John William Draper Quotes

• Four years after the death of Justinian, A.D. 569, was born at Mecca, in Arabia the man who, of all men exercised the greatest influence upon the human race . . . Mohammed . . .

  John William Draper

  Men, Race, Years

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• The history of Science is not a mere record of isolated discoveries; it is a narrative of the conflict of two contending powers, the expansive force of the human intellect on one side, and the compression arising from traditionary faith and human interests on the other.

  John William Draper

  Faith, Science, Discovery

  John William Draper (1875). “History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science: By John William Draper ...”, p.6, New York, D. Appleton

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• Every movement in the skies or upon the earth proclaims to us that the universe is under government.

  John William Draper

  Science, Sky, Government

  John William Draper (1875). “History of the Intellectual Development of Europe”, p.5, New York : Harper & brothers

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• How is it that the Church produced no geometer in her autocratic reign of twelve hundred years?

  John William Draper

  Years, Atheism, Church

  John William Draper (1875). “History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science: By John William Draper ...”, p.307, New York, D. Appleton

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• Science has never sought to ally herself with civil power. She has never subjected anyone to mental torment, physical torment, least of all death, for the purpose of promoting her ideas.

  John William Draper

  Thinking, Ideas, Allies

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• I have to deplore the systematic manner in which the literature of Europe has continued to put out of sight our obligations to the Muhammadans. Surely they cannot be much longer hidden. Injustice founded on religious rancour and national conceit cannot be perpetuated forever. The Arab has left his intellectual impress on Europe. He has indelibly written it on the heavens as any one may see who reads the names of the stars on a common celestial globe.

  John William Draper

  Religious, Stars, Sight

  "A History of the Intellectual Development of Europe". Book by John William Draper, Harper & brothers, p. 356, 1863.

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• Over events, we may have some control, but over the law of life's progress none.

  John William Draper

  Change, Law, Progress

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• The scientific study of Nature tends not only to correct and ennoble the intellectual conceptions of man; it serves also to ameliorate his physical condition.

  John William Draper

  Nature, Men, Intellectual

  John William Draper (1874). “History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science”, p.310

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• Time, to the nation as to the individual, is nothing absolute; its duration depends on the rate of thought and feeling.

  John William Draper

  Time, Feelings, Duration

  John William Draper (1863). “A History of the Intellectual Development of Europe”, p.13, New York, Harper

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• Antiquity was often delighted to cast a halo of mythical glory around its illustrious names. The immortal works of this great philosopher seemed to entitle him to more than mortal honors. A legend into the authenticity of which we will abstain from inquiring, asserted that his mother, Perictione, a pure virgin, suffered an immaculate conception through the influence of Apollo. The god declared to Ariston, to whom she was about to be married, the parentage of the child.

  John William Draper

  Mother, Children, Names

  John William Draper (1876). “History of the Intellectual Development of Europe”, p.151

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• So great was the preference given to sacred over profane learning that Christianity had been in existence fifteen hundred years, and had not produced a single astronomer.

  John William Draper

  Years, Atheism, Fifteen

  John William Draper (1875). “History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science: By John William Draper ...”, p.158, New York, D. Appleton

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• As to Science, she has never sought to ally herself to civil power. She has never attempted to throw odium or inflict social ruin on any human being. She has never subjected anyone to mental torment, physical torture, least of all to death, for the purpose of upholding or promoting her ideas. She presents herself unstained by cruelties and crimes. But in the Vatican-we have only to recall the Inquisition-the hands that are now raised in appeals to the Most Merciful are crimsoned. They have been steeped in blood!

  John William Draper

  Science, Blood, Hands

  John William Draper (1875). “History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science: By John William Draper ...”, p.11, New York, D. Appleton

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• In England Giordano Bruno had given lectures on the plurality of worlds, and in that country had written, in Italian, his most important works. It added not a little to the exasperation against him, that he was perpetually declaiming against the insincerity, the impostures, of his persecutors - that wherever he went he found skepticism varnished over and concealed by hypocrisy; and that it was not against the belief of men, but against their pretended belief, that he was fighting; that he was struggling with an orthodoxy that had neither morality nor faith.

  John William Draper

  Country, Struggle, Fighting

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• Experimental investigation, to borrow a phrase employed by Kepler respecting the testing of hypotheses, is "a very great thief of time." Sometimes it costs many days to determine a fact that can be stated in a line.

  John William Draper

  Science, Thieves, Kepler

  John William Draper (1973). “Scientific memoirs, being experimental contributions to a knowledge of radiant energy”, Ayer Co Pub

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• A divine revelation must necessarily be intolerant of contradiction; it must repudiate all improvement in itself, and view with disdain that arising from the progressive intellectual development of man.

  John William Draper

  Men, Views, Intellectual

  John William Draper (1875). “History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science: By John William Draper ...”, p.6, New York, D. Appleton

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• Is it not true that for every person the course of life is along the line of least resistance, and that in this the movement of humanity is like the movement of material bodies?

  John William Draper

  Life, Science, Humanity

  John William Draper (1973). “Scientific memoirs, being experimental contributions to a knowledge of radiant energy”, Ayer Co Pub

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• Is it at all surprising that the number of those who hold the opinions of the Church in light esteem should so rapidly increase? How can that be received as a trustworthy guide in the invisible, which falls into so many errors in the visible?

  John William Draper

  Fall, Errors, Religion

  "History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science: By John William Draper".

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• As a better knowledge of Nature was obtained, the sky was shown to be an illusionBut this did not take place without resistance. At first, the public, and particularly its religious portion, denounced the rising doubts as atheism.

  John William Draper

  Religious, Sky, Doubt

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• In early life I had felt a strong desire to devote myself to the experimental study of nature; and, happening to see a glass containing some camphor, portions of which had been caused to condense in very beautiful crystals on the illuminated side, I was induced to read everything I could obtain respecting the chemical and mechanical influences of light, adhesion, and capillary attraction.

  John William Draper

  Beautiful, Nature, Strong

  John William Draper (1973). “Scientific memoirs, being experimental contributions to a knowledge of radiant energy”, Ayer Co Pub

  4 Copy quote

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