Variety Quotes - Page 22

• Your remarks upon chemical notation with the variety of systems which have arisen, &c., &c., had almost stirred me up to regret publicly that such hindrances to the progress of science should exist. I cannot help thinking it a most unfortunate thing that men who as experimentalists & philosophers are the most fitted to advance the general cause of science & knowledge should by promulgation of their own theoretical views under the form of nomenclature, notation, or scale, actually retard its progress.

  Michael Faraday

  Regret, Science, Men

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• ... our "Physick" and "Anatomy" have embraced such infinite varieties of being, have laid open such new worlds in time and space, have grappled, not unsuccessfully, with such complex problems, that the eyes of Vesalius and of Harvey might be dazzled by the sight of the tree that has grown out of their grain of mustard seed.

  Thomas Huxley

  Eye, Science, Sight

  Thomas Henry Huxley (1910). “Huxley's Autobiography and Selected Essays from Lay Sermons”

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• But the greatest error of all the rest is the mistaking or misplacing of the last or farthest end of knowledge: for men have entered into a desire of learning and knowledge, sometimes upon a natural curiosity and inquisitive appetite; sometimes to entertain their minds with variety and delight; sometimes for ornament and reputation; and sometimes to enable them to victory of wit and contradiction; and most times for lucre and profession; and seldom sincerely to give a true account of their gift of reason, to the benefit and use of men.

  Francis Bacon

  Knowledge, Science, Men

  Francis Bacon (1765). “The works of Francis Bacon, Baron of Verulam, Viscount St. Alban, and Lord High Chancellor of England, in five volumes”, p.81

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• Groups do not have experiences except insofar as all their members do. And there are no experiences... that all the members of a scientific community must share in the course of a [scientific] revolution. Revolutions should be described not in terms of group experience but in terms of the varied experiences of individual group members. Indeed, that variety itself turns out to play an essential role in the evolution of scientific knowledge.

  Thomas Kuhn

  Knowledge, Science, Play

  Paul Hoyningen-Huene, Thomas S. Kuhn (1989). “Die Wissenschafts Philosophie Thomas S. Kuhns: Rekonstruktion und Grundlagenprobleme”

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• Science is uncertain. Theories are subject to revision; observations are open to a variety of interpretations, and scientists quarrel amongst themselves. This is disillusioning for those untrained in the scientific method, who thus turn to the rigid certainty of the Bible instead. There is something comfortable about a view that allows for no deviation and that spares you the painful necessity of having to think.

  Isaac Asimov

  Science, Thinking, Views

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• Understanding a theory has, indeed, much in common with understanding a human personality. We may know or understand a man's system of dispositions pretty well; that is to say, we may be able to predict how he would act in a number of different situations. But since there are infinitely many possible situations, of infinite variety, a full understanding of a man's dispositions does not seem to be possible.

  Karl Popper

  Science, Men, Numbers

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• Theory has nothing to do with a work of art. Pictures which are interpretable, and which contain a meaning, are bad pictures. A picture presents itself as the Unmanageable, the Illogical, the Meaningless. It demonstrates the endless multiplicity of aspects; it takes away our certainty, because it deprives a thing of its meaning and its name. It shows us the thing in all the manifold significance and infinite variety that preclude the emergence of any single meaning and view.

  Gerhard Richter

  Art, Views, Names

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• The end and aim of spying in all its five varieties is knowledge of the enemy; and this knowledge can only be derived, in the first instance, from the converted spy. Hence it is essential that the converted spy be treated with the utmost liberality.

  Sun Tzu

  War, Enemy, Spy

  Sun Tzu (2010). “The Art of War”, p.47, Cosimo, Inc.

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• Nothing is more despicable than the old age of a passionate man. When the vigour of youth fails him, and his amusements pall with frequent repetition, his occasional rage sinks by decay of strength into peevishness; that peevishness, for want of novelty and variety, becomes habitual; the world falls off from around him, and he is left, as Homer expresses it, to devour his own heart in solitude and contempt.

  Lyndon B. Johnson

  Fall, Heart, Men

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• The Koran was assembled from a variety of prior Hagarene texts (hence the contradictions re Jesus' death) in order to provide the Moses-like Muhammad with a Torah of his own.

  Robert M. Price

  Jesus, Order, Islam

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• While "cute" is hopelessly anchored to the Teletubby ideal, "ugly" is free to take infinite varieties. In this way, ugly is beautiful.

  Jim Toomey

  Cute, Beautiful, Ugly

  Jim Toomey (1999). “Poodle The Other White Meat: A Sherman's Lagoon Collection”, p.4, Andrews McMeel Publishing

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• There is the life of the plankton in almost endless variety; there are the many kinds of fish, both surface and bottom living; there are the hosts of different invertebrate creatures on the sea-floor; and there are those almost grotesque forms of pelagic life in the oceans depths. Then there are the squids and cuttlefish, and the porpoises, dolphins and great whales.

