Alexander Von Humboldt Quotes

Statistical projections which speak to the senses without fatiguing the mind, possess the advantage of fixing the attention on a great number of important facts.

Collaboration operates through a process in which the successful intellectual achievements of one person arouse the intellectual passions and enthusiasms of others.

At no other time has Nature concentrated such a wealth of valuable nourishment into such a small space as in the cocoa bean.

I saw with regret, (and all scientific men have shared this feeling) that whilst the number of accurate instruments was daily increasing, we were still ignorant

Insight into universal nature provides an intellectual delight and sense of freedom that no blows of fate and no evil can destroy.

The expression of vanity and self-love becomes less offensive, when it retains something of simplicity and frankness.

Die gefährlichste Weltanschauung ist die Weltanschauung derer, die die Welt nie angeschaut haben. (The most dangerous worldview is the worldview of those who have not viewed the world)

The philosophical study of nature endeavors, in the the vicissitudes of phenomena, to connect the present with the past.

Nature can be so soothing to the tormented mind

The most dangerous worldviews are the worldviews of those who have never viewed the world.

This view of a living nature where man is nothing is both odd and sad. Here, in a fertile land, in an eternal greenness, you search in vain for traces of man; you feel you are carried into a different world from the one you were born into.

The most powerful influence exercised by the Arabs on general natural physics was that directed to the advances of chemistry ; a science for which this race created a new era.( ... ) Besides making laudatory mention of that which we owe to the natural science of the Arabs in both the terrestrial and celestial spheres, we must likewise allude to their contributions in separate paths of intellectual development to the general mass of mathematical science.

I could not possibly have been placed in circumstances more highly favorable for study and exploration than those which I now enjoy. I am free from the distractions constantly arising in civilized life from social claims. Nature offers unceasingly the most novel and fascinating objects for learning. The only drawbacks to this solitude are the want of information on the progress of scientific discovery in Europe and the lack of all the advantages arising from an interchange of ideas.

Petroleum is the product of a distillation from great depth and issues from the primitive rocks beneath which the forces of all volcanic action lie.

I regard marriage as a sin and propagation of children as a crime. It is my conviction also that he is a fool, and still more a sinner, who takes upon himself the yoke of marriage - a fool, because he thereby throws away his freedom, without gaining a corresponding recompense; a sinner, because he gives life to children, without being able to give them the certainty of happiness. I despise humanity in all its strata; I foresee that our posterity will be far more unhappy than we are; and should not I be a sinner, if, in spite of this insight, I should take care to leave a posterity of unhappy beings behind me? The whole of life is the greatest insanity. And if for eighty years one strives and inquiries, still one is obliged finally to confess that he has striven for nothing and has found nothing. Did we at least know why we are in this world! But to the thinker, everything is and remains a riddle; and the greatest good luck is that of being born a flathead.

People often say that I'm curious about too many things at once ... But can you really forbid a man from harbouring a desire to know and embrace everything that surrounds him?

There are some races more cultured and advanced and ennobled by education than others; but there are no races nobler than others. All are equally destined for freedom.

The most dangerous worldview is the worldview of those have not viewed the world.

This aspect of animated nature, in which man is nothing, has something in it strange and sad ... Here, in a fertile country, adorned with eternal verdure, we seek in vain the traces of the power of man; we seem to be transported into a world different from that which gave us birth.

Our imagination is struck only by what is great; but the lover of natural philosophy should reflect equally on little things.

With most animals, as with man, the alertness of the senses diminishes after years of work, after domestic habits and progress of culture.

Time is the most important thing in human life, for what is pleasure after the departure of time? and the most consolatory, since pain, when pain has passed, is nothing. Time is the wheel-track in which we roll on towards eternity, conducting us to the Incomprehensible. In its progress there is a ripening power, and it ripens us the more, and the more powerfully, when we duly estimate it. Listen to its voice, do not waste it, but regard it as the highest finite good, in which all finite things are resolved.