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A science communicator's quotation kit Instant erudition arranged by Ian Russell Some
of these are my own discoveries, Praise up the humanities, my boy. That will make them think you are
broad-minded. Last updated: December 2004 Hands-on Nihil in intellectu quod non prius in sensu. One must learn by doing the thing; though you think you know it, you
have no certainty until you try. The hand is the cutting edge of the mind. Look for knowledge not in books but in things themselves. I love fools' experiments. I am always making them. Those who are good at archery learnt from the bow and not from Yi the
Archer. Those who know how to manage boats learnt from boats and not from
Wo [the legendary boatman]. Those who can think learnt for themselves
and not from the sages. Concept development Socrates: Shall we set down astronomy among the objects of study?
Make no little plans. They have no magic to stir men's blood... Make
big plans; aim high in hope and work. Omne tulit punctum qui miscuit utile dulci. A plagiarist steals from one person. A true artist steals from everybody.
Anyone who tries to make a distinction between education and entertainment
doesn't know the first thing about either. The maverick approach He that leaves nothing to chance will do few things ill, but he will
do very few things. It is important that students bring a certain ragamuffin, barefoot irreverence
to their studies; they are not here to worship what is known, but to question
it. A committee is a cul-de-sac down which ideas are lured and then quietly
strangled. Living movements do not come out of committees. Search all the parks in all your cities; you'll find no statues of committees." Those who danced were thought to be quite insane by those who could not hear the music. Angela Monet Expansion means complexity and complexity decay (Parkinson's Third Law).
If you're going to be an alec, you might as well be a smart one. You can recognize a pioneer by the arrows in his back. The truth will set you free. But first, it will piss you off. Show me a man with both feet on the ground and I will show you a man
who cannot put his pants on... Only the mediocre are always at their best. Exhibit design [Occam's Razor] Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem.
You find sometimes that a Thing which seemed very Thingish inside you
is quite different when it gets out into the open and has other people
looking at it. There may be more than one way to skin a cat, but you just get one chance
per cat.... No plan survives contact with the enemy. The concrete before the abstract I am never content until I have constructed a mechanical model of the
subject I am studying. If I succeed in making one, I understand; otherwise
I do not. Come forth into the light of things, Let Nature be your Teacher. To a man who has not eaten a globe fish, we cannot speak of its flavour.
Explanations 'Why,' said the Dodo, 'the best way to explain it is to do it.' Facts are ventriloquist's dummies. Sitting on a wise man's knee they
may be made to utter words of wisdom; elsewhere, they say nothing, or
talk nonsense. The map is not the territory, and the name is not the thing named. A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops.
We teachers can only help the work going on, as servants wait upon a
master. Man is a creature who lives not upon bread alone, but principally by
catchwords... It gets you nowhere if the other person's tail is only just in sight
for the second half of the conversation. I never let schooling interfere with my education. Should we always supply an answer? 'You damn sadist,' said mr cummings, Truth comes out of error more readily than out of confusion. Give me fruitful error any time, full of seeds, bursting with its own
corrections. You can keep your sterile truth for yourself. Wisdom comes from experience. Experience is often a result of lack of
wisdom. The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the
source of all true art and science. Explanation separates us from astonishment, which is the only gateway
to the incomprehensible. Sir, I have found you an argument. I am not obliged to find you an understanding.
To me education is a leading out of what is already there in the pupil's
soul. To Miss Mackay it is a putting in of something that is not there,
and that is not what I call education, I call it intrusion. Whatever you can teach him from the nature of things themselves, do not
teach him by words. Leave him to himself to see, hear, find, stumble,
rise again, and be mistaken. Give no words when action or deed is possible.
What he can do for himself, let him do. How to tell students what to look for without telling them what to see
is the dilemma of teaching. Children have a real understanding only of that which they invent themselves,
and each time we try to teach them something too quickly, we keep them
from reinventing it themselves. You know that children are growing up when they start asking questions
that have answers. It is better to know some of the questions than all of the answers. Letting visitors speak First listen my friend, and then you may shriek and bluster. .The little girl had the making of a poet in her who, being told to be
sure of her meaning before she spoke, said: ‘How can I know what
I think till I see what I say?’ Much have I learned from my teachers, more from my colleagues, but most
from my students. We should not be speaking to, but with. That is second nature to any
good teacher. Attitudes before understanding Give people facts and you feed their minds for an hour. Awaken curiosity
and they feed their own minds for a lifetime. A child of the new generation Education is what survives when what has been learned has been forgotten.
Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire. We must view young people not as empty bottles to be filled, but as candles
to be lit. The whole art of teaching is only the art of awakening the natural curiosity
of young minds for the purpose of satisfying it afterwards. There is no such whetstone, to sharpen a good wit and encourage a will
to learning, as is praise. One looks back with appreciation to the brilliant teachers, but with
gratitude to those who touched our human feelings. The curriculum is so
much necessary raw material, but warmth is the vital element for the growing
plant and for the soul of the child. Learning is by nature, curiosity. The important thing is not so much that every child should be taught,
as that every child should be given the wish to learn. There is always one moment in childhood when the door opens and lets
the future in. Children will forget what you say. Children will forget what you did,
but children will never forget how you made them feel. Honest simplicity The ill and unfit choice of words wonderfully obstructs the understanding.
I was in a Printing-house in hell and saw the method in which knowledge
is transmitted from generation to generation. Facts do not speak. Things should be made as simple as possible, but not any simpler. Guid gear gangs intae sma bouk. Great minds To live for a time close to great minds is the best kind of education.
I do not know what I may appear to the world; but to myself I seem to
have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself,
now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary,
whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me. There is no scorn more profound, or on the whole more justifiable, than
that of men who make for men who explain. Exposition, criticism, appreciation,
is work for second-rate minds. I do not subscribe to the 'Exploding Custard'
kind of science communication. There is not the slightest indication that nuclear energy will ever be
obtainable. It would mean that the atom would have to be shattered at
will. The energy produced by the breaking down of the atom is a very poor kind
of thing. Anyone who expects a source of power from the transformation
of these atoms is talking moonshine. Such startling announcements as these should be deprecated as being unworthy
of science and mischievous to its true progress. It is apparent to me that the possibilities of the aeroplane, which two
or three years ago were thought to hold the solution to the [flying machine]
problem, have been exhausted, and that we must turn elsewhere. I have always consistently opposed high-tension and alternating systems
of electric lighting...not only on account of danger, but because of their
general unreliability and unsuitability for any general system of distribution. The more important fundamental laws and facts of physical science have
all been discovered, and these are now so firmly established that the
possibility of their ever being supplanted in consequence of new discoveries
is exceedingly remote.... Our future discoveries must be looked for in
the sixth place of decimals. Space travel is bunk I think we can safely assume that no one understands quantum mechanics. The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new For every expert, there is an equal and opposite expert. Respect for youth There are children playing in the street who could solve some of my top
problems in physics, because they have modes of sensory perception that
I lost long ago. The understanding of atomic physics is childs play, compared with the
understanding of childs play. Any subject can be taught effectively in some intellectually honest way
to any child at any stage of development. We do not cease to play because we grow old. It's never too late to have a happy childhood. Play is the highest form of research A child is a person who is going to carry on what you have started ...
the We spend the first twelve months of our children's lives teaching them
to walk and talk and the next twelve years telling them to sit down and
shut up. Science and the humanities Science grows and beauty dwindles. Whoever wins to a great scientific truth will find a poet before him
in the quest. You explain nothing, O poet, but thanks to you all things become explicable.
There is grandeur in this view of life… I hate quotations. Tell me what you know. Science and religion The 'conflict' between the fundamental realities of Religion and the
established facts of Science, is seen to be unreal as soon as Religion
and Science each recognises the true borders of its dominion. Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.
Let us seek to fathom those things that are fathomable and reserve those
things which are unfathomable for reverence in quietude. I see no good reason why the views given in this volume should shock
the religious feelings of anyone. The humble knowledge of thyself is a surer way to God than the deepest
search after science. Scientific rationalism is the crowning glory of the human spirit. …tis a dangerous thing to ingage the authority of Scripture in
disputes about the Natural World, in opposition to Reason; lest Time,
which brings all things to light, should discover that to be evidently
false which we had made Scripture to assert. iv.26 ...it is not to be taken in the sense of our day, which we reckon
by But, beloved, do not forget this one thing, that with the Lord one day
is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us
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