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Latitude Quote by Dava Sobel

“The zero-degree parallel of latitude is fixed by the laws of nature, while the zero-degree meridian of longitude shifts like the sands of time.” quote by Dava Sobel — Download Open image

““The zero-degree parallel of latitude is fixed by the laws of nature, while the zero-degree meridian of longitude shifts like the sands of time.””

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More by Dava Sobel

“[John] Harrison [could not] express himself clearly in writing… No matter how brilliantly ideas formed in his mind, or crystallized in his clockworks, his…

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“With his marine clocks, John Harrison tested the waters of space-time. He succeeded, against all odds, in using the fourth—temporal—dimension to link points on…

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Earlier maps had underestimated the distances to other continents and exaggerated the outlines of individual nations. Now global dimensions could be set, with authority, by the celestial spheres. Indeed, King Louis XIV of France, confronted with a revised map of his domain based on accurate longitude measurements, reportedly complained that he was losing more territory to his astronomers than to…

“He wrested the world's whereabouts from the stars, and locked the secret in a pocket watch.”

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“Any clock that can track this sideral schedule proves itself as perfect as God's magnificent clockwork. Dava Sobel”

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“the beaches. In literally hundreds of instances, a vessel’s ignorance of her longitude led swiftly to her destruction. Launched on a mix of bravery and greed, the sea captains of the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries relied on “dead reckoning” to gauge their distance east or west of home port. The captain would throw a log overboard and observe how…

“Time is to clock as mind is to brain. The clock or watch somehow contains the time. And yet time refuses to be bottled up like a genie stuffed in a lamp. Whether it flows as sand or turns on wheels within wheels, time escapes irretrievably, while we watch. Even when the bulbs of the hourglass shatter, when darkness withholds…

“And by this experience his knowledge was reduced to diffidence, so that when asked how sounds were created he used to answer tolerantly that…

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And since time sets its own tempo, like a heartbeat or an ebb tide, timepieces don't really keep time. They just keep up with…

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“As earnestly as men may seek to understand the workings of the universe, they must remember that God is not hampered by their limited…

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“There was only one trial of Galileo, and yet it seems there were a thousand—the suppression of science by religion, the defense of individualism…

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“To have done work which is widely recognized, to have gained the sincere esteem of many and the real love of even a few,…

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Explore all 18 Dava Sobel quotes

More Latitude quotes

Below the 40th latitude there is no law; below the 50th no god; below the 60th no common sense and below the 70th no…

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Women, are a map, Avik. You've got to understand their longitude, and how much latitude you can take.

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While the principles of our Constitution give just latitude to inquiry, every citizen faithful to it will deem embodied expressions of discontent and open…

Thomas Jefferson

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The Earth's population will be culled from today's 6.6 billion to as few as 500 million, with most of the survivors living in the far latitudes - Canada, Iceland, Scandinavia, the Arctic Basin.

A bad guy in a movie has a lot of latitude for acting. He can walk up the wall, crawl across the ceiling, go…

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In 1491 the Inka ruled the greatest empire on earth. Bigger than Ming Dynasty China, bigger than Ivan the Great’s expanding Russia, bigger than Songhay in the Sahel or powerful Great Zimbabwe in the West Africa tablelands, bigger than the cresting Ottoman Empire, bigger than the Triple Alliance (as the Aztec empire is more precisely known), bigger by far than…

Charles C. Mann

Handsome widows, after a twelve-month, enjoy a latitude and longitude without limit.

Honore de Balzac

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Cable had a latitude to move which created less censorship and bestowed upon the artists, the writers and the creators, more liberty to create…

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This is a perverse thing, personally, but I would rather be in the cycle where people are underestimating us. It gives us latitude to…

Mark Zuckerberg

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The word 'pure' has never revealed an intelligent meaning to me. I can only use the word to quench an optical thirst for purity…

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Procedure is the bone structure of a democratic society. Our scheme of law affords great latitude for dissent and opposition. It compels wide tolerance…

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Scientists say every action initiates an equal and opposite reaction. I say that's just the start. I say every action initiates a most unequal and upredictable chain reaction, that every filament of living becomes part of a larger weave, while remaining identifiable. That every line of latitude requires several stripes of longitude to obtain meaning. That every universe is part…

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