Thomas Young Quotes

• Vision motivates, sustains and dispels doubt.

  Thomas Young

  Doubt, Vision

  25 Copy quote

• The nature of light is a subject of no material importance to the concerns of life or to the practice of the arts, but it is in many other respects extremely interesting.

  Thomas Young

  Life, Art, Science

  Thomas Young (1807). “A Course of Lectures on Natural Philosophy and the Mechanical Arts: In Two Volumes”, p.457

  35 Copy quote

• When I was a boy, I thought myself a man. Now that I am a man, I find myself a boy.

  Thomas Young

  Boys, Men

  Thomas Young (2003). “Thomas Young's Life and Works: Life of Thomas Young”

  34 Copy quote

• The experiments I am about to relate ... may be repeated with great ease, whenever the sun shines, and without any other apparatus than is at hand to every one.

  Thomas Young

  Hands, Shining, Ease

  Thomas Young, John Leitch (1855). “Miscellaneous Works of the Late Thomas Young, M.D., F.R.S., &c: And One of the Eight Foreign Associates of the National Institute of France. Vols. I. & II., Including His Scientific Memoirs, &c”, p.181

  25 Copy quote

• Suppose a number of equal waves of water to move upon the surface of a stagnant lake, with a certain constant velocity, and to enter a narrow channel leading out of the lake. Suppose then another similar cause to have excited another equal series of waves, which arrive at the same time, with the first. Neither series of waves will destroy the other, but their effects will be combined.

  Thomas Young

  Moving, Science, Lakes

  Thomas Young, George Peacock, John Leitch (1855). “Miscellaneous Works: Scientific memoirs”, p.202

  13 Copy quote

• It must be observed that fishing with any living bait is to be condemned for the same reason as fishing with a worm: in all such instances we torture two animals at once for our amusement.

  Thomas Young

  Animal, Lakes, Sea

  Thomas Young (1798). “An Essay on Humanity to Animals”, p.90

  12 Copy quote

• If we seek for the simplest arrangement, which would enable it [the eye] to receive and discriminate the impressions of the different parts of the spectrum, we may suppose three distinct sensations only to be excited by the rays of the three principal pure colours, falling on any given point of the retina, the red, the green, and the violet; while the rays occupying the intermediate spaces are capable of producing mixed sensations, the yellow those which belong to the red and green, and the blue those which belong to the green and violet.

  Thomas Young

  Fall, Eye, Science

  18 Copy quote

• You may evade justice but in our eyes you are each guilty of egregious war crimes, of plunder and, finally, of murder, including the murder of thousands of young Americans - my fellow veterans - whose future you stole.

  Thomas Young

  War, Eye, Justice

  8 Copy quote

• But it will be found... that one universal law prevails in all these phenomena. Where two portions of the same light arrive in the eye by different routes, either exactly or very nearly in the same direction, the appearance or disappearance of various colours is determined by the greater or less difference in the lengths of the paths.

  Thomas Young

  Eye, Science, Differences

  22 Copy quote

• Newton advanced, with one gigantic stride, from the regions of twilight into the noon day of science. A Boyle and a Hooke, who would otherwise have been deservedly the boast of their century, served but as obscure forerunners of Newton's glories.

  Thomas Young

  Twilight, Science, Noon

  Thomas Young (1807). “A Course of Lectures on Natural Philosophy and the Mechanical Arts: In Two Volumes”, p.7

  13 Copy quote

• Bacon first taught the world the true method of the study of nature, and rescued science from that barbarism in which the followers of Aristotle, by a too servile imitation of their master.

  Thomas Young

  Nature, Science, Followers

  Thomas Young (1807). “A Course of Lectures on Natural Philosophy and the Mechanical Arts: In Two Volumes”, p.7

  11 Copy quote

• Proposition IX. Radiant light consists in Undulations of the Luminiferous Ether.

  Thomas Young

  Science, Light, Propositions

  "On the Theory of Light and Colors," Philosophical Transactions (1802)

  13 Copy quote

• Proposition VIII. When two Undulations, from different Origins, coincide either perfectly or very nearly in Direction, their joint effect is a Combination of the Motions belonging to each.

  Thomas Young

  Science, Two, Differences

  Thomas Young, George Peacock, John Leitch (1855). “Miscellaneous Works: Scientific memoirs”, p.157

  9 Copy quote

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