Jonathan Swift Quotes About Science

Quotes about: Science

• That the universe was formed by a fortuitous concourse of atoms, I will no more believe than that the accidental jumbling of the alphabet would fall into a most ingenious treatise of philosophy.

  Jonathan Swift

  Philosophy, Believe, Fall

• The greatest Inventions were produced in Times of Ignorance; as the Use of the Compass, Gunpowder, and Printing; and by the dullest Nation, as the Germans.

  Jonathan Swift

  Ignorance, Science, Ignorant

  Jonathan Swift (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Jonathan Swift (Illustrated)”, p.894, Delphi Classics

• He had been eight years upon a project for extracting sunbeams out of cucumbers, which were to be put into vials hermetically sealed, and let out to warm the air in raw, inclement summers.

  Jonathan Swift

  Summer, War, Science

  Gulliver's Travels "A Voyage to Laputa, etc." ch. 5 (1726)

• If the world had but a dozen Arbuthnots in it, I would burn my Travels.

  Jonathan Swift

  Science, Gulliver, World

• Old sciences are unraveled like old stockings, by beginning at the foot.

  Jonathan Swift

  Science, Oxen, Feet

  Jonathan Swift (1765). “The Works of Dr. Jonathan Swift ...: Accurately Revised ... Adorned with Copper-plates; with Some Account of the Author's Life, and Notes Historical and Explanatory”, p.288

• All Pretences of foretelling by Astrology, are Deceits; for this manifest Reason, because the Wise and Learned, who can only judge whether there be any Truth in this Science, do all unanimously agree to laugh at and despise it; and none but the poor ignorant Vulgar give it any Credit.

  Jonathan Swift

  Wise, Science, Astrology

  Jonathan Swift, John Hawkesworth (1766). “The Works of Dr. Jonathan Swift: Accurately Revised in Twelve Volumes, Adorned with Copper-plates, with Some Account of the Author's Life, and Notes Historical and Explanatory”, p.194

• The sciences are found, like Hercules's oxen, by tracing them backward; and old sciences are unravelled like old stockings, by beginning at the foot.

  Jonathan Swift

  Science, Oxen, Feet

  Jonathan Swift (1803). “The Works”, p.388

• This single Stick, which you now behold ingloriously lying in that neglected Corner, I once knew in a flourishing State in a Forest: It was full of Sap, full of Leaves, and full of Boughs: But now, in vain does the busy Art of Man pretend to vie with Nature, by tying that withered Bundle of Twigs to its sapless Trunk: It is at best but the Reverse of what it was; a Tree turned upside down, the Branches on the Earth, and the Root in the Air.

  Jonathan Swift

  Art, Nature, Lying

  Jonathan Swift, Thomas Roscoe (1859). “The works of Jonathan Swift, D.D.: with copious notes and additions and a memoir of the author”, p.551

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