Irving Langmuir Quotes

All science requires mathematics. The knowledge of mathematical things is almost innate in us. This is the easiest of sciences, a fact which is obvious in that no one's brain rejects it; for laymen and people who are utterly illiterate know how to count and reckon.

I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. My sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history, naval architecture, navigation, commerce, and agriculture, in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry, and porcelain.

Borrowing knowledge of reality from all sources, taking the best from every study, Science of Mind brings together the highest enlightenment of the ages.

In my schooling through high school, I excelled mainly in chemistry, physics and mathematics.

At Harvard I majored