Practical Applications Quotes

Today's science is tomorrow's technology. ~ Edward Teller

Today, nothing is unusual about a scientific discovery's being followed soon after by a technical application: The discovery of electrons led to electronics; fission led to nuclear energy. But before the 1880's, science played almost no role in the advances of technology. For example, James Watt developed the first efficient steam engine long before science established the equivalence between mechanical heat and energy. ~ Edward Teller

The natural sciences have the clearest patterns. Physics admits of a lovely unification, not just at the level of fundamental forces, but when considering its extent and implications. Classifications like 'optics' or 'thermodynamics' are just straitjackets, preventing physicists from seeing countless intersections. Even putting aside aesthetics, the practical applications that have been overlooked are legion; years ago engineers could have been artificially generating spherically symmetric gravity fields. Having ~ Ted Chiang

But why can't we just order what we need? Or buy it?"
Myrnin flicked the silver ring on his right hand into the bars of his cell, setting up a metallic ringing. "None of that. Modern children are fools, slaves to the work of others, dependent for everything. Not you. You will learn how to build your tools as well as use them."
"You want me to be an engineer?"
"Is it not a useful thing for one who studies physics to understand such practical applications?"
She stared at him doubtfully. "You're not going to make me get an anvil and make my own screwdrivers or anything, are you?"
Myrnin smiled slowly. "What a good idea! I'll consider it. ~ Rachel Caine

It does not help that some politicians and journalists assume the public is interested only in those aspects of science that promise immediate practical applications to technology or medicine. ~ Steven Weinberg

In some strata of Greek and Roman society the engineer was actually denigrated, higher esteem being accorded to poets, playwrights and sculptors. According to Plutarch, Archimedes was praised for refusing to contaminate his theoretical and mathematical science with practical applications, although under extreme pressure at the siege of Syracuse in Sicily he did design practical machinery. ~ Stephanie Dalley

In its first 30 years of existence, up to the mid 1970s, the practical applications of game theory were very limited, probably as a result of excessive preoccupation by game theorists with cooperative solution concepts. ~ John Harsanyi

Administrators and scientists are excited by buckyballs for their own sake, and if they turn out to have practical applications, so much the better. ~ Richard Smalley

The hybridoma technology was a by-product of basic research. Its success in practical applications is to a large extent the result of unexpected and unpredictable properties of the method. It thus represents another clear-cut example of the enormous practical impact of an investment in research which might not have been considered commercially worthwhile, or of immediate medical relevance. It resulted from esoteric speculations, for curiosity's sake, only motivated by a desire to understand nature. ~ Cesar Milstein

Goals are not dreamy, pie-in-the-sky ideals. They have every day practical applications and they should be practical. ~ Les Brown

Get back to work, he would tell himself sternly. There's a garuda to get airborne. ~ China Mieville

Simplicio: Are you really trying to claim that mathematics offers no useful or practical applications to society?
Salviati: Of course not. I'm merely suggesting that just because something happens to have practical consequences, doesn't mean that's what it is about. Music can lead armies into battle, but that's not why people write symphonies. Michelangelo decorated a ceiling, but I'm sure he had loftier things on his mind. ~ Paul Lockhart

Throughout history, people have studied pure science from a desire to understand the universe rather than practical applications for commercial gain. But their discoveries later turned out to have great practical benefits. ~ Stephen Hawking

Dilbert: It took weeks but I've calculated a new theory about the origin of the universe. According to my calculations it didn't start with a "Big Bang" at all-it was more of "Phhbwt" sound. You may be wondering about the practical applications of the "Little Phhbwt" theory. Dogbert: I was wondering when you'll go away. ~ Scott Adams

Basic research leads to new knowledge," Bush wrote. "It provides scientific capital. It creates the fund from which the practical applications of knowledge must be drawn. ~ Walter Isaacson

Communism is fascism, in all practical applications," he was saying now. "Can you think of a Communist country sans dictator? ~ Sara Novic

...only poetry, exempt from all practical applications, permits one to have at its disposal, to a certain extent, the brilliance and suffocation that Marquis de Sade tried so indecently to provoke.`
Georges Bataille, Visions of Excess. Selected Writings 1927-1939, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 2004, p. 93 ~ Georges Bataille

It is not paradox to say that in our most theoretical moods we may be nearest to our most practical applications. ~ Alfred North Whitehead

No part of mathematics is ever, in the long run, "useless." Most of number theory has very few "practical" applications. That does not reduce its importance, and if anything it enhances its fascination. No one can predict when what seems to be a most obscure theorem may suddenly be called upon to play some vital and hitherto unsuspected role. ~ C. Stanley Ogilvy

