Antoine Lavoisier Quotes About Science

Quotes about: Science

• We must trust to nothing but facts: These are presented to us by Nature, and cannot deceive. We ought, in every instance, to submit our reasoning to the test of experiment, and never to search for truth but by the natural road of experiment and observation.

  Antoine Lavoisier

  Nature, Science, Deception

  1789 Traiteele mentaire de la chimie ('Elements of Chemistr y', translated by Robert Kerr).

• The impossibility of separating the nomenclature of a science from the science itself, is owing to this, that every branch of physical science must consist of three things; the series of facts which are the objects of the science, the ideas which represent these facts, and the words by which these ideas are expressed. Like three impressions of the same seal, the word ought to produce the idea, and the idea to be a picture of the fact.

  Antoine Lavoisier

  Science, Ideas, Nomenclature

  Antoine Laurent Lavoisier, David M. Knight (1998). “The Development of Chemistry, 1789-1914: Elements of chemistry”, p.14, Taylor & Francis

• As ideas are preserved and communicated by means of words, it necessarily follows that we cannot improve the language of any science, without at the same time improving the science itself; neither can we, on the other hand, improve a science without improving the language or nomenclature which belongs to it.

  Antoine Lavoisier

  Mean, Science, Hands

  Antoine Laurent Lavoisier (1802). “Elements of chemistry, tr. by R. Kerr”, p.18

• In every combustion there is disengagement of the matter of fire or of light. A body can burn only in pure air [oxygen]. There is no destruction or decomposition of pure air and the increase in weight of the body burnt is exactly equal to the weight of air destroyed or decomposed. The body burnt changes into an acid by addition of the substance that increases its weight. Pure air is a compound of the matter of fire or of light with a base. In combustion the burning body removes the base, which it attracts more strongly than does the matter of heat, which appears as flame, heat and light.

  Antoine Lavoisier

  Science, Fire, Light

• I have had a fairly long life, above all a very happy one, and I think that I shall be remembered with some regrets and perhaps leave some reputation behind me. What more could I ask? The events in which I am involved will probably save me from the troubles of old age. I shall die in full possession of my faculties, and that is another advantage that I should count among those that I have enjoyed. If I have any distressing thoughts, it is of not having done more for my family; to be unable to give either to them or to you any token of my affection and my gratitude is to be poor indeed.

  Antoine Lavoisier

  Life, Gratitude, Regret

• Perhaps... some day the precision of the data will be brought so far that the mathematician will be able to calculate at his desk the outcome of any chemical combination, in the same way, so to speak, as he calculates the motions of celestial bodies.

  Antoine Lavoisier

  Science, Data, Body

• Mathematicians come to the solution of a problem by the simple arrangement of the data, and reducing the reasoning to such simple operations, to judgments so brief, that they never lose sight of the evidence that serves as their guide.

  Antoine Lavoisier

  Science, Simple, Sight

• If everything in chemistry is explained in a satisfactory manner without the help of phlogiston, it is by that reason alone infinitely probable that the principle does not exist; that it is a hypothetical body, a gratuitous supposition; indeed, it is in the principles of good logic, not to multiply bodies without necessity.

  Antoine Lavoisier

  Science, Body, Principles

• We may lay it down as an incontestible axiom, that, in all the operations of art and nature, nothing is created; an equal quantity of matter exists both before and after the experiment; the quality and quantity of the elements remain precisely the same; and nothing takes place beyond changes and modifications in the combination of these elements. Upon this principle the whole art of performing chemical experiments depends: We must always suppose an exact equality between the elements of the body examined and those of the products of its analysis.

  Antoine Lavoisier

  Art, Science, Quality

  Antoine Laurent Lavoisier (1802). “Elements of chemistry, tr. by R. Kerr”, p.226

• This theory [the oxygen theory] is not as I have heard it described, that of the French chemists, it is mine (elle est la mienne); it is a property which I claim from my contemporaries and from posterity.

  Antoine Lavoisier

  Science, Oxygen, Biographies

• Imagination, on the contrary, which is ever wandering beyond the bounds of truth, joined to self-love and that self-confidence we are so apt to indulge, prompt us to draw conclusions which are not immediately derived from facts.

  Antoine Lavoisier

  Self Confidence, Science, Imagination

  Antoine Lavoisier (2011). “Elements of Chemistry”, Courier Corporation

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