A Quote by Clive Thompson

That's the old ecological tale that explains humans' inability to fully appreciate global warming. To wit: if you drop a frog in a pan of hot water, it jumps out. If you drop it in a pan of cold water, then turn the heat up slowly, you can roast it to death.

Clive Thompson

Quote Topics

Appreciate Cold Cold Water Death Drop Ecological Explains Frog Fully Global Global Warming Heat Hot Hot Water Humans Inability Jumps Old Out Pan Roast Slowly Tale Then Turn Up Warming Water Wit

Quote Author

Clive Thompson
Canadian - Journalist
Born: 1968

And that dismal cry rose slowly And sank slowly through the air, Full of spirit's melancholy And eternity's despair; And they heard the words it said,- "Pan is dead! great Pan is dead! Pan, Pan is dead!"

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

If you throw a frog in a pot of boiling water, it will hop right out. But if you put that frog in a pot of tepid water and slowly warm it, the frog doesn't figure out what going on until it's too late. Boiled frog. It's just a metter of working by slow degrees.

Stephenie Meyer

One of the big questions in the climate change debate: Are humans any smarter than frogs in a pot? If you put a frog in a pot and slowly turn up the heat, it won't jump out. Instead, it will enjoy the nice warm bath until it is cooked to death. We humans seem to be doing pretty much the same thing.

Jeff Goodell

Into this pour the purified juice: and put it into a pan of water come almost to a boil and continue nearly in the state of boiling until the juice is found to be the consistency of a thick syrup when cold. It is then when cold, to be corked up in a bottle for use.

James Lind

Realization doesn't destroy the individual any more than the reflection of the moon breaks a drop of water. A drop of water can reflect the whole sky.

Dogen

If you throw a frog in boiling water, he'll just hop out. But if you put him in warm water and slowly amp up the temperature, he won't notice and end up boiled.

Tim Sweeney

When a drop of water touches a drop of water there is no holding back - it joins. Water responds to water. Your being responds to what is the same, outside of you, as your own being.

John de Ruiter

It may seem rash indeed to draw conclusions valid for the whole universe from what we can see from the small corner to which we are confined. Who knows that the whole visible universe is not like a drop of water at the surface of the earth? Inhabitants of that drop of water, as small relative to it as we are relative to the Milky Way, could not possibly imagine that beside the drop of water there might be a piece of iron or a living tissue, in which the properties of matter are entirely different.

Emile Borel

The old pond, ah! A frog jumps in: The water's sound.

Matsuo Basho

The water hollows out the stone, not by force but drop by drop.

Lucretius

Don't believe that jazz about there's nothing you can do, "turn on and drop out, man" - because you've got to turn on and drop in, or they're going to drop all over you.

John Lennon

(On the temperature of water in wells) The reason why the water in wells becomes colder in summer is that the earth is then rarefied by the heat, and releases into the air all the heat-particles it happens to have. So, the more the earth is drained of heat, the colder becomes the moisture that is concealed in the ground. On the other hand, when all the earth condenses and contracts and congeals with the cold, then, of course, as it contracts, it squeezes out into the wells whatever heat it holds.

Lucretius

A drop of water is not immortal; it can be resolved into oxygen and hydrogen. If, therefore, a drop of water were to maintain that it had a quality of aqueousness which would survive its dissolution we should be inclined to be skeptical. In like manner we know that the brain is not immortal.

Bertrand Russell

No electricity, no hot water, no heat - at times, we struggled. We'd wake up in the morning and wash with water we heated on a hot plate. And we'd go to bed at night wearing skull caps, sweat shirts, and gloves.

Jalen Rose

I like less the story that a frog if put in cold water will not bestir itself if that water is heated up slowly and gradually and will in the end let itself be killed, boiled alive, too comfortable with continuity to realize that continuous change at some point may become intolerable and demand a change in behaviour.