Science and Reason

There is only a perspective seeing, only a perspective "knowing"; and the more affects we allow to speak about one thing, the more eyes, different eyes, we can use to observe one thing, the more complete will our "concept" of this thing, our "objectivity," be.

It is not the victory of science that distinguishes our nineteenth century, but the victory of scientific method over science.

All truly great thoughts are conceived while walking.

None of the people have any real interest in a science, who only begin to be enthusiastic about it when they themselves have made discoveries in it.

In some remote corner of the universe, poured out and glittering among innumerable solar systems, there once was a star on which clever animals invented knowledge.

We don’t know a millionth of one percent about anything.

We ought never to allow ourselves to be persuaded of the truth of anything unless on the evidence of our own reason.

I seem to have been like a child playing on the sea shore, finding now and then a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay undiscovered before me.

The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science.

In faith there is enough light for those who want to believe and enough shadows to blind those who don’t.

Science is not only compatible with spirituality; it is a profound source of spirituality.

It is not the business of science to inherit the earth, but to inherit the moral imagination; because without that, man and beliefs and science will perish together.

A public-opinion poll is no substitute for thought.

Even when the experts all agree, they may well be mistaken.

The reason is that they utter these words of theirs not by virtue of a skill, but by a divine power - otherwise, if they knew how to speak well on one topic thanks to a skill, they would know how to speak about every other topic too.

The philosopher whose dealings are with divine order himself acquires the characteristics of order and divinity.

No intelligent man will ever be so bold as to put into language those things which his reason has contemplated.

Men say that we ought not to enquire into the supreme God and the nature of the universe, nor busy ourselves in searching out the causes of things, and that such enquiries are impious; whereas the very opposite is the truth.

Is there any self-existent fire? and do all those things which we call self-existent exist? or are only those things which we see, or in some way perceive through the bodily organs, truly existent, and nothing whatever besides them? And is all that which we call an intelligible essence nothing at all, and only a name?

I prefer nothing, unless it is true.

I must distinguish between that which always is and never becomes and which is apprehended by reason and reflection, and that which always becomes and never is and is conceived by opinion with the help of sense.

Prejudice, a dirty word, and faith, a clean one, have something in common: they both begin where reason ends.

No prejudice has even been able to prove its case in the court of reason.

One defeats the fanatic precisely by not being a fanatic oneself, but on the contrary by using one’s intelligence.