciences. Since World War II the discoveries that have changed the world are not made so much in lofty halls of theoretical physics as in the less-noticed labs of engineering and experimental physics. The roles of pure and applied science have been reversed; they are no longer what they were in the golden age of physics, in the age of Einstein, Schrödinger, Fermi and Dirac.
— Nicholas Metropolis
'The Age of Computing: a Personal Memoir', Daedalus (1992), 121, 120.
Science quotes on:  |  Application (56)  |  Applied Science (15)  |  Paul A. M. Dirac (32)  |  Discovery (318)  |  Albert Einstein (148)  |  Engineer (25)  |  Fact (277)  |  Enrico Fermi (10)  |  Laboratory (66)  |  Physical Science (28)  |  Physics (142)  |  Prejudice (25)  |  Pure Science (6)  |  Reverse (6)  |  Role (13)  |  Erwin Schrödinger (18)  |  Theoretical Physics (11)  |  Theory (319)  |  World War II (3)

Engineering is the professional and systematic application of science to the efficient utilization of natural resources to produce wealth.
— Theodore Jesse (T. J.) Hoover
T. J. Hoover and John Charles Lounsbury (J.C.L.) Fish, The Engineering Profession (1941), 10.
Science quotes on:  |  Application (56)  |  Definition (71)  |  Efficient (2)  |  Engineering (53)  |  Science (754)  |  Systematic (6)  |  Use (41)  |  Wealth (23)

How to start on my adventure—how to become a forester—was not so simple. There were no schools of Forestry in America. ... Whoever turned his mind toward Forestry in those days thought little about the forest itself and more about its influences, and about its influence on rainfall first of all. So I took a course in meteorology, which has to do with weather and climate. and another in botany, which has to do with the vegetable kingdom—trees are unquestionably vegetable. And another in geology, for forests grow out of the earth. Also I took a course in astronomy, for it is the sun which makes trees grow. All of which is as it should be, because science underlies the forester's knowledge of the woods. So far I was headed right. But as for Forestry itself, there wasn't even a suspicion of it at Yale. The time for teaching Forestry as a profession was years away.
— Gifford Pinchot
In Breaking New Ground (1947, 1998), 3.
Science quotes on:  |  Astronomy (98)  |  Biography (196)  |  Botany (29)  |  Climate (23)  |  Earth (210)  |  Forester (2)  |  Forestry (5)  |  Geology (135)  |  Growth (54)  |  Influence (41)  |  Kingdom (15)  |  Knowledge (593)  |  Meteorology (15)  |  Simplicity (81)  |  Sun (99)  |  Suspicion (10)  |  Teaching (51)  |  Tree (66)  |  Underlie (2)  |  Vegetable (10)  |  Weather (8)  |  Wood (15)

I feel more confident and more satisfied when I reflect that I have two professions and not one. Medicine is my lawful wife and literature is my mistress. When I get tired of one I spend the night with the other. Though it's disorderly it's not so dull, and besides, neither really loses anything, through my infidelity.
— Anton Pavlovich Chekhov
In letter to A.S. Suvorin (11 Sep 1888).
Science quotes on:  |  Confidence (12)  |  Disorder (7)  |  Dullness (4)  |  Infidelity (2)  |  Literature (31)  |  Loss (37)  |  Medicine (183)  |  Satisfaction (25)  |  Wife (9)

I hold every man a debtor to his profession; from the which as men of course do seek to receive countenance and profit, so ought they of duty to endeavour themselves, by way of amends, to be a help and ornament thereunto. This is performed, in some degree, by the honest and liberal practice of a profession; where men shall carry a respect not to descend into any course that is corrupt and unworthy thereof, and preserve themselves free from the abuses wherewith the same profession is noted to be infected: but much more is this performed, if a man be able to visit and strengthen the roots and foundation of the science itself; thereby not only gracing it in reputation and dignity, but also amplifying it in profession and substance.
— Sir Francis Bacon
Opening sentences of Preface, Maxims of Law (1596), in The Works of Francis Bacon: Law tracts. Maxims of the Law (1803), Vol. 4, 10.
Science quotes on:  |  Abuse (2)  |  Amplification (3)  |  Corruption (5)  |  Countenance (2)  |  Course (19)  |  Descent (7)  |  Dignity (7)  |  Endeavour (19)  |  Foundation (27)  |  Freedom (36)  |  Grace (5)  |  Help (10)  |  Honesty (10)  |  Infection (13)  |  Liberal (3)  |  Ornament (8)  |  Performance (16)  |  Practice (25)  |  Preservation (12)  |  Profit (12)  |  Reputation (6)  |  Respect (19)  |  Root (15)  |  Science (754)  |  Substance (33)  |  Unworthy (4)  |  Visit (4)

