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The chief requisite for the making of a good chicken pie is chicken; no amount of culinary legerdemain can make up for the lack of chicken. In the same way, the chief requisite for the history of science is intimate scientific knowledge; no amount of philosophic legerdemain can make up for its absence.

— George Sarton

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Wikiquote does not flag this quote as disputed or misattributed.

Source: "The Teaching of the History of Science" Sci. Monthly 7, 193-211 (1918).
Source quality: Source identified Names the work or year, but without an exact location.

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Erudition without pedantry is as a rare as wisdom itself.

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The whole iconography of ancient science is simply the fruit of wishful thinking.

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The whole past and the whole world are alive in my heart, and I shall do my part to communicate their presence to my readers.

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The scientific books written in Arabic during the Middle Ages were, for a few centuries, the main vehicle of the living science.

My gratitude to them [my first teachers] grows as I myself grow older.

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Some forty years of experience in my field as a scholar and as a teacher have given me great confidence mixed with greater humility.

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A deed happens in a definite place at a definite time, but if it be sufficiently great and pregnant, its virtue radiates everywhere in time and space.

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The general acceptance of simple ideas is difficult and rare, and yet it is only when simple, fundamental, ideas have been accepted that further progress becomes possible on a higher level.

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There are two kinds of people in the world, whom we might dub the jobholders and the enthusiasts.

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History has often proved the shortsightedness of the practical men and vindicated the "lazy" dreamers; it has also proved that the dreamers are often mistaken.

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The history of science should be the leading thread in the history of civilization.

From the humanistic point of view every human achievement is unforgettable and immortal in its essence, even if it is replaced by a "better" one.

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I am obliged to deal with hundreds of men and to make them live without killing the reader.

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