Top John William Draper Quotes - Quotesmemo.com

John William Draper Biography

John William Draper

John William Draper (May 5, 1811 – January 4, 1882) was an English-born American scientist, philosopher, physician, chemist, historian and photographer. He is credited with producing the first clear photograph of a female face (1839–40) and the first detailed photograph of the moon in 1840. He was also the first president of the American Chemical Society (1876–77) and a founder of the New York University School of Medicine. One of Draper's books, the History of the Conflict between Religion and Science, popularised the conflict thesis proposing intrinsic hostility in the relationship between religion and science. It was widely read and was translated into several languages. His son, Henry Draper, and his granddaughter, Antonia Maury, were astronomers, her younger sister, Carlotta Maury, was a paleontologist, and his eldest son, John Christopher Draper, was a chemist.

Read about John William Draper in Wikipedia

Random Authors

John William Draper Quotes

Antiquity was often delighted to cast a halo of mythical glory around its illustrious names. The immortal works of this great philosopher seemed to entitle him to more than mortal honors. A legend into the authenticity of which we will abstain from inquiring, asserted that his mother, Perictione, a pure virgin, suffered an immaculate conception through the influence of Apollo. The god declared to Ariston, to whom she was about to be married, the parentage of the child.

Children, Conception, Mother, Names, Seemed

Over events, we may have some control, but over the law of life's progress none.

Change, Events, Law, Progress

As a better knowledge of Nature was obtained, the sky was shown to be an illusionBut this did not take place without resistance. At first, the public, and particularly its religious portion, denounced the rising doubts as atheism.

Doubt, Illusionbut, Religious, Sky, Take

Every movement in the skies or upon the earth proclaims to us that the universe is under government.

Government, Proclaims, Science, Sky, Under

I have to deplore the systematic manner in which the literature of Europe has continued to put out of sight our obligations to the Muhammadans. Surely they cannot be much longer hidden. Injustice founded on religious rancour and national conceit cannot be perpetuated forever. The Arab has left his intellectual impress on Europe. He has indelibly written it on the heavens as any one may see who reads the names of the stars on a common celestial globe.

Intellectual, Reads, Religious, Sight, Stars, Written

Science has never sought to ally herself with civil power. She has never subjected anyone to mental torment, physical torment, least of all death, for the purpose of promoting her ideas.

Allies, Ideas, Mental, Power, Science, Thinking

The scientific study of Nature tends not only to correct and ennoble the intellectual conceptions of man; it serves also to ameliorate his physical condition.

Ameliorate, Condition, Ennoble, Intellectual, Men, Nature

Experimental investigation, to borrow a phrase employed by Kepler respecting the testing of hypotheses, is "a very great thief of time. " Sometimes it costs many days to determine a fact that can be stated in a line.

Investigation, Kepler, Respecting, Science, Stated, Thieves

Four years after the death of Justinian, A. D. 569, was born at Mecca, in Arabia the man who, of all men exercised the greatest influence upon the human race. . . Mohammed. . .

Greatest, Human, Men, Race, Years

A divine revelation must necessarily be intolerant of contradiction; it must repudiate all improvement in itself, and view with disdain that arising from the progressive intellectual development of man.

Development, Intellectual, Intolerant, Men, Revelation, Views

How is it that the Church produced no geometer in her autocratic reign of twelve hundred years?

Atheism, Church, Geometer, Produced, Years

Time, to the nation as to the individual, is nothing absolute; its duration depends on the rate of thought and feeling.

Duration, Feelings, Individual, Rate, Time

Is it not true that for every person the course of life is along the line of least resistance, and that in this the movement of humanity is like the movement of material bodies?

Humanity, Life, Like, Line, Science

How can the Church be received as a trustworthy guide in the invisible, which falls into so many errors in the visible?

Errors, Fall, Invisible, Received, Religion, Trustworthy

In early life I had felt a strong desire to devote myself to the experimental study of nature; and, happening to see a glass containing some camphor, portions of which had been caused to condense in very beautiful crystals on the illuminated side, I was induced to read everything I could obtain respecting the chemical and mechanical influences of light, adhesion, and capillary attraction.

Beautiful, Illuminated, Nature, Obtain, Respecting, Strong

In England Giordano Bruno had given lectures on the plurality of worlds, and in that country had written, in Italian, his most important works. It added not a little to the exasperation against him, that he was perpetually declaiming against the insincerity, the impostures, of his persecutors - that wherever he went he found skepticism varnished over and concealed by hypocrisy; and that it was not against the belief of men, but against their pretended belief, that he was fighting; that he was struggling with an orthodoxy that had neither morality nor faith.

Added, Country, Fighting, Pretended, Struggle

So great was the preference given to sacred over profane learning that Christianity had been in existence fifteen hundred years, and had not produced a single astronomer.

Astronomer, Atheism, Existence, Fifteen, Produced, Years

The history of Science is not a mere record of isolated discoveries; it is a narrative of the conflict of two contending powers, the expansive force of the human intellect on one side, and the compression arising from traditionary faith and human interests on the other.

Conflict, Discovery, Faith, Human, Record, Science

As to Science, she has never sought to ally herself to civil power. She has never attempted to throw odium or inflict social ruin on any human being. She has never subjected anyone to mental torment, physical torture, least of all to death, for the purpose of upholding or promoting her ideas. She presents herself unstained by cruelties and crimes. But in the Vatican-we have only to recall the Inquisition-the hands that are now raised in appeals to the Most Merciful are crimsoned. They have been steeped in blood!

Blood, Cruelties, Ideas, Odium, Science, Torture