  Alister Hardy

  Ocean, Whales, Sea

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• A great variety of reading confuses and does not teach. It makes the student like a man who dwells everywhere and, therefore, nowhere in particular.

  Martin Luther

  Reading, Men, Doe

  Martin Luther (1959). “What Luther says: an anthology”, Concordia

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• I like to hear a man dwell much on the same essentials of Christianity. For we have but one God, and one Christ, and one faith to preach; and I will not preach another Gospel to please men with variety, as if our Saviour and our Gospel had grown stale.

  Richard Baxter

  Faith, Men, Essentials

  Richard Baxter, William Orme (1830). “The Practical Works of Richard Baxter: with a Life of the Author and a Critical Examination of His Writings by William Orme”, p.11

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• The really great thing about cats is their endless variety. One can pick a cat to fit almost any kind of decor, income, personality, mood. But under the fur, there still lies, essentially unchanged, one of the world's free souls.

  Eric Gurney

  Lying, Cat, Personality

  Eric Gurney (2016). “How to Live With A Calculating Cat”, p.24, Pickle Partners Publishing

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• Geology is part of that remarkable dynamic process of the human mind which is generally called science and to which man is driven by an inquisitive urge. By noticing relationships in the results of his observations, he attempts to order and to explain the infinite variety of phenomena that at first sight may appear to be chaotic.

  Reinout Willem van Bemmelen

  Science, Men, Fire

  "The Scientific Character of Geology". The Journal of Geology, Vol. 69, No. 4, p. 454, July 1961.

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• One who knows how to appreciate color relationships, the influence of one color with another, their contrasts and dissonances, is promised an infinite variety of images.

  Sonia Delaunay

  Color, Appreciate, Influence

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• Historically, much of the motivation for public schooling has been to stifle variety and institute social control.

  Hugh Jackman

  Motivation, Liberty, Libertarian

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• Unanimity of opinion may be fitting for a church, for the frightened or greedy victims of some (ancient, or modern) myth, or for the weak and willing followers of some tyrant. Variety of opinion is necessary for objective knowledge. And a method that encourages variety is also the only method that is comparable with a humanitarian outlook.

  Paul Feyerabend

  Knowledge, Science, Tyrants

  Paul Feyerabend (1975). “Against method: outline of an anarchistic theory of knowledge”, Not Avail

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• I decided that life rationally considered seemed pointless and futile, but it is still interesting in a variety of ways, including the study of science. So why not carry on, following the path of scientific hedonism? Besides, I did not have the courage for the more rational procedure of suicide.

  Robert S. Mulliken

  Suicide, Science, Interesting

  Robert S. Mulliken (2012). “Life of a Scientist: An Autobiographical Account of the Development of Molecular Orbital Theory”, p.24, Springer Science & Business Media

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• Living with and studying good paintings offers greater interest, variety and satisfaction than any other pleasure known to man.

  Albert C. Barnes

  Art, Men, Satisfaction

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• Every writer must reconcile, as best he may, the conflicting claims of consistency and variety, of rigour in detail and elegance in the whole. The present author humbly confesses that, to him, geometry is nothing at all, if not a branch of art.

  Julian Coolidge

  Art, Science, Consistency

  Julian Lowell Coolidge (2004). “A Treatise on Algebraic Plane Curves”, p.10, Courier Corporation

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• We are not here just to survive and live long .... We are here to live and know life in it's multi-dimensions, to know life in its richness, in all it's variety. And when a man lives multi-dimensionally, explores all possibilities available, never shrinks back from a challenge, goes, rushes to it, welcomes it, rises to the occasion then life becomes a flame, life blooms.

  Rajneesh

  Spiritual, Men, Flames

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• Contemporary scholars have little explored the preconditions of genocide. Still less have they asked whether a society's weapons policy might be one of the institutional arrangements that contributes to the probability of its government engaging in some of the more extreme varieties of outrage. Though it is a long step between being disarmed and being murdered - one does not usually lead to the other - but it is nevertheless an arresting reality that not one of the principal genocides of the 20th century, and there have been dozens, has been inflicted on a population that was armed.

  Daniel D. Polsby

  Gun, Reality, Government

  "Armed against genocide" by Glenn Reynolds, www.theguardian.com. March 20, 2006.

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• Without undervaluing any other human agency, it may be safely affirmed that the Common School, improved and energized, as it can easily be, may become the most effective and benignant of all the forces of civilization. Two reasons sustain this position. In the first place, there is a universality in its operation, which can be affirmed of no other institution whatever... And, in the second place, the materials upon which it operates are so pliant and ductile as to be susceptible of assuming a greater variety of forms than any other earthly work of the Creator.

  Horace Mann

  School, Civilization, Two

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