Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes About Science

• In nature we never see anything isolated, but everything in connection with something else which is before it, beside it, under it and over it.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Nature, Science, Connections

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Johann Peter Eckermann (2014). “Conversations of Goethe with Johann Peter Eckermann”, p.162, Ravenio Books

• Daring ideas are like chessmen moved forward; they may be beaten, but they may start a winning game.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Motivational, Courage, Clever

• He who possesses art and science has religion; he who does not possess them, needs religion.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Art, Science, Religion

• Science and art belong to the whole world, and before them vanish the barriers of nationality.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Art, Science, World

  Speech by King Willem-Alexander at the Diplomatic Corps dinner, Royal Palace, Amsterdam, www.royal-house.nl. June 24, 2015.

• Someday someone will write a pathology of experimental physics and bring to light all those swindles which subvert our reason, beguile our judgement and, what is worse, stand in the way of any practical progress. The phenomena must be freed once and for all from their grim torture chamber of empiricism, mechanism, and dogmatism; they must be brought before the jury of man's common sense.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Writing, Science, Men

• We see only what we know.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Science, Belief, Knows

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, John Gage (1980). “Goethe on Art”, p.7, Univ of California Press

• Mathematicians are like Frenchmen: whatever you say to them they translate into their own language and forthwith it is something entirely different.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Funny, Humorous, Math

• I could never have known so well how paltry men are, and how little they care for really high aims, if I had not tested them by my scientific researches. Thus I saw that most men only care for science so far as they get a living by it, and that they worship even error when it affords them a subsistence.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Science, Men, Errors

  Conversations with Goethe 15 October (1825)

• Nothing is more consonant with Nature than that she puts into operation in the smallest detail that which she intends as a whole.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Nature, Science, Details

• The Primal Plant is going be the strangest creature in the world, which Nature herself must envy me. With this model and the key to it, it will be possible to go on for ever inventing plants and know that their existence is logical; that is to say, if they do not actually exist, they could, for they are not the shadowy phantoms of a vain imagination, but possess an inner necessity and truth. The same law will be applicable to all other living organisms.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Science, Law, Keys

• Nature goes her own way, and all that to us seems an exception is really according to order.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Nature, Science, Order

  "Conversations of Goethe with Eckermann and Soret".

• Not art and science only, but patience will be required for the work.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Art, Science, Art And Science

• There is no patriotic art and no patriotic science.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Art, Patriotic, Science

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1963). “Goethe's world view: presented in his reflections and maxims”

• God could cause us considerable embarrassment by revealing all the secrets of nature to us: we should not know what to do for sheer apathy and boredom.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Science, Keeping Secrets, Boredom

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1966). “Conversations and encounters”

• The history of science is science itself; the history of the individual, the individual.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Science, Historical, Individual

• In all times it is only individuals that have advanced science, not the age.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Science, Men, Age

• I had rather be Mercury, the smallest among seven [planets], revolving round the sun, than the first among five [moons] revolving round Saturn.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Science, Moon, Mercury

  "Dictionary of Quotations from Ancient and Modern, English and Foreign Sources" by James Wood, p. 166, 1893.

• Hypotheses are the scaffolds which are erected in front of a building and removedd when the building is completed. They are indispensable to the worker; but the worker must not mistake the scaffolding for the building.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Mistake, Science, Building

• Experiments are mediators between nature and idea.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Science, Technology, Ideas

• The arts are the salt of the earth; as salt relates to food, the arts relate to technology.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Art, Science, Technology

• Microscopes and telescopes really confuse our minds.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Science, Technology, Mind

• Insofar as he makes use of his healthy senses, man himself is the best and most exact scientific instrument possible. The greatest misfortune of modern physics is that its experiments have been set apart from man, as it were, physics refuses to recognize nature in anything not shown by artificial instruments, and even uses this as a measure of its accomplishments.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Science, Men, Healthy

• It will be! the mass is working clearer!
  Conviction gathers, truer, nearer!
  The mystery which for Man in Nature lies
  We dare to test, by knowledge led;
  And that which she was wont to organize
  We crystallize, instead.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Lying, Hard Work, Knowledge

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1912). “Faust”

• The works of Lavoisier and his associates operated upon many of us at that time like the Sun's rising after a night of moonshine: but Chemistry is now betrothed to the Mathematics, and is in consequence grown somewhat shy of her former admirers.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Hard Work, Science, Night

  Luke Howard, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1976). “Luke Howard (1772-1864): His Correspondence with Goethe and His Continental Journey of 1816”

• Man is not born to solve the problem of the universe, but to find out what he has to do; and to restrain himself within the limits of his comprehension.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Science, Men, Limits

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