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Who said: “Nature does nothing in vain when less will serve; for Nature is pleased with simplicity and affects not the pomp of superfluous causes.”
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Home > Dictionary of Science Quotations > Scientist Names Index N > John Henry Newman Quotes

John Henry Newman
(1801 - 1890)

British cardinal and theologian.

Science Quotes by John Henry Newman (7 quotes)

A science is not mere knowledge, it is knowledge which has undergone a process of intellectual digestion. It is the grasp of many things brought together in one, and hence is its power; for, properly speaking, it is Science that is power, not Knowledge..,
— John Henry Newman
Discourses on the Scope and Nature of University Education. Addressed to the Catholics of Dublin (1852), Discourse 5, 144.
Science quotes on:  |  Digestion (29)  |  Grasp (65)  |  Intellect (251)  |  Intellectual (258)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Power (771)  |  Process (439)  |  Speaking (118)  |  Thing (1914)  |  Together (392)

If physical science is dangerous, as I have said, it is dangerous because it necessarily ignores the idea of moral evil; but literature is open to the more grievous imputation of recognizing and understanding it too well.
— John Henry Newman
In 'Duties of the Church Towards Knowledge', The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated (1852, 1873), Discourse 9, 229.
Science quotes on:  |  Dangerous (108)  |  Evil (122)  |  Grievous (4)  |  Idea (881)  |  Ignore (52)  |  Literature (116)  |  Moral (203)  |  More (2558)  |  Necessarily (137)  |  Open (277)  |  Physical (518)  |  Physical Science (104)  |  Recognize (136)  |  Understand (648)  |  Understanding (527)

It is a matter of primary importance in the cultivation of those sciences in which truth is discoverable by the human intellect that the investigator should be free, independent, unshackled in his movement; that he should be allowed and enabled to fix his mind intently, nay, exclusively, on his special object, without the risk of being distracted every other minute in the process and progress of his inquiry by charges of temerariousness, or by warnings against extravagance or scandal.
— John Henry Newman
In The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated (1905), 471.
Science quotes on:  |  Against (332)  |  Being (1276)  |  Charge (63)  |  Cultivation (36)  |  Discovery (837)  |  Distraction (7)  |  Education (423)  |  Extravagance (3)  |  Free (239)  |  Human (1512)  |  Human Intellect (32)  |  Importance (299)  |  Independent (74)  |  Inquiry (88)  |  Intellect (251)  |  Investigate (106)  |  Investigator (71)  |  Matter (821)  |  Mind (1377)  |  Minute (129)  |  Movement (162)  |  Object (438)  |  Other (2233)  |  Primary (82)  |  Process (439)  |  Progress (492)  |  Risk (68)  |  Scandal (5)  |  Science And Society (25)  |  Special (188)  |  Truth (1109)  |  Unshackled (2)  |  Warning (18)

Literature stands related to Man as Science stands to Nature; it is his history.
— John Henry Newman
Discourses on the Scope and Nature of University Education. Addressed to the Catholics of Dublin (1852), Discourse 10, 353.
Science quotes on:  |  History (716)  |  Literature (116)  |  Man (2252)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Relationship (114)  |  Stand (284)

Living movements do not come out of committees.
— John Henry Newman
…...
Science quotes on:  |  Committee (16)  |  Do (1905)  |  Live (650)  |  Living (492)  |  Movement (162)

