Humphry Davy - Science Quotes

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In natural science there is one language universally intelligible, — the language of facts; it belongs to nature, and it is permanent as the objects of nature; it is the same to the citizen of Paris and of London.

Humphry Davy
[Hypotheses were] part of the scaffolding of the building of science [rather] than as belonging either to its foundations, materials, or ornaments.

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
Insulated, striking, but unexplained facts in science, are to the philosopher what green branches and fruits in the ocean are to the mariner voyaging for discovery; they are omens of land, which, even though he himself should not have the felicity of attaining, he may yet indicate to others.

Humphry Davy
The man of true genius, who studies science in consequence of its applications, pointing out to himself a definite end, will make use of all the instruments of investigation which are necessary for his purposes: and in the search of discovery, he will rather pursue the plans of his own mind than be limited by the artificial divisions of language.

Humphry Davy
The most important part of the history of a man of science is necessarily recorded in his work.

Humphry Davy
The grandest as well as the most correct views are those that have been gained by minute observation, and by the application of all the more precise and accurate methods of science.

Humphry Davy
Science for its progression requires patronage, - but it must be a patronage bestowed, a patronage received, with dignity. It must be preserved independent. It can bear no fetters, not even fetters of gold, and least of all those fetters in which ignorance or selfishness may attempt to shackle it.

Humphry Davy
It is needless for us again to say that in science and the arts there is a dependence which is the source of their progression and importance. In a well organized country, power is always compound: Archimedes could not have made machines which terrified the Roman soldiers without the assistance of good carpenters and good workers in metal.

Humphry Davy
Astronomy is the most ancient, and the nearest approaching to perfection, of the sciences; yet, relating to the immensity of the universe, how unbounded are the objects of inquiry it presents! And, amongst them, how many grand and abstruse subjects of investigation !

Humphry Davy
Science is in fact nothing more than the refinement of common sense making use of facts already known to acquire new facts.

Humphry Davy
The greatest use of practical science is discovery.

Humphry Davy
At no very distant period the whole science [chemistry] will be capable of elucidation by mathematical principles.

Humphry Davy
One use of physical science is that it gives definite ideas.

Humphry Davy
To me there never has been a higher source of honour or distinction than that connected with advances in science. I have not possessed enough of the eagle in my character to make a direct flight to the loftiest altitudes in the social world; and I certainly never endeavored to reach those heights by using the creeping powers of the reptile, who in ascending, generally chooses the dirtiest path, because it is the easiest.

Humphry Davy
In all cases in science, it is our business to analyse every principle, and to ascertain to what expressions of facts it relates, or to what simpler laws it may be referred. It is our duty to separate propositions from human passions, and to reason on them as mere representations of things.

Humphry Davy
Complexity almost always belongs to the early epochs of every science; and the grandest results are usually obtained by the most simple means.

Humphry Davy
Experimental science hardly ever affords us more than approximations to truth; and whenever many agents are concerned we are in great danger of being mistaken.

Humphry Davy
The person who wishes to understand the higher departments of chemistry, or to pursue them in their most interesting relations to the economy of Nature, ought to be well-grounded in elementary mathematics; he will oftener have to refer to arithmetic than algebra, and to algebra than to geometry. But all these sciences lend their aid to chemistry.

Humphry Davy
There are few persons who pursue science with true dignity; it is followed more as connected with objects of profit than those of fame, and there are fifty persons who take out patents for supposed inventions for one who makes a real discovery.

Humphry Davy
I will say a few words of the intellectual qualities necessary for discovery or for the advancement of the science. Amongst them patience, industry, and neatness in manipulation, and accuracy and minuteness in observing and registering the phenomena which occur, are essential. A steady hand and a quick eye are most useful auxiliaries.

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
But if the two countries or governments are at war, the men of science are not. That would, indeed be a civil war of the worst description: we should rather, through the instrumentality of the men of science soften the asperities of national hostility. Davy's remarks to Thomas Poole on accepting Napoleon's prize for the best experiment on Galvanism.

Humphry Davy
By science calmed, over the peaceful soul,
Bright with eternal Wisdom's lucid ray,
Peace, meek of eye, extends her soft control,
And drives the puny Passions far away.

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
There are very few persons who pursue science with true dignity.

Humphry Davy
Nothing is so fatal to the progress of the human mind as to suppose that our views of science are ultimate; that there are no mysteries in nature; that our triumphs are complete, and that there are no new worlds to conquer.

Humphry Davy
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