Royal Society Quotes

Tyndall, ... I must remain plain Michael Faraday to the last; and let me now tell you, that if accepted the honour which the Royal Society desires to confer upon me, I would not answer for the integrity of my intellect for a single year. ~ Michael Faraday

The belief that science proceeds from observation to theory is still so widely and so firmly held that my denial of it is often met with incredulity. I have even been suspected of being insincere- of denying what nobody in his senses would doubt.
But in fact the belief that we can start with pure observation alone, without anything in the nature of a theory is absurd; as may be illustrated by the story of the man who dedicated his life to natural science, wrote down everything he could observe, and bequeathed his priceless collection of observations to the Royal Society to be used as evidence. This story should show us that though beetles may profitably be collected, observations may not.
Twenty-five years ago I tried to bring home the same point to a group of physics students in Vienna by beginning a lecture with the following instructions : 'Take pencil and paper; carefully observe, and write down what you have observed!' They asked, of course, what I wanted them to observe. Clearly the instruction, 'Observe!' is absurd. (It is not even idiomatic, unless the object of the transitive verb can be taken as understood.) Observation is always selective. It needs a chosen object, a definite task, an interest, a point of view, a problem. And its description presupposes a descriptive language, with property words; it presupposes similarity and classification, which in their turn presuppose interests, points of view, and problems. ~ Karl Popper

[The Royal Society] is quite simply the voice of science in Britain. It is intellectually rigorous, not afraid to be outspoken on controversial issues such as climate change, but it is not aggressively secular either, insisting on a single view of the world. In fact, there are plenty of eminent scientists - Robert Winston, for instance - who are also men of faith. ~ Bill Bryson

In an echo of earlier times, the climate change prophets have in recent years tried to silence counter views and suppress dissent. August members of the Royal Society, a body once noted for its cultivation of debate in science, are now leaders of the 'science is settled' camp: the only debate they consider to be legitimate is about choice among the different forms of the centralized action they believe is required to deal with the problems they foresee. ~ Colin Robinson

Cavendish was a great Man with extraordinary singularities - His voice was squeaking his manner nervous He was afraid of strangers & seemed when embarrassed to articulate with difficulty - He wore the costume of our grandfathers. Was enormously rich but made no use of his wealth ... Cavendish lived latterly the life of a solitary, came to the Club dinner & to the Royal Society: but received nobody at his home. He was acute sagacious & profound & I think the most accomplished British Philosopher of his time. ~ Humphry Davy

Mr Humphry Davy is a lively and talented man, and a thorough chemist ... ~ Joseph Banks

In the early evening time Dr. Kemp was sitting in his study in the belvedere on the hill overlooking Burdock. It was a pleasant little room, with three windows - north, west, and south - and bookshelves covered with books and scientific publications, and a broad writing-table, and, under the north window, a microscope, glass slips, minute instruments, some cultures, and scattered bottles of reagents. Dr. Kemp's solar lamp was lit, albeit the sky was still bright with the sunset light, and his blinds were up because there was no offence of peering outsiders to require them pulled down. Dr. Kemp was a tall and slender young man, with flaxen hair and a moustache almost white, and the work he was upon would earn him, he hoped, the fellowship of the Royal Society, so highly did he think of it. ~ H.G.Wells

Perhaps the most important contribution to science that the Royal Society has made in its three centuries of existence is its early role in publishing Newton's masterful account of his discoveries. ~ Julian Schwinger

In the field of Artificial Intelligence there is no more iconic and controversial milestone than the Turing Test, when a computer convinces a sufficient number of interrogators into believing that it is not a machine but rather is a human. It is fitting that such an important landmark has been reached at the Royal Society in London, the home of British Science and the scene of many great advances in human understanding over the centuries. This milestone will go down in history as one of the most exciting. ~ Kevin Warwick

Charles II once invited the members of the Royal Society to explain to him why a dead fish weighs more than the same fish alive; a number of subtle explanations were offered to him. He then pointed out that it does not. ~ Alasdair MacIntyre

Instead of having to be a member of the Royal Society to do science, the way you had to be in England in the 17th, 18th, centuries today pretty much anybody who wants to do it can, and the information that they need to do it is there. ~ Seth Lloyd

