Enquiry Quotes

• The news of the discovery spread fast all over the country, and inquisitive enquiries mingled with congratulations from this moment became the daily programme.

  Howard Carter

  Country, Congratulations, Discovery

  Howard Carter's Diary, November 7, 1922.

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• The purpose of scientific enquiry is not to compile an inventory of factual information, nor to build up a totalitarian world picture of natural Laws in which every event that is not compulsory is forbidden. We should think of it rather as a logically articulated structure of justifiable beliefs about nature.

  Peter Medawar

  Thinking, Law, Information

  Peter Brian Medawar (1969). “Induction and intuition in scientific thought”

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• Life without enquiry is not worth living for a man.

  Socrates

  Worth Living

  "The Apology of Socrates" by Plato, 399 BC.

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• Reason and free inquiry are the only effectual agents against error.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Errors, Inquiry, Agents

  Thomas Jefferson, Richard Holland Johnston, Thomas Jefferson Memorial Association of the United States “The Writings of Thomas Jefferson”

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• As the artist picks his way along, rejecting and accepting as he goes, certain patterns of enquiry emerge.

  Bridget Riley

  Artist, Patterns, Way

  Bridget Riley (2009). “The Eye's Mind: Collected Writings 1965-2009”

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• If a psychiatric and scientific inquiry were to be made upon our rulers, mankind would be appalled at the disclosures.

  Alfred Korzybski

  Science, Would Be, Inquiry

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• Truth never lost ground by enquiry.

  William Penn

  Truth, Lost

  William Penn (1726). “A Collection of the Works of William Penn: To which is Prefixed a Journal of His Life, with Many Original Letters and Papers Not Before Published”, p.852

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• Difference of opinion leads to enquiry, and enquiry to truth; and I am sure...we both value too much the freedom of opinion sanctioned by our Constitution, not to cherish its exercise even where in opposition to ourselves.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Exercise, Differences, Democracy

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• I hold a beast, an angel and a madman within me.

  Dylan Thomas

  Angel, Upheaval, Beast

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• In our reasonings concerning matter of fact, there are all imaginable degrees of assurance, from the highest certainty to the lowest species of moral evidence. A wise man, therefore, proportions his belief to the evidence.

  David Hume

  Wise, Men, Facts

  David Hume (1784). “Essays and Treatises on Several Subjects”, p.118

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• I hold a beast, an angel, and a madman in me, and my enquiry is as to their working, and my problem is their subjugation and victory, down throw and upheaval, and my effort is their self-expression.

  Dylan Thomas

  Writing, Angel, Self

  Dylan Thomas, Paul Ferris (1985). “The collected letters”, Scribner

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• If we take in our hand any volume; of divinity or school metaphysics, for instance; let us ask, Does it contain any abstract reasoning concerning quantity or number? No. Does it contain any experimental reasoning concerning matter of fact and existence? No. Commit it then to the flames: for it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion.

  David Hume

  School, Math, Numbers

  An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding sec. 12, pt. 3 (1748)

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• We are all more or less ill till we find -Self-enquiry our Oneness with everyone else.

  Douglas Harding

  Self, Oneness, Spirituality

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• By doubting we are led to enquire, and by enquiry we perceive the truth.

  Peter Abelard

  Doubt, Perceive

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• The whole history of these books (i.e. the Gospels) is so defective and doubtful that it seems vain to attempt minute enquiry into it: and such tricks have been played with their text, and with the texts of other books relating to them, that we have a right, from that cause, to entertain much doubt what parts of them are genuine. In the New Testament there is internal evidence that parts of it have proceeded from an extraordinary man; and that other parts are of the fabric of very inferior minds. It is as easy to separate those parts, as to pick out diamonds from dunghills.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Religious, Book, Men

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• The only roads of enquiry there are to think of: one, that it is and that it is not possible for it not to be, this is the path of persuasion (for truth is its companion); the other, that it is not and that it must not be - this I say to you is a path wholly unknowable.

