Samuel Butler Quotes About Science

Quotes about: Science

• When people talk of atoms obeying fixed laws, they are either ascribing some kind of intelligence and free will to atoms or they are talking nonsense. There is no obedience unless there is at any rate a potentiality of disobeying.

  Samuel Butler

  Science, Talking, Law

  Samuel Butler (2008). “The Note-books of Samuel Butler: Easyread Super Large 18pt Edition”, p.121, ReadHowYouWant.com

• You cannot have a thing "matter" by itself which shall have no motion in it, nor yet a thing "motion" by itself which shall exist apart from matter; you must have both or neither. You can have matter moving much, or little, and in all conceivable ways; but you cannot have matter without any motion more than you can have motion without any matter that is moving.

  Samuel Butler

  Moving, Science, Littles

  Samuel Butler (2014). “The Notebooks of Samuel Butler”, p.103, The Floating Press

• A definition is the enclosing a wilderness of idea within a wall of words.

  Samuel Butler

  Wall, Science, Ideas

  'Notebooks' (1912) ch. 14

• Business should be like religion and science; it should know neither love nor hate.

  Samuel Butler

  Hate, Science, Should

  Samuel Butler (1951). “Notebooks: Selections Edited by Geoffrey Keynes and Brian Hill”

• Science is being daily more and more personified and anthromorphized into a god. By and by they will say that science took our nature upon him, and sent down his only begotten son, Charles Darwin, or Huxley, into the world so that those who believe in him, &c.; and they will burn people for saying that science, after all, is only an expression for our ignorance of our own ignorance.

  Samuel Butler

  Nature, Believe, Ignorance

  Samuel Butler (1968). “The note-books of Samuel Butler”

• Whereas, to borrow an illustration from mathematics, life was formerly an equation of, say, 100 unknown quantities, it is now one of 99 only, inasmuch as memory and heredity have been shown to be one and the same thing.

  Samuel Butler

  Life, Memories, Science

  Samuel Butler (1926). “The Shrewsbury Edition of the Works of Samuel Butler: The notebooks of Samuel Butler”

• There is one class of mind that loves to lean on rules and definitions, and another that discards them as far as possible. A faddist will generally ask for a definition of faddism, and one who is not a faddist will be impatient of being asked to give one.

  Samuel Butler

  Science, Class, Giving

  Samuel Butler (2015). “Delphi Complete Works of Samuel Butler (Illustrated)”, p.4257, Delphi Classics

• There is no such source of error as the pursuit of absolute truth.

  Samuel Butler

  Truth, Science, Errors

  Samuel Butler (2014). “The Notebooks of Samuel Butler”, p.374, The Floating Press

• Nature. As the word is now commonly used it excludes nature's most interesting productions-the works of man. Nature is usually taken to mean mountains, rivers, clouds and undomesticated animals and plants. I am not indifferent to this half of nature, but it interests me much less than the other half.

  Samuel Butler

  Nature, Taken, Mean

  Samuel Butler (2015). “Delphi Complete Works of Samuel Butler (Illustrated)”, p.4256, Delphi Classics

• Men of Science. If they are worthy of the name they are indeed about God's path and about his bed and spying out all his ways.

  Samuel Butler

  God, Science, Men

  Samuel Butler (2014). “The Notebooks of Samuel Butler”, p.273, The Floating Press

• If [science] tends to thicken the crust of ice on which, as it were, we are skating, it is all right. If it tries to find, or professes to have found, the solid ground at the bottom of the water it is all wrong. Our business is with the thickening of this crust by extending our knowledge downward from above, as ice gets thicker while the frost lasts; we should not try to freeze upwards from the bottom.

  Samuel Butler

  Knowledge, Science, Ice

  Samuel Butler (1950). “The Essential Samuel Butler”, London : J. Cape

• There are two classes [of scientists], those who want to know, and do not care whether others think they know or not, and those who do not much care about knowing, but care very greatly about being reputed as knowing.

  Samuel Butler

  Knowledge, Science, Thinking

  Samuel Butler (2014). “The Notebooks of Samuel Butler”, p.272, The Floating Press

• I am the enfant terrible of literature and science. If I cannot, and I know I cannot, get the literary and scientific bigwigs to give me a shilling, I can, and I know I can, heave bricks into the middle of them.

  Samuel Butler

  Science, Giving, Literature

  Samuel Butler (2014). “The Notebooks of Samuel Butler”, p.230, The Floating Press

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