Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Science Quotations

In nature we never see anything isolated, but everything in connection with something else which is before it, beside it, under it and over it.

He who possesses art and science has religion; he who does not possess them, needs religion.

The credit of advancing science has always been due to individuals and never to the age.

Whether a person shows themselves to be a genius in science or in writing a song, the only point is, whether the thought, the discovery, or the deed, is living and can live on.

I had rather be Mercury, the smallest among seven [planets], revolving round the sun, than the first among five [moons] revolving round Saturn.

Microscopes and telescopes really confuse our minds.

The arts are the salt of the earth; as salt relates to food, the arts relate to technology.

Experiments are mediators between nature and idea.

In all times it is only individuals that have advanced science, not the age.

Hypotheses are the scaffolds which are erected in front of a building and removedd when the building is completed. They are indispensable to the worker; but the worker must not mistake the scaffolding for the building.

As soon as any one belongs to a narrow creed in science, every unprejudiced and true perception is gone.

There is no patriotic art and no patriotic science.

Not art and science only, but patience will be required for the work.

Whether one show one's self a man of genius in science or compose a song, the only point is, whether the thought, the discovery, the deed, is living and can live on.

Science has been seriously retarded by the study of what is not worth knowing and of what is not knowable.

Man is not born to solve the problem of the universe, but to find out what he has to do; and to restrain himself within the limits of his comprehension.

Basic characteristics of an individual organism: to divide, to unite, to merge into the universal, to abide in the particular, to transform itself, to define itself, and as living things tend to appear under a thousand conditions, to arise and vanish, to solidify and melt, to freeze and flow, to expand and contract. Since these effects occur together, any or all may occur at the same moment.

We see only what we know.

God could cause us considerable embarrassment by revealing all the secrets of nature to us: we should not know what to do for sheer apathy and boredom.

Nature goes on her way, and all that to us seems an exception is really according to order.

Normally, the sciences distance themselves from life and the return to it via a detour.

Everything in science depends on what one calls an aperçu, on becoming aware of what is at the bottom of the phenomena. Such becoming aware is infinitely fertile.

If you have science and art, You also have religion; But if you don't have them, You better have religion.

Insofar as he makes use of his healthy senses, man himself is the best and most exact scientific instrument possible. The greatest misfortune of modern physics is that its experiments have been set apart from man, as it were, physics refuses to recognize nature in anything not shown by artificial instruments, and even uses this as a measure of its accomplishments.

Science and art belong to the whole world, and before them vanish the barriers of nationality.