Dava Sobel Quotes

Earlier maps had underestimated the distances to other continents and exaggerated the outlines of individual nations. Now global dimensions could be set, with authority, by the celestial spheres. Indeed, King Louis XIV of France, confronted with a revised map of his domain based on accurate longitude measurements, reportedly complained that he was losing more territory to his astronomers than to his enemies.

Dava Sobel

• Distance
• Individual
• Authority
• Losing
• Enemies

• Previous
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Quotes to Explore

• I'm an Oscar nominee. I love saying that. Whatever happens, I'm going to sing that 'I'm an Oscar nominee' part.

  

  Octavia Spencer
  • Love
  • Happens
  • Saying

• Chefs think about what it's like to make food. Being a scientist in the kitchen is about asking why something works, and how it works.

  

  Nathan Myhrvold
  • Why
  • Think
  • Food

• The Queen's wedding dress in 1947, there was some embroidery on the train which was definitely there to illustrate new dawn/post-war optimism, that sort of thing.

  

  Kate Reardon
  • War
  • Wedding
  • Queen

• Heartless zealotry, whether from the religious right or from the teachers' union on the left, is always troubling.

  

  Brown Campbell
  • Always
  • Religious
  • Teachers

• I really loved animals when I was little - my friend and I had an imaginary vet's office; we would mime doing surgery on animals. We treated more injuries than illnesses - fixing with a baby bear with a broken leg, removing a tumor. Of course, our surgeries would take about five seconds; that's how good we were.

  

  Hannah Murray
  • Good
  • Friend
  • Baby

• In almost every marriage there is a selfish and an unselfish partner. A pattern is set up and soon becomes inflexible, of one person always making the demands and one person always giving way.

  

  Iris Murdoch
  • Up
  • Giving
  • Marriage

• Nature doesn't need people - people need nature; nature would survive the extinction of the human being and go on just fine, but human culture, human beings, cannot survive without nature.

  

  Harrison Ford
  • People
  • Nature
  • Culture

• I try not to punish the audience by making them listen to too much acoustic guitar.

  

  Kaki King
  • Guitar
  • Listen
  • Too Much

• The most perfect technique is that which is not noticed at all.

  

  Pablo Casals
  • Perfect
  • Most
  • Which

• I've been fortunate to work with some really smart people. Larry Page is an extremely smart guy, most probably one of the smartest people I've worked with.

  

  Ram Shriram
  • People
  • Work
  • Guy

• I wrote for magazines. I wrote adventure stuff, I wrote for the 'National Enquirer,' I wrote advertising copy for cemeteries.

  

  Walter Dean Myers
  • Adventure
  • Advertising
  • Copy

• After all the sacrifice in Afghanistan and Iraq, why do we find ourselves in a more dangerous world?

  

  Rand Paul
  • World
  • Why
  • Find

• There are only two kinds of people who are really fascinating - people who know absolutely everything, and people who know absolutely nothing.

  

  Oscar Wilde
  • People
  • Know
  • Fascinating

• In my view, the fact that computers caught up to humans and completely dominate humans in chess and some other domains already, that says there's evidence that, yes, in principle, they can be better programmers than humans.

  

  Jaan Tallinn
  • Up
  • Better
  • Chess

• He seems to think that posterity is a pack-horse, always ready to be loaded.

  

  Benjamin Disraeli
  • Horse

• I try to write catchy hooks but, at the same time, things that mean something that will provoke thought.

  

  Grace Martine Tandon
  • Time

• I would have loved to have been a footballer like my great uncle Matt Busby, but I knew quite early on that I wasn't going to make the grade. Luckily I was told by the age of 13 that I wasn't good enough. That's not a bad thing. You see this 'X Factor' generation of kids now who don't accept that they're not good enough.

  

  Brendan Coyle
  • Good
  • Great
  • Kids

• No, I've never played baseball in my life.

  

  Jay Hernandez
  • Life
  • Baseball

• I'm not a writer who refuses to talk about a book until I've finished.

  

  Markus Zusak
  • Book

• Prayer breaks all bars, dissolves all chains, opens all prisons, and widens all straits by which God's saints have been held.

  

  Edward McKendree Bounds
  • God
  • Prayer
  • Gods

• Producers don't really have any authority because you are paid by the artist, and if they choose to ignore you, they can. Your power only hangs by the tiniest thread. If you pull it too hard it will snap.

  

  Trevor Charles Horn Art of Noise
  • Artist
  • Authority
  • Producers

• I think there is value in having practising scientists as leaders of research institutions.

  

  Thomas R. Cech
  • Leader
  • Values
  • Research

• Earlier maps had underestimated the distances to other continents and exaggerated the outlines of individual nations. Now global dimensions could be set, with authority, by the celestial spheres. Indeed, King Louis XIV of France, confronted with a revised map of his domain based on accurate longitude measurements, reportedly complained that he was losing more territory to his astronomers than to his enemies.

  

  Dava Sobel
  • Distance
  • Individual
  • Authority