Repute Quotes (3 quotes)
As pilgrimages to the shrines of saints draw thousands of English Catholics to the Continent, there may be some persons in the British Islands sufficiently in love with science, not only to revere the memory of its founders, but to wish for a description of the locality and birth-place of a great master of knowledge—John Dalton—who did more for the world’s civilisation than all the reputed saints in Christendom.
In The Worthies of Cumberland (1874), 25.
It is rather astonishing how little practical value scientific knowledge has for ordinary men, how dull and commonplace such of it as has value is, and how its value seems almost to vary inversely to its reputed utility.
In A Mathematician's Apology (1940, 2012), 117-118.
One always finds among men who are reputed to be reasonable some evidence of this tendency to inquire into the reason of things; of this desire to know not simply how things are, but why they are one way rather than another; and, consequently, of this awareness of a relation which is not gained through the senses, this notion of an abstract bond by virtue of which one thing is subordinated to another which determines and explains it.
From Essai sur les Fondements de nos Connaissances et sur les Caractères de la Critique Philosophique (1851), 21, as translated by Merritt H Moore in An Essay on the Foundations of Our Knowledge (1956), 18. From the original French: “Toujours est-il que, chez tous les hommes réputés raisonnables, on retrouve, à certains degrés, cette tendance à s’enquérir de la raison des choses; ce désir de connaître, non pas seulement comment les choses sont, mais pourquoi elles sont de telle façon plutôt que d’une autre; et, partant, cette intelligence d’un rapport qui ne tombe pas sous les sens; cette notion d’un lien abstrait en vertu duquel une chose est subordonnée à une autre qui la détermine et qui l’explique.”
In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion.
(1987) -- 
