Samuel Butler Quotes about Science

Business should be like religion and science; it should know neither love nor hate.

Business should be like religion and science; it should know neither love nor hate.

Hate, Science, Should

Samuel Butler (1951). “Notebooks: Selections Edited by Geoffrey Keynes and Brian Hill”

When people talk of atoms obeying fixed laws, they are either ascribing some kind of intelligence and free will to atoms or they are talking nonsense. There is no obedience unless there is at any rate a potentiality of disobeying.

Samuel Butler

Science, Talking, Law

Samuel Butler (2008). “The Note-books of Samuel Butler: Easyread Super Large 18pt Edition”, p.121, ReadHowYouWant.com

A definition is the enclosing a wilderness of idea within a wall of words.

Samuel Butler

Wall, Science, Ideas

'Notebooks' (1912) ch. 14

You cannot have a thing "matter" by itself which shall have no motion in it, nor yet a thing "motion" by itself which shall exist apart from matter; you must have both or neither. You can have matter moving much, or little, and in all conceivable ways; but you cannot have matter without any motion more than you can have motion without any matter that is moving.

Samuel Butler

Moving, Science, Littles

Samuel Butler (2014). “The Notebooks of Samuel Butler”, p.103, The Floating Press

If [science] tends to thicken the crust of ice on which, as it were, we are skating, it is all right. If it tries to find, or professes to have found, the solid ground at the bottom of the water it is all wrong. Our business is with the thickening of this crust by extending our knowledge downward from above, as ice gets thicker while the frost lasts; we should not try to freeze upwards from the bottom.

Samuel Butler

Knowledge, Science, Ice

Samuel Butler (1950). “The Essential Samuel Butler”, London : J. Cape

I am the enfant terrible of literature and science. If I cannot, and I know I cannot, get the literary and scientific bigwigs to give me a shilling, I can, and I know I can, heave bricks into the middle of them.

Samuel Butler

Science, Giving, Literature

Samuel Butler (2014). “The Notebooks of Samuel Butler”, p.230, The Floating Press

Whereas, to borrow an illustration from mathematics, life was formerly an equation of, say, 100 unknown quantities, it is now one of 99 only, inasmuch as memory and heredity have been shown to be one and the same thing.

Samuel Butler

Life, Memories, Science

Samuel Butler (1926). “The Shrewsbury Edition of the Works of Samuel Butler: The notebooks of Samuel Butler”

There is one class of mind that loves to lean on rules and definitions, and another that discards them as far as possible. A faddist will generally ask for a definition of faddism, and one who is not a faddist will be impatient of being asked to give one.

Samuel Butler

Science, Class, Giving

Samuel Butler (2015). “Delphi Complete Works of Samuel Butler (Illustrated)”, p.4257, Delphi Classics

There is no such source of error as the pursuit of absolute truth.

Samuel Butler

Truth, Science, Errors

Samuel Butler (2014). “The Notebooks of Samuel Butler”, p.374, The Floating Press

There are two classes [of scientists], those who want to know, and do not care whether others think they know or not, and those who do not much care about knowing, but care very greatly about being reputed as knowing.

Samuel Butler

Knowledge, Science, Thinking

Samuel Butler (2014). “The Notebooks of Samuel Butler”, p.272, The Floating Press