François Arago Quotes

13 Sourced Quotes

On certain occasions, the eyes of the mind can supply the want of the most powerful telescopes, and lead to astronomical discoveries of the highest importance.

François Arago
The calculus of probabilities, when confined within just limits, ought to interest, in an equal degree, the mathematician, the experimentalist, and the statesman.

François Arago
In the experimental sciences, the epochs of the most brilliant progress are almost always separated by long intervals of almost absolute repose.

François Arago
I was often humiliated to see men disputing for a piece of bread, just as animals might have done. My feelings on this subject have very much altered since I have been personally exposed to the tortures of hunger. I have discovered, in fact, that a man, whatever may have been his origin, his education, and his habits, is governed, under certain circumstances, much more by his stomach than by his intelligence and his heart.

François Arago
Let us award a just, a brilliant homage to those rare men whom nature has endowed with the precious privilege of arranging a thousand isolated facts, of making seductive theories spring from them; but let us not forget to state, that the scythe of the reaper had cut the stalks before one had thought of uniting them into sheaves!

François Arago
The ancients had a taste, let us say rather a passion, for the marvellous, which caused them to forget even the sacred duties of gratitude. Observe them, for example, grouping together the lofty deeds of a great number of heroes, whose names they have not even deigned to preserve, and investing the single personage of Hercules with them. The lapse of ages has not rendered us wiser in this respect. In our own time the public delight in blending fable with history. In every career of life, in the pursuit of science especially, they enjoy a pleasure in creating Herculeses.

François Arago
Astronomy, although the oldest and in many respects the most perfect of the sciences, in many of its questions is still in its infancy.

François Arago
Astronomy is a happy science, it has not need for decorations.

François Arago
He who, outside of pure mathematics, says a thing is impossible, speaks without reason.

François Arago
Thunder in the hands of nature is electricity in the hands of physicists.

François Arago
GURU: Today I will discourse upon the violence in astronomy.
DISCIPLE: Revered Sir! Will you be describing the violent phenomena in the Universe?
GURU: Yes, and I will also dwell upon the controversies amongst the astronomers about what these events imply — controversies which are no less violent than the phenomena themselves.

François Arago
Astronomy is the science of which the human mind may most justly boast. It owes this indisputable pre-eminence to the elevated nature of its object, to the grandeur of its means of investigation, to the certainty, the utility, and the unparalleled magnificence of its results.

François Arago
The mathematics have been in all ages the implacable adversaries of scientific romances.

François Arago