Enquiry Quotes - Page 3

• Sometimes I am a collector of data, and only a collector, and am likely to be gross and miserly, piling up notes, pleased with merely numerically adding to my stores.

  Charles Fort

  Science, Data, Mind

  Charles Fort (2014). “Wild Talents”, p.35, Baen Publishing Enterprises

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• The mention of one apartment in a building naturally introduces an enquiry or discourse concerning the others: and if we think ofa wound, we can scarcely forbear reflecting on the pain which follows it.

  David Hume

  Pain, Thinking, Reflection

  David Hume, Eric Steinberg (1992). “An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding; [with] A Letter from a Gentleman to His Friend in Edinburgh; [and] An Abstract of a Treatise of Human Nature”, p.14, Hackett Publishing

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• By far the most important consequence of the conceptual revolution brought about in physics by relativity and quantum theory lies not in such details as that meter sticks shorten when they move or that simultaneous position and momentum have no meaning, but in the insight that we had not been using our minds properly and that it is important to find out how to do so.

  Percy Williams Bridgman

  Lying, Moving, Science

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• The period of Catholic ascendancy was on the whole one of the most deplorable in the history of the human mind. . . . The spirit that shrinks from enquiry as sinful and deems a state of doubt a state of guilt, is the most enduring disease that can afflict the mind of man. Not till the education of Europe passed from the monasteries to the universities, not till Mohammedan science, and classical free thought, and industrial independence broke the sceptre of the Church, did the intellectual revival of Europe begin.

  William Edward Hartpole Lecky

  Men, Europe, Catholic

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• Design is a field of concern, response, and enquiry as often as decision and consequence... it is convenient to group design into three simple categories, though the distinctions are in no way absolute, nor are they always so described: product design (things), environment design (places) and communication design (messages).

  Norman Potter

  Communication, Simple, Design

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• Does a man of sense run after every silly tale of hobgoblins or fairies, and canvass particularly the evidence? I never knew anyone, that examined and deliberated about nonsense who did not believe it before the end of his enquiries.

  David Hume

  Running, Believe, Silly

  David Hume (1965). “David Hume: Philosophical Historian”, Indianapolis : Bobbs-Merrill

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• The writing of solid, instructive stuff fortified by facts and figures is easy enough. There is no trouble in writing a scientific treatise on the folk-lore of Central China, or a statistical enquiry into the declining population of Prince Edward Island. But to write something out of one's own mind, worth reading for its own sake, is an arduous contrivance only to be achieved in fortunate moments, few and far in between. Personally, I would sooner have written Alice in Wonderland than the whole Encyclopedia Britannica.

  Stephen Leacock

  Reading, Writing, Islands

  Stephen Leacock (2014). “Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town”, p.7, The Floating Press

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• We learn together in teams. This involves a shift from a spirit of advocacy to a spirit of enquiry.

  Peter Senge

  Inspiring, Team, Moving

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• To the possible enquiry as to the probable character of a successful flying machine, the writer would answer that in his judgment two types of such machines may eventually be evolved: one, which may be termed the soaring type, and which will carry but a single operator, and another, likely to be developed somewhat later, which may be termed the journeying type, to carry several passengers, and to be provided with a motor.

  Octave Chanute

  Character, Successful, Two

  Octave Chanute (1894). “Progress in Flying Machines”

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• With respect to Committees as you would perceive I am very jealous of their formation. I mean working committees. I think business is always better done by few than by many.

  Michael Faraday

  Hard Work, Jealous, Mean

  "The Correspondence of Michael Faraday: 1832-December 1840, Letters 525-1333".

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• His attention caught, her companion raised his eyes from the book which lay open beside him on the table and directed them upon her in a look of aloof enquiry. 'What's that? Did you say something to me, Venetia?' 'Yes, love,' responded his sister cheerfully, 'but it wasn't of the least consequence, and in any event I answered for you. You would be astonished, I daresay, if you knew what interesting conversations I enjoy with myself.

  Georgette Heyer

  Book, Eye, Interesting Conversation

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• Reason and free inquiry are the only effectual agents against error... They are the natural enemies of error, and of error only... If [free enquiry] be restrained now, the present corruptions will be protected, and new ones encouraged.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Truth, Errors, Political

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• The aspects of things that are most important for us are hidden because of their simplicity and familiarity. (One is unable to notice something because it is always before one’s eyes.) The real foundations of his enquiry do not strike a man at all

  Ludwig Wittgenstein

  Real, Eye, Men

  Ludwig Wittgenstein (1958). “Philosophical Investigations”

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• How she might have felt had there been no Captain Wentworth in the case, was not worth enquiry; for there was a Captain Wentworth: and be the conclusion of the present suspense good or bad, her affection would be his forever. Their union, she believed, could not divide her more from other men, than their final separation.

