Top 39 Smithsonian Quotes & Sayings

The Smithsonian should box and preserve Tim McGraw's Nashville den for a future exhibit entitled 'Early 21st Century American Man Cave.'

The Smithsonian Institute is one of the most popular agencies of government in the United States.

If I had been at a University I don't think I would have been able to have the experience I had in my Smithsonian work. I don't think I have been as successful.

The first job I had with the Smithsonian was as a field researcher among African American communities in Southwest Louisiana and Arkansas for the festival.

There are seductions that should be in the Smithsonian Institute, right next to The Spirit of St. Louis.

As a regent, I hope to bring that important perspective of a typical family visitor in combination with my background as a Member of Congress and a proponent of the Smithsonian's efforts to reach all Americans.

By analyzing data from Greenwich Observatory in the period 1836-1953, John A. Eddy [Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and High Altitude Observatory in Boulder] and Aram A. Boornazian [mathematician with S. Ross and Co. in Boston] have found evidence that the sun has been contracting about 0.1% per century during that time, corresponding to a shrinkage rate of about 5 feet per hour. And digging deep into historical records, Eddy has found 400-year-old eclipse observations that are consistent with such a shrinkage.

I love the Smithsonian. I'm a real dork for that kind of stuff.

The mind is a vagrant thing ... Thinking is not analogous to a person working in a laboratory who invents something on company time. Answering criticism that the book for which he won a Pulitzer Prize was written in the years he had been employed at the Smithsonian. He specified that did not write on the premises there, but only at home outside of working hours.

One of the things that I first remember wanting to be was a 'geolisty' - that was the best I could say when I was a kid. That was right after I stopped wanting to be a fireman or a truck driver. Because my dad is a paleontologist who worked with the Smithsonian, I got to see the bones up close and the exhibits behind the scenes there.

The Smithsonian museums are among this country's most endearing treasures and I look forward to helping maintain and enhance their coveted works of art.

After Gibbs, one the most distinguished [American scientists] was Langley, of the Smithsonian. ... He had the physicist's heinous fault of professing to know nothing between flashes of intense perception. ... Rigidly denying himself the amusement of philosophy, which consists chiefly in suggesting unintelligible answers to insoluble problems, and liked to wander past them in a courteous temper, even bowing to them distantly as though recognizing their existence, while doubting their respectibility.

I've got a portrait in the Smithsonian. Who ever thought that would happen?

I was at the Smithsonian for twenty years, and I'm still at the Smithsonian as a curator emeritus, and I still plan to figure out what that means for me at this point in my life

When I moved to America, I knew I wanted to be a designer. I never imagined one of my dresses would end up in the Smithsonian.

When I had a fellowship at the Smithsonian, I asked for a couch in the office because I liked to lie down and take a break.

The Smithsonian Festival of American Folklife, actually, was an effort to put something on the mall in Washington so American tourists could walk through America, and in their minds everything on the mall would be American

Ask any guy if sex is important in a relationship and the one who says no is lying. I just haven't met that guy yet. When you meet him, let's get him in to the Smithsonian - he's that special and rare.

I was at the Smithsonian for twenty years, and I'm still at the Smithsonian as a curator emeritus, and I still plan to figure out what that means for me at this point in my life.

The turntable is now an instrument at the Smithsonian.

Sometimes when I'm swimming, I think that maybe someday I'll put my red Speedo up for auction. Or maybe I'll donate it to the Smithsonian. They can stuff it with two plums and a gherkin and put it on display.

The Mothership is in the Smithsonian now. That's probably one of the biggest displays there.

We show people that anybody can paint a picture that they're proud of. It may never hang in the Smithsonian, but it will certainly be something that they'll hang in their home and be proud of. And that's what it's all about.

I wouldn't be surprised if some day, they put the Simpsons in the Smithsonian. It's become part of our culture, those characters.

If I had to pick three of my favorite magazines, they would be 'Fast Company', 'Silicon India', and 'Smithsonian.'

The dresses I wore are in the Smithsonian now.

It has taken biologists some 230 years to identify and describe three quarters of a million insects; if there are indeed at least thirty million, as Erwin (Terry Erwin, the Smithsonian Institute) estimates, then, working as they have in the past, insect taxonomists have ten thousand years of employment ahead of them. Ghilean Prance, director of the Botanical Gardens in Kew, estimates that a complete list of plants in the Americas would occupy taxonomists for four centuries, again working at historical rates.

When was the last time you bought an American-made radio or television? If you're Gen X or younger, the answer is 'never.' Does the label on that shirt or skirt you're wearing say 'Made in the U.S.A.'? If so, you probably got it at Goodwill, or maybe at a Smithsonian garage sale.

Imagine foreign troops sitting idly, laughing as hooligans trashed the Smithsonian, stole the gold from Fort Knox and burned down the Department of the Interior. That was us in Iraq.

Dr. S. Dillon Ripley, secretary of the Smithsonian Institute, believes that in 25 years, somewhere between 75 and 80 percent of all the species of living animals will be extinct.

I have taught history on the high school and college levels, and am or have been a lecturer at the Smithsonian, The National Institutes of Health, and numerous colleges and universities, mostly on science fiction and technology subjects.

I've always wanted to visit [Washington]. The Smithsonian has some fantastic archival material on blues music, which I'm really into. There's a ton of stuff I want to do there. but it just never happened.

If I had been at a University I don't think I would have been able to have the experience I had in my Smithsonian work. I don't think I have been as successful

I listened to birds and crickets, looking for the ways that rhythm appears most naturally in the world. I listened to the Smithsonian's field recordings of pygmy choirs from Africa.

Perhaps the worst example of Smithsonian contempt for Jesus Christ is seen in its 1994 publication of a coffee-table book entitled Smithsonian Time Lines of the Ancient World ... This flagrant display of religious bigotry and discrimination in a book officially sponsored by the Smithsonian is intellectually and academically dishonest.

I started graduate school in 1971, I started working at the Smithsonian in the festival in 1972. I went full-time at the Smithsonian in 1974. And I got my doctorate in 1975.

I read a book every night. I really am that nerd, so when I get to go to the Smithsonian and get to go in the back rooms and play with stuff, things like that, for a guy like me, that's amazing.

Jesus, that ear. He should donate it to The Smithsonian. Brian Wilson, he made all his records with four tracks, but you couldn't make his records if you had a hundred tracks today.

The Smithsonian Festival of American Folklife, actually, was an effort to put something on the mall in Washington so American tourists could walk through America, and in their minds everything on the mall would be American.