William Whewell Quotes

Nobody since Newton has been able to use geometrical methods to the same extent for the like purposes; and as we read the Principia we feel as when we are in an ancient armoury where the weapons are of gigantic size; and as we look at them we marvel what manner of man he was who could use as a weapon what we can scarcely lift as a burden. ~ William Whewell

Only recently, the word scientist had been coined, by the polymath William Whewell. Many scholars had objected to this blunt new term, as it sounded so sinisterly similar to that awful word atheist; why not simply continue to call themselves natural philosophers? Was that designation not more godly, more pure? But divisions were being drawn now between the realm of nature and the realm of philosophy. Ministers who doubled as botanists or geologists were becoming increasingly rare, as far too many challenges to biblical truths were stirred up through investigation of the natural world. It used to be that God was revealed in the wonders of nature; now God was being challenged by those same wonders. Scholars were now required to choose one side or the other. As ~ Elizabeth Gilbert

The catastrophist constructs theories, the uniformitarian demolishes them. ~ William Whewell

And so no force however great can stretch a cord however fine into a horizontal line that shall be absolutely straight. ~ William Whewell

It is a test of true theories not only to account for but to predict phenomena. ~ William Whewell

Our assent to the hypothesis implies that it is held to be true of all particular instances. That these cases belong to past or to future times, that they have or have not already occurred, makes no difference in the applicability of the rule to them. Because the rule prevails, it includes all cases. ~ William Whewell

A man really and practically looking onwards to an immortal life, on whatever grounds, exhibits to us the human soul in an enobled attitude. ~ William Whewell

Prudence supposes the value of the end to be assumed, and refers only to the adaptation of the means. It is the relation of right means for given ends. ~ William Whewell

Hence no force, however great, can stretch a cord, however fine, into a horizontal line which is accurately straight: there will always be a bending downwards. ~ William Whewell

The person who did most to give to analysis the generality and symmetry which are now its pride, was also the person who made mechanics analytical; I mean Euler. ~ William Whewell

The hypotheses which we accept ought to explain phenomena which we have observed. But they ought to do more than this; our hypotheses ought to foretell phenomena which have not yet been observed; ... because if the rule prevails, it includes all cases; and will determine them all, if we can only calculate its real consequences. Hence it will predict the results of new combinations, as well as explain the appearances which have occurred in old ones. And that it does this with certainty and correctness, is one mode in which the hypothesis is to be verified as right and useful. ~ William Whewell

In art, truth is a means to an end; in science, it is the only end. ~ William Whewell

Every man has obligations which belong to his station. Duties extend beyond obligations, and direct the affections, desires, and intentions, as well as the actions. ~ William Whewell

Gold and iron at the present day, as in ancient times, are the rulers of the world; and the great events in the world of mineral art are not the discovery of new substances, but of new and rich localities of old ones. ~ William Whewell

There is nothing distinctively scientific about the hypothetico-deductive process. It is not even distinctively intellectual. It is merely a scientific context for a much more general stratagem that underlies almost all regulative processes or processes of continuous control, namely feedback, the control of performance by the consequences of the act performed. In the hypothetico-deductive scheme the inferences we draw from a hypothesis are, in a sense, its logical output. If they are true, the hypothesis need not be altered, but correction is obligatory if they are false. The continuous feedback from inference to hypothesis is implicit in Whewell's account of scientific method; he would not have dissented from the view that scientific behaviour can be classified as appropriately under cybernetics as under logic. ~ Peter Medawar

The present generation finds itself the heir of a vast patrimony of science; and it must needs concern us to know the steps by which these possessions were acquired, and the documents by which they are secured to us and our heirs for ever. ~ William Whewell

Those who have obtained the farthest insight into Nature have been, in all ages, firm believers in God. ~ William Whewell

There is a mask of theory over the whole face of nature. ~ William Whewell

In order that the facts obtained by observation and experiment may be capable of being used in furtherance of our exact and solid knowledge, they must be apprehended and analysed according to some Conceptions which, applied for this purpose, give distinct and definite results, such as can be steadily taken hold of and reasoned from. ~ William Whewell

We need very much a name to describe a cultivator of science in general. I should incline to call him a scientist. [The first use of the word.] ~ William Whewell

Conscience is the reason employed about questions of right and wrong. ~ William Whewell

Other approaches to studying language, and there are many, go by names like poetics, philology, and rhetoric, but as long as we have had the word in English, linguistics has been associated with the methods, goals, and results of science.1 When William Whewell (who is also responsible for the coinage, scientist) first proposed the term, it was in his History of the Inductive Sciences (1837.1:cxiv; he was borrowing it from the Germans, who, Teutonically
enough, later came to prefer Sprachwissenschaft). ~ Randy Allen Harris

Astronomy is ... the only progressive Science which the ancient world produced. ~ William Whewell

