Water Quotes from Scientists
Jim Lauria
The last post in my “Water Quotes from…” series was Water Quotes from Funny People. So this time I’d like to post water quotes from people who do serious work, scientists. The definition of a scientist is a person who is studying or has expert knowledge of one or more of the natural or physical sciences. That sounds like serious business to me.
Most of my followers know my deep appreciation for Leonardo da Vinci, especially for his views on water. For me he is the world’s foremost scientist, a genius well before his time. Here is a link to my favorite water quotes from him…
Water Quotes from Leonardo da Vinci
And here are my favorite water quotes from other scientists…
1. “We forget that the water cycle and the life cycle are one." - Jacques Cousteau
2. "If there is magic on this planet, it is contained in water." - Loren Eiseley
3. “Water is life's mater and matrix, mother and medium. There is no life without water." - Albert Szent-Gyorgyi
4. “There's plenty of water in the universe without life, but nowhere is there life without water.” - Sylvia Earle
5. “Water is the most critical resource issue of our lifetime and our children's lifetime. The health of our waters is the principal measure of how we live on the land.” - Luna Leopold
6. “Water should not be judged by its history, but by its quality.” - Lucas van Vuuren, National Institute of Water Research, South Africa“
7. "It is scarcity and plenty that make the vulgar take things to be precious or worthless; they call a diamond very beautiful because it is like pure water, and then would not exchange one for ten barrels of water.” - Galileo
8. “Water is the sine qua non of life and seems to be all over the universe and so it’s reasonable for NASA to use a ‘follow the water’ strategy as a first cut or shorthand in our quest to locate other life in the universe." - Lynn Rothschild
9. “To say that water is essential hardly covers it.” - Richard Wolfenden
10. “Anything else you’re interested in is not going to happen if you can’t breathe the air or drink the water.” - Carl Sagan
11. “Rivers are roads which move, and which carry us whither we desire to go.” - Blaise Pascal
12. "If you could tomorrow morning make water clean in the world, you would have done, in one fell swoop, the best thing you could have done for human health by improving environmental quality." - William C. Clark
13. “Someday, we might look back with nostalgia at the days when profligate homeowners wastefully sprayed their lawns with liquid gold to make grass grow, just so they could burn black gold to cut it down on weekends.” - Michael Webber
14. “One of the challenges is that water efficiency isn’t sexy. People just don’t perceive that we need to use water more wisely…until we run out.” - Betsy Otto
15. “It is essential for ocean life and our own that we transform ourselves from being a species that uses up its resources to one that cherishes and nurtures them.” - Callum Roberts
16. “River water is the urine of the landscape. And we in the hydrologic community look up and down our rivers to see what’s in them in terms of sediments, chemistry, pollution—in other words, to understand what’s really happening to the quality of our water.” - Robert M. Hirsch
17. “The height of the water at any place may be expressed as the sum of a certain number of simple harmonic functions of the time, of which the periods are known, being the periods of certain components of the sun’s and moon’s motions. Any such harmonic term will be called a tidal constituent.” - William Thomson (Lord Kelvin)
18. “Should we slink back inside our reliable equations and brood over the inconsistencies of nature? Never! Instead we must become outdoor wave researchers. It means being wet, salty, cold - and confused.” - Willard Bascom
19. “Much mental and therefore neural activity flows through the brain like ripples on a river, with no lasting effects on its channel. But intense, prolonged, or repeated mental/neural activity— especially if it is conscious— will leave an enduring imprint in neural structure, like a surging current reshaping a riverbed.” - Rick Hanson
And from one of my other favorite scientists in his book Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge...
20. “To summarize the future of resources and climate, the wall toward which humanity is evidently rushing is a shortage not of minerals and energy, but of food and water.” - Edward O. Wilson,
If you have any quotes to add, please post them in the comments section.
Thanks and please check out the other posts from my series “Water Quotes from…”
Water Quotes from Funny People
Water Quotes from Women
Water Quotes from U.S. Presidents
Water Quotes from Famous People
Water Quotes from Movies and Films
Water Quotes from Chinese Teachings
Water Quotes from Song Lyrics
Water Quotes from Around the World
Water Quotes from Leonardo da Vinci