18th-century Physicist Quotes

Alessandro Volta

Hans Christian Ørsted

Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac

Charles-Augustin de Coulomb

Roger Joseph Boscovich

Benjamin Thompson

Joseph von Fraunhofer

Approximavit sidera He brought the stars closer

Joseph von Fraunhofer

The language of experiment is more authoritative than any reasoning: facts can destroy our ratiocination—not vice versa.

Alessandro Volta

To be in a position to discover the laws which link phenomena together, it is important to make use of the very powerful instrument of calculation ("le calcul ") by means of which one may more easily grasp the relations between bodies.

Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac

It will be found that everything depends on the composition of the forces with which the particles of matter act upon one another; and from these forces, as a matter of fact, all phenomena of Nature take their origin.

Roger Joseph Boscovich

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

On graduating from the school, a studious young man who would withstand the tedium and monotony of his duties has no choice but to lose himself in some branch of science or literature completely irrelevant to his assignment.

Charles-Augustin de Coulomb

The exterior form and the chemical composition are each other's image.

René Just Haüy

Added to this we already see numerous indications of a future, in which the chemical and mechanical laws of nature will be more intimately united. In short, the natural laws of chemistry, as well as those of mechanics, are laws of Reason, and both are so intimately connected, that they must be viewed as a unity of Reason.

Hans Christian Ørsted

The first thoughts, which gave rise to his Principia, he had, when he retired from Cambridge in 1666 on account of the plague. As he sat alone in a garden, he fell into a speculation on the power of gravity; that as this power is not found sensibly diminished at the remotest distance from the centre of the earth to which we can rise, neither at the tops of the loftiest buildings, nor even on the summits of the highest mountains, it appeared to him reasonable to conclude that this power must extend much further than was usually thought: why not as high as the moon? said he to himself.

Henry Pemberton

Man may almost with propriety be said to be a meteorologist by nature: he is naturally placed in such a state of dependence upon the elements, that to watch their vicissitudes and anticipate their disturbances, becomes a necessary portion of the labor to which he is born.

John Frederic Daniell

So great is the effect of cleanliness upon man, that it extends even to his moral character. Virtue never dwelt long with filth; nor do I believe there ever was a person scrupulously: attentive to cleanliness, who was a consummate villain.

Benjamin Thompson