In speaking of the work of machines and of natural forces we must, of course, in this comparison eliminate anything in which activity of intelligence….

There is a kind, I might almost say, of artistic satisfaction, when we are able to survey the enormous wealth of Nature as a regularly ordered whole ….

Just as a physicist has to examine the telescope and galvanometer with which he is working; has to get a clear conception of what he can attain with ….

Not that I wish by any means to deny, that the mental life of individuals and peoples is also in conformity with law, as is the object of philosophic….

The quantity of force which can be brought into action in the whole of Nature is unchangeable, and can neither be increased nor diminished..

What we see is the solution to a computational problem, our brains compute the most likely causes from the photon absorptions within our eyes..

When young Galileo, then a student at Pisa, noticed one day during divine service a chandelier swinging backwards and forwards, and convinced himself….

The most startling result of Faraday's Law is perhaps this. If we accept the hypothesis that the elementary substances are composed of atoms, we cann….

The originator of a new concept...finds, as a rule, that it is much more difficult to find out why other people do not understand him, than it was to….

A metaphysical conclusion is either a false conclusion or a concealed experimental conclusion..

Heat can also be produced by the impact of imperfectly elastic bodies as well as by friction. This is the case, for instance, when we produce fire by….

The smallest quantity of alcohol scares away novel ideas..

A moving body whose motion was not retarded by any resisting force would continue to move to all eternity..

Black is real sensation, even if it is produced by entire absence of light. The sensation of black is distinctly different from the lack of all sensa….

All that science can achieve is a perfect knowledge and a perfect understanding of the action of natural and moral forces..

The formation of scales and of the web of harmony is a product of artistic invention, and is in no way given by the natural structure or by the natur….

Whoever, in the pursuit of science, seeks after immediate practical utility, may generally rest assured that he will seek in vain..

A raised weight can produce work, but in doing so it must necessarily sink from its height, and, when it has fallen as deep as it can fall, its gravi….

Music stands in a much closer connection with pure sensation than any of the other arts..

Each individual fact, taken by itself, can indeed arouse our curiosity or our astonishment, or be useful to us in its practical applications..

Isolated facts and experiments have in themselves no value, however great their number may be. They only become valuable in a theoretical or practica….