Justus von Liebig Quotes

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I would more readily believe that a book on chemistry or on botany could grow out of dead matter by chemical processes.

Justus von Liebig
The study of Chemistry is profitable, not only inasmuch as it promotes the material interests of mankind, but also because it furnishes us with insight into those wonders of creation which immediately surround us, and with which our existence, life, and development, are most closely connected.

Justus von Liebig
Error is transient; truth alone is eternal. Error is only the shadow cast by truth, when its rays are arrested on their path by human ignorance and intellectual opacity.

Justus von Liebig
If it is impossible to judge merit and guilt in the field of natural science, then it is not possible in any field, and historical research becomes an idle, empty activity.

Justus von Liebig
But it must not be forgotten that... glass and porcelain were manufactured, stuffs dyed and metals separated from their ores by mere empirical processes of art, and without the guidance of correct scientific principles.

Justus von Liebig
Without an acquaintance with chemistry, the statesman must remain a stranger to the true vital interests of the state, to the means of its organic development and improvement;... The highest economic or material interests of a country, the increased and more profitable production of food for man and animals,... are most closely linked with the advancement and diffusion of the natural sciences, especially of chemistry.

Justus von Liebig
The more fodder, the more flesh; the more flesh, the more manure; the more manure, the more grain.

Justus von Liebig
The acquisition of a new truth is like the acquisition of a new sense, which renders a man capable and recognizing a large number of phenomena that are hidden from another, as they were from him originally.

Justus von Liebig
The loveliest theories are being overthrown by these damned experiments; it's no fun being a chemist anymore.

Justus von Liebig
If you want to become a chemist, you will have to ruin your health. If you don't ruin your health studying, you won't accomplish anything these days in chemistry.
Liebig's advice to Kekulé

Justus von Liebig
Only about seventy years ago was chemistry, like a grain of seed from a ripe fruit, separated from the other physical sciences. With Black, Cavendish and Priestley, its new era began. Medicine, pharmacy, and the useful arts, had prepared the soil upon which this seed was to germinate and to flourish.

Justus von Liebig
From one sublime genius — Newton — more light has proceeded than the labour of a thousand years preceding had been able to produce.

Justus von Liebig
By the deficiency or absence of one necessary constituent, all the others being present, the soil is rendered barren for all those crops to the life of which that one constituent is indispensable.

Justus von Liebig
A time will come, when fields will be manured with a solution of glass (silicate of potash), with the ashes of burnt straw, and with the salts of phosphoric acid, prepared in chemical manufactories, exactly as at present medicines are given for fever and goitre.

Justus von Liebig
We may fairly judge of the commercial prosperity of a country from the amount of sulphuric acid it consumes.

Justus von Liebig
The progress of mankind is due exclusively to the progress of natural sciences, not to morals, religion or philosophy.

Justus von Liebig
Chemistry, in its application to animals and vegetables. Endeavours jointly with physiology to enlighten us respecting the mysterious processes and sources of organic life.

Justus von Liebig
A manure containing several ingredients acts in this wise: The effect of all of them in the soil accommodates itself to that one among them which, in comparison to the wants of the plant, is present in the smallest quantity.

Justus von Liebig
Balard did not discover bromine, rather bromine discovered Balard.
Of Antoine Jérôme Balard

Justus von Liebig
I have spent some months in England, have seen an awful lot and learned little. England is not a land of science, there is only a widely practised dilettantism, the chemists are ashamed to call themselves chemists because the pharmacists, who are despised, have assumed this name.

Justus von Liebig
A fact acquires its true and full value only through the idea which is developed from it.

Justus von Liebig
In the progressive growth of astronomy, physics or mechanical science was developed, and when this had been, to a certain degree, successfully cultivated, it gave birth to the science of chemistry.

Justus von Liebig
I have learnt that all our theories are not Truth itself, but resting places or stages on the way to the conquest of Truth, and that we must be contented to have obtained for the strivers after Truth such a resting place which, if it is on a mountain, permits us to view the provinces already won and those still to be conquered.

Justus von Liebig
It has been said that every science must pass through three periods of development. The first is that of presentiment, or of faith; the second is that of sophistry; and the third is that of sober research.

Justus von Liebig
Since the discovery of oxygen the civilised world has undergone a revolution in manners and customs. The knowledge of the composition of the atmosphere, of the solid crust of the earth, of water, and of their influence upon the life of plants and animals, was linked to that discovery. The successful pursuit of innumerable trades and manufactures, the profitable separation of metals from their ores, also stand in the closest connection therewith.

Justus von Liebig
The art of observing is like a piece of glass destined for a mirror, which requires to be polished with the utmost care, to produce the reflection of a clear and undistorted image.

Justus von Liebig
The discovery of the conditions of a phenomenon is the first and most important requisite for its explanation. They must be ascertained and established by observation. The mode of inquiry and observation depends on the art of the scientific man; the skilful putting of the questions displays the powers of his mind.

Justus von Liebig
Science confers power, not money; and power is the source of riches and of poverty, - of riches when it produces, and of poverty when it destroys.

Justus von Liebig
Our children have more correct notions of nature and natural phenomena than had Plato! they may treat with ridicule the errors!

Justus von Liebig
Every new discovery opens up wider and richer fields to our researches ; and in the laws of nature we are still ever seeking the "virgin earth" of the alchemist, a search which can never have an end.

Justus von Liebig