Thomas Young Quotes

17 Sourced Quotes

There is no study more difficult than that of physic: it exceeds, as a science, the comprehension of the human mind: and those who blunder onwards, without attempting to understand what they see, are often very nearly on a level with those, who depend too much on imperfect generalisations, applied to facts, which can scarcely be subjected to any well marked analogy. Hence it may happen, that talents and labour may become useless for want of a proper direction... To assist in furnishing the student with a sufficient direction... is the principal object of this work.

Thomas Young
Radiant light consists in Undulations of the Luminiferous Ether.
Proposition IX

Thomas Young
Up to the time of the foundation of the Institute of Physics, the physicists had hardly been recognized as a member of one of the professions.

Thomas Young
It must be observed that fishing with any living bait is to be condemned for the same reason as fishing with a worm: in all such instances we torture two animals at once for our amusement.

Thomas Young
No discovery, however remote in its nature from the subjects of daily observation, can with reason be declared wholly inapplicable to the benefit of mankind.

Thomas Young
In physic, the wisest can do but little, and the ignorant can only do worse than nothing.

Thomas Young
Suppose a number of equal waves of water to move upon the surface of a stagnant lake, with a certain constant velocity, and to enter a narrow channel leading out of the lake. Suppose then another similar cause to have excited another equal series of waves, which arrive at the same time, with the first. Neither series of waves will destroy the other, but their effects will be combined.

Thomas Young
Newton advanced, with one gigantic stride, from the regions of twilight into the noon day of science. A Boyle and a Hooke, who would otherwise have been deservedly the boast of their century, served but as obscure forerunners of Newton's glories.

Thomas Young
It is surprising that so great a mathematician as Dr. Smith could have entertained for a moment, an idea that the vibrations constituting different sounds should be able to cross each other in all directions, without affecting the same individual particles of air by their joint forces: undoubtedly they cross, without disturbing each other's progress; but this can be no otherwise effected than by each particle's partaking of both motions. If this assertion stood in need of any proof, it might be amply furnished by the phenomena of beats, and of the grave harmonics observed...

Thomas Young
When I was a boy, I thought myself a man. Now that I am a man, I find myself a boy.

Thomas Young
Proposition VIII. When two Undulations, from different Origins, coincide either perfectly or very nearly in Direction, their joint effect is a Combination of the Motions belonging to each.

Thomas Young
Bacon first taught the world the true method of the study of nature, and rescued science from that barbarism in which the followers of Aristotle, by a too servile imitation of their master.

Thomas Young
Physic is one of those departments, in which there is frequent necessity for the exercise of an incommunicable faculty of judgment, and a sagacity, which may be called transcendental, as extending beyond the simple combination of all that can be taught by precept. Nor is there any other mode of cultivating these powers, than by pursuing a much more extensive range of elementary study, than appears, to a common and superficial observer, to be in any way connected with the immediate objects of the profession.

Thomas Young
The nature of light is a subject of no material importance to the concerns of life or to the practice of the arts, but it is in many other respects extremely interesting.

Thomas Young
The well known elevation of the pitch of wind instruments, in the course of playing, sometimes amounting to half a note, is not, as is commonly supposed, owing to any expansion of the instrument, for this should produce a contrary effect, but to the increased warmth of the air in the tube.

Thomas Young
It may hereafter be considered how far the excellent experiments of Count Rumford, which tend very greatly to weaken the evidence of the modern doctrine of heat, may be more or less favourable to one or the other system of light and colours.

Thomas Young
I have resolved to confine my studies and my pen to medical subjects only. For the talents which God has not given me, I am not responsible, but those which I possess, I have hitherto cultivated and employed as diligently as my opportunities have allowed me to do ; and I shall continue to apply them with assiduity, and in tranquillity, to that profession which has constantly been the ultimate object of all my labours.

Thomas Young