Science and Reason

The color of the object illuminated partakes of the color of that which illuminates it.

Experiment is the sole interpreter of the artifices of Nature.

Anyone who conducts an argument by appealing to authority is not using his intelligence; he is just using his memory.

The merit of painting lies in the exactness of reproduction. Painting is a science and all sciences are based on mathematics. No human inquiry can be a science unless it pursues its path through m a t h e m a t i c a l e x p o s i t i o n a n d demonstration.

Science is the observation of things possible, whether present or past; prescience is the knowledge of things 50 which may come to pass, though but slowly.

Oh! Speculators on things, boast not of knowing the things that nature ordinarily brings about; but rejoice if you know the end of those things which you yourself device.

Each man is always in the middle of the surface of the earth and under the zenith of his own hemisphere, and over the centre of the earth.

If your only tool is a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail.

Why are the bones of great fishes, and oysters and corals and various other shells and sea-snails, found on the high tops of mountains that border the sea, in the same way in which they are found in the depths of the sea?

I abhor the supreme folly of those who blame the disciples of nature in defiance of those masters who were themselves her pupils.

Medicine to produce health must examine disease; and music, to create harmony must investigate discord.

Wonder is the feeling of the philosopher, and philosophy begins in wonder.

Better to hunt in fields, for health unbought, Than fee the doctor for a nauseous draught. The wise, for cure, on exercise depend; God never made his work for man to mend.

The subtlety of nature is greater many times over than the subtlety of the senses and understanding.

When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth?

It is a capital mistake to theorize before you have all the evidence. It biases the judgement.

Houston, we’ve had a problem.

I am not yet so lost in lexicography as to forget that words are the daughters of earth, and that things are the sons of heaven. Language is only the instrument of science, and words are but the signs of ideas: I wish, however, that the instrument might be less apt to decay, and that signs might be permanent, like the things which they denote.

Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men.

Mathematics may be defined as the subject in which we never know what we are talking about, nor whether what we are saying is true.

The action required to sustain human life is primarily intellectual, everything man needs has to be discovered by his mind and produced by his effort.

Superstition sets the whole world in flames; philosophy quenches them.

I deny nothing, but doubt everything.

Thinking is the endeavor to capture reality by the means of ideas.