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Within the short span of a human life and with man's limited powers of memory, any stock of knowledge worthy of the name is unattainable except by the greatest mental economy. Science itself, therefore, may be regarded as a minimal problem, consisting of the completest possible presentment of facts with the least possible expenditure of thought.

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More quotes by Ernst Mach

The acquisition of the most elementary truth does not devolve upon the individual alone: it is pre-effected in the development of the race.

The aim of research is the discovery of the equations which subsist between the elements of phenomena.

Popular Scientific Lectures (1910)

Mathematical and physiological researches have shown that the space of experience is simply an actual case of many conceivable cases, about whose peculiar properties experience alone can instruct us.

Popular Scientific Lectures (1910)

All this, the positive and physical essence of mechanics, which makes its chief and highest interest for a student of nature, is in existing treatises completely buried and concealed beneath a mass of technical considerations.

The Science of Mechanics (1893)

The history of the development of mechanics is quite indispensable to a full comprehension of the science in its present condition. It also affords a simple and instructive example of the processes by which natural science generally is developed.

The Science of Mechanics: A Critical and Historical Account of Its Development (1893)

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The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents.

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All religions, arts and sciences are branches of the same tree. All these aspirations are directed toward ennobling man's life, lifting it from the sphere of mere physical existence and leading the individual towards freedom.

Albert Einstein Moral Decay (1937)

Science and religion are two human enterprises sharing many features.

Freeman Dyson Infinite in All Directions (1988)

To doubt everything or to believe everything are two equally convenient solutions; both dispense with the necessity of reflection.

Henri Poincaré Science and Hypothesis (1901)

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Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Ernst Mach (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.