  Jane Austen

  Men, Forever, Would Be

  Jane Austen (2013). “Persuasion In Modern English”, p.346, BookCaps Study Guides

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• Touch and away, Jack?’ asked Stephen. ‘Touch and away? Do you not recall that I have important business there? Enquiries of the very first interest?’ To do with our enterprise? To do with this voyage?’ Perhaps not quite directly.

  Patrick O'Brian

  Important, Voyages, Firsts

  Patrick O'Brian (2000). “Blue at the Mizzen (Vol. Book 20) (Aubrey/Maturin Novels)”, p.121, W. W. Norton & Company

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• Modern science has been a voyage into the unknown, with a lesson in humility waiting at every stop. Many passengers would rather have stayed home.

  Carl Sagan

  Home, Humility, Science

  Carl Sagan, Ann Druyan (2011). “Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space”, p.41, Ballantine Books

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• The University of Cambridge, in accordance with that law of its evolution, by which, while maintaining the strictest continuity between the successive phases of its history, it adapts itself with more or less promptness to the requirements of the times, has lately instituted a course of Experimental Physics.

  James Clerk Maxwell

  Science, Discovery, Law

  James Clerk Maxwell, Elizabeth Garber, Stephen G. Brush, C. W. Francis Everitt (1986). “Maxwell on Molecules and Gases”, p.111, MIT Press

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• A page from a journal of modern experimental physics will be as mysterious to the uninitiated as a Tibetan mandala. Both are records of enquiries into the nature of the universe.

  Fritjof Capra

  Nature, Science, Records

  "The Tao of Physics: An Exploration of the Parallels Between Modern Physics and Eastern Mysticism". Book by Fritjof Capra, 1975.

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• We know next to nothing about virtually everything. It is not necessary to know the origin of the universe; it is necessary to want to know. Civilization depends not on any particular knowledge, but on the disposition to crave knowledge

  George Will

  Knowledge, Science, Civilization

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• Science is the attempt to make the chaotic diversity of our sense-experience correspond to a logically uniform system of thought.

  Albert Einstein

  Science, Diversity, Uniforms

  Albert Einstein (2011). “Out of My Later Years: The Scientist, Philosopher, and Man Portrayed Through His Own Words”, p.178, Open Road Media

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• Science teaches us, in effect, to submit our reason to the truth and to know and judge of things as they are-that is to say, as they themselves choose to be and not as we would have them to be.

  Miguel de Unamuno

  Science, Judging, Reason

  Miguel de Unamuno (2012). “Tragic Sense of Life”, p.197, Courier Corporation

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• [John] Dalton was a man of regular habits. For fifty-seven years he walked out of Manchester every day; he measured the rainfall, the temperature-a singularly monotonous enterprise in this climate. Of all that mass of data, nothing whatever came. But of the one searching, almost childlike question about the weights that enter the construction of these simple molecules-out of that came modern atomic theory. That is the essence of science: ask an impertinent question, and you are on the way to the pertinent answer.

  Jacob Bronowski

  Science, Simple, Men

  Ascent of Man (1973) ch. 4

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• For you teach very clearly by your behaviour how slowly and how meagerly our senses proceed in the investigation of ever inexhaustible nature.

  Giovanni Battista Beccaria

  Nature, Science, Behaviour

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• If the maintenance of public credit, then, be truly important, the next enquiry which suggests itself is, by what means it is to be effected? The ready answer to which question is, by good faith, by a punctual performance of contracts. States, like individuals, who observe their engagements, are respected and trusted: while the reverse is the fate of those who pursue an opposite conduct.

  Alexander Hamilton

  Mean, Fate, Opposites

  Nancy Spannaus, Christopher White, Alexander Hamilton, Thomas More, Henry VIII (2015). “The Political Economy of the American Revolution”, p.346, Executive Intelligence Review

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• ... your spiritual teachers caution you against enquiry--tell you not to read certain books; not to listen to certain people; to beware of profane learning; to submit your reason, and to receive their doctrines for truths. Such advice renders them suspicious counsellors.

  Frances Wright

  Spiritual, Teacher, Book

  Frances Wright (1829). “Course of popular lectures; with 3 addresses on various public occasions, and a reply to the charges against the French reformers of 1789”, p.45

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