  Parmenides

  Thinking, Path, Persuasion

  Frag. B 2.2-6, quoted by Proclus, "Commentary on the Timaeus I", 345,

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• Science seems to me to teach in the highest and strongest manner the great truth which is embodied in the Christian conception of entire surrender to the will of God. Sit down before fact as a little child, be prepared to give up every preconceived notion, follow humbly wherever and to whatever abysses nature leads, or you shall learn nothing. I have only begun to learn content and peace of mind since I have resolved at all risks to do this.

  Thomas Huxley

  God, Christian, Nature

  Letter to Charles Kingsley, mathcs.clarku.edu. September 23, 1860.

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• Science is wonderful at destroying metaphysical answers, but incapable of providing substitute ones. Science takes away foundations without providing a replacement. Whether we want to be there or not, science has put us in the position of having to live without foundations. It was shocking when Nietzsche said this, but today it is commonplace; our historical position-and no end to it is in sight-is that of having to philosophise without 'foundations'.

  Hilary Putnam

  Science, Sight, Historical

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• The peculiar fascination of the brain lies in the fact that there is probably no other object of scientific enquiry about which we know at once so much and yet understand so little.

  Gerd Sommerhoff

  Lying, Brain, Littles

  Gerd Sommerhoff (1974). “Logic of the living brain”, John Wiley & Sons

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• You may tear apart the baby's rattle and see what makes the noise inside, but there is a veil covering the unseen world which not the strongest man, nor even the united strength of all the strongest men that ever lived, could tear apart.

  Francis Pharcellus Church

  Baby, Science, Men

  "Is There a Santa Claus" (editorial), Sun (N.Y.), 21 Sept. 1897

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• The traditional disputes of philosophers are, for the most part, as unwarranted as they are unfruitful. The surest way to end them is to establish beyond question what should be the purpose and method of a philosophical enquiry. And this is by no means so difficult a task as the history of philosophy would lead one to suppose. For if there are any questions which science leaves it to philosophy to answer, a straightforward process of elimination must lead to their discovery.

  A.J. Ayer

  Truth, Philosophy, Philosophical

  "Language, Truth, and Logic" by A.J. Ayer, (Ch. 1), 1936.

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• If the Commission is to enquire into the conditions "to be observed," it is to be presumed that they will give the result of their enquiries; or, in other words, that they will lay down, or at least suggest, "rules" and "conditions to be (hereafter) observed" in the construction of bridges, or, in other words, embarrass and shackle the progress of improvement to-morrow by recording and registering as law the prejudices or errors of to-day. [Objecting to any interference by the State with the freedom of civil engineers in the conduct of their professional work.]

  Isambard Kingdom Brunel

  Errors, Law, Bridges

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• While, on the one hand, the end of scientific investigation is the discovery of laws, on the other, science will have reached its highest goal when it shall have reduced ultimate laws to one or two, the necessity of which lies outside the sphere of our cognition. These ultimate laws-in the domain of physical science at least-will be the dynamical laws of the relations of matter to number, space, and time. The ultimate data will be number, matter, space, and time themselves. When these relations shall be known, all physical phenomena will be a branch of pure mathematics.

  William Mitchinson Hicks

  Lying, Science, Discovery

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• It is in applied psychology, if anywhere, that today we should be modest and grant validity to a number of apparently contradictory opinions; for we are still far from having anything like a thorough knowledge of the human psyche, that most challenging field of scientific enquiry. For the present we have merely more or less plausible opinions that defy reconciliation.

  Carl Jung

  Knowledge, Numbers, Psychology

  "Modern Man in Search of a Soul". Book by Carl Jung, p. 57, 1933.

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• A mind which has once imbibed a taste for scientific inquiry, and has learnt the habit of applying its principles readily to the cases which occur, has within itself an inexhaustible source of pure and exciting contemplations.

  John Herschel

  Science, Mind, Taste

  "A Preliminary Discourse on the Study of Natural Philosophy". Book by John Herschel, 1830.

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