Adolphe Quetelet - Laws Quotes

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Hitherto, the science of Man has been limited to researches... respecting some of its laws, to results deduced from single or insulated observations, and to theories often based on mere glimpses; and these constitute pretty nearly all the materials it possesses.

Adolphe Quetelet
We then better understand the weakness of man, and the power of the Supreme: we are struck with the inflexible constancy of the laws which regulate the march of worlds, and which preside over the succession of human generations.

Adolphe Quetelet
Social physics never can pretend to discover laws which will verify themselves in every particular, in the case of isolated individuals. The science will have rendered a service sufficiently vast, in giving more precise views upon a host of points, of which vague glimpses only were before possessed.

Adolphe Quetelet
As laws and the principles of religion and morality are influencing causes, I have then not only the hope, but, what you have not, the positive conviction, that society may be ameliorated and reformed.

Adolphe Quetelet
A person examining too nearly a small portion of a very large circle... would see in this detached portion merely a certain quantity of physical points, grouped in a more or less irregular manner, and so, indeed, as to seem as if they had been arranged by chance... But, placing himself at a greater distance, the eye embraces of necessity a greater number of points, and already a degree of regularity is observable... and by removing still farther from the object, the observer loses sight of the individual points, no longer observes any accidental or odd arrangements amongst them, but discovers at once the law presiding over their general arrangements, and the precise nature of the circle so traced.

Adolphe Quetelet
This observation is merely the extension of a law well known to all who have studied the condition of society in a philosophic manner: it is, that so long as the same causes exist, we must expect a repetition of the same effects. What has induced some to believe that moral phenomena did not obey this law, has been the too great influence ascribed all times to man himself over his actions.

Adolphe Quetelet
To him... who had examined the laws of light merely in a drop of water, the brilliant phenomenon of the rainbow would be totally unintelligible.

Adolphe Quetelet
It is a remarkable fact in the history of science, that the more extended human knowledge has become, the more limited human power, in that respect, has constantly appeared. This globe, of which man imagines the haughty possessor, becomes, in the eyes of astronomer, merely a grain of dust floating in immensity of space: an earthquake, a tempest, an inundation, may destroy in an instant an entire people, or ruin the labours of twenty ages.... But if each step in the career of science thus gradually diminishes his importance, his pride has a compensation in the greater idea of his intellectual power, by which he has been enabled to perceive those laws which seem to be, by their nature, placed for ever beyond his grasp.

Adolphe Quetelet
It may be seen, in my work, that the course which I have adopted is that followed by the natural philosopher, in order to grasp the laws that regulate the material world. By the seizure of facts, I seek to rise to an appreciation of the causes whence they spring.

Adolphe Quetelet
This great body (the social body) subsists by virtue of conservative principles, as does everything which has proceeded from the hands of the Almighty... When we think we have reached the highest point of the scale we find laws as fixed as those which govern the heavenly bodies: we turn to the phenomena of physics, where the free will of man is entirely effaced, so that the work of the Creator may predominate without hindrance. The collection of these laws, which exist independently of time and of the caprices of man, form a separate science, which I have considered myself entitled to name social physics.

Adolphe Quetelet