Conjecture Quotes

• The mind revels in conjecture. Where information is lacking, it will gladly fill in the gaps.

  James Geary

  Mind, Information, Gaps

  James Geary (2011). “The World in a Phrase”, p.33, Bloomsbury Publishing USA

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• The art of discovering the causes of phenomena, or true hypotheses, is like the art of deciphering, in which an ingenious conjecture often greatly shortens the road.

  Gottfried Leibniz

  Art, Math, Causes

  "New Essays Concerning Human Understanding with an Appealing". Transtated from the Original Latin, French and German Writeen,

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• [Great scientists] are men of bold ideas, but highly critical of their own ideas: they try to find whether their ideas are right by trying first to find whether they are not perhaps wrong. They work with bold conjectures and severe attempts at refuting their own conjectures.

  Karl Popper

  Hard Work, Science, Greatness

  Sir Karl Raimund Popper, Karl Raimund Popper (1974). “The Philosophy of Karl Popper”

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• Rumor is a pipe Blown by surmises, jealousies, conjectures.

  William Shakespeare

  Rumor, Pipe, Rumours

  'Henry IV, Part 2' (1597) induction, l. 15

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• The entire annals of Observation probably do not elsewhere exhibit so extraordinary a verification of any theoretical conjecture adventured on by the human spirit!

  John Pringle Nichol

  Adventure, Science, Spirit

  John Pringle Nichol (1848). “The planet Neptune: an exposition and history”, p.90

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• This place is the Devil, or at least his principal residence, they call it the University, but any other appellation would have suited it much better, for study is the last pursuit of the society; the Master eats, drinks, and sleeps, the Fellows drink, dispute and pun, the employments of the undergraduates you will probably conjecture without my description.

  Lord Byron

  Sleep, College, Devil

  Lord Byron (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Lord Byron (Illustrated)”, p.2475, Delphi Classics

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• From Man or Angel the great Architect Did wisely to conceal, and not divulge, His secrets, to be scanned by them who ought Rather admire. Or, if they list to try Conjecture, he his fabric of the Heavens Hath left to their disputes - perhaps to move His laughter at their quaint opinions wide Hereafter, when they come to model Heaven And calculate the stars: how they will wield The mighty frame: how build, unbuild, contrive To save appearances; how gird the Sphere With Centric and Eccentric scribbled o'er, Cycle and Epicycle, Orb in Orb.

  John Milton

  Stars, Laughter, Moving

  'Paradise Lost' (1667) bk. 8, l. 76

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• There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact.

  Mark Twain

  Math, Science, Return

  Life on the Mississippi ch. 17 (1883)

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• Mathematics is the art of explanation. If you deny students the opportunity to engage in this activity-- to pose their own problems, to make their own conjectures and discoveries, to be wrong, to be creatively frustrated, to have an inspiration, and to cobble together their own explanations and proofs-- you deny them mathematics itself.

  Paul Lockhart

  Art, Inspiration, Opportunity

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• To die for an idea is to set a rather high price upon conjecture.

  Anatole France

  Funny, Ideas, Atheism

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• To explain all nature is too difficult a task for any one man or even for any one age. Tis much better to do a little with certainty & leave the rest for others that come after than to explain all things by conjecture without making sure of any thing.

  Isaac Newton

  Nature, Science, Men

  "Never at Rest: A Biography of Isaac Newton". Book by Richard S. Westfall, p. 643, 1704.

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• I think everybody handles things very differently and you can conjecture, but until you're put in that situation, you really don't know.

  Laura Linney

  Thinking, Situation, Handle

  "Laura Linney Interview THE BIG C". Interview with Christina Radish, collider.com. August 16, 2010.

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• You should not put too much trust in any unproved conjecture, even if it has been propounded by a great authority, even if it has been propounded by yourself. You should try to prove it or disprove it.

  George Polya

  Trying, Too Much, Authority

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• Experience, already reduced to a group of impressions, is ringed round for each one of us by that thick wall of personality through which no real voice has ever pierced on its way to us, or from us to that which we can only conjecture to be without.

  Walter Pater

  Wall, Real, Voice

  Walter Pater (2013). “The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry”, p.153, Courier Corporation

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• You know more of a road by having traveled it than by all the conjectures and descriptions in the world.

  William Hazlitt

  Life, Travel, Experience

  William Hazlitt (1904). “The Collected Works of William Hazlitt: Fugitive writings”

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• The world has arisen in some way or another. How it originated is the great question, and Darwin's theory, like all other attempts, to explain the origin of life, is thus far merely conjectural. I believe he has not even made the best conjecture possible in the present state of our knowledge.

  Louis Agassiz

  Believe, Knowledge, Science

  "Evolution and Permanence of Type". Atlantic Monthly, January 1874.

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• In politics a capable ruler must be guided by circumstances, conjectures and conjunctions.

  Catherine the Great

  Conjunctions, Circumstances, Rulers

  "One Thousand Sayings of History Presented as Pictures in Prose". Book by Walter Fogg, 1971.

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• To explain all nature is too difficult a task for any one man or even for any one age

  Isaac Newton

  Science, Men, Age

  "Never at Rest: A Biography of Isaac Newton". Book by Richard S. Westfall, p. 643, 1983.

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• I think now I'm being taken a little more seriously. That's pure conjecture on my part.

  Tom Wopat

  Taken, Thinking, Littles

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  Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing admiration and awe, the oftener and more steadily we reflect on them: the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me.

  Immanuel Kant

  Nature, Two, Awe And Wonder

  Critique of Practical Reason conclusion (1788) (translation by Lewis White Beck)

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• No one but yourself knows whether you are cowardly and cruel, or loyal and devout; others do not see you; they surmise you by uncertain conjectures; they perceive not so much your nature as your art.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Art, Loyal, Uncertain

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• Far from creating a new formalism, what these can yield is something far transcending surface values since they not only embody form as beauty, but also form in which intuitions or ideas or conjectures have taken visible substance.

  Max Bill

  Taken, Creating, Yield

  Max Bill, Eduard Hüttinger, Albright-Knox Art Gallery (1978). “Max Bill”

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• The appearance and retirement of actors are the great events of the theatrical world; and their first performances fill the pit with conjecture and prognostication, as the first actions of a new monarch agitate nations with hope and fear.

  Samuel Johnson

  Retirement, Theatre, Firsts

  Samuel Johnson (1825). “The works of Samuel Johnson [ed. by F.P. Walesby].”, p.222

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• In the discovery of secret things and in the investigation of hidden causes, stronger reasons are obtained from sure experiments and demonstrated arguments than from probable conjectures and the opinions of philosophical speculators of the common sort.

  W. S. Gilbert

  Philosophical, Discovery, Secret

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• We hate the very idea that our own ideas may be mistaken, so we cling dogmatically to our conjectures.

  Karl Popper

  Hate, Ideas, May

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