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Let us award a just, a brilliant homage to those rare men whom nature has endowed with the precious privilege of arranging a thousand isolated facts, of making seductive theories spring from them; but let us not forget to state, that the scythe of the reaper had cut the stalks before one had thought of uniting them into sheaves!

— François Arago Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men (1859)

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More quotes by François Arago

Such is the privilege of genius; it perceives, it seizes relations where vulgar eyes see only isolated facts.

Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men (1859)

On certain occasions, the eyes of the mind can supply the want of the most powerful telescopes, and lead to astronomical discoveries of the highest importance.

Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men (1859)

The calculus of probabilities, when confined within just limits, ought to interest, in an equal degree, the mathematician, the experimentalist, and the statesman.

Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men (1859)

I was often humiliated to see men disputing for a piece of bread, just as animals might have done.

Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men (1859)

In the experimental sciences, the epochs of the most brilliant progress are almost always separated by long intervals of almost absolute repose.

Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men (1859)

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