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Leonardo da Vinci
(15 Apr 1452 - 2 May 1519)
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Science Quotes by Leonardo da Vinci (78 quotes)
>> Click for Leonardo da Vinci Quotes on | Mountain | Nature |
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... we might say that the earth has a spirit of growth; that its flesh is the soil, its bones the arrangement and connection of the rocks of which the mountains are composed, its cartilage the tufa, and its blood the springs of water.
— Leonardo da Vinci
[1155] Mechanics are the Paradise of mathematical science, because here we come to the fruits of mathematics.
— Leonardo da Vinci
[1157] The man who blames the supreme certainty of mathematics feeds on confusion, and can never silence the contradictions of sophistical sciences which lead to an eternal quackery.
— Leonardo da Vinci
[1158] There is no certainty in sciences where one of the mathematical sciences cannot be applied, or which are not in relation with these mathematics.
— Leonardo da Vinci
La necessità è maestra e tutrice della natura; La necessità è tema e inventrice della natura e freno e regola eterna.
Necessity is the mistress and guide of nature. Necessity is the theme and the inventress, the eternal curb and law of nature.
Necessity is the mistress and guide of nature. Necessity is the theme and the inventress, the eternal curb and law of nature.
— Leonardo da Vinci
La verità fu sola figliola del tenpo.
Truth was the only daughter of Time.
Truth was the only daughter of Time.
— Leonardo da Vinci
Ogni nostra cognitione prīcipia da sentimēti.
All our knowledge has its origin in our preceptions.
All our knowledge has its origin in our preceptions.
— Leonardo da Vinci
~~[No known source]~~ Once you have flown, you will walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been, there you long return.
— Leonardo da Vinci
~~[No known source]~~ The human foot is a masterpiece of engineering and a work of art.
— Leonardo da Vinci
A bird is an instrument working according to mathematical law, which instrument it is within the capacity of man to reproduce with all its movements, but not with a corresponding degree of strength, though it is deficient only in the power of maintaining equilibrium. We may therefore say that such an instrument constructed by man is lacking in nothing except the life of the bird, and this life must needs be supplied from that of man.
— Leonardo da Vinci
A bird maintains itself in the air by imperceptible balancing, when near to the mountains or lofty ocean crags; it does this by means of the curves of the winds which as they strike against these projections, being forced to preserve their first impetus bend their straight course towards the sky with divers revolutions, at the beginning of which the birds come to a stop with their wings open, receiving underneath themselves the continual buffetings of the reflex courses of the winds.
— Leonardo da Vinci
A single and distinct luminous body causes stronger relief in the objects than a diffused light; as may be seen by comparing one side of a landscape illuminated by the sun, and one overshadowed by clouds, and illuminated only by the diffused light of the atmosphere.
— Leonardo da Vinci
Although nature commences with reason and ends in experience it is necessary for us to do the opposite, that is to commence as I said before with experience and from this to proceed to investigate the reason.
— Leonardo da Vinci
And ye who wish to represent by words the form of man and all the aspects of his membrification, get away from that idea. For the more minutely you describe, the more you will confuse the mind of the reader and the more you will prevent him from a knowledge of the thing described. And so it is necessary to draw and describe.
— Leonardo da Vinci
Ask advice of him who governs himself well.
— Leonardo da Vinci
Common Sense is that which judges the things given to it by other senses.
— Leonardo da Vinci
Experience is never at fault; it is only your judgment that is in error in promising itself such results from experience as are not caused by our experiments. For having given a beginning, what follows from it must necessarily be a natural development of such a beginning, unless it has been subject to a contrary influence, while, if it is affected by any contrary influence, the result which ought to follow from the aforesaid beginning will be found to partake of this contrary influence in a greater or less degree in proportion as the said influence is more or less powerful than the aforesaid beginning.
— Leonardo da Vinci
Experiment is the interpreter of nature. Experiments never deceive. It is our judgment which sometimes deceives itself because it expects results which experiment refuses. We must consult experiment, varying the circumstances, until we have deduced general rules, for experiment alone can furnish reliable rules.
— Leonardo da Vinci
He who does not punish evil commands it to be done.
— Leonardo da Vinci
He who loves practice without theory is like a seafarer who boards ship without wheel or compass and knows not wither he travels.
— Leonardo da Vinci
I say that the power of vision extends through the visual rays to the surface of non-transparent bodies, while the power possessed by these bodies extends to the power of vision.
