“We may need simple and heroic legends for that peculiar genre of literature known as the textbook. But historians must also labor to rescue human beings from their legends in science—if only so that we may understand the process of scientific thought aright.”
"Darwin at Sea—and the Virtues of Port", p. 348
The Flamingo's Smile (1985)
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Stephen Jay Gould274
American evolutionary biologist 1941–2002Related quotes
Richard Matheson book I Am Legend
Source: I Am Legend (1954), Ch. 3
Context: True, he thought, but no one ever got the chance to know it. Oh, they knew it was something, but it couldn’t be that — not that. That was imagination, that was superstition, there was no such thing as that.
And, before science had caught up with the legend, the legend had swallowed science and everything.
Victor Hugo (1802–1885) French poet, novelist, and dramatist
Attributed to Hugo in Old Gods Almost Dead : The 40-year Odyssey of the Rolling Stones (2001), by Stephen Davis, p. 557; but sourced to Illuminations by Arthur Rimbaud in Jaco : The Extraordinary and Tragic Life of Jaco Pastorius (2006) by Bill Milkowski, p. iii
Disputed
Frederick Soddy (1877–1956) chemist and physicist from England
As quoted in Morning of the Magicians (1963) by Louis Pauwels and Jacques Berger, p. 181
Werner Heisenberg (1901–1976) German theoretical physicist
Physics and Philosophy (1958)
Source: Physics and Philosophy: The Revolution in Modern Science
Context: Whenever we proceed from the known into the unknown we may hope to understand, but we may have to learn at the same time a new meaning of the word "understanding."
Marie Curie (1867–1934) French-Polish physicist and chemist
Lecture at Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, New York (14 May 1921)
Max Velmans (1942) British psychologist
Max Velmans (Ed.) (1996). The Science of Consciousness: Psychological, Neuropsychological and Clinical Reviews. Routledge. p. 3
“Legends were not only for the desperate. Legends were for the brave. (Soren)”
Kathryn Lasky (1944) American children's writer
Source: The Capture
John Ronald Reuel Tolkien (1892–1973) British philologist and author, creator of classic fantasy works
Context: Do we walk in legends or on the green earth in the daylight? A man may do both, said Aragorn. For not we but those who come after will make the legends of our time. The green earth, say you? That is a mighty matter of legend, though you tread it under the light of day!