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Hilaire Belloc
(27 Jul 1870 - 16 Jul 1953)
French-English writer.
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Science Quotes by Hilaire Belloc (6 quotes)
Anyone of common mental and physical health can practice scientific research. … Anyone can try by patient experiment what happens if this or that substance be mixed in this or that proportion with some other under this or that condition. Anyone can vary the experiment in any number of ways. He that hits in this fashion on something novel and of use will have fame. … The fame will be the product of luck and industry. It will not be the product of special talent.
— Hilaire Belloc
In Essays of a Catholic Layman in England (1931).
It seems to be saying perpetually; 'I am the end of the nineteenth century; I am glad they built me of iron; let me rust.' ... It is like a passing fool in a crowd of the University, a buffoon in the hall; for all the things in Paris has made, it alone has neither wits nor soul.
About the Eiffel Tower.
About the Eiffel Tower.
— Hilaire Belloc
Paris (1900). In Peter Yapp, The Travellers' Dictionary of Quotation: Who Said What, About Where? (1983), 183.
Physicians of the Utmost Fame
Were called at once; but when they came
They answered, as they took their Fees,
“There is no Cure for this Disease.”
Were called at once; but when they came
They answered, as they took their Fees,
“There is no Cure for this Disease.”
— Hilaire Belloc
In 'Henry King', Cautionary Tales for Children (1907, 1908 edition), 18-19.
Statistics are the triumph of the quantitative method, and the quantitative method is the victory of sterility and death.
— Hilaire Belloc
'On Statistics'. In On the Silence of the Sea and Other Essays (1941),199-200.
The Microbe is so very small,
You cannot make him out at all.
But many sanguine people hope
To see him down a microscope.
His jointed tongue that lies beneath
A hundred curious rows of teeth;
His seven tufted tails with lots
Of lovely pink and purple spots
On each of which a pattern stands,
Composed of forty separate bands;
His eyebrows of a tender green;
All these have never yet been seen
But Scientists, who ought to know,
Assure us they must be so ...
Oh! let us never, never doubt
What nobody is sure about!
You cannot make him out at all.
But many sanguine people hope
To see him down a microscope.
His jointed tongue that lies beneath
A hundred curious rows of teeth;
His seven tufted tails with lots
Of lovely pink and purple spots
On each of which a pattern stands,
Composed of forty separate bands;
His eyebrows of a tender green;
All these have never yet been seen
But Scientists, who ought to know,
Assure us they must be so ...
Oh! let us never, never doubt
What nobody is sure about!
— Hilaire Belloc
In More Beasts for Worse Children (1897), 47-8.
The whale that wanders round the Pole
Is not a table fish.
You cannot bake or boil him whole
Nor serve him in a dish.
Is not a table fish.
You cannot bake or boil him whole
Nor serve him in a dish.
— Hilaire Belloc
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) -- 
