Devil Quotes (34 quotes)
'It’s this accursed Science,' I cried. 'It’s the very Devil. The mediaeval priests and persecutors were right, and the Moderns are all wrong. You tamper with it—and it offers you gifts. And directly you take them it knocks you to pieces in some unexpected way.'
The First Men in the Moon (1901), 144.
A famous anecdote concerning Cuvier involves the tale of his visitation from the devil—only it was not the devil but one of his students dressed up with horns on his head and shoes shaped like cloven hooves. This frightening apparition burst into Cuvier’s bedroom when he was fast asleep and claimed:
“Wake up thou man of catastrophes. I am the Devil. I have come to devour you!”
Cuvier studied the apparition carefully and critically said,
“I doubt whether you can. You have horns and hooves. You eat only plants.”
“Wake up thou man of catastrophes. I am the Devil. I have come to devour you!”
Cuvier studied the apparition carefully and critically said,
“I doubt whether you can. You have horns and hooves. You eat only plants.”
Quoted in Glyn Daniel, The Idea of Pre-History (1962), 34.
Ac astronomye is an hard thyng,
And yvel for to knowe;
Geometrie and geomesie,
So gynful of speche,
Who so thynketh werche with tho two
Thryveth ful late,
For sorcerie is the sovereyn book
That to tho sciences bilongeth.
Now, astronomy is a difficult discipline, and the devil to learn;
And geometry and geomancy have confusing terminology:
If you wish to work in these two, you will not succeed quickly.
For sorcery is the chief study that these sciences entail.
And yvel for to knowe;
Geometrie and geomesie,
So gynful of speche,
Who so thynketh werche with tho two
Thryveth ful late,
For sorcerie is the sovereyn book
That to tho sciences bilongeth.
Now, astronomy is a difficult discipline, and the devil to learn;
And geometry and geomancy have confusing terminology:
If you wish to work in these two, you will not succeed quickly.
For sorcery is the chief study that these sciences entail.
In William Langland and B. Thomas Wright (ed.) The Vision and Creed of Piers Ploughman (1842), 186. Modern translation by Terrence Tiller in Piers Plowman (1981, 1999), 94.
The Devil: Reformers … will thrust you first into religion, where you will sprinkle water on babies to save their souls from me ; then it will drive you from religion into science, where you will snatch the babies from the water sprinkling and inoculate them with disease to save them from catching it accidentally.
In Man and Superman: A Comedy and a Philosophy (1903), 135.
A hundred devils leap into my body, if there be not more old drunkards than old physicians.
As translated to English by Thomas Urquart in Chap. 41, 'How the Monk made Gargantua sleep, and of his hours and breviaries', The Romance of Gargantua and Pantagruel (1838), 112. The original French quote is: “Cent diables me sautent au corps s’il n’y a plus de vieux yurognes, qu’il n’y a de vieux medecins.” From Chap. 41, Gargantua et Pantagruel collected in Les Oeuvres de M. François Rabelais, Docteur en médecine (1596), 132.
Astrology is framed by the devil, to the end people may be scared from entering into the state of matrimony, and from every divine and human office and calling.
W. Hazlitt (trans. and ed.) The Table Talk of Martin Luther, (1857), 343.
Electronic aids, particularly domestic computers, will help the inner migration, the opting out of reality. Reality is no longer going to be the stuff out there, but the stuff inside your head. It's going to be commercial and nasty at the same time, like 'Rite of Spring' in Disney's Fantasia ... our internal devils may destroy and renew us through the technological overload we've invoked.
Interview in Heavy Metal (Apr 1971). Reprinted in Re/Search, No. 8/9 (1984).
God exists since mathematics is consistent, and the Devil exists since we cannot prove it.
Given as “A. Weil has said…”, in Paul C. Rosenbloom, The Elements of Mathematical Logic (1950), 72. Note that Rosenbloom gives the quote in narrative form, not within quotation marks, which suggests these words may not be verbatim. Later texts have added quotation marks [which may not be justified. —Webmaster] As yet, Webmaster has not found an earlier source to validate whether the quotations marks can be used. (Can you help?)
God runs electromagnetics on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday by the wave theory, and the devil runs it by quantum theory on Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday.
In Daniel J. Kevles, The Physicists (1978), 159, citing interview by David Webster, AIP, p.35.
Goethe's devil is a cultivated personage and acquainted with the modern sciences; sneers at witchcraft and the black art even while employing them, and doubts most things, nay, half disbelieves even his own existence.
