“The laws of nature are but the mathematical thoughts of God.” - Euclid, Euclid's Elements
“There is no Royal Road to Geometry.” - Euclid
“What has been affirmed without proof can also be denied without proof.” - Euclid
“Handwriting is a spiritual designing, even though it appears by means of a material instrument.” - Euclid
“1. An 'unit' is that by virtue of which each of the things that exist is called one.
2. A 'number' is a multiple composed of units.” - Euclid, Euclid's Elements
“A straight line is said to have been cut in extreme and mean ratio when, as the whole line is to the greater segment, so is the greater to the lesser.” - Euclid , Euclid's Elements
I am aware that a philosopher's ideas are not subject to the judgment of ordinary persons, because it is his endeavour to seek the truth in all things, to the extent permitted to human reason by God. - Nicolaus Copernicus
Moreover, since the sun remains stationary, whatever appears as a motion of the sun is really due rather to the motion of the earth. - Nicolaus Copernicus
Mathematics is written for mathematicians. - Nicolaus Copernicus
The earth together with its surrounding waters must in fact have such a shape as its shadow reveals, for it eclipses the moon with the arc of a perfect circle. - Nicolaus Copernicus
Those things which I am saying now may be obscure, yet they will be made clearer in their proper place. - Nicolaus Copernicus
For I am not so enamoured of my own opinions that I disregard what others may think of them. - Nicolaus Copernicus
At rest, however, in the middle of everything is the sun. - Nicolaus Copernicus
Finally we shall place the Sun himself at the center of the Universe. - Nicolaus Copernicus
Of all things visible, the highest is the heaven of the fixed stars. - Nicolaus Copernicus
To know that we know what we know, and to know that we do not know what we do not know, that is true knowledge. - Nicolaus Copernicus
“I have never met a man so ignorant that I couldn't learn something from him.” - Galileo Galilei
“I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use.” - Galileo Galilei
“You cannot teach a man anything, you can only help him find it within himself.” - Galileo
“In questions of science, the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual.” - Galileo Galilei
“All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered; the point is to discover them.” - Galileo
“Philosophy [nature] is written in that great book which ever is before our eyes -- I mean the universe -- but we cannot understand it if we do not first learn the language and grasp the symbols in which it is written. The book is written in mathematical language, and the symbols are triangles, circles and other geometrical figures, without whose help it is impossible to comprehend a single word of it; without which one wanders in vain through a dark labyrinth.” - Galileo
“Passion is the genesis of genius.” - Galileo Galilei
“The sun, with all those planets revolving around it and dependent on it, can still ripen a bunch of grapes as if it had nothing else in the universe to do.” - Galileo Galilei
“Sì perché l'autorità dell'opinione di mille nelle scienze non val per una scintilla di ragione di un solo, sì perché le presenti osservazioni spogliano d'autorità i decreti de' passati scrittori, i quali se vedute l'avessero, avrebbono diversamente determinato.
For in the sciences the authority of thousands of opinions is not worth as much as one tiny spark of reason in an individual man. Besides, the modern observations deprive all former writers of any authority, since if they had seen what we see, they would have judged as we judge.” - Galileo Galilei
“It is a beautiful and delightful sight to behold the body of the Moon.” - Galileo Galilei
“Wine is sunlight, held together by water.” - Galileo Galilei
“If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants.” - Isaac Newton
“I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.” - Isaac Newton
“I can calculate the motion of heavenly bodies but not the madness of people.” - Isaac Newton
“Nature is pleased with simplicity. And nature is no dummy” - Isaac Newton
“What we know is a drop, what we don't know is an ocean.” - Isaac Newton
“Tact is the knack of making a point without making an enemy.” - Isaac Newton
“Gravity explains the motions of the planets, but it cannot explain who sets the planets in motion.” - Isaac Newton
“Truth is ever to be found in the simplicity, and not in the multiplicity and confusion of things.” - Isaac Newton
“No great discovery was ever made without a bold guess.” - Isaac Newton
“This most beautiful system of the sun, planets and comets, could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and powerful Being...
This Being governs all things, not as the soul of the world, but as Lord over all; and on account of his dominion he is wont, to be called Lord God παντοκρατωρ or Universal Ruler.” - Isaac Newton
“A man may imagine things that are false, but he can only understand things that are true.” - Sir Isaac Newton
“If I had my life to live over again, I would have made a rule to read some poetry and listen to some music at least once every week.” - Charles Darwin
“A man who dares to waste one hour of time has not discovered the value of life.” - Charles Darwin
“Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science.” - Charles Darwin
“Thus, from the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly follows. There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.” - Charles Darwin
“If the misery of the poor be caused not by the laws of nature, but by our institutions, great is our sin.” - Charles Darwin
“We stopped looking for monsters under our bed when we realized that they were inside us.” - Charles Darwin
“The love for all living creatures is the most noble attribute of man.” - Charles Darwin
“I am not apt to follow blindly the lead of other men” - Charles Darwin
“It is not the strongest of the species that survives,
not the most intelligent that survives.