I think it is a duty I owe to my profession and to my sex to show that a woman has a right to the practice of her profession and cannot be condemned to abandon it merely because she marries. I cannot conceive how women's colleges, inviting and encouraging women to enter professions can be justly founded or maintained denying such a principle.
(From a letter Brooks wrote to her dean, knowing that she would be told to resign if she married, she asked to keep her job. Nevertheless, she lost her teaching position at Barnard College in 1906. Dean Gill wrote that “The dignity of women's place in the home demands that your marriage shall be a resignation.”)
— Harriet Brooks
As quoted by Margaret W. Rossiter in Women Scientists in America: Struggles and Strategies to 1940. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press (1982).
Science quotes on:  |  Abandonment (5)  |  College (12)  |  Condemnation (8)  |  Denial (3)  |  Duty (21)  |  Encouragement (10)  |  Encouragement (10)  |  Founding (4)  |  Founding (4)  |  Founding (4)  |  Invitation (4)  |  Maintenance (5)  |  Marriage (17)  |  Practice (25)  |  Principle (87)  |  Right (37)  |  Role Model (5)  |  Sex (30)  |  Woman (28)

It is told of Faraday that he refused to be called a physicist; he very much disliked the new name as being too special and particular and insisted on the old one, philosopher, in all its spacious generality: we may suppose that this was his way of saying that he had not over-ridden the limiting conditions of class only to submit to the limitation of a profession.
— Lionel Trilling
Commentary (Jun 1962), 33, 461-77. Cited by Sydney Ross in Nineteenth-Century Attitudes: Men of Science (1991), 11.
Science quotes on:  |  Biography (196)  |  Call (7)  |  Class (26)  |  Condition (53)  |  Dislike (8)  |  Michael Faraday (57)  |  Generality (13)  |  Limit (30)  |  Name (46)  |  Nomenclature (93)  |  Particular (16)  |  Philosopher (56)  |  Physicist (61)  |  Preference (11)  |  Refusal (9)  |  Special (19)  |  Submit (3)

Mathematics is a dangerous profession; an appreciable proportion of us go mad.
— John Edensor (J. E.) Littlewood
A Mathematician's Miscellany (1953). In Béla Bollobás, Littlewood's Miscellany (1986), 104.
Science quotes on:  |  Mad (6)  |  Mathematics (318)  |  Proportion (20)

My practice as a scientist is atheistic. That is to say, when I set up an experiment I assume that no god, angel or devil is going to interfere with its course; and this assumption has been justified by such success as I have achieved in my professional career. I should therefore be intellectually dishonest if I were not also atheistic in the affairs of the world.
— J.B.S. Haldane
In Fact and Faith (1934), vi.
Science quotes on:  |  Achievement (59)  |  Affair (7)  |  Angel (9)  |  Assumption (23)  |  Atheist (6)  |  Career (27)  |  Course (19)  |  Devil (8)  |  Dishonesty (5)  |  Experiment (346)  |  God (207)  |  Intellect (89)  |  Interference (7)  |  Justification (16)  |  Practice (25)  |  Science And Religion (129)  |  Scientist (186)  |  Success (93)  |  Word (89)

Nowadays the field naturalist—who is usually at all points superior to the mere closet naturalist—follows a profession as full of hazard and interest as that of the explorer or of the big-game hunter in the remote wilderness.
— Theodore Roosevelt
African Game Trails (1910), 414-415.
Science quotes on:  |  Explorer (7)  |  Hazard (3)  |  Hunter (2)  |  Interest (58)  |  Naturalist (21)  |  Remote (7)  |  Wilderness (11)

Parenthood is the only profession that has been left exclusively to amateurs.
— Anonymous
Science quotes on:  |  Amateur (2)  |  Parent (15)