In James Wood, Dictionary of Quotations from Ancient and Modern, English and Foreign Sources (1893), 128:24.
GUNPOWDER, n. An agency employed by civilized nations for the settlement of disputes which might become troublesome if left unadjusted. By most writers the invention of gunpowder is ascribed to the Chinese, but not upon very convincing evidence. Milton says it was invented by the devil to dispel angels with, and this opinion seems to derive some support from the scarcity of angels.
The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce (1911), Vol. 7, The Devil's Dictionary, 124-125.
I have a friendly feeling towards pigs generally, and consider them the most intelligent of beasts, not excepting the elephant and the anthropoid ape—the dog is not to be mentioned in this connection. I also like his disposition and attitude towards all other creatures, especially man. He is not suspicious, or shrinkingly submissive, like horses, cattle, and sheep; nor an impudent devil-may-care like the goat; nor hostile like the goose; nor condescending like the cat; nor a flattering parasite like the dog. He views us from a totally different, a sort of democratic, standpoint as fellow-citizens and brothers, and takes it for granted, or grunted, that we understand his language, and without servility or insolence he has a natural, pleasant, camerados-all or hail-fellow-well-met air with us.
In The Book of a Naturalist (1919), 295-296.
I have witnessed a most remarkable drama here, one which to me as a German was very unexpected, and quite shocking. I saw the famous M. Lavoisier hold a ceremonial auto-da-fe of phlogiston in the Arsenal. His wife... served as the sacrificial priestess, and Stahl appeared as the advocatus diaboli to defend phlogiston. In the end, poor phlogiston was burned on the accusation of oxygen. Do you not think I have made a droll discovery? Everything is literally true. I will not say whether the cause of phlogiston is now irretrievably lost, or what I think about the issue. But I am glad that this spectacle was not presented in my fatherland.
Letter to Chemische Annalen, 1789, 1, 519. Quoted (in English translation) in K. Hufbauer, The Formation of the German Chemical Community (1982), 96.
It did not last: the Devil howling “Ho, Let Einstein be,” restored the status quo.
Adding to earlier Epitaph by Alexander Pope for Isaac Newton, 'In Continuation of Pope on Newton', in J.C. Squire, Poems in One Volume (1926), 218.
It was a standing joke of [Dr. Chapman] to quote old Leuwenhoeck as having discovered 'twenty thousand devils playing upon the point of a needle' thus foreshadowing some of the most remarkable discoveries of the present day, especially disease germs.
Opening address to American Medical Association, Cleveland, Ohio, 5 Jun 1883. In The Chicago Medical Journal and Examiner (1883), 47 4.
Junior high school seemed like a fine idea when we invented it but it turned out to be an invention of the devil. We’re catching our boys in a net in which they’re socially unprepared. We put them in junior high school with girls who are two years ahead of them. There isn’t a thing they should have to do with girls at this age except growl at them.
As quoted in interview with Frances Glennon, 'Student and Teacher of Human Ways', Life (14 Sep 1959), 147.
Last night I invented a new pleasure, and as I was giving it the first trial an angel and a devil came rushing toward my house. They met at my door and fought with each other over my newly created pleasure; the one crying, “It is a sin!” - the other, “It is a virtue!”
In Kahlil Gibran: The Collected Works (2007), 21.
Logarithmic plots are a device of the devil.
From interview with Henry Spall, as in an abridged version of Earthquake Information Bulletin (Jan-Feb 1980), 12, No. 1, that is on the USGS website.
My practice as a scientist is atheistic. That is to say, when I set up an experiment I assume that no god, angel or devil is going to interfere with its course; and this assumption has been justified by such success as I have achieved in my professional career. I should therefore be intellectually dishonest if I were not also atheistic in the affairs of the world.
In Fact and Faith (1934), vi.
One of the greatest gifts science has brought to the world is continuing elimination of the supernatural, and it was a lesson that my father passed on to me, that knowledge liberates mankind from superstition. We can live our lives without the constant fear that we have offended this or that deity who must be placated by incantation or sacrifice, or that we are at the mercy of devils or the Fates. With increasing knowledge, the intellectual darkness that surrounds us is illuminated and we learn more of the beauty and wonder of the natural world.
…...
Private patients, if they do not like me, can go elsewhere; but the poor devils in the hospital I am bound to take care of.
Stating the courtesy he felt obliged to give to charity patients.
Stating the courtesy he felt obliged to give to charity patients.
In George Macilwain, Memoirs of John Abernethy (1854), 37.
