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However well fitted atomic theories may be to reproduce certain groups of facts, the physical inquirer who has laid to heart Newton's rules will only admit those theories as provisional helps. and will strive to attain, in some more natural way, a satisfactory substitute.

— Ernst Mach The Science of Mechanics (1893)

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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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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.