— Leonardo da Vinci
If a man has a tent made of linen of which the apertures have all been stopped up, and be it twelve bracchia across (over twenty-five feet) and twelve in depth, he will be able to throw himself down from any height without sustaining injury. [His concept of the parachute.]
— Leonardo da Vinci
If you are on the side whence the wind is blowing you will see the trees looking much lighter than you would see them on the other sides; and this is due to the fact that the wind turns up the reverse side of the leaves which in all trees is much whiter than the upper side.
— Leonardo da Vinci
If you do not rest on the good foundation of nature, you will labour with little honor and less profit.
— Leonardo da Vinci
If you throw a stone in a pond... the waves which strike against the shores are thrown back towards the spot where the stone struck; and on meeting other waves they never intercept each other’s course... In a small pond one and the same stroke gives birth to many motions of advance and recoil.
— Leonardo da Vinci
In rivers, the water that you touch is the last of what has passed and the first of that which comes; so with present time.
— Leonardo da Vinci
In the mountains of Parma and Piacenza, multitudes of shells and corals filled with worm-holes may be seen still adhering to the rocks, and when I was making the great horse at Milan a large sack of those which had been found in these parts was brought to my workshop by some peasants... The red stone of the mountains of Verona is found with shells all intermingled, which have become part of this stone... And if you should say that these shells have been and still constantly are being created in such places as these by the nature of the locality or by potency of the heavens in these spots, such an opinion cannot exist in brains possessed of any extensive powers of reasoning because the years of their growth are numbered upon the outer coverings of their shells; and both small and large ones may be seen; and these would not have grown without feeding, or fed without movement, and here [embedded in rock] they would not have been able to move... The peaks of the Apennines once stood up in a sea, in the form of islands surrounded by salt water... and above the plains of Italy where flocks of birds are flying today, fishes were once moving in large shoals.
— Leonardo da Vinci
Inequality is the cause of all local movements. There is no rest without equality.
— Leonardo da Vinci
Instrumental or mechanical science is the noblest and above all others, the most useful.
— Leonardo da Vinci
Just as eating contrary to the inclination is injurious to the health, so study without desire sports the memory, and it retains nothing that it takes in.
— Leonardo da Vinci
Just as iron rusts from disuse and stagnant water putrefies, or when cold turns to ice, so our intellect wastes unless it is kept in use.
— Leonardo da Vinci
Learning acquired in youth arrests the evil of old age; and if you understand that old age has wisdom for its food, you will so conduct yourself in youth that your old age will not lack for nourishment.
— Leonardo da Vinci
Life well spent is long.
— Leonardo da Vinci
Music may be called the sister of painting, for she is dependent upon hearing, the sense which comes second and her harmony is composed of the union of proportional parts sounded simultaneously, rising and falling in one or more harmonic rhythms.
— Leonardo da Vinci
Nature being capricious and taking pleasure in creating and producing a continuous sucession of lives and forms because she knows that they serve to increase her terrestrial substance, is more ready and swift in her creating than time is in destroying, and therefore she has ordained that many animals shall serve as food one for the other; and as this does not satisfy her desire she sends forth frequently certain noisome and pestilential vapours and continual plagues upon the vast accumulations and herds of animals and especially upon human beings who increase very rapidly because other animals do not feed upon them.
— Leonardo da Vinci
Nature is a source of truth. Experience does not ever err, it is only your judgment that errs in promising itself results which are not caused by your experiments.
— Leonardo da Vinci
Nature is so delightful and abundant in its variations that there would not be one that resembles another, and not only plants as a whole, but among their branches, leaves and fruit, will not be found one which is precisely like another.
— Leonardo da Vinci
Nature never breaks her own laws.
— Leonardo da Vinci
No human investigation can be called real science if it cannot be demonstrated mathematically.
— Leonardo da Vinci
Now do you not see that the eye embraces the beauty of the whole world? It counsels and corrects all the arts of mankind... it is the prince of mathematics, and the sciences founded on it are absolutely certain. It has measured the distances and sizes of the stars it has discovered the elements and their location... it has given birth to architecture and to perspective and to the divine art of painting.
— Leonardo da Vinci
Obstacles cannot crush me. Every obstacle yields to stern resolve. He who is fixed to a star does not change his mind.
— Leonardo da Vinci
Of several bodies all equally larger and distant, that most brightly illuminated will appear to the eye nearest and largest.
