Charles Babbage Quotes

On two occasions I have been asked, 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question.

Errors using inadequate data are much less than those using no data at all.

As soon as an Analytical Engine exists, it will neccessarily guide the future course of science.

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

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

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

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

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

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

I wish to God these calculations had been executed by steam.

Perhaps it would be better for science, that all criticism should be avowed.

Propose to an Englishman any principle, or any instrument, however admirable, and you will observe that the whole effort of the English mind is directed to find a difficulty, a defect, or an impossibility in it. If you speak to him of a machine for peeling a potato, he will pronounce it impossible: if you peel a potato with it before his eyes, he will declare it useless, because it will not slice a pineapple.

A young man passes from our public schools to the universities, ignorant almost of the elements of every branch of useful knowledge.

Whenever a man can get hold of numbers, they are invaluable: if correct, they assist in informing his own mind, but they are still more useful in deluding the minds of others. Numbers are the masters of the weak, but the slaves of the strong.

The whole of the developments and operations of analysis are now capable of being executed by machinery ... As soon as an Analytical Engine exists, it will necessarily guide the future course of science.

If we look at the fact, we shall find that the great inventions of the age are not, with us at least, always produced in universities.

An object is frequently not seen, from not knowing how to see it, rather than from any defect of the organ of vision.

The errors which arise from the absence of facts are far more numerous and more durable than those which result from unsound reasoning respecting true data.

Perhaps the most important principle on which the economy of a manufacture depends, is the division of labour amongst the persons who perform the work.

In mathematics we have long since drawn the rein, and given over a hopeless race.

Whenever the work is itself light, it becomes necessary, in order to economize time, to increase the velocity.

If we define a miracle as an effect of which the cause is unknown to us, then we make our ignorance the source of miracles! And the universe itself would be a standing miracle. A miracle might be perhaps defined more exactly as an effect which is not the consequence or effect of any known laws of nature.

There is nothing in the nature of a miracle that should render it incredible:;: its credibility depends upon the nature of the evidence by which it is supported. An event of extreme probability will not necessarily command our belief unless upon a sufficiency of proof; and so an event which we may regard as highly improbable may command our belief if it is sustained by sufficient evidence. So that the credibility or incredibility of an event does not rest upon the nature of the event itself, but depends upon the nature and sufficiency of the proof which sustains it.

Another mode of accumulating power arises from lifting a weight and then allowing it to fall.

Miracles may be, for anything we know to the contrary, phenomena of a higher order of God's laws, superior to, and, under certain conditions, controlling the inferior order known to us as the ordinary laws of nature.