Such is professional jealousy; a scientist will never show any kindness for a theory which he did not start himself.
— Mark Twain
In A Tramp Abroad (1880), 156.
Science quotes on:  |  Himself (8)  |  Jealousy (4)  |  Kindness (5)  |  Scientist (186)  |  Start (22)  |  Theory (319)

The historian of science may be tempted to claim that when paradigms change, the world itself changes with them. Led by a new paradigm, scientists adopt new instruments and look in new places. even more important, during revolutions, scientists see new and different things when looking with familiar instruments in places they have looked before. It is rather as if the professional community had been suddenly transported to another planet where familiar objects are seen in a different light and are joined by unfamiliar ones as well.
— Thomas S. Kuhn
In The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962, 2nd ed. 1970). Excerpt 'Revolutions as Changes of World View', in Joseph Margolis and Jacques Catudal, The Quarrel between Invariance and Flux (2001), 35-36.
Science quotes on:  |  Change (106)  |  Claim (20)  |  Community (21)  |  Difference (117)  |  Familiarity (7)  |  Historian (16)  |  History Of Science (27)  |  Instrument (34)  |  Look (25)  |  New (77)  |  Object (38)  |  Paradigm (10)  |  Place (21)  |  Planet (69)  |  Revolution (30)  |  Science (754)  |  Temptation (5)  |  Transportation (6)  |  Unfamiliarity (3)  |  World (165)

The indescribable pleasure—which pales the rest of life's joys—is abundant compensation for the investigator who endures the painful and persevering analytical work that precedes the appearance of the new truth, like the pain of childbirth. It is true to say that nothing for the scientific scholar is comparable to the things that he has discovered. Indeed, it would be difficult to find an investigator willing to exchange the paternity of a scientific conquest for all the gold on earth. And if there are some who look to science as a way of acquiring gold instead of applause from the learned, and the personal satisfaction associated with the very act of discovery, they have chosen the wrong profession.
— Santiago Ramón y Cajal
In Santiago Ramón y Cajal, Neely Swanson (trans.) and Larry W. Swanson (trans.), Advice for a Young Investigator (2004), 50.
Science quotes on:  |  Abundance (8)  |  Acquisition (18)  |  Analysis (70)  |  Appearance (39)  |  Applause (2)  |  Choice (36)  |  Conquest (4)  |  Difficulty (59)  |  Discovery (318)  |  Earth (210)  |  Endurance (4)  |  Exchange (2)  |  Find (33)  |  Gold (20)  |  Investigator (11)  |  Joy (23)  |  Learned (4)  |  Life (379)  |  New (77)  |  Nothing (64)  |  Pain (47)  |  Perseverance (10)  |  Pleasure (45)  |  Preceding (3)  |  Rest (25)  |  Satisfaction (25)  |  Scholar (16)  |  Scientist (186)  |  Truth (399)  |  Willingness (5)  |  Work (152)

The modern naturalist must realize that in some of its branches his profession, while more than ever a science, has also become an art.
— Theodore Roosevelt
African Game Trails (1910), 17.
Science quotes on:  |  Naturalist (21)  |  Science And Art (48)

The price one pays for pursuing any profession, or calling, is an intimate knowledge of its ugly side.
— James Arthur Baldwin
Nobody Knows My Name (1961). In The Price of the Ticket: Collected Nonfiction, 1948-1985 (1985), 302.
Science quotes on:  |  Calling (2)  |  Career (27)  |  Intimate (3)  |  Knowledge (593)  |  Pay (3)  |  Price (8)  |  Pursue (2)  |  Ugly (3)

There has come about a general public awareness that America is not automatically, and effortlessly, and unquestionably the leader of the world in science and technology. This comes as no surprise to those of us who have watched and tried to warn against the steady deterioration in the teaching of science and mathematics in the schools for the past quarter century. It comes as no surprise to those who have known of dozens of cases of scientists who have been hounded out of jobs by silly disloyalty charges, and kept out of all professional employment by widespread blacklisting practices.
— Edward U. Condon
Banquet speech at American Physical Society, St. Louis, Missouri. (29 Nov 1957). In "Time to Stop Baiting Scientists", Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (Feb 1958), 80.
Science quotes on:  |  America (23)  |  Automatic (8)  |  Awareness (8)  |  Case (12)  |  Charge (12)  |  Employment (13)  |  Job (11)  |  Leader (4)  |  Public (21)  |  Science And Technology (10)  |  Surprise (17)  |  Unquestionable (3)  |  Widespread (3)  |  World (165)

