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Home > Dictionary of Science Quotations > Scientist Names Index H > William Hazlitt Quotes

William Hazlitt
(10 Apr 1778 - 18 Sep 1830)

English writer.

Science Quotes by William Hazlitt (7 quotes)

No man can thoroughly master more than one art or science.
— William Hazlitt
The Round Table: a Collection of Essays on Literature, Men, and Manners (1817), Vol. 2, 40.
Science quotes on:  |  Art (680)  |  Man (2252)  |  Master (182)  |  More (2558)  |  Thoroughly (67)

Silence is one great art of conversation.
— William Hazlitt
Characteristics: In the Manner of Rochefoucault's Maxims (1837), 24.
Science quotes on:  |  Art (680)  |  Conversation (46)  |  Great (1610)  |  Linguistics (39)  |  Silence (62)

The most important and lasting truths are the most obvious ones. Nature cheats us with her mysteries, one after another, like a juggler with his tricks; but shews us her plain honest face, without our paying for it.
— William Hazlitt
Characteristics: In the Manner of Rochefoucault's Maxims (1837), 149.
Science quotes on:  |  Cheat (13)  |  Face (214)  |  Honest (53)  |  Important (229)  |  Juggler (3)  |  Most (1728)  |  Mystery (188)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Obvious (128)  |  Trick (36)  |  Truth (1109)

The most learned are often the most narrow-minded.
— William Hazlitt
In Hialmer Day Gould, New Practical Spelling (1905), 14.
Science quotes on:  |  Learn (672)  |  Learned (235)  |  Mind (1377)  |  Most (1728)  |  Narrow (85)  |  Narrow-Minded (5)  |  Often (109)

The origin of all science is the desire to know causes, and the origin of all false science and imposture is the desire to accept false causes rather than none; or, which is the same thing, in the unwillingness to acknowledge our own ignorance.
— William Hazlitt
From 'Burke and the Edinburgh Phrenologists', The Atlas (15 Feb 1829). Collected in William Hazlitt and Percival Presland Howe (ed.), New Writings by William Hazlitt (2nd Ed., 1925), 117.
Science quotes on:  |  Accept (198)  |  Acknowledge (33)  |  Cause (561)  |  Desire (212)  |  False (105)  |  Ignorance (254)  |  Imposture (6)  |  Know (1538)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Origin (250)  |  Thing (1914)  |  Unwillingness (5)

The reputation of science which ought to be the most lasting, as synonymous with truth, is often the least so. One discovery supersedes another; and the progress of light throws the past into obscurity. What is become of the Blacks, the Lavoisiers, the Priestleys, in chemistry? … When any set of men think theirs the only science worth studying, and themselves the only infallible persons in it, it is a sign how frail the traces are of past excellence in it.
— William Hazlitt
Characteristics: In the Manner of Rochefoucault's Maxims (1837), 148-149.
Science quotes on:  |  Become (821)  |  Joseph Black (14)  |  Chemistry (376)  |  Discovery (837)  |  Excellence (40)  |  Frail (2)  |  Infallible (18)  |  Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier (41)  |  Least (75)  |  Light (635)  |  Most (1728)  |  Obscurity (28)  |  Often (109)  |  Past (355)  |  Person (366)  |  Joseph Priestley (16)  |  Progress (492)  |  Reputation (33)  |  Set (400)  |  Study (701)  |  Studying (70)  |  Supersede (8)  |  Themselves (433)  |  Think (1122)  |  Trace (109)  |  Truth (1109)  |  Worth (172)

You shall yourself be judge. Reason, with most people, means their own opinion.
— William Hazlitt
Essay XVII. 'A New School of Reform: A Dialogue between a Rationalist and a Sentimentalist', in A.R. Waller and A. Glover (eds.), The Collected Works of William Hazlitt (1903), Vol. 7, 188.
Science quotes on:  |  Judge (114)  |  Mean (810)  |  Means (587)  |  Most (1728)  |  Opinion (291)  |  People (1031)  |  Reason (766)


Carl Sagan Thumbnail 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) -- Carl Sagan
Quotations by:Albert EinsteinIsaac NewtonLord KelvinCharles DarwinSrinivasa RamanujanCarl SaganFlorence NightingaleThomas EdisonAristotleMarie CurieBenjamin FranklinWinston ChurchillGalileo GalileiSigmund FreudRobert BunsenLouis PasteurTheodore RooseveltAbraham LincolnRonald ReaganLeonardo DaVinciMichio KakuKarl PopperJohann GoetheRobert OppenheimerCharles Kettering  ... (more people)

Quotations about:Atomic  BombBiologyChemistryDeforestationEngineeringAnatomyAstronomyBacteriaBiochemistryBotanyConservationDinosaurEnvironmentFractalGeneticsGeologyHistory of ScienceInventionJupiterKnowledgeLoveMathematicsMeasurementMedicineNatural ResourceOrganic ChemistryPhysicsPhysicianQuantum TheoryResearchScience and ArtTeacherTechnologyUniverseVolcanoVirusWind PowerWomen ScientistsX-RaysYouthZoology  ... (more topics)
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