Ernst Mach Quotes

105 Sourced Quotes

Truth suffers herself to be won. She flirts at times disgracefully. Above all, she is determined to be merited, and has naught but contempt for the man who will win her too quickly.

Ernst Mach
Nature acts in the construction of liquid figures on the principle of a covetous tailor, and gives no thought in her work to the fashions. But, strange to say, in this work, the most beautiful fashions are of themselves produced.

Ernst Mach
Experiments are never absolutely exact, but they at least may lead the inquiring mind to conjecture that... key which will clear up the connection of all the facts.

Ernst Mach
It is a peculiar property of instinctive knowledge that it is predominantly of a negative nature. We cannot so well say what must happen as we can what cannot happen, since the latter alone stands in glaring contrast to the obscure mass of experience in us in which single characters are not distinguished.

Ernst Mach
Generally speaking, anything that is constructed according to fixed and logically followed rules, is a product of tolerable beauty.

Ernst Mach
If our dreams were more regular, more connected, more stable, they would also have more practical importance for us.

Ernst Mach
Everything which we observe in nature imprints itself uncomprehended and unanalyzed in our percepts and ideas which then, in their turn, mimic the processes of nature in their most general and most striking features.

Ernst Mach
When the human mind, with its limited powers, attempts to mirror in itself the rich life of the world, of which it is itself only a small part, and which it can never hope to exhaust, it has every reason for proceeding economically.

Ernst Mach
I know of nothing more terrible than the poor creatures who have learned too much. Instead of the sound powerful judgement which would probably have grown up if they had learned nothing, their thoughts creep timidly and hypnotically after words, principles and formulae, constantly by the same paths. What they have acquired is a spider's web of thoughts too weak to furnish sure supports, but complicated enough to provide confusion.

Ernst Mach
Economy of communication and of apprehension is of the very essence of science. Herein lies its pacificatory, its enlightening, its refining element.

Ernst Mach
We are entitled to regard our knowledge of the decisive conditions of any phenomenon as sufficient only in the event that such conditions determine the phenomenon precisely and uniquely.

Ernst Mach
An incomplete knowledge put into words forms a relatively firm prop for fleeting thoughts, from which the thoughts, seeking among facts, set out, and to which, modifying it by criticism and comparison, they continually return.

Ernst Mach
That branch of physics which is at once the oldest and the simplest and which is therefore treated as introductory to other departments of this science, is concerned with the motions and equilibrium of masses. It bears the name of mechanics.

Ernst Mach
Similarly, many a young man, hearing for the first time of the refraction of stellar light, has thought that doubt was cast on the whole of astronomy, whereas nothing is required but an easily effected and unimportant correction to put everything right again.

Ernst Mach
In his unceasing desire to diminish the boundaries of the incomprehensible, man has always been engaged in attempts to understand death by life and life by death.

Ernst Mach
An ancient philosopher once remarked that people who cudgeled their brains about the nature of the moon reminded him of men who discussed the laws and institutions of a distant city of which they had heard no more than the name.

Ernst Mach
Every candid person will confess that there are many branches of knowledge about which he had better be silent.

Ernst Mach
Bodies do not produce sensations, but complexes of elements (complexes of sensations) make up bodies.

Ernst Mach
He who understands not only the letter but also the reason of the law will not be at a loss when confronted with cases to which the letter does not accurately apply.

Ernst Mach
Every philosopher has his own private view of science, and every scientist his private philosophy.

Ernst Mach
Theories are abstractions, which, while placing in relief what is important in certain determinate cases, neglect almost necessarily, or even disguise, what is important in other cases.

Ernst Mach
Is science itself anything more than — a business? Is not its task to acquire with the least possible work, in the least possible time, with the least possible thoughts, the greatest possible part of eternal truth?

Ernst Mach
Science is communicated by instruction, in order that one man may profit by the experience of another and be spared the trouble of accumulating it for himself; and thus, to spare posterity, the experiences of whole generations are stored up in libraries.

Ernst Mach
Purely mechanical phenomena do not exist... are abstractions, made, either intentionally or from necessity, for facilitating our comprehension of things. The science of mechanics does not comprise the foundations, no, nor even a part of the world, but only an aspect of it.

Ernst Mach
Physical science does not pretend to be a complete view of the world; it simply claims that it is working toward such a complete view in the future.

Ernst Mach
A movement that we will to execute is never more than a represented movement, and appears in a different domain from that of the executed movement, which always takes place when the image is vivid enough.

Ernst Mach
Every one who busies himself with science recognizes how unsettled and indefinite the notions are which he has brought with him from common life, and how, on a minute examination of things, old differences are effaced and new ones introduced.

Ernst Mach
Science has almost made greater progress through that which she has known how to ignore than by that which she has taken into account.

Ernst Mach
The use of the signs of algebra and analysis, which are merely symbols of operations to be performed, is due to the observation that we can materially disburden the mind in this way and spare its powers for more important and more difficult duties, by imposing all mechanical operations upon the hand.

Ernst Mach
Just as without sensations of heat there would have been no theory of heat, so also without sensations of space there would be no geometry.

Ernst Mach