The object of science is knowledge; the objects of art are works. In art, truth is the means to an end; in science, it is the only end. Hence the practical arts are not to be classed among the sciences ~ William Whewell

The hypotheses we accept ought to explain phenomena which we have observed. But they ought to do more than this: our hypotheses ought to foretell phenomena which have not yet been observed. ~ William Whewell

Man is the interpreter of nature, science the right interpretation. ~ William Whewell

The Soviet Union has indeed been our greatest menace, not so much because of what it has done, but because of the excuses it has provided us for our failures. ~ J. William Fulbright

If humans died in a healthy culture, they would not lock out the earth in metal coffins and carve their names on stone monuments, but would instead place the naked body in the earth and plant a tree above the silent heart. ~ William Irwin Thompson

Strangely, when I was a kid, my first acting job, at 5 years old, was a performance of 'The Three Little Pigs.' They cast me as the Big Bad Wolf. ~ William Zabka

I pray you school yourself. [MacBeth, Act 1V, Scene 2] ~ William Shakespeare

It's funny, in a human kind of way, how we can convince ourselves that we're in control at the very moment we are beginning to lose it. ~ William Moyers

Love seeketh not itself to please, nor for itself hath any care, but for another gives its ease, and builds a Heaven in Hell's despair. ~ William Blake

O how true are poor sinners to the devil's trust! ~ William Gurnall

After orbiting the moon, mundane business problems did not faze him. ~ William N. Thorndike Jr.

William Stoner entered the University of Missouri as a freshman in the year 1910, at the age of nineteen. Eight years later, during the height of World War I, he received his Doctor of Philosophy degree and accepted an instructorship at the same University, where he taught until his death in 1956. He did not rise above the rank of assistant professor, and few students remembered him with any sharpness after they had taken his courses. When he died his colleagues made a memorial contribution of a medieval manuscript to the University library. This manuscript may still be found in the Rare Books Collection, bearing the inscription: 'Presented to the Library of the University of Missouri, in memory of William Stoner, Department of English. By his colleagues.'

An occasional student who comes upon the name may wonder idly who William Stoner was, but he seldom pursues his curiosity beyond a casual questions. Stoner's colleagues, who held him in no particular esteem when he was alive, speak of him rarely now; to the older ones, his name is a reminder of the end that awaits them all, and to the younger ones it is merely a sound which evokes no sense of the past and no identity with which they can associate themselves or their careers. ~ John Williams

Chapter One. The Bride." He held up the book then. "I'm reading it to you for relax." He practically shoved the book in my face. "By S. Morgenstern. Great Florinese writer. The Princess Bride. He too came to America. S. Morgenstern. Dead now in New York. The English is his own. He spoke eight tongues." Here my father put down the book and held up all his fingers. "Eight. Once in Florin City ... ~ William Goldman

She hung up and the room was a fist of silence. page 233 ~ William Kent Krueger

You can't beat women anyhow and that if you are wise or dislike trouble and uproar you don't even try to. ~ William Faulkner

Hip - Someone who knows the score. Someone who understands "jive talk." Someone who is "with it." The expression is not subject to definition because, if you don't "dig" what it means, no one can ever tell you. ~ William S. Burroughs

Any one may mouth out a passage with theatrical cadence or get upon stilts to tell his thoughts. But to write or speak with propriety and simplicity is a more difficult task. ~ William Hazlitt

Ode To the Bacillus

Oh powerful bacillus
With wonder how you fill us, Everyday.
While medical detectives,
With powerful objectives, Watch your play. ~ William T. Helmuth

That man is thought a dangerous knave, Or zealot plotting crime, Who for advancement of his kind Is wiser than his time. ~ Douglas William Jerrold

But though I am always in haste, I am never in a hurry, because I never undertake any more work than I can go through with perfect calmness of spirit. JOHN WESLEY ~ William Thrasher

Don't let the little fuckers generation gap you. ~ William Gibson

You don't need great actors to do a 3D picture. All of this condescending stuff that they put out? "Oh, we will always need actors." Bullshit! They are able to take anybody and put some markers on them, and have them walk through an empty room. Then they paint in the background. ~ William Friedkin

The fairest state of them all, this tranquil and beloved domain - what has it now become? A nursery for Mississippi, Alabama, Arkansas. A monstrous breeding farm to supply the sinew to gratify the maw of Eli Whitney's infernal machine, cursed be that blackguard's name! In such a way is our human decency brought down, when we pander all that is in us noble and just to the false god which goes by the vile name of Capital! Oh, Virginia, woe betide thee! Woe, thrice woe, and ever damned in memory be the day when poor black men in chains first trod upon thy sacred strand! ~ William Styron

Mistakes are the growing pains of wisdom. ~ William Jordan

What has brought unique, irreplaceable me - out of all the possibilities of life - here, now, to this? ~ William Broyles Jr.