— Leonardo da Vinci
Of the four elements water is the second in weight and the second in respect of mobility. It is never at rest until it unites with the sea…
— Leonardo da Vinci
Perspective is a most subtle discovery in mathematical studies, for by means of lines it causes to appear distant that which is near, and large that which is small.
— Leonardo da Vinci
Poor is the pupil who does not surpass his master.
— Leonardo da Vinci
Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.
— Leonardo da Vinci
Study the science of art. Study the art of science. Develop your senses - especially learn how to see. Realize that everything connects to everything else.
— Leonardo da Vinci
Sufficient for us is the testimony of things produced in the salt waters and now found again in the high mountains, sometimes far from the sea.
— Leonardo da Vinci
The [mechanical] bird I have described ought to be able by the help of the wind to rise to a great height, and this will prove to be its safety; since even if… revolutions [of the winds] were to befall it, it would still have time to regain a condition of equilibrium; provided that its various parts have a great power of resistance, so that they can safely withstand the fury and violence of the descent, by the aid of the defenses which I have mentioned; and its joints should be made of strong tanned hide, and sewn with cords of strong raw silk. And let no one encumber himself with iron bands, for these are very soon broken at the joints or else they become worn out, and consequently it is well not to encumber oneself with them.
— Leonardo da Vinci
The body of the earth is of the nature of a fish... because it draws water as its breath instead of air.
— Leonardo da Vinci
The eye is the window of the human body through which it feels its way and enjoys the beauty of the world.
— Leonardo da Vinci
The eye transmits its own image through the air to all the objects which face it, and also receives them on its own surface, whence the “sensus communis” takes them and considers them.
— Leonardo da Vinci
The eye, the window of the soul, is the chief means whereby the understanding can most fully and abundantly appreciate the infinite works of Nature; and the ear is second.
— Leonardo da Vinci
The light and heat of the universe comes from the sun, and its cold and darkness from the withdrawal of the sun.
— Leonardo da Vinci
The lover is moved by the thing loved, as the sense is by that which perceives, and it unites with it and they become one and the same thing... when the lover is united with the beloved it finds rest there; when the burden is laid down there it finds rest.
— Leonardo da Vinci
The sun gives spirit and life to the plants and the earth nourishes them with moisture.
— Leonardo da Vinci
There are many occasions when the muscles that form the lips of the mouth move the lateral muscles that are joined to them, and there are an equal number of occasions when these lateral muscles move the lips of this mouth, replacing it where it cannot return of itself, because the function of muscle is to pull and not to push except in the case of the genitals and the tongue.
— Leonardo da Vinci
There is no certainty where one can neither apply any of the mathematical sciences nor any of those which are based upon the mathematical sciences.
— Leonardo da Vinci
There is no result in nature without a cause; understand the cause and you will have no need of the experiment.
— Leonardo da Vinci
There shall be wings! If the accomplishment be not for me, ’tis for some other. The spirit cannot die; and man, who shall know all and shall have wings...
— Leonardo da Vinci
Therefore O students study mathematics and do not build without foundations.
— Leonardo da Vinci
This work should commence with the conception of man, and should describe the nature of the womb, and how the child inhabits it, and in what stage it dwells there, and the manner of its quickening and feeding, and its growth, and what interval there is between one stage of growth and another, and what thing drives it forth from the body of the mother, and for what reason it sometimes emerges from the belly of its mother before the due time.
— Leonardo da Vinci
Those who are enamoured of practice without science, are like the pilot who embarks in a ship without rudder or compass and who is never certain where he is going.
— Leonardo da Vinci
Though human ingenuity may make various inventions which, by the help of various machines answering the same end, it will never devise any inventions more beautiful, nor more simple, nor more to the purpose than Nature does; because in her inventions nothing is wanting, and nothing is superfluous, and she needs no counterpoise when she makes limbs proper for motion in the bodies of animals.
— Leonardo da Vinci
Time stays long enough for anyone who will use it.
— Leonardo da Vinci
To speak of this subject you must... explain the nature of the resistance of the air, in the second the anatomy of the bird and its wings, in the third the method of working the wings in their various movements, in the fourth the power of the wings and the tail when the wings are not being moved and when the wind is favorable to serve as guide in various movements.
— Leonardo da Vinci
Very great charm of shadow and light is to be found in the faces of those who sit in the doors of dark houses. The eye of the spectator sees that part of the face which is in shadow lost in the darkness of the house, and that part of the face which is lit draws its brilliancy from the splendor of the sky. From this intensification of light and shade the face gains greatly in relief and beauty by showing the subtlest shadows in the light part and the subtlest lights in the dark part.