Though the parallel is not complete, it is safe to say that science will never touch them unaided by its practical applications. Its wonders may be catalogued for purposes of education, they may be illustrated by arresting experiments, by numbers and magnitudes which startle or fatigue the imagination but they will form no familiar portion of the intellectual furniture of ordinary men unless they be connected, however remotely, with the conduct of ordinary life. ~ Arthur Balfour

Will fluorine ever have practical applications?
It is very difficult to answer this question. I may, however, say in all sincerity that I gave this subject little thought when I undertook my researches, and I believe that all the chemists whose attempts preceded mine gave it no more consideration.
A scientific research is a search after truth, and it is only after discovery that the question of applicability can be usefully considered. ~ Henri Moissan

Well, regular math, or applied math, is what I suppose you could call practical math," he said. "It's used to solve problems, to provide solutions, whether it's in the realm of economics, or engineering, or accounting, or what have you. But pure math doesn't exist to provide immediate, or necessarily obvious, practical applications. It's purely an expression of form, if you will - the only thing it proves is the almost infinite elasticity of mathematics itself, within the accepted set of assumptions by which we define it, of course. ~ Hanya Yanagihara

There cannot be a greater mistake than that of looking superciliously upon practical applications of science. The life and soul of science is its practical application ... ~ Lord Kelvin

It is hard to think of practical applications of the black hole. Because practical applications are so remote, many people assume we should not be interested. But this quest to understand the world is what defines us as human beings. ~ Yuri Milner

Far too many managers have lost sight of the basics, in our opinion: quick action, service to customers, practical innovation, and the fact that you can't get any of these without virtually everyone's commitment. ~ Tom Peters

Practical men who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influence, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist. Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years back ~ John Maynard Keynes

You see, control can never be a means to any practical end ... It can never be a means to anything but more control ... like junk.. ~ William S. Burroughs

You never know when I'm lying. So it would be more practical to believe what I say
-Pauline in In the Presence of a Clown ~ Ingmar Bergman

Technology means the systematic application of scientific or other organized knowledge to practical tasks. ~ John Kenneth Galbraith

Social Liberty: the nature and limits of the power which can be legitimately exercised by society over the individual. A question seldom stated, and hardly ever discussed, in general terms, but which profoundly influences the practical controversies of the age by its latent presence, and is likely soon to make itself recognised as the vital question of the future. ~ John Stuart Mill

Hearts will never be practical until they can be made unbreakable.
- Wizard ~ L. Frank Baum

The more divorced from practical reality any given theory is, the greater its fascination for those who are also divorced from reality. ~ Christopher G. Nuttall

We assume that we can have an exploitive, ruthlessly competitive, profit-for-profit's-sake economy, and yet remain a decent and a democratic nation, as we still apparently wish to think ourselves. This simply means that our highest principles and standards have no practical force or influence and are reduced merely to talk. ~ Wendell Berry

Our moral and practical attitude ... impulses, inhibitions ... how it contains and moulds us by its restrictive pressure almost as if we were fluids pent with the cavity of a jar ... It becomes our subconscious. [p. 287] ~ William James

About Jewish loyalty:
What we have seen from history is practical Jewish approach to the country of residence: loyalty in exchange of the equal opportunity and no persecution. Fair enough? ~ Leo Pevsner

A person who peremptorily denies the existence of anything which is beyond the horizon of his understanding because he cannot make it harmonise with his accepted opinions is as credulous as he who believes everything without any discrimination. Either of these persons is not a freethinker, but a slave to the opinions which he has accepted from others, or which he may have formed in the course of his education, and by his special experiences in his (naturally limited) intercourse with the world. If such persons meet with any extraordinary fact that is beyond their own experience, they often either regard it with awe and wonder, and are ready to accept any wild and improbable theory that may be offered to them in regard to such facts, or they sometimes reject the testimony of credible witnesses, and frequently even that of their own senses. They often do not hesitate to impute the basest motives and the most silly puerilities to honourable persons, and are credulous enough to believe that serious and wise people had taken the trouble to play upon them "practical jokes," and they are often willing to admit the most absurd theories rather than to use their own common sense. ~ Franz Hartmann

Remember that all models are wrong; the practical question is how wrong do they have to be to not be useful. ~ George E.P. Box

A spiritual man should be a normal man, a sound man. God Himself is normal; He is not insane. In order to reach God, a spiritual person has to be divinely practical in his day-to-day activities. Spirituality does not negate the outer life. But we have to know that the outer life does not mean the animal life. The outer life should be the manifestation of the divine life within us. ~ Sri Chinmoy

