“"A natural scientist, examining a single atom, might well be able to asseverate the structure and history of the entire universe!"
Bah!" muttered Hurtiancz. "By the same token, a sensible man need listen to but a single word in order to recognize the whole for egregious nonsense."”
Dying Earth (1950-1984), Rhialto the Marvellous (1984), "Morreion", Ch. 8
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Jack Vance 213
American mystery and speculative fiction writer 1916–2013Related quotes

“Gather your strength and listen; the whole heart of man is a single outcry.”
The Saviors of God (1923)
Context: Gather your strength and listen; the whole heart of man is a single outcry. Lean against your breast to hear it; someone is struggling and shouting within you.
It is your duty every moment, day and night, in joy or in sorrow, amid all daily necessities, to discern this Cry with vehemence or restraint, according to your nature, with laughter or with weeping, in action or in thought, striving to find out who is imperiled and cries out.
And how we may all be mobilized together to free him.

AronRa vs Ray Comfort (September 17th, 2012), Radio Paul's Radio Rants

Source: The Martyrdom of Man (1872), Chapter II, "Religion", pp. 143-4.

“Scientists are not dependent on the ideas of a single man, but on the combined wisdom of thousands”
As quoted in The Birth of a New Physics (1959) by I. Bernard Cohen
Context: It is not in the nature of things for any one man to make a sudden violent discovery; science goes step by step, and every man depends on the work of his predecessors. When you hear of a sudden unexpected discovery—a bolt from the blue, as it were—you can always be sure that it has grown up by the influence of one man on another, and it is this mutual influence which makes the enormous possibility of scientific advance. Scientists are not dependent on the ideas of a single man, but on the combined wisdom of thousands of men, all thinking of the same problem, and each doing his little bit to add to the great structure of knowledge which is gradually being erected.
p, 125
Essay on Atomism: From Democritus to 1960 (1961)