Henry David Thoreau Quotations: Science
Science never saw a ghost nor does it look for any but it sees everywhere the traces —and it is itself the agent—of a Universal Intelligence.—Journal, 2 December 1853
The entertaining a single thought of a certain elevation makes all men of one religion. It is always some base alloy that creates the distinction of sects.—Journal, 8 August 1852
The man of most science is the man most alive, whose life is the greatest event.—Journal, 6 May 1854
The purest science is still biographical.—A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers
The sum of what the writer of what ever class has to report is simply some human experience, whether he be poet or philosopher or man of science.—Journal, 6 May 1854
The vast machine may indeed roll over our toes, and we not know it, but it would rebound and be staved to pieces like an empty barrel, if it should strike fair and square on the smallest and least angular of a man's thoughts.—Thoreau to H.G.O. Blake, 26 September 1859
The whole body of what is now called moral or ethical truth existed in the golden age as abstract science. Or, if we prefer, we may say that the laws of Nature are the purest morality.—A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers
There is no such thing as pure objective observation. Your observation, to be interesting, i.e. to be significant, must be subjective.—Journal, 6 May 1854
These modern ingenious sciences and arts do not affect me as those more venerable arts of hunting and fishing, and even of husbandry in its primitive and simple form; as ancient and honorable trades as the sun and moon and winds pursue, coeval with the faculties of man, and invented when these were invented.—A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers
We do not ride on the railroad; it rides upon us. Did you ever think what those sleepers are that underlie the railroad? Each one is a man . . . The rails are laid on them, and they are covered with sand, and the cars run smoothly over them. They are sound sleepers, I assure you. And every few years a new lot is laid down and run over; so that, if some have the pleasure of riding on a rail, others have the misfortune to be ridden upon.—Walden
