Science and Reason

There are no such things as applied sciences, only applications of science.

Where observation is concerned, chance favours only the prepared mind.

I don’t know what I may seem to the world, but as to myself, I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the sea-shore and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.

Hypotheses non fingo.

To every action there is always opposed an equal reaction: or, the mutual actions of two bodies upon each other are always equal, and directed to contrary parts.

The alteration of motion is ever proportional to the motive force impressed; and is made in the direction of the right line in which that force is impressed.

Every body continues in its state of rest, or of uniform motion in a right line, unless it is compelled to change that state by forces impressed upon it.

Though all the winds of doctrine were let loose to play upon the earth, so Truth be in the field, we do injuriously by licensing and prohibiting to misdoubt her strength. Let her and Falsehood grapple; who ever knew Truth put to the worse, in a free and open encounter?

Houston, we’ve had a problem.

The Analytical Engine weaves algebraic patterns just as the Jacquard loom weaves flowers and leaves.

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

Do not all charms fly

BOSWELL : Sir, what is poetry?

I refute it thus.

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.

The Christian religion not only was at first attended with miracles, but even at this day cannot be believed by any reasonable person without one.

If we take in our hand any volume; of divinity or school metaphysics, for instance; let us ask, Does it contain any abstract reasoning concerning quantity or number? No. Does it contain any experimental reasoning, concerning matter of fact and existence? No. Commit it then to the flames: for it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion.

Mehr Licht!

All theory, dear friend, is grey, but the golden tree of actual life springs ever green.

Eppur si muove.

Philosophy is written in that great book which ever lies before our eyes—I mean the universe … This book is written in mathematical language and its characters are triangles, circles and other geometrical figures, without whose help … one wanders in vain through a dark labyrinth.

Technology … the knack of so arranging the world that we need not experience it.

The grand aim of all science [is] to cover the greatest number of empirical facts by logical deduction from the smallest possible number of hypotheses or axioms.

The unleashed power of the atom has changed everything save our modes of thinking and we thus drift toward unparalleled catastrophe.