Wolfgang Ostwald Quotes

12 Sourced Quotes

I must consider the organizer as more important than the discoverer.

Wolfgang Ostwald
The only difference between elements and compounds consists in the supposed impossibility of proving the so-called elements to be compounds.

Wolfgang Ostwald
What we call matter is only a complex of energies which we find together in the same place.

Wolfgang Ostwald
A catalyst is a substance which alters the velocity of a chemical reaction without appearing in the final products.

Wolfgang Ostwald
Only when the very last of all the offspring perishes may death be regarded as the victor.

Wolfgang Ostwald
Science is not like a chain which snaps when only a single link proves to be weak. It is like a tree, or, better still, like a forest, in which all sorts of changes or ravages go on without causing the whole to pass out of existence or cease to be active.

Wolfgang Ostwald
The mere fact that the footprints of a previous wanderer can be recognized is sufficient to cause the later wanderer to keep in the same path, although he might possibly find another more convenient way if he made himself independent.

Wolfgang Ostwald
Our knowledge is an incomplete piece of patchwork; but each one of us is bound to make the best possible use of the incomplete knowledge he possesses, conscious always that his results are any day liable to be replaced by new discoveries or ideas.

Wolfgang Ostwald
All these sticky, mucilaginous, resinous, tarry masses which refuse to crystallize, and which are the abomination of the normal organic chemist; those substances which he carefully sets toward the back of his cupboard and marks "not fit for further use," just these are the substances which are the delight of the colloid chemist.

Wolfgang Ostwald
That is just what science is for, - to make practical things easier by letting us know what is important and what unimportant.

Wolfgang Ostwald
Science will always give a clear answer; if not today, in the near future.

Wolfgang Ostwald
Research workers were, at one time, obliged to endeavor to ensure that their theories did not contradict those of the Church, nowadays, in contrast, the Church is at pains to prove that its teachings are compatible with those of Science. In other words, the Church acknowledges Science as the higher authority.

Wolfgang Ostwald