This Excellent Mathematician having given us, in the Transactions of February last, an account of the cause, which induced him to think upon Reflecting Telescopes, instead of Refracting ones, hath thereupon presented the curious world with an Essay of what may be performed by such Telescopes; by which it is found, that Telescopical Tubes may be considerably shortened without prejudice to their magnifiying effect. On his invention of the catadioptrical telescope, as he communicated to the Royal Society. ~ Isaac Newton

Charles Darwin [is my personal favorite Fellow of the Royal Society]. I suppose as a physical scientist I ought to have chosen Newton. He would have won hands down in an IQ test, but if you ask who was the most attractive personality then Darwin is the one you'd wish to meet. Newton was solitary and reclusive, even vain and vindictive in his later years when he was president of the society. ~ Martin Rees

I sometimes, in my sprightly moments, consider myself, in my great chair at school, as some dictator at the head of a common-wealth. In this little state I can discover all the great geniuses, all the surprising actions and revolutions of the great world in miniature. I have several renowned generals but three feet high, and several deep-projecting politicians in petticoats. I have others catching and dissecting flies, accumulating remarkable pebbles, cockleshells, etc., with as ardent curiosity as any virtuoso in the Royal Society ... . At one table sits Mr. Insipid foppling and fluttering, spinning his whirligig, or playing with his fingers as gaily and wittily as any Frenchified coxcomb brandishes his cane and rattles his snuff box. At another sits the polemical divine, plodding and wrangling in his mind about Adam's fall in which we sinned, all as his primer has it. ~ John Adams

My favourite fellow of the Royal Society is the Reverend Thomas Bayes, an obscure 18th-century Kent clergyman and a brilliant mathematician who devised a complex equation known as the Bayes theorem, which can be used to work out probability distributions. It had no practical application in his lifetime, but today, thanks to computers, is routinely used in the modelling of climate change, astrophysics and stock-market analysis. ~ Bill Bryson

The English too, were turning their eyes to the South. In 1769, there was to be a transit of the planet Venus across the disc of the sun, a rare event which astronomers wanted to observe. The newly discovered island of Tahiti was judged the perfect site. The Royal Society in London asked the Royal Navy to organize the expedition. The Navy obliged. This was to have profound and unlooked-for consequences. It led to the virtual monopolization by naval officers of British Polar exploration until the first decade of this century. The voyage inspired by the transit of Venus was commanded by a man of quiet genius, James Cook, one of the greatest of discoverers. ~ Roland Huntford

The Royal Society view is completely apolitical: it will judge anything based on the evidence. One of the big strengths of the Society is that is it widely perceived as impartial and above the fray. We'd like to make sure it stays that way. ~ Venkatraman Ramakrishnan

The creature was very young. He was alone in a dread universe. I crept on my knees and crouched beside him. It was a small fox pup from a den under the timbers who looked up at me. God knows what had become of his brothers and sisters. His parents must not have been home from hunting. He innocently selected what I think was a chicken bone from an untidy pile of splintered rubbish and shook it at me invitingly... the universe was swinging in some fantastic fashion around to present its face and the face was so small that the universe itself was laughing.
It was not a time for human dignity. It was a time only for the careful observance of amenities written behind the stars. Gravely I arranged my forepaws while the puppy whimpered with ill-concealed excitement. I drew the breath of a fox's den into my nostrils. On impulse, I picked up clumsily a whiter bone and shook it in teeth that had not entirely forgotten their original purpose. Round and round we tumbled and for just one ecstatic moment I held the universe at bay by the simple expedient of sitting on my haunches before a fox den and tumbling about with a chicken bone. It is the gravest, most meaningful act I shall ever accomplish, but, as Thoreau once remarked of some peculiar errand of his own, there is no use reporting it to the Royal Society. ~ Loren Eiseley

The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds", says Mrs. Phillips. "Our members will not be allowed to wear, or buy, ant hats with feathers, and they must devote themselves to the cause of protecting the birds and discouraging their wanton destruction. ~ Helen Humphreys

At some point, Fatio had to tear those eyes away from Eliza and begin the same sort of dance cum duel with Waterhouse. Again, if Fatio had been a fellow of the Royal Society or a doctor at some university, Waterhouse would have had some idea what to make of him. As it was, Fatio had to conjure his credentials and bona fides out of thin are, as it were, by dropping names and scattering references to books he'd read, problems he'd solved, inflated reputations he had punctured, experiments he had performed, creatures he had seen. ~ Neal Stephenson

