Skip to content

We then better understand the weakness of man, and the power of the Supreme: we are struck with the inflexible constancy of the laws which regulate the march of worlds, and which preside over the succession of human generations.

— Adolphe Quetelet

Another quote →

Source and credibility

Wikiquote does not flag this quote as disputed or misattributed.

Source: Adolphe Quételet. 1981. Letters addressed to H.R.H. the Grand Duke of Saxe Coburg and Gotha, on the theory of probability. Arno Press, p. 132
Source quality: Precise citation Points to a specific work with a page, chapter, date or similar locator, so you can look it up.

More by Adolphe Quetelet

Ought charges of materialism to be brought against him who points out that regularity?

A Treatise on Man and the Development of His Faculties (1842)

And yet who dreams this day of raising his voice against the study?

A Treatise on Man and the Development of His Faculties (1842)

Timorous persons have raised the cry of fatalism.

A Treatise on Man and the Development of His Faculties (1842)

In every instance, it is not my method that is defective; proper observations alone fail me.

A Treatise on Man and the Development of His Faculties (1842)

My aim has been, not only to go once more through the task of Albert Durer, but to execute it also on an extended scale.

A Treatise on Man and the Development of His Faculties (1842)

I am less desirous to explain phenomena than to establish their existence.

A Treatise on Man and the Development of His Faculties (1842)

I have been surprised to find how little variety of opinion exists, in different places, regarding what they concurred in terming the beautiful.

A Treatise on Man and the Development of His Faculties (1842)

This great body (the social body) subsists by virtue of conservative principles, as does everything which has proceeded from the hands of the Almighty...

All Adolphe Quetelet quotes →

More quotes by Adolphe Quetelet

The time is come for studying the moral anatomy of man also, and for uncovering its most afflicting aspects, with the view of providing remedies.

A Treatise on Man and the Development of His Faculties (1842)

It is a remarkable fact in the history of science, that the more extended human knowledge has become, the more limited human power, in that respect, has constantly appeared.

A Treatise on Man and the Development of His Faculties (1842)

Society prepares the crime, and the guilty are only the instruments by which it is executed.

A Treatise on Man and the Development of His Faculties (1842)

But is the anatomy of man not a more painful science still?

A Treatise on Man and the Development of His Faculties (1842)

We must conceive the same distinctions in the moral world.

A Treatise on Man and the Development of His Faculties (1842)

All Adolphe Quetelet quotes →

Attribution

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