There is a tolerably general agreement about what a university is not. It is not a place of professional education.
— John Stuart Mill
Address (Feb 1867) to the University of St. Andrews upon inauguration as Rector. The Living Age (16 Mar 1867), 92, 643.
Science quotes on:  |  Agreement (13)  |  Education (154)  |  University (22)

We are having wool pulled over our eyes if we let ourselves be convinced that scientists, taken as a group, are anything special in the way of brains. They are very ordinary professional men, and all they know is their own trade, just like all other professional men. There are some geniuses among them, just as there are mental giants in any other field of endeavor.
— Anthony Standen
In Science is a Sacred Cow (1950), 23-24.
Science quotes on:  |  Brain (99)  |  Conviction (19)  |  Deception (2)  |  Endeavour (19)  |  Genius (77)  |  Ordinary (16)  |  Scientist (186)  |  Special (19)  |  Trade (8)

We profess to teach the principles and practice of medicine, or, in other words, the science and art of medicine. Science is knowledge reduced to principles; art is knowledge reduced to practice. The knowing and doing, however, are distinct. ... Your knowledge, therefore, is useless unless you cultivate the art of healing. Unfortunately, the scientific man very often has the least amount of art, and he is totally unsuccessful in practice; and, on the other hand, there may be much art based on an infinitesimal amount of knowledge, and yet it is sufficient to make its cultivator eminent.
— Sir Samuel Wilks
From H.G. Sutton, Abstract of Lecture delivered at Guy's Hospital by Samuel Wilks, 'Introductory to Part of a Course on the Theory and Practice of Medicine', The Lancet (24 Mar 1866), 1, 308
Science quotes on:  |  Cultivation (7)  |  Distinction (15)  |  Doing (22)  |  Eminence (7)  |  Healing (10)  |  Infinitesimal (5)  |  Knowledge (593)  |  Medicine (183)  |  Practice (25)  |  Principle (87)  |  Science And Art (48)  |  Scientist (186)  |  Success (93)  |  Sufficiency (13)  |  Uselessness (16)  |  Word (89)

[Certain students] suppose that because science has penetrated the structure of the atom it can solve all the problems of the universe. ... They are known in every ... college as the most insufferable, cocksure know-it-alls. If you want to talk to them about poetry, they are likely to reply that the "emotive response" to poetry is only a conditioned reflex .... If they go on to be professional scientists, their sharp corners are rubbed down, but they undergo no fundamental change. They most decidedly are not set apart from the others by their intellectual integrity and faith, and their patient humility in front of the facts of nature.... They are uneducated, in the fullest sense of the word, and they certainly are no advertisement for the claims of science teachers.
— Anthony Standen
In Science is a Sacred Cow (1950), 18-19.
Science quotes on:  |  Advertisement (5)  |  Atom (157)  |  Change (106)  |  Claim (20)  |  College (12)  |  Emotion (26)  |  Faith (56)  |  Fundamental (46)  |  Humility (10)  |  Integrity (4)  |  Intellect (89)  |  Nature (475)  |  Patience (12)  |  Pentration (2)  |  Poetry (59)  |  Problem (149)  |  Response (8)  |  Solution (103)  |  Structure (84)  |  Student (39)  |  Supposition (22)  |  Uneducated (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

More quotes:     Name Index    Isaac Newton    Lord Kelvin    Charles Darwin    Albert Einstein    Aristotle    Michio Kaku    Srinivasa Ramanujan    Carl Sagan    Florence Nightingale    Atomic  Bomb    Biology    Chemistry    Deforestation    Engineering

Sitewide search within all Today In Science History pages:
Custom Quotations Search - custom search within only our quotations 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 |



Please add a link from your own site or blog if you find this site useful.
Author Icon by Ian Ellis
who invites your feedback
Thank you for sharing the site with Tweets, Facebook and Stumble Upon.






Explore 100 Famous Scientist Quotes Pages

Click above to expand
- 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

Scroll above for more
Scientist Quotes Index
Today in Science History ©  1999 - 2013 by Todayinsci ®