48 quotes
The only remedy, if one be possible at all, is to alter the relative fertility of the good and the bad stocks in the community.
There is no short cut to truth, no way to gain a knowledge of the universe except through the gateway of scientific method.
The Grammar of Science (1900)
Order and reason, beauty and benevolence, are characteristics and conceptions which we find solely associated with the mind of man.
The first demand of the state upon the individual is not for self-sacrifice but for self-development.
The Grammar of Science (1900)
All great scientists have, in a certain sense, been great artists; the man with no imagination may collect facts, but he cannot make great discoveries.
The Grammar of Science (1900)
The ignorance of science means the enforced ignorance of mankind.
The Grammar of Science (1900)
Our aesthetic judgment demands harmony between the representation, and the represented and in this sense science is often more artistic than modern art.
The Grammar of Science (1900)
The universe grows ever larger as we learn to understand more of our own corner of it.
The Grammar of Science (1900)
Step by step [aesthetic] judgment, restless under the growth of positive knowledge, has discarded creed after creed and philosophic system after philosophic system.
The Grammar of Science (1900)
Clifford held on the categories of matter and force as clear and original ideas as on all subjects of which he has treated; only, alas! they have not been preserved.
The Common Sense of the Exact Sciences (1885)
Facts and their classification have been accumulating at such a rate that nobody seems to have leisure to recognise the relations of sub-groups to the whole.
The Grammar of Science (1900)
The holding of a myth explanation of any problem whereon mankind has attained true knowledge is what I term enslaved thought or dogmatism.
The Ethic of Freethought (1883)
Our conception of chance is one of law and order in large numbers; it is not that idea of chaotic incidence which vexed the mediaeval mind.
The Chances of Death (1895)
Science can only answer to the great majority of "metaphysical" problems "I am ignorant." Meanwhile, it is idle to be impatient or to indulge in system-making.
The Grammar of Science (1900)
The single statement, the brief formula, the few words of which replace in our minds a wide range of relationships between isolated phenomena, is what we term a scientific law.
The Grammar of Science (1900)
Who can give us the assurance that the fields already occupied by science are alone those in which knowledge is possible? Who, in the words of Galilei, is willing to set limits to the human intellect?
The Grammar of Science (1900)
Yet this great structure... possesses a symmetry and unity... in scientific method.
The Grammar of Science (1900)
[T]he laws of science are products of the human mind rather than factors of the external world.
The Grammar of Science (1900)
For the present the Grammar may yet be of service. After an eight years' life and... 4000 copies, it reappears in a revised and enlarged form.
The Grammar of Science (1900)
The universe is a variable quantity, which depends upon the keenness and structure of our organs of sense, and upon the fineness of our powers and instruments of observation.
The Grammar of Science (1900)