Robert Fortune Quotes

The secret of improved plant breeding, apart from scientific knowledge, is love.

I have to keep up with the scientific literature as part of my job, but increasingly I found myself reading things that weren't really relevant to my academic work, but were relevant to gardening.

That one plant should be sown and another be produced cannot happen; whatever seed is sown, a plant of that kind even comes forth.

You cannot eat apples planted from seeds. They must be grafted, cloned.

Whatever kind of seed is sown in a field, prepared in due season, a plant of that same kind, marked with the peculiar qualities of the seed, springs up in it.

When these suckers had formed roots in the open ground, or kind of nursery where they were planted, they were looked over and the best taken up for potting.

I think I just want to garden - or kill some plants, in my case.

It's my observation that gardeners and gardening for a very long time have had to take a back seat. Architects are very famous; they've got huge projects. What goes on in and around them has been relegated to a very minor role.

One of the least arduous but most productive of gardening jobs, the magic of deadheading never fails to delight me. It was a revelation when the principle was explained to me: that flowers are the attempt by the plant to reproduce itself. So if you cut the heads off before the flower turns into seeds, the plant will continue to flower.

Because I am really interested in gardening, I do really interesting plants, not even always flowers. And because I have grown them, I really know them like friends. I paint everything from exotic orchids to rosehips growing wild in a hedge. They just have to speak to me.

What's not to aspire to about how to grow your own fruit and vegetables and plants, and then being creative?

In any case, if I grow hybrid maize or hybrid pearl mallet or any hybrid, I have to sow fresh seed every year. I cannot keep the seed of the same plant. If I keep the seed of the same plant, yield will be much less and there will be a wide variation in the field, like maturity period, quality and so on.

We should amuse our evening hours of life in cultivating the tender plants, and bringing them to perfection, before they are transplanted to a happier clime.

I must begin, not with hypothesis, but with specific instances, no matter how minute.

Expose every belief to the light of reason, discourse, facts, scientific observations; question everything, be sceptical because this is the only chance at life you will ever get.

Science is nothing but developed perception, interpreted intent, common sense rounded out and minutely articulated.

I love making observations. That one is a classic example.

It is inherent in any definition of science that statements that cannot be checked by observation are not really saying anything or at least they are not science.

The real purpose of the scientific method is to make sure nature hasn’t misled you into thinking you know something you actually don’t know.

We must reason in natural philosophy not from what we hope, or even expect, but from what we perceive.

In the philosophic sense, observation shows and experiment teaches.

Rationalism doesn't require "belief," only observation. The real, measurable world doesn't care what you believe.

In order that the facts obtained by observation and experiment may be capable of being used in furtherance of our exact and solid knowledge, they must be apprehended and analysed according to some Conceptions which, applied for this purpose, give distinct and definite results, such as can be steadily taken hold of and reasoned from.

In the realm of scientific observation, luck is granted only to those who are prepared.

Science is a way of equipping yourself with the tools to interpret what happens in front of you.