George Campbell, 8th Duke of Argyll Quotes

14 Sourced Quotes

Those who, by special study, have laid their minds alongside the mind of Nature in any of her provinces have generally imparted to them a true sense, so far as it goes, in the interpretation of her mysteries.

George Campbell, 8th Duke of Argyll
Creation, strictly speaking, is inconceivable to us. And yet creation is a fact. The system of visible things in which we live was certainly not the author of itself.

George Campbell, 8th Duke of Argyll
If man is ever destined to navigate the air it will be in machines formed in strict obedience to the mechanical laws which have been employed by the Creator for the same purpose in flying animals.

George Campbell, 8th Duke of Argyll
Questions of Definition are of the very highest importance in Philosophy, and they need to be watched accordingly.

George Campbell, 8th Duke of Argyll
Among the many wonders of Nature there is nothing more wonderful than this the adaptability of the one Vertebrate Type to the infinite variety of Life to which it serves as an organ and a home.

George Campbell, 8th Duke of Argyll
Half the perplexities of men are traceable to obscurity of thought hiding and breeding under obscurity of language.

George Campbell, 8th Duke of Argyll
Without a sense of ignorance there could be no desire of knowledge, and without his desire of knowledge man would not be man.

George Campbell, 8th Duke of Argyll
Science has cast no light on the ultimate nature of life. But whatever it be, it has evidently fundamental elements which are the same throughout the whole circle of the organic world.

George Campbell, 8th Duke of Argyll
Words, which should be the servants of Thought, are too often its masters; and there are very few words which are used more ambiguously, and therefore more injuriously, than the word "Law."

George Campbell, 8th Duke of Argyll
Laws of nature are seen to be nothing but combinations of force with a view to purpose: combinations which indicate complete knowledge, not only of what is, but of what is to be, and which foresees the end from the beginning.

George Campbell, 8th Duke of Argyll
The first and, so to speak, the lowest sense in which law is applied to natural phenomena is that in which it is used to express simply "an observed order of facts" that is to say, facts which under the same conditions always follow each other in the same order.

George Campbell, 8th Duke of Argyll
There is no existing order no present combination of matter or of force which we cannot conceive coming to an end. But when that end is come, we cannot conceive but that something must remain if it be nothing else than that by which the ending was brought about.

George Campbell, 8th Duke of Argyll
The facts of Nature are best brought home and explained to the understanding, and to the intelligence of man, by stating them in terms of the relation which they obviously bear to the familiar operations of our own mind and spirit.

George Campbell, 8th Duke of Argyll
The System of Nature in which we live impresses itself on the mind as one System. It is under this impression that we speak of it as the Universe.

George Campbell, 8th Duke of Argyll