— Leonardo da Vinci
Water is the driver of nature.
— Leonardo da Vinci
Weight is caused by one element being situated in another; and it moves by the shortest line towards its centre, not by its own choice, not because the centre draws it to itself, but because the other intervening element cannot withstand it.
— Leonardo da Vinci
What induces you, oh man, to depart from your home in town, to leave parents and friends, and go to the countryside over mountains and valleys, if it is not for the beauty of the world of nature?
— Leonardo da Vinci
When the sun is covered by clouds, objects are less conspicuous, because there is little difference between the light and shade of the trees and the buildings being illuminated by the brightness of the atmosphere which surrounds the objects in such a way that the shadows are few, and these few fade away so that their outline is lost in haze.
— Leonardo da Vinci
When you are identifying science of the motion of water, remember to include under each subject its application and use, so that the science will be useful.
— Leonardo da Vinci
When you try to explain the behavior of water, remember to demonstrate the experiment first and the cause next.
— Leonardo da Vinci
Where the flow carries a large quantity of water, the speed of the flow is greater and vice versa.
— Leonardo da Vinci
Who would believe that so small a space could contain the images of all the universe?
— Leonardo da Vinci
Whoever despises the high wisdom of mathematics nourishes himself on delusion.
— Leonardo da Vinci
Why are the bones of great fishes, and oysters and corals and various other shells and sea-snails, found on the high tops of mountains that border the sea, in the same way in which they are found in the depths of the sea?
— Leonardo da Vinci
Why does the eye see a thing more clearly in dreams than the imagination when awake?
— Leonardo da Vinci
Quotes by others about Leonardo da Vinci (9)
The modern version of Buridan’s ass [a figurative description of a man of indecision] has a Ph.D., but no time to grow up as he is undecided between making a Leonardo da Vinci in the test tube or planting a Coca Cola sign on Mars.
The pre-Darwinian age had come to be regarded as a Dark Age in which men still believed that the book of Genesis was a standard scientific treatise, and that the only additions to it were Galileo’s demonstration of Leonardo da Vinci’s simple remark that the earth is a moon of the sun, Newton’s theory of gravitation, Sir Humphry Davy's invention of the safety-lamp, the discovery of electricity, the application of steam to industrial purposes, and the penny post.
Thou, O God, dost sell unto us all good things at the price of labour.
Quotation credited to Leonardo da Vinci that she chose for her bookplate, and which reflects her outlook on her work.
Quotation credited to Leonardo da Vinci that she chose for her bookplate, and which reflects her outlook on her work.
Da Vinci was as great a mechanic and inventor as were Newton and his friends. Yet a glance at his notebooks shows us that what fascinated him about nature was its variety, its infinite adaptability, the fitness and the individuality of all its parts. By contrast what made astronomy a pleasure to Newton was its unity, its singleness, its model of a nature in which the diversified parts were mere disguises for the same blank atoms.
When Da Vinci wanted an effect, he willed, he planned the means to make it happen: that was the purpose of his machines. But the machines of Newton … are means not for doing but for observing. He saw an effect, and he looked for its cause.
I am a cross between Steve Jobs and Leonardo da Vinci.
My interest in Science had many roots. Some came from my mother … while I was in my early teens. She fell in love with science,… [from] classes on the Foundations of Physical Science. … I was infected by [her] professor second hand, through hundreds of hours of conversations at my mother’s knees. It was from my mother that I first learned of Archimedes, Leonardo da Vinci, Galileo, Kepler, Newton, and Darwin. We spent hours together collecting single-celled organisms from a local pond and watching them with a microscope.
The genius of Leonardo da Vinci imagined a flying machine, but it took the methodical application of science by those two American bicycle mechanics to create it.
It was not alone the striving for universal culture which attracted the great masters of the Renaissance, such as Brunellesco, Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, Michelangelo and especially Albrecht Dürer, with irresistible power to the mathematical sciences. They were conscious that, with all the freedom of the individual fantasy, art is subject to necessary laws, and conversely, with all its rigor of logical structure, mathematics follows aesthetic laws.
See also:
- 15 Apr - short biography, births, deaths and events on date of da Vinci's birth.
- The Science of Leonardo: Inside the Mind of the Great Genius of the Renaissance, by Fritjof Capra. - book suggestion.
- Booklist for Leonardo da Vinci.