Quotes About Humboldt

I came to Berlin not to visit its museums and galleries, its operas, its theaters... but for the sake of seeing and speaking with the world's greatest living man - Alexander von Humboldt.

Baron Humboldt asked Jefferson, 'Why are these libels allowed? Why is not this libelous journal suppressed, or its editor at least, fined and imprisoned?' The question gave Jefferson a perfect opening. 'Put that paper in your pocket, Baron, and should you hear the reality of our liberty, the freedom of our press, questioned, show this paper, and tell where you found it.

Baron Humboldt asked Jefferson, Why are these libels allowed? Why is not this libelous journal suppressed, or its editor at least, fined and imprisoned? The question gave Jefferson a perfect opening. Put that paper in your pocket, Baron, and should you hear the reality of our liberty, the freedom of our press, questioned, show this paper, and tell where you found it.

Progetti, sbuffò Gauss. Chiacchiere, piani, intrighi. Tiritere con dieci prìncipi e cento accademie prima di poter appoggiare un barometro da qualche parte. Quella non era scienza. Ah, esclamò Humboldt, e cos'era allora la scienza? Gauss tirò dalla pipa. Un uomo da solo seduto alla sua scrivania. Un foglio di carta, tutt'al più un cannocchiale davanti alla finestra con un cielo terso. E quest'uomo che non si arrende fino a quando non capisce. Forse quella era scienza.

Writing a novel, said Humboldt, seemed to him the perfect way to capture the most fleeting essence of the present for the future.

A zoologist at Humboldt State, Michael A. Camann, climbed in the Atlas Grove and took samples of the fern mats and discovered that they are also sprinkled with tiny aquatic creatures, crustaceans of an unnamed species of copepod. Copepods are oval-shaped, shrimp-like creatures, barely visible to the naked eye, that are sometimes called the insects of the ocean.

In the early nineteenth century Wilhelm von Humboldt – one of the chief architects of the modern education system – said that the aim of existence is 'a distillation of the widest possible experience of life into wisdom'. He also wrote that 'there is only one summit in life – to have taken the measure in feeling of everything human'.

This man [Alexander von Humboldt] is as knowledgeable as a whole academy.

Tortoises can survive for weeks without food or water, easily long enough to float in the Humboldt Current from South America to the Galapagos Islands.

to German culture, and the path of this cultural assimilation was Bildung, the ideal of education and self-improvement set by Humboldt in the age of Aufklärung.55 In the United States, German Jews had discovered a multi-ethnic and multicultural nation in which being American meant adhering to the Constitution.

Humboldt believed it is only with our feelings, our senses, and our imaginations—that is, with the faculties of human subjectivity—that we can ever penetrate nature's secrets. "Nature everywhere speaks to man in a voice" that is "familiar to his soul.

A]ccording to Hell's Best Friend, by Jan Holden, if you were unfortunate enough to order a Manhattan at the Humboldt in Grays Harbor, Washington, the owner, Fred Hewett (who apparently didn't much care for anyone who drank cocktails), would pour a mixture of whiskey, gin, rum, brandy, aquavit, and bitters into a beer mug, top it up with beer, and stir it with his finger before handing it to you.

When we ... devote ourselves to the strict and unsparing performance of duty, then happiness comes of itself.

Walled off from wet air by both the Andes and the Humboldt Current, the Peruvian littoral is astonishingly dry: the average annual precipitation is about two inches. The Atacama Desert, just south of Peru on the Chilean shore, is the driest place on earth—in some places rain has literally never been recorded

During the first half of the present century we had an Alexander von Humboldt , who was able to scan the scientific knowledge of his time in its details, and to bring it within one vast generalization. At the present juncture, it is obviously very doubtful whether this task could be accomplished in a similar way, even by a mind with gifts so peculiarly suited for the purpose as Humboldt 's was, and if all his time and work were devoted to the purpose.