inquiry quotes

The best and safest method of philosophizing seems to be first to inquire diligently into the properties of things, and establishing those properties by experiments, and then to proceed more slowly to hypotheses for the explanation of them.

Aristotle could have avoided the mistake of thinking that women have fewer teeth than men, by the simple device of asking Mrs. Aristotle to keep her mouth open while he counted.

The proper method for inquiring after the properties of things is to deduce them from experiments.

Science must have originated in the feeling that something was wrong.

The inquiry constantly is what will please, not what will benefit the people. In such a government there can be nothing but temporary expedient, fickleness, and folly.

A subtle thought that is in error may yet give rise to fruitful inquiry that can establish truths of great value.

Every art and every inquiry, and similarly every action and choice, is thought to aim at some good; and for this reason the good has rightly been declared to be that at which all things aim.

Doubt is the incentive to truth and inquiry leads the way.