Humphry Davy - Philosophy Quotes

9 Sourced Quotes

View all Humphry Davy Quotes
Geology, perhaps more than any other department of natural philosophy, is a science of contemplation. It requires no experience or complicated apparatus, no minute processes upon the unknown processes of matter. It demands only an enquiring mind and senses alive to the facts almost everywhere presented in nature. And as it may be acquired without much difficulty, so it may be improved without much painful exertion.

Humphry Davy
Fortunately science, like that nature to which it belongs, is neither limited by time nor by space. It belongs to the world, and is of no country and of no age. The more we know, the more we feel our ignorance; the more we feel how much remains unknown; and in philosophy, the sentiment of the Macedonian hero can never apply, — there are always new worlds to conquer.

Humphry Davy
The progression of physical science is much more connected with your prosperity than is usually imagined. You owe to experimental philosophy some of the most important and peculiar of your advantages. It is not by foreign conquests chiefly that you are become great, but by a conquest of nature in your own country.

Humphry Davy
Chemistry is that part of Natural Philosophy which relates to those intimate actions of bodies upon each other, by which their appearances are altered, and their individuality destroyed.

Humphry Davy
Philosophy is simple and intelligible. We owe confused systems to men of vague and obscure ideas.

Humphry Davy
There will always be enigmas for us in nature as in philosophy, which will keep alive the faculty of research, and the active power of investigation. And it is much wiser to rejoice that something has been discovered, than to regret that so much is still concealed from us.

Humphry Davy
We ought to reason from effects alone. False philosophy has uniformly depended upon making use of words which signify no definite ideas.

Humphry Davy
The substitution of analogy for fact is the bane of chemical philosophy; the legitimate use of analogy is to connect facts together and to guide to new experiments.

Humphry Davy
There is now before us a boundless prospect of novelty in science; a country unexplored, but noble and fertile in aspect; a land of promise in philosophy.

Humphry Davy