The work of a person laboring in some humble occupation is no less relevant to the well-being of society than that of, for example, a doctor, a teacher, a monk, or a nun. All human endeavor is potentially great and noble. So long as we carry out our work with good motivation, thinking, "My work is for others," it will be of benefit to the wider community. ~ Dalai Lama XIV

The death penalty is no more effective a deterrent than life imprisonment ... It is also evident that the burden of capital punishment falls upon the poor, the ignorant and the underprivileged members of society. ~ Thurgood Marshall

To my fellow free thinkers fear not the persecution of the disenlightened for their ignorance is a cancer of the mind. Continue to be yourself & do not conform to the "norms" of society. Stretch your intellect to the broadest boundaries of the universe. Never feel embarrassed to speak your mind even if no one wants to listen. For you are the truth in a world of lies. You are the light in the darkness. You are special in every way imaginable!! ~ Kenneth G. Ortiz

Only he qualifies to be an INDIVIDUAL, who has created an IMAGE for himself, in tune with his INTRINSIC NATURE, for majority only succumb to the human stupidity and perish! ~ Ramana Pemmaraju

One quarter of a mile is, in metric terms, about 400 metres. I believe the world record for a man to cover this distance by use of his legs is about forty something seconds. At that time, I would have bet any amount of money that I would have beaten the world record at that distance as I sprinted like a tornado across the open farmer's fields. ~ Stephen Richards

I'm doing this because society wants sex to be straight, cis-gendered, married, monogamous, private, not-for-hire, completely vanilla and all about making babies. And I think that's bullshit. ~ Ava Crawford, Without A Thought

I caught the rest of it in one of those snob columns in the society section of the paper. I don't read them often, only when I run out of things to dislike ... I threw the paper into the corner and turned on the TV set. After the society page dog vomit even the wrestlers looked good. ~ Raymond Chandler

This is what you get when you found a political system on the family values of Henry VIII. At a point in the not-too-remote future, the stout heart of Queen Elizabeth II will cease to beat. At that precise moment, her firstborn son will become head of state, head of the armed forces, and head of the Church of England. In strict constitutional terms, this ought not to matter much. The English monarchy, as has been said, reigns but does not rule. From the aesthetic point of view it will matter a bit, because the prospect of a morose bat-eared and chinless man, prematurely aged, and with the most abysmal taste in royal consorts, is a distinctly lowering one. ~ Christopher Hitchens

Only if you empower the liberals, if you empower the moderate socialists, if you empower all factions of society, only then will extremists be marginalised. ~ Mohamed ElBaradei

The concept of guilt is found most powerfully developed even in the most primitive communal forms which we know: ... the man is guilty who violates one of the original laws which dominate the society and which are mostly derived from a divine founder; the boy who is accepted into the tribal community and learns its laws, which bind him thenceforth, learns to promise; this promise is often given under the sign of death, which is symbolically carried out on the boy, with a symbolical rebirth. ~ Martin Buber

The Marxians love of democratic institutions was a stratagem only, a pious fraud for the deception of the masses. Within a socialist community there is no room left for freedom. ~ Ludwig Von Mises

Who's influenced you the most in your life?" "My principal, Ms. Lopez." "How has she influenced you?" "When we get in trouble, she doesn't suspend us. She calls us to her office and explains to us how society was built down around us. And she tells us that each time somebody fails out of school, a new jail cell gets built. And one time she made every student stand up, one at a time, and she told each one of us that we matter. ~ Brandon Stanton

Despite whatever the left may say, or even believe, about their concern for the poor, their actual behavior shows their interest in the poor to be greatest when the poor can be used as a focus of the left's denunciations of society. ~ Thomas Sowell

You can have a lot of political "change" in the United States, but will it really change that much? Will it change the amount of money in someone's bank account? Will it change contracts? Will it void contracts that already exist? And contracts on contracts? And contracts on contracts on contracts? Not really. So I say that free speech in many Western places is free not as a result of liberal circumstances but rather as a result of such intense fiscalization that it doesn't matter what you say. The dominant elite doesn't have to be scared of what people think, because a change in political view is not going to change whether they own their company or not; it is not going to change whether they own a piece of land or not. But China is still a political society, although it is rapidly heading toward a fiscalized society. And other societies, like Egypt, are still heavily politicized. Their rulers really do need to be concerned about what people think, so they expend proportionate efforts on controlling freedom of speech.