As I remember his laugh, there was nothing mad about it, it was more like the laugh of someone who has been the victim of a practical joke, a farce in which he had believed until suddenly he realized his folly. ~ Guy Sajer

There were open source projects and free software before Linux was there. Linux in many ways is one of the more visible and one of the bigger technical projects in this area, and it changed how people looked at it because Linux took both the practical and ideological approach. ~ Linus Torvalds

This could seem counterintuitive for many dictators running communist or socialist single-party states, but a thriving private tech industry can contribute invaluable tools to help you implement a controllable internet. The reason is fairly simple: the technologies that transform internet applications into more personalized, efficient and enjoyable experiences are usually the same ones that increase the capacity to monitor its users. ~ Laurier Rochon

Today's applications will become tomorrow's implications and complications. So watch your actions, reactions, associations and communications. ~ Constance Friday Elias

The twentieth century will be chiefly remembered by future generations not as an era of political conflicts or technical inventions, but as an age in which human society dared to think of the welfare of the whole human race as a practical objective. ~ Arnold J. Toynbee

Maybe the universe is a giant practical joke and we don't know the punchline. ~ John Lloyd

Philosophy can bake no bread; but she can procure for us God , Freedom , Immortality. Which, then, is more practical, Philosophy or Economy ? ~ Novalis

This book has been a catalogue of mistakes by politicians, moral and practical disasters which led to wars, enslavement and wretchedness on a scale which no previous age could have dreaded or dreamed of. ~ A. N. Wilson

Imagination is the other end of Reality. ~ K. Hari Kumar

America is the only nation in the world that is founded on a creed. That creed is set forth with dogmatic and even theological lucidity in the Declaration of Independence; perhaps the only piece of practical politics that is also theoretical politics and also great literature. It enunciates that all men are equal in their claim to justice, that governments exist to give them that justice, and that their authority is for that reason just. It certainly does condemn anarchism, and it does also by inference condemn atheism, since it clearly names the Creator as the ultimate authority from whom these equal rights are derived. Nobody expects a modern political system to proceed logically in the application of such dogmas, and in the matter of God and Government it is naturally God whose claim is taken more lightly. The point is that there is a creed, if not about divine, at least about human things. ~ G.K. Chesterton

"It is essential to understand this point thoroughly: that the thing-in-itself, whether animal, vegetable, or mineral, is not only unknowable-it does not exist. This is important not only for sanity and peace of mind, but also for the most "practical" reasons of economics, politics, and technology.. This is not to say only that things exist in relation to one another, but that what we call "things" are no more than glimpses of a unified process. Certainly, this process has distinct features which catch our attention, but we must remember that distinction is not separation." ~ Alan Watts

Teaching money management is a practical tool that will help shape kids' futures. ~ Bill Rancic

Dearest Lily." Penelope took her hand and pressed it between her own. "Since I was a little girl, I've always thought of you as the most beautiful, most courageous, most everything. But not practical. Never practical. ~ Lisa Kleypas

Most young dealers of the Silicon Chip Era regard a reference library as merely a waste of space. Old Timers on the West Coast seem to retain a fondness for reference books that goes beyond the practical. Everything there is to know about a given volume may be only a click away, but there are still a few of us who'd rather have the book than the click. A bookman's love of books is a love of books, not merely of the information in them. ~ Larry McMurtry

In other words, our constitution was designed by people who were idealistic but not ideological. There's a big difference. You can have a philosophy that tends to be liberal or conservative but still be open to evidence, experience, and argument. That enables people with honest differences to find practical, principled compromise. On the other hand, fervent insistence on an ideology makes evidence, experience, and arguments irrelevant: If you possess the absolute truth, those who disagree are by definition wrong, and evidence of success or failure is irrelevant. There is nothing to learn from the experience of other countries. Respectful arguments are a waste of time. Compromise is weakness. And if your policies fail, you don't abandon them; instead, you double down, asserting that they would have worked if only they had been carried to their logical extreme. ~ Bill Clinton

Since, in the long run, every planetary civilization will be endangered by impacts from space, every surviving civilization is obliged to become spacefaring
not because of exploratory or romantic zeal, but for the most practical reason imaginable: staying alive ... If our long-term survival is at stake, we have a basic responsibility to our species to venture to other worlds. ~ Carl Sagan

No matter the outcome, having completed a series of MBA applications in a serious, thoughtful way is a real achievement. ~ Linda Abraham