If we estimate dignity by immediate usefulness, agriculture is undoubtedly the first and noblest science.
Interpretation
Agriculture is essential and holds a high value due to its direct impact on human survival and well-being.
In this quote, Samuel Johnson emphasizes the importance of agriculture as a fundamental science that provides immediate benefits to society. He suggests that dignity and value should be measured by the utility of a discipline, and since agriculture is crucial for sustaining life and supporting communities, it deserves recognition as a noble pursuit.
In practice
In a speech about sustainable practices, one could quote Johnson to highlight the importance of agriculture.
To be of no church is dangerous. Religion, of which the rewards are distant, and which is animated only by faith and hope, will glide by degrees out of the mind unless it be invigorated and reimpressed by external ordinances, by stated calls to worship, and the salutary influence of example.
He that reads and grows no wiser seldom suspects his own deficiency, but complains of hard words and obscure sentences, and asks why books are written which cannot be understood.
To let friendship die away by negligence and silence is certainly not wise. It is voluntarily to throw away one of the greatest comforts of the weary pilgrimage.
Fly-fishing may be a very pleasant amusement; but angling or float fishing I can only compare to a stick and a string, with a worm at one end and a fool at the other.
When any anxiety or gloom of the mind takes hold of you, make it a rule not to publish it by complaining; but exert yourselves to hide it, and by endeavoring to hide it you drive it away.
A fishing rod is a stick with a hook at one end and a fool at the other.
And as for other men, who worked in tank-rooms full of steam, and in some of which there were open vats near the level of the floor, their peculiar trouble was that they fell into the vats; and when they were fished out, there was never enough of them left to be worth exhibiting,-sometimes they would be overlooked for days, till all but the bones of them had gone out into the world as Durham's Pure Leaf Lard! This contributed to the passing of the Pure Food Act of 1906.
Economics has never been a science - and it is even less now than a few years ago.
A doctor can save maybe a few hundred lives in a lifetime. A researcher can save the whole world.
Most discoveries even today are a combination of serendipity and of searching.
Spacewalking trumps everything. Viscerally, it is a phenomenal place to be; to be able to glance right and see the world, glance left and see the universe, and realise for a moment that you're holding on to your known existence with one hand. That's the thing.
It is my supposition that the Universe in not only queerer than we imagine, is queerer than we can imagine.
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