Wonder Quotes (16)
A common fallacy in much of the adverse criticism to which science is subjected today is that it claims certainty, infallibility and complete emotional objectivity. It would be more nearly true to say that it is based upon wonder, adventure and hope.
Quoted in E. J. Bowen's obituary of Hinshelwood, Chemistry in Britain (1967), Vol. 3, 536.
All of my life, I have been fascinated by the big questions that face us, and have tried to find scientific answers to them. If, like me, you have looked at the stars, and tried to make sense of what you see, you too have started to wonder what makes the universe exist.
From website for PBS program, Stephen Hawking's Universe (1997).
See also: | Answer (24) | Autobiography (42) | Existence (44) | Fascination (4) | Question (45) | Star (55) | Universe (138)
Arts and sciences in one and the same century have arrived at great perfection; and no wonder, since every age has a kind of universal genius, which inclines those that live in it to some particular studies; the work then, being pushed on by many hands, must go forward.
In Samuel Austin Allibone, Prose Quotations from Socrates to Macaulay (1880), 45.
See also: | Century (8) | Genius (53) | Perfection (12) | Progress (117) | Science And Art (25) | Study (33) | Work (42)
I cannot anyhow be contented to view this wonderful universe, and especially the nature of man, and to conclude that everything is the result of brute force. I am inclined to look at everything as resulting from designed laws, with the details, whether good or bad, left to the working out of what we call chance. Not that this notion at all satisfies me. I feel most deeply that the whole subject is too profound for the human intellect. A dog might as well speculate on the mind of Newton. Let each man hope and believe what he can.
Letter to Asa Gray (22 May 1860). 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), 236.
See also: | Belief (37) | Brute (3) | Chance (33) | Conclusion (24) | Content (6) | Design (12) | Detail (7) | Dog (6) | Hope (14) | Inclination (2) | Intellect (47) | Law (134) | Mind (116) | Nature Of Man (3) | Sir Isaac Newton (82) | Profound (5) | Result (25) | Result (25) | Satisfaction (5) | Universe (138)
I would... establish the conviction that Chemistry, as an independent science, offers one of the most powerful means towards the attainment of a higher mental cultivation; that the study of Chemistry is profitable, not only inasmuch as it promotes the material interests of mankind, but also because it furnishes us with insight into those wonders of creation which immediately surround us, and with which our existence, life, and development, are most closely connected.
Familiar Letters on Chemistry (1859), 4th edn., 1.
See also: | Attainment (2) | Chemistry (87) | Creation (46) | Development (20) | Existence (44) | Independence (4) | Insight (16) | Life (155) | Mankind (34)
If a man will comprehend the richness and variety of the universe, and inspire his mind with a due measure of wonder and awe, he must contemplate the human intellect not only on its heights of genius but in its abysses of ineptitude...
M. Manilii Astronomicon. Liber Primus Recensuit et enarravit A.E. Housman. Editio Altera (1937), i, xix. Quoted in David Womersley, 'Dulness and Pope', British Academy, 2004 Lectures, (2005), 233.
In earlier times they had no statistics and so they had to fall back on lies. Hence the huge exaggerations of primitive literature, giants, miracles, wonders! It's the size that counts. They did it with lies and we do it with statistics: but it's all the same.
In Model Memoirs and Other Sketches from Simple to Serious (1971), 265.
Men love to wonder, and that is the seed of our science.
'Works and Days', Emerson's Complete Works (1883), 152.
See also: | Science (444)
Observation by means of the microscope will reveal more wonderful things than those viewed in regard to mere structure and connection: for while the heart is still beating the contrary (i.e., in opposite directions in the different vessels) movement of the blood is observed in the vessels—though with difficulty—so that the circulation of the blood is clearly exposed.
De Pulmonibus (1661), trans. James Young, Proceedings of the Royal Society of Medicine (1929-30), 23, 8.
See also: | Beat (2) | Blood (35) | Capillary (3) | Connection (6) | Heart (21) | Microscope (27) | Observation (142) | Structure (33) | Vessel (3)
Science makes people reach selflessly for truth and objectivity; it teaches people to accept reality, with wonder and admiration, not to mention the deep awe and joy that the natural order of things brings to the true scientist.
Lecture, Austrian UNESCO Commision (30 Mar 1953), in Atomenergie und Frieden: Lise Meitner und Otto Hahn (1953), 23-4. Trans. Ruth Sime, Lise Meitner: A Life in Physics (1996), 375.
See also: | Accept (2) | Admiration (4) | Awe (4) | Joy (8) | Objectivity (3) | People (10) | Reality (20) | Science (444) | Teach (10) | Truth (241)
Some of you may have met mathematicians and wondered how they got that way.
[Contact Webmaster if you can supply a primary print source.]
See also: | Mathematician (66)
Suppose that we are wise enough to learn and know—and yet not wise enough to control our learning and knowledge, so that we use it to destroy ourselves? Even if that is so, knowledge remains better than ignorance. It is better to know—even if the knowledge endures only for the moment that comes before destruction—than to gain eternal life at the price of a dull and swinish lack of comprehension of a universe that swirls unseen before us in all its wonder. That was the choice of Achilles, and it is mine, too.
Widely seen on the Web, but always without citation, so regard attribution as uncertain. Webmaster has not yet found reliable verification. Contact Webmaster if you know a primary print source.
See also: | Achilles (2) | Choice (6) | Comprehension (4) | Control (11) | Destroy (7) | Destruction (6) | Dull (4) | Endure (4) | Eternal (2) | Ignorance (62) | Knowledge (330) | Learn (11) | Learning (43) | Life (155) | Universe (138) | Wisdom (43)
The power of mathematics rests on its evasion of all unnecessary thought and on its wonderful saving of mental operations.
Quoted in Freeman Dyson, 'Mathematic; in the Physical Sciences', Scientific American (Sep 1964), 211, No. 3, 133.
The wonder is, not that the field of the stars is so vast, but that man has measured it.
The Garden of Epicurus (1894) translated by Alfred Allinson, in The Works of Anatole France in an English Translation (1920), 16.
We are here to celebrate the completion of the first survey of the entire human genome. Without a doubt, this is the most important, most wondrous map ever produced by human kind.
From White House press conference broadcast on the day of the publication of the first draft of the human genome. Quoted in CNN.com, transcript, 'President Clinton, British Prime Minister Tony Blair Deliver Remarks on Human Genome Milestone' (26 Jun 2000).
[W]hen Galileo discovered he could use the tools of mathematics and mechanics to understand the motion of celestial bodies, he felt, in the words of one imminent researcher, that he had learned the language in which God recreated the universe. Today we are learning the language in which God created life. We are gaining ever more awe for the complexity, the beauty, the wonder of God's most devine and sacred gift.
From White House press conference broadcast on the day of the publication of the first draft of the human genome. Quoted in CNN.com, transcript, 'President Clinton, British Prime Minister Tony Blair Deliver Remarks on Human Genome Milestone' (26 Jun 2000).
See also: | Awe (4) | Beauty (33) | Complexity (18) | Galileo Galilei (55) | Gift (4) | God (121) | Language (38) | Life (155) | Mathematics (221) | Mechanics (16) | Tool (10) | Understanding (94) | Universe (138)
