- Science without conscience is the death of the soul.
- Everything comes in time to those who can wait.
- If we begin with certainties, we shall end in doubts; but if we begin with doubts, and are patient in them, we shall end in certainties.
- Science is but an image of the truth.
- Age appears best in four things: old wood to burn, old wine to drink, old friends to trust, and old authors to read.
- Imagination was given man to compensate for what he is not, and a sense of humor to console him for what he is.
- Truth arises more readily from error than from confusion.
- Skepticism is the first step on the road to philosophy
- Most of the fundamental ideas of science are essentially simple, and may, as a rule, be expressed in a language comprehensible to everyone.
- The greatest happiness of the greatest number is the foundation of morals and legislation.
- A life is worth nothing but nothing's worth a life.
John Stuart Mill
- No great improvements in the lot of mankind are possible until a great change takes place in the fundamental constitution of their modes of thought.
- If it can go wrong, it will.
- The best way to have a good idea is to have lots of ideas.
- All good intellects have repeated, since Bacon's time, that there can be no real knowledge but that which is based on observed facts. This is incontestable, in our present advanced stage; but, if we look back to the primitive stage of human knowledge, we shall see that it must have been otherwise then. If it is true that every theory must be based upon observed facts, it is equally true that facts cannot be observed without the guidance of some theory. Without such guidance, our facts would be desultory and fruitless; we could not retain them: for the most part we could not even perceive them.
- Science no longer is in the position of observer of nature, but rather recognizes itself as part of the interplay between man and nature. The scientific method ... changes and transforms its object: the procedure can no longer keep its distance from the object.