But I think young people actually innately have fairly good values. Of course it's a spectrum, but they have fairly good values most of the time and they want to demonstrate them to other people, and you can see this when people first go to university. They become hardened as a result of certain things having a payoff and other things not having a payoff. ~ Julian Assange

The outer chains have simply been put inside of man. The desires and thoughts that the suggestion apparatus of society fills him with, chain him more thoroughly than outer chains. ~ Erich Fromm

The American Dream has become a death sentence of drudgery, consumerism, and fatalism: a garage sale where the best of the human spirit is bartered away for comfort, obedience and trinkets. It's unequivocally absurd. ~ Zoltan Istvan

Each of them had personal, real or imagined, but deep reasons for dissatisfaction with life. Furthermore they had one great reason in common; both felt themselves to be unhappy and like outcasts in this town and this society of officers, for the most part frivolous and empty-headed. So they clung to one another feverishly like two survivors of a shipwreck. ~ Ivo Andric

The problem of the house is a problem of the epoch. The equilibrium of society today depends upon it. Architecture has for its first duty, in this period of renewal, that of bringing about a revision of values, a revision of the constituent elements of the house. ~ Le Corbusier

I said I didn't think it would be a collectivist state so much as a wilderness in which most people lived hand to mouth, and the rich would live like princes - better than the rich had ever lived, except that their lives would constantly be in danger from the hungry predatory poor. All the technology would serve the rich, but they would need it for their own protection and to assure their continued prosperity. ~ Paul Theroux

What the Founding Fathers created in the Constitution is the most magnificent government on the face of the Earth, and the reason is this: because it was intended to preserve the American society and the American spirit, not to transform it or destroy it. ~ Mark Levin

President of the Society for Creative Anachronisms. ~ Arthur C. Clarke

Most people think the more money, luxury or fame they have, the more successful they are; but I think that the true sign of success depends on how many positive emotions they experience each day. ~ Maddy Malhotra

Domination is a relationship, not a condition; it depends on the participation of both parties. Hierarchical power is not just the gun in the policeman's hand; it is just as much the obedience of the ones who act as if it is always pointed at them. It is not just the government and the executives and the armed forces; it extends through society from top to bottom, an interlocking web of control and compliance. Sometimes all it takes to be complicit in the oppression of millions is to die of natural causes. ~ CrimethInc.

Scientific research sooner or later, but inevitably, encounters something ultimately given that it cannot trace back to something else of which it would appear as the regular or necessary derivative. Scientific progress consists in pushing further back this ultimately given. ~ Ludwig Von Mises

Few, I believe, have had much affection for mankind, who did not first love their parents, their brothers, sisters, and even the domestic brutes, whom they first played with. ~ Mary Wollstonecraft

Choosing a spouse and a choosing career: the two great decisions for which society refuses to set up institutional guidance. ~ Alain De Botton

When a beast invades your house and starts abusing your loved ones, would you sit back waiting for the authorities to intervene - you may, but I can't - I won't - for me family and society are one, and when wild animals run rampant abusing that family of mine, I would die defending my family, not sit back like a spineless coward. ~ Abhijit Naskar

This is not a Black problem. It is not a white problem. It is not a police problem. It is a WE problem. We the people, for the people. It is going to take all of us being transparent in order to transform. ~ Bobby F. Kimbrough Jr.

I want to invent a new kind of revolution. A revolution of the human soul. Society changes without a single drop of spilt blood ~ Bruce Burk

The first century of the plague had seen the country turned upside down. In the twilight years of Edward III it seemed that nothing could damage the greatness of the Plantagenet royal estate. But the world of the village went from impoverished claustrophobia to traumatized infection. A hundred years later, everything had been upended, courtesy of King Death. ~ Simon Schama

No ONE MENTIONS YOUR TEARS, SADNESS OR SLOW DEATH! BUT, WE FEEL YOUR FALLEN TEARS, YOUR BEHEADED BODIES, YOUR RAPED DIGNITY! ~ Widad Akreyi

We believe in personal choice, rather than society dictating how we must live our lives. ~ Mike Peters

