Josiah W Gibbs Quotes & Sayings

Someone gave me A Gift
without it was Given — Petra Hermans

I didn't have time to be anyone's muse ... I was too busy rebelling against my family and learning to be an artist. — Leonora Carrington

This irrelevance of molecular arrangements for macroscopic results has given rise to the tendency to confine physics and chemistry to the study of homogeneous systems as well as homogeneous classes. In statistical mechanics a great deal of labor is in fact spent on showing that homogeneous systems and homogeneous classes are closely related and to a considerable extent interchangeable concepts of theoretical analysis (Gibbs theory). Naturally, this is not an accident. The methods of physics and chemistry are ideally suited for dealing with homogeneous classes with their interchangeable components. But experience shows that the objects of biology are radically inhomogeneous both as systems (structurally) and as classes (generically). Therefore, the method of biology and, consequently, its results will differ widely from the method and results of physical science. — Walter M. Elsasser

Only one man lived who could understand Gibbs's papers. That was Maxwell, and now he is dead. — Muriel Rukeyser

In the last generation, this country produced one of the most eminent men of science in the whole world. His name was quite unknown among us while he lived, and it is still unknown. Yet I may say without too great exaggeration that when I heard it mentioned in a professional assembly in the Netherlands two years ago, everybody got down under the table and touched their foreheads to the floor. His name was Josiah Willard Gibbs. — Albert Jay Nock

Willard Gibbs is the type of the imagination at work in the world. His story is that of an opening up which has had its effect on our lives and our thinking; and, it seems to me, it is the emblem of the naked imagination - which is called abstract and impractical, but whose discoveries can be used by anyone who is interested, in whatever 'field' - an imagination which for me, more than that of any other figure in American thought, any poet, or political, or religious figure, stands for imagination at its essential points. — Muriel Rukeyser

If you were a real professional, you'd build a bridge and get over it. — Jacqueline E. Smith

Unassuming in manner, genial and kindly in his intercourse with his fellow-men, never showing impatience or irritation, devoid of personal ambition of the baser sort or of the slightest desire to exalt himself ... In the minds of those who knew him, the greatness of his intellectual achievements will never overshadow the beauty and dignity of his life.
[H.A. Burnstead's comments on the life of esteemed scientist J. Willard Gibbs] — Henry Andrews Bumstead

His true monument lies not on the shelves of libraries, but in the thoughts of men, and in the history of more than one science.

{Gibbs's obituary for scientist Rudolf Clausius} — Josiah Willard Gibbs

We hate Chicago and Chicago hates us and unfortunately he's on the other team and he's the big gun. — T. J. Oshie

You coming?" he asked her, leaning in through the door. And then he finally really looked at me. He came to a complete halt - not just his body, but his energy. His eyebrows went right up. "Oh," he said. I sort of flicked my hem at him, assuming what I fondly considered an enigmatic look. "This okay?" I asked. "Oh," he said again, stepping inside the house. The screen door hit him when it closed. "Yeah. Yeah, that works." It kind of looked like he was beginning to sweat. — Kristen D. Randle

Finding an old friend is like finding a lost treasure. — Anthony D. Williams