"As soon as man does not take his existence for granted, but beholds it as something unfathomably mysterious, thought begins."
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Science quotes
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Science quotes (page 66 of 352)
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"The aim of science is to seek the simplest explanation of complex facts. We are apt to fall into the error of thinking that the facts are simple because simplicity is the goal of our quest. The guiding motto in the life of every natural philosopher should be ``Seek simplicity and distrust it.''"
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"The true method of discovery is like the flight of an aeroplane. It starts from the ground of particular observation; it makes a flight in the thin air of imaginative generalization; and it again lands for renewed observation rendered acute by rational interpretation."
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"It is the business of the future to be dangerous; and it is among the merits of science that it equips the future for its duties."
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"No man of science wants merely to know. He acquires knowledge to appease his passion for discovery. He does not discover in order to know, he knows in order to discover."
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"Without adventure civilization is in full decay. ... The great fact [is] that in their day the great achievements of the past were the adventures of the past."
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"Who knows, the mind has the key to all things besides."
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"I dislike literary jargon and never use it. Criticism has only one function and that is to help readers read and understand literature. It is not a science, it is an aid to art."
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"The same thing may have all the kinds of causes, e.g. the moving cause of a house is the art or the builder, the final cause is the function it fulfils, the matter is earth and stones, and the form is the definitory formula."
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"The least deviation from truth will be multiplied later."
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"The male has more teeth than the female in mankind, and sheep and goats, and swine. This has not been observed in other animals. Those persons which have the greatest number of teeth are the longest lived; those which have them widely separated, smaller, and more scattered, are generally more short lived."
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"Hippocrates is an excellent geometer but a complete fool in everyday affairs."
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"We, on the other hand, must take for granted that the things that exist by nature are, either all or some of them, in motion."
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"Everything that depends on the action of nature is by nature as good as it can be."
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"Anaximenes and Anaxagoras and Democritus say that its [the earth's] flatness is responsible for it staying still: for it does not cut the air beneath but covers it like a lid, which flat bodies evidently do: for they are hard to move even for the winds, on account of their resistance."
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"In all things which have a plurality of parts, and which are not a total aggregate but a whole of some sort distinct from the parts, there is some cause."
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"...we are all inclined to ... direct our inquiry not by the matter itself, but by the views of our opponents; and, even when interrogating oneself, one pushes the inquiry only to the point at which one can no longer offer any opposition. Hence a good inquirer will be one who is ready in bringing forward the objections proper to the genus, and that he will be when he has gained an understanding of the differences."
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"For any two portions of fire, small or great, will exhibit the same ratio of solid to void; but the upward movement of the greater is quicker than that of the less, just as the downward movement of a mass of gold or lead, or of any other body endowed with weight, is quicker in proportion to its size."
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"Conscientious and careful physicians allocate causes of disease to natural laws, while the ablest scientists go back to medicine for their first principles."
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"Now, the causes being four, it is the business of the student of nature to know about them all, and if he refers his problems back to all of them, he will assign the "why" in the way proper to his science-the matter, the form, the mover, that for the sake of which."
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