For one person who is blessed with the power of invention, many will always be found who have the capacity of applying principles.

- Charles Babbage

What is there in a name? It is merely an empty basket, until you put something into it.

- Charles Babbage

It can happen to but few philosophers, and but at distant intervals, to snatch a science, like Dalton, from the chaos of indefinite combination, and …

- Charles Babbage

[In response to Alfred Tennyson's poem "Vision of Sin," which included the line "Every moment dies a man, every moment one is born."] If this were tr…

- Charles Babbage

The first steps in the path of discovery, and the first approximate measures, are those which add most to the existing knowledge of mankind.

- Charles Babbage

I have no desire to write my own biography, as long as I have strength and means to do better work.

- Charles Babbage

The accumulation of skill and science which has been directed to diminish the difficulty of producing manufactured goods, has not been beneficial to …

- Charles Babbage

At each increase of knowledge, as well as on the contrivance of every new tool, human labour becomes abridged.

- Charles Babbage

The economy of human time is the next advantage of machinery in manufactures.

- Charles Babbage