Science gives us the grounds of premises from which religious truths are to be inferred; but it does not set about inferring them, much less does it reach the inference; that is not its province. It brings before us phenomena, and it leaves us, if we will, to call them works of design, wisdom, or benevolence; and further still, if we will, to proceed to confess an Intelligent Creator. We have to take its facts, and to give them a meaning, and to draw our own conclusions from them. First comes Knowledge, then a view, then reasoning, then belief. This is why Science has so little of a religious tendency; deductions have no power of persuasion. The heart is commonly reached, not through the reason, but through the imagination, by means of direct impressions, by the testimony of facts and events, by history, by description. Persons influence us, voices melt us, looks subdue us, deeds inflame us. Many a man will live and die upon a dogma; no man will be a martyr for a conclusion.
— John Henry Newman
Letter collected in Tamworth Reading Room: Letters on an Address Delivered by Sir Robert Peel, Bart., M.P. on the Establishment of a Reading Room at Tamworth (1841), 32. Excerpted in John Henry Newman, An Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent (1870), 89 & 94 footnote.
Science quotes on:  |  Belief (615)  |  Benevolence (11)  |  Bring (95)  |  Call (781)  |  Commonly (9)  |  Conclusion (266)  |  Confess (42)  |  Creator (97)  |  Deduction (90)  |  Deed (34)  |  Description (89)  |  Design (203)  |  Die (94)  |  Direct (228)  |  Dogma (49)  |  Draw (140)  |  Event (222)  |  Fact (1257)  |  Facts (553)  |  Far (158)  |  First (1302)  |  Give (208)  |  Ground (222)  |  Heart (243)  |  History (716)  |  Imagination (349)  |  Impression (118)  |  Infer (12)  |  Inference (45)  |  Inflame (2)  |  Influence (231)  |  Intelligent (108)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Leave (138)  |  Less (105)  |  Little (717)  |  Live (650)  |  Look (584)  |  Man (2252)  |  Martyr (3)  |  Mean (810)  |  Meaning (244)  |  Means (587)  |  Melt (16)  |  Person (366)  |  Persuasion (9)  |  Phenomenon (334)  |  Power (771)  |  Premise (40)  |  Proceed (134)  |  Province (37)  |  Reach (286)  |  Reason (766)  |  Reasoning (212)  |  Religious (134)  |  Set (400)  |  Still (614)  |  Subdue (7)  |  Tendency (110)  |  Testimony (21)  |  Through (846)  |  Truth (1109)  |  View (496)  |  Voice (54)  |  Why (491)  |  Will (2350)  |  Wisdom (235)  |  Work (1402)

To discover and to teach are distinct functions; they are also distinct gifts, and are not commonly found united in the same person.
— John Henry Newman
Discourses on the Scope and Nature of University Education. Addressed to the Catholics of Dublin (1852), Preface, xii.
Science quotes on:  |  Commonly (9)  |  Discover (571)  |  Distinct (98)  |  Function (235)  |  Gift (105)  |  Person (366)  |  Teach (299)  |  United (15)


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)

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Ernest Rutherford
James Chadwick
Marcel Proust
William Harvey
Johann Goethe
John Keynes
Carl Gauss
Paul Feyerabend
- 90 -
Antoine Lavoisier
Lise Meitner
Charles Babbage
Ibn Khaldun
Euclid
Ralph Emerson
Robert Bunsen
Frederick Banting
Andre Ampere
Winston Churchill
- 80 -
John Locke
Bronislaw Malinowski
Bible
Thomas Huxley
Alessandro Volta
Erwin Schrodinger
Wilhelm Roentgen
Louis Pasteur
Bertrand Russell
Jean Lamarck
- 70 -
Samuel Morse
John Wheeler
Nicolaus Copernicus
Robert Fulton
Pierre Laplace
Humphry Davy
Thomas Edison
Lord Kelvin
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Carolus Linnaeus
- 60 -
Francis Galton
Linus Pauling
Immanuel Kant
Martin Fischer
Robert Boyle
Karl Popper
Paul Dirac
Avicenna
James Watson
William Shakespeare
- 50 -
Stephen Hawking
Niels Bohr
Nikola Tesla
Rachel Carson
Max Planck
Henry Adams
Richard Dawkins
Werner Heisenberg
Alfred Wegener
John Dalton
- 40 -
Pierre Fermat
Edward Wilson
Johannes Kepler
Gustave Eiffel
Giordano Bruno
JJ Thomson
Thomas Kuhn
Leonardo DaVinci
Archimedes
David Hume
- 30 -
Andreas Vesalius
Rudolf Virchow
Richard Feynman
James Hutton
Alexander Fleming
Emile Durkheim
Benjamin Franklin
Robert Oppenheimer
Robert Hooke
Charles Kettering
- 20 -
Carl Sagan
James Maxwell
Marie Curie
Rene Descartes
Francis Crick
Hippocrates
Michael Faraday
Srinivasa Ramanujan
Francis Bacon
Galileo Galilei
- 10 -
Aristotle
John Watson
Rosalind Franklin
Michio Kaku
Isaac Asimov
Charles Darwin
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