Ludwig Büchner Quotes

21 Sourced Quotes

Empirical philosophy, wherever it may search for it, is nowhere able to find a trace of a supernatural influence either in time or space.

Ludwig Büchner
That the world is not governed as is frequently expressed, but that the changes and motions of matter obey a necessity inherent in it, which admits of no exception, cannot be denied by any person who is but superficially acquainted with the natural sciences.

Ludwig Büchner
Every schoolboy knows that the sky is not a glass shade covering the earth, but that, in contemplating it, we behold an immense space interrupted by infinitely distant and scattered groups of worlds.

Ludwig Büchner
Like astronomy, which with mathematical certainty has measured the spaces of the heavens, so does modern geology, by taking a retrospective view of the millions of years which have passed, lift the veil which has so long concealed the history of the earth and has given rise to all kinds of religious and mysterious dreams.

Ludwig Büchner
In the long run there is no contending against facts; it is useless to "kick against the pricks."

Ludwig Büchner
The investigations of geology have thrown a highly interesting and important light on the history of the origin and gradual development of the earth. It was in the rocks and strata of the crust of the earth, and in the organic remains, that geologists read, as in an old chronicle, the history of the earth.

Ludwig Büchner
We have the fullest right, and are scientifically correct, in asserting there is no such thing as a miracle; everything that happens, does so in a natural way...

Ludwig Büchner
A spirit independent of nature cannot exist; for never has an unprejudiced mind, cultivated by science, perceived its manifestations.

Ludwig Büchner
An enlightened intellect no longer requires the aid of that powerful hand which, acting from without, excites the burning spirits of the interior of the earth to a sudden rebellion, which pours the waters as a deluge over the earth, and shapes for its designs the whole structure like soft clay.

Ludwig Büchner
What this or that man may understand by a governing reason, an absolute power, a universal soul, a personal God, etc., is his own affair. The theologians, with their articles of faith, must be left to themselves; so the naturalists with their science: they both proceed by different routes.

Ludwig Büchner
The science of statistics, which has only been turned to proper account in modern times, has the great honor of having proved the existence of definite rules in a number of phenomena, which had hitherto been looked upon as merely accidental or as owing their origin to an arbitrary power.

Ludwig Büchner
What we still designate as chance, merely depends on a concatenation of circumstances, the internal connection and final causes of which we have as yet been unable to unravel.

Ludwig Büchner
The power of spirits and gods dissolved in the hands of science.

Ludwig Büchner
How is it possible that the unalterable order in which things move should ever be disturbed without producing an irremediable gap in the world, without delivering us and everything up to arbitrary power, without reducing all science, every earthly endeavor, to a vain and childish effort.

Ludwig Büchner
Force can as little exist without a substance, as seeing without a visual apparatus, or thinking without an organ of thought.

Ludwig Büchner
Individual human qualities and imperfections are transferred to philosophical notions, and belief is made to occupy the place of actual knowledge.

Ludwig Büchner
How curious and whimsical is not the conception of a creative power, which conducts the earth and its inhabitants through various transitions and immense periods of time to a more developed form, in order to make it finally a fit dwelling-place for the most organised animal - man.

Ludwig Büchner
Science has gradually taken all the positions of the childish belief of the peoples; it has snatched thunder and lightning from the hands of the gods; the eclipse of the stars, and the stupendous powers of the Titans of the olden time have been grasped by the fingers of man.

Ludwig Büchner
It is now known that there can be no discussion about those periodic creations of the earth of which so much was said, and which to this day an erroneous conception of nature tries to identify with the so-called days of creation of the Bible; but that the whole past of the earth is nothing but an unfolded present.

Ludwig Büchner
[How can we conceive] a supreme legislator, who allows himself to be moved by prayers and sobs, to reverse the immutable order which he himself has created, to violate his own laws, and with his own hand to destroy the action of the natural forces!

Ludwig Büchner
We should only waste words in our endeavor to prove the natural impossibility of a miracle. No educated, much less a scientific person, who is convinced of the immutable order of things, can now-a-days believe in miracles.

Ludwig Büchner