I am appalled to think that some of the people out there, in our society today, think that being different is an excuse to attack and hurt another. ~ Renae Kaye

My hope is that we're going to end up with a far more tolerant society, where the erosion of privacy, to the extent it erodes, will be offset by increased tolerance. ~ Peter Thiel

Moral sense is almost completely ignored by modern society. We have, in fact, suppressed its manifestations. All are imbued with irresponsibility. Those who discern good and evil, who are industrious and provident, remain poor and are looked upon as morons. The woman who has several children, who devotes herself to their education, instead of to her own career, is considered weak-minded. If a man saves a little money for his wife and the education of his children, this money is stolen from him by enterprising financiers. Or taken by the government and distributed to those who have been reduced to want by their own improvidence and the shortsightedness of manufacturers, bankers, and economists. Artists and men of science supply the community with beauty, health, and wealth. They live and die in poverty. Robbers enjoy prosperity in peace. Gangsters are protected by politicians and respected by judges. They are the heroes whom children admire at the cinema and imitate in their games. A rich man has every right. He may discard his aging wife, abandon his old mother to penury, rob those who have entrusted their money to him, without losing the consideration of his friends. ...Ministers have rationalized religion. They have destroyed its mystical basis. But they do not succeed in attracting modern men. In their half-empty churches they vainly preach a weak morality. They are content with the part of policemen, helping in the interest of the wealthy to preserve the framework of pres ~ Alexis Carrel

With sincerity, courage, & honesty, one can face death, extreme physical pain, & even extreme psychological pain. One can resist persecution from individuals, society, or government. To live in preparation of adversity & finding ways to preserve your core values --this is what it means to learn "how to live. ~ Qiu Miaojin

Mere unorthodoxy or dissent from the prevailing mores is not to be condemned. The absence of such voices would be a symptom of grave illness to our society. ~ Earl Warren

In the past the need for a hierarchal form of society has been the doctrine specifically of the High. It had been preached by kings and aristocrats and the priests, lawyers and the like who were parasitical upon them, and it had generally been softened by promises of an imaginary world beyond the grave. ~ George Orwell

Let them be what they want to be. Make yourselves what you want to be. ~ Harshvardhan Malpani

Money is a mind, the oldest artificial intelligence. Its prime directives are simple, its programming endlessly creative. Humans obey it unthinkingly, with cheerful alacrity. Like a virus, it doesn't care if it kills its host. ~ Sam J. Miller

Education is the proper way to promote compassion and tolerance in society. Compassion and peace of mind bring a sense of confidence that reduce stress and anxiety, whereas anger and hatred come from frustration and undermine our sense of trust. Because of ignorance, many of our problems are our own creation. Education, however, is the instrument that increases our ability to employ our own intelligence.
~ 14th Dalai Lama on FB Oct 8, 2012 ~ Dalai Lama XIV

We know that a large majority of the Australian society is extremely comfortable with a multicultural society, that we accept that living in a democracy means having a freedom to practise your religion within the limits of the law. ~ Tim Soutphommasane

It is no wonder that the writers of the nineteenth century look upon society as an artificial creation of the legislator's genius. This idea
the fruit of classical education
has taken possession of all the intellectuals and famous writers of our country. To these intellectuals and writers, the relationship between persons and the legislator appears to be the same as the relationship between the clay and the potter. ~ Frederic Bastiat

Man has learned almost nothing even when confronted with the impending end of the world. The majority of people continue to make their daily choices on the basis of what they desire and what pleases them. Democracy caters to the whims of man: the will of the people. The consequences of this are frightening: what democracy leads to is the kind of suicidal society that we see all around us. Democracy is the most miserable of all known societal systems, the building block of doom. Therein the unmanageable freedom of production and consumption and the passions of the people are not only tolerated, but cherished as the highest values. The most serious environmental disasters occur in democracies. ~ Pentti Linkola

Alienation as we find it in modern society is almost total ... Man has created a world of man-made things as it never existed before. He has constructed a complicated social machine to administer the technical machine he built. The more powerful and gigantic the forces are which he unleashes, the more powerless he feels himself as a human being. He is owned by his creations, and has lost ownership of himself. ~ Erich Fromm

A society that thinks the choice between ways of living is just a choice between equally eligible 'lifestyles' turns universities into academic cafeterias offering junk food for the mind. ~ George Will