It is the one that is the most adaptable to change.” - Charles Darwin
“...Whilst on board the Beagle I was quite orthodox, and I remember being heartily laughed at by several of the officers... for quoting the Bible as an unanswerable authority on some point of morality... But I had gradually come by this time, i.e., 1836 to 1839, to see that the Old Testament from its manifestly false history of the world, with the Tower of Babel, the rainbow at sign, &c., &c., and from its attributing to God the feelings of a revengeful tyrant, was no more to be trusted than the sacred books of the Hindoos, or the beliefs of any barbarian.
...By further reflecting that the clearest evidence would be requisite to make any sane man believe in the miracles by which Christianity is supported, (and that the more we know of the fixed laws of nature the more incredible do miracles become), that the men at that time were ignorant and credulous to a degree almost uncomprehensible by us, that the Gospels cannot be proved to have been written simultaneously with the events, that they differ in many important details, far too important, as it seemed to me, to be admitted as the usual inaccuracies of eyewitnesses; by such reflections as these, which I give not as having the least novelty or value, but as they influenced me, I gradually came to disbelieve in Christianity as a divine revelation. The fact that many false religions have spread over large portions of the earth like wild-fire had some weight with me. Beautiful as is the morality of the New Testament, it can be hardly denied that its perfection depends in part on the interpretation which we now put on metaphors and allegories.
But I was very unwilling to give up my belief... Thus disbelief crept over me at a very slow rate, but was at last complete. The rate was so slow that I felt no distress, and have never since doubted even for a single second that my conclusion was correct. I can indeed hardly see how anyone ought to wish Christianity to be true; for if so the plain language of the text seems to show that the men who do not believe, and this would include my Father, Brother and almost all of my friends, will be everlastingly punished.
And this is a damnable doctrine.” - Charles Darwin
“The mystery of the beginning of all things is insoluble by us; and I for one must be content to remain an agnostic.” - Charles Darwin
GREAT QUOTES OF FAMOUS ECONOMISTS GREAT QUOTES OF ADAM SMITH
“The great source of both the misery and disorders of human life, seems to arise from over-rating the difference between one permanent situation and another. Avarice over-rates the difference between poverty and riches: ambition, that between a private and a public station: vain-glory, that between obscurity and extensive reputation. The person under the influence of any of those extravagant passions, is not only miserable in his actual situation, but is often disposed to disturb the peace of society, in order to arrive at that which he so foolishly admires. The slightest observation, however, might satisfy him, that, in all the ordinary situations of human life, a well-disposed mind may be equally calm, equally cheerful, and equally contented. Some of those situations may, no doubt, deserve to be preferred to others: but none of them can deserve to be pursued with that passionate ardour which drives us to violate the rules either of prudence or of justice; or to corrupt the future tranquillity of our minds, either by shame from the remembrance of our own folly, or by remorse from the horror of our own injustice.” - Adam Smith
“Civil government, so far as it is instituted for the security of property, is in reality instituted for the defense of the rich against the poor, or of those who have some property against those who have none at all.” - Adam Smith
“Science is the great antidote to the poison of enthusiasm and superstition.” - Adam Smith
“The first thing you have to know is yourself. A man who knows himself can step outside himself and watch his own reactions like an observer.” - Adam Smith
“It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own self-interest. We address ourselves not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities, but of their advantages” - Adam Smith
“Never complain of that of which it is at all times in your power to rid yourself.” - Adam Smith
“The man whose whole life is spent in performing a few simple operations, of which the effects are perhaps always the same, or very nearly the same, has no occasion to exert his understanding or to exercise his invention in finding out expedients for removing difficulties which never occur. He naturally loses, therefore, the habit of such exertion, and generally becomes as stupid and ignorant as it is possible for a human creature to become. ” - Adam Smith
“Mercy to the guilty is cruelty to the innocent.” - Adam Smith
“No society can surely be flourishing and happy of which by far the greater part of the numbers are poor and miserable.” - Adam Smith
“In regards to the price of commodities, the rise of wages operates as simple interest does, the rise of profit operates like compound interest.
Our merchants and masters complain much of the bad effects of high wages in raising the price and lessening the sale of goods. They say nothing concerning the bad effects of high profits. They are silent with regard to the pernicious effects of their own gains. They complain only of those of other people.” - Adam Smith