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Every man has obligations which belong to his station. Duties extend beyond obligations, and direct the affections, desires, and intentions, as well as the actions.

William Whewell

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William Whewell
Age: 71 †
Born: 1794
Born: May 24
Died: 1866
Died: March 6
Economist
Geologist
Historian
Mathematician
Philosopher
Physicist
Polymath
Theologian
University Teacher
Writer
Reverend William Whewell
Wells
Affection
Extend
Well
Intention
Duties
Every
Actions
Station
Men
Direct
Intentions
Beyond
Stations
Duty
Belong
Desire
Desires
Affections
Action
Obligation
Obligations

More quotes by William Whewell

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We need very much a name to describe a cultivator of science in general. I should incline to call him a scientist. [The first use of the word.]
William Whewell
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The hypotheses we accept ought to explain phenomena which we have observed. But they ought to do more than this: our hypotheses ought to foretell phenomena which have not yet been observed.
William Whewell
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Nobody since Newton has been able to use geometrical methods to the same extent for the like purposes and as we read the Principia we feel as when we are in an ancient armoury where the weapons are of gigantic size and as we look at them we marvel what manner of man he was who could use as a weapon what we can scarcely lift as a burden.
William Whewell
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In art, truth is a means to an end in science, it is the only end.
William Whewell
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Those who have obtained the farthest insight into Nature have been, in all ages, firm believers in God.
William Whewell
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Prudence supposes the value of the end to be assumed, and refers only to the adaptation of the means. It is the relation of right means for given ends.
William Whewell
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Conscience is the reason employed about questions of right and wrong.
William Whewell
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Geometry in every proposition speaks a language which experience never dares to utter and indeed of which she but halfway comprehends the meaning.
William Whewell
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The earlier truths are not expelled but absorbed, not contradicted but extended and the history of each science, which may thus appear like a succession of revolutions, is, in reality, a series of developements.
William Whewell
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Astronomy is ... the only progressive Science which the ancient world produced.
William Whewell
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The person who did most to give to analysis the generality and symmetry which are now its pride, was also the person who made mechanics analytical I mean Euler.
William Whewell
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A man really and practically looking onwards to an immortal life, on whatever grounds, exhibits to us the human soul in an enobled attitude.
William Whewell
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The present generation finds itself the heir of a vast patrimony of science and it must needs concern us to know the steps by which these possessions were acquired, and the documents by which they are secured to us and our heirs for ever.
William Whewell
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...the question undoubtedly is, or soon will be, not whether or no we shall employ notation in chemistry, but whether we shall use a bad and incongruous, or a consistent and regular notation.
William Whewell
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The catastrophist constructs theories, the uniformitarian demolishes them.
William Whewell
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Every failure is a step to success.
William Whewell
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Gold and iron at the present day, as in ancient times, are the rulers of the world and the great events in the world of mineral art are not the discovery of new substances, but of new and rich localities of old ones.
William Whewell
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Our assent to the hypothesis implies that it is held to be true of all particular instances. That these cases belong to past or to future times, that they have or have not already occurred, makes no difference in the applicability of the rule to them. Because the rule prevails, it includes all cases.
William Whewell
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It is a test of true theories not only to account for but to predict phenomena.
William Whewell
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Fundamental ideas are not a consequence of experience, but a result of the particular constitution and activity of the mind, which is independent of all experience in its origin, though constantly combined with experience in its exercise.
William Whewell