Drown thyself? Drown cats and blind puppies. ~ William Shakespeare

A coward dies a thousand times before his death, but the valiant taste of death but once. It seems to me most strange that men should fear, seeing that death, a necessary end, will come when it will come. ~ William Shakespeare

I am in earnest
I will not equivocate
I will not excuse
I will not retreat a single inch
And I will be heard.
~ William Lloyd Garrison

But try to remember that a good man can never die. You will see your brother many times again-in the streets, at home, in all the places of the town. The person of a man may go, but the best part of him stays. It stays forever. ~ William, Saroyan

Children born today have a fifty-fifty chance of living to 100. ~ William Greider

Atrocitus: You believe fear to be the most powerful force in the universe? Fear is inaction. Fear is hiding away. Fear is cowering and begging. Rage is action. Rage is spilling blood. Sinestro: Rage is uncontrollable. ~ William Irwin

I'm sure I spent more time in Texas than anybody else who had run for President recently. ~ William J. Clinton

In the beginning his flesh was simply soft, so soft that he was cut to the bone by dust particles, air currents and brushing overcoats while direct contact with doors and chairs seemed to occasion no discomfort. No wound healed in his soft, tentative flesh... Long white tendrils of fungus curled round the naked bones. ~ William S. Burroughs

Who owned no property and never desired to since the earth was no man's but all men's, as light and air and weather were. ~ William Faulkner

When people are feeling insecure, they'd rather have someone who is strong and wrong rather than somebody who is weak and right. ~ William J. Clinton

The tide of life, swift always in its course,
May run in cities with a brisker force,
But nowhere with a current so serene,
Or half so clear, as in the rural scene. ~ William Cowper

Make use of time, let not advantage slip. ~ William Shakespeare

It is discouraging to leave the past behind only to see it coming toward you like the thunderstorm which drenched you yesterday. ~ William H Gass

Your Alex.He's selfish too.He could have left you alone, but he didn't. The difference is he's always known the consequences."
"And what are the consequences? What did you see?"
"You really should learn your history better Rowan." She slid the book across the table to me.
The book was open and her finger was pointed to a list of names. I took a deep breath and began to read aloud.
"A list of the accused witches hung at Gallows Hill." I let my eyes wander down until they froze on one name.
"Alexander William Foster." The words sucked the life from me, leaving me limp and broken. My eyes met hers.
"What does this mean?" She pulled the book back and grabbed my hand.
"It means that Alex is from a very different place. A place where is no free will.When they find out what he is, he'll hang for it, Rowan.And they will find out.It's all here. His future is our history.You can't change that." She tapped on the book as she folded the cover closed. I caught a glimpse of the title. The Salem Witch Trials. ~ Tara A. Fuller

We look to our last sickness for repentance, unmindful that it is during a recovery men repent, not during a sickness. ~ Augustus William Hare

Now, gods, stand up for bastards! ~ William Shakespeare

These people who come to Comic-Con and dress up - all across the country, the rest of the population who doesn't understand are scoffing at them. ~ William Shatner

Firing off 1,000 or 500 or 2,000 nuclear warheads on a few minutes' consideration has always struck me as an absurd way to go to war. ~ William Odom

My great fear in this life didn't have a name that I knew of. I was afraid of remaining exactly who I was, and that phobia instilled a shiver of fear into every one of my days. Something as simple as a fear of cats would have been a blessing. ~ William Lashner

Be always lavish of your caresses, and sparing in your corrections. ~ William Cavendish

I am getting so far out one day I won't come back at all. ~ William S. Burroughs

Even if the disciples had believed in the resurrection of Jesus, it is doubtful they would have generated any following. So long as the body was interred in the tomb, a Christian movement founded on belief in the resurrection of the dead man would have been an impossible folly. ~ William Lane Craig

Conscience, as a mentor, the guide and compass of every act, leads ever to happiness. When the individual can stay alone with his or her conscience and get its approval, without knowing force or specious knowledge, then he or she begins to know what real happiness is. ~ William George Jordan

The infinite variety in the properties of the solid materials we find in the world is really the expression of the infinite variety of the ways in which the atoms and molecules can be tied together, and of the strength of those ties. ~ William Henry Bragg

Our object in these remarks has been not only to account for the slow progress which has as yet been made by Political Economy, and to suggest means by which its advancement may be accelerated, but also to warn the reader of the nature of the following Treatise. ~ Nassau William Senior

Kindness is too often left uncultivated, because men do not sufficiently understand its value. Men may be charitable and not kind; merciful, yet not kind; self-denying and yet not kind. If they would add a little common kindness to their uncommon graces, they would convert ten where they now only abate the prejudice of one. ~ Frederick William Faber