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- Something unknown is doing we don't know what.
- Sir Arthur Eddington (1882 - 1944), comment on the Uncertainty Principle in quantum physics, 1927
- Proof is the idol before whom the pure mathematician tortures himself.
- Sir Arthur Eddington (1882 - 1944), The Nature of the Physical World
- We have found a strange footprint on the shores of the unknown. We have devised profound theories, one after another, to account for its origins. At last, we have succeeded in reconstructing the creature that made the footprint. And lo! It is our own.
- Sir Arthur Eddington (1882 - 1944), Space, Time, and Gravitation, 1920
- It is impossible to trap modern physics into predicting anything with perfect determinism because it deals with probabilities from the outset.
- Sir Arthur Eddington (1882 - 1944), In J. R. Newman (ed.) The World of Mathematics, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1956
- I ask you to look both ways. For the road to a knowledge of the stars leads through the atom; and important knowledge of the atom has been reached through the stars.
- Sir Arthur Eddington (1882 - 1944), Stars and Atoms (1928), Lecture 1
- The mathematics is not there till we put it there.
- Sir Arthur Eddington (1882 - 1944), The Philosophy of Physical Science
- For the truth of the conclusions of physical science, observation is the supreme Court of Appeal. It does not follow that every item which we confidently accept as physical knowledge has actually been certified by the Court; our confidence is that it would be certified by the Court if it were submitted. But it does follow that every item of physical knowledge is of a form which might be submitted to the Court. It must be such that we can specify (although it may be impracticable to carry out) an observational procedure which would decide whether it is true or not. Clearly a statement cannot be tested by observation unless it is an assertion about the results of observation. Every item of physical knowledge must therefore be an assertion of what has been or would be the result of carrying out a specified observational procedure.
- Sir Arthur Eddington (1882 - 1944), The Philosophy of Physical Science
- Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. When change is absolute there remains no being to improve and no direction is set for possible improvement: and when experience is not retained, as among savages, infancy is perpetual. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. In the first stage of life the mind is frivolous and easily distracted, it misses progress by failing in consecutiveness and persistence. This is the condition of children and barbarians, in which instinct has learned nothing from experience.
- George Santayana (1863 - 1952), The Life of Reason, Volume 1, 1905
- If all the world hated you and believed you wicked, while your own conscience approved of you and absolved you from guilt, you would not be without friends.
- Charlotte Bronte (1816 - 1855), Jane Eyre pg. 61
- Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
- Lord Acton, Letter to Bishop Mandell Creighton, 1887
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