Scientific method: to work like the devil to get the answer with no holds barred.
As quoted by Charles Hard Townes in essay, 'Unpredictability in Science and Technology', collected in Martin Moskovits (ed.), Science and Society, the John C. Polanyi Nobel Laureates Lectures (1995), 31.
TELEPHONE, n. An invention of the devil which abrogates some of the advantages of making a disagreeable person keep his distance.
The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce (1911), Vol. 7, The Devil's Dictionary, 341.
That brain of mine is something more than merely mortal; as time will show; (if only my breathing & some other etceteras do not make too rapid a progress towards instead of from mortality).
Before ten years are over, the Devil’s in it if I haven’t sucked out some of the life-blood from the mysteries of this universe, in a way that no purely mortal lips or brains could do.
Before ten years are over, the Devil’s in it if I haven’t sucked out some of the life-blood from the mysteries of this universe, in a way that no purely mortal lips or brains could do.
In letter to Charles Babbage (5 Jul 1843). British Library Additional Manuscripts, MSS 37192, folio 349. As quoted and cited in Dorothy Stein (ed.), 'This First Child of Mine', Ada: A Life and a Legacy (1985), 110.
The divergent series are the invention of the devil, and it is a shame to base on them any demonstration whatsoever. By using them, one may draw any conclusion he pleases and that is why these series have produced so many fallacies and so many paradoxes.
From letter (Jan 1828) to his former teacher Berndt Holmböe. In Morris Kline, Mathematics: The Loss of Certainty (1982), 170.
The good Christian should beware of mathematicians, and all those who make empty prophecies. The danger already exists that the mathematicians have made a covenant with the devil to darken the spirit and to confine man in the bonds of Hell.
Mathematician refers to astrologer. From De Genesi ad Litteram (400s), Book 2, xviii, 37. As quoted in Morris Kline, Mathematics in Western Culture (1953, 1964), 3.
The instinct to command others, in its primitive essence, is a carnivorous, altogether bestial and savage instinct. Under the influence of the mental development of man, it takes on a somewhat more ideal form and becomes somewhat ennobled, presenting itself as the instrument of reason and the devoted servant of that abstraction, or political fiction, which is called the public good. But in its essence it remains just as baneful, and it becomes even more so when, with the application of science, it extends its scope and intensifies the power of its action. If there is a devil in history, it is this power principle.
In Mikhail Aleksandrovich Bakunin, Grigorii Petrovich Maksimov, Max Nettlau, The political philosophy of Bakunin (1953), 248.
There are no whole truths; all truths are half-truths. It is trying to treat them as whole truths
that plays the devil.
In Dialogues of Alfred North Whitehead (1954), 16.
Vaccination was discovered, and, like all new discoveries, had at the first to maintain a vigorous battle for existence. It was condemned by the church as a cunning device of the devil to defeat the judgments of God. Nevertheless, it has triumphed, and is now adopted by the best instructed of all nations.
From speech (20 Nov 1883) delivered to the Bethel Literary and Historical Association, Washington D.C.,'It Moves, or Philosophy of Reform', collected in The Essential Douglass: Selected Writings and Speeches (2016), 290.
We have enslaved the rest of the animal creation, and have treated our distant cousins in fur and feathers so badly that beyond doubt, if they were able to formulate a religion, they would depict the Devil in human form.
From Romanes Lecture (27 May 1920), 'The Idea of Progress', collected in Outspoken Essays: Second Series (1922), 167.
What a book a Devil's chaplin might write on the clumsy, wasteful, blundering, low & horridly cruel works of nature!
Letter to J. D. Hooker, 13 July 1856. In F. Burkhardt and S. Smith (eds.), The Correspondence of Charles Darwin 1844-1846 (1987), Vol. 6, 178.
When Death lurks at the door, the physician is considered as a God. When danger has been overcome, the physician is looked upon as an angel. When the patient begins to convalesce, the physician becomes a mere human. When the physician asks for his fees, he is considered as the devil himself.
In Harper's Magazine (1931-32), 164, 512.
Whenever science makes a discovery, the devil grabs it while the angels are debating the best way to use it.
…...
Whether science is seen as genie or devil, the attitude is wrong. We need to get some sort of perspective, so that people understand science is just one more intellectual tool, one more way of knowing enough things to give society a means of living on Earth.
From interview with Graham Chedd, 'The Lady Gets Her Way', New Scientist (5 Jul 1973), 59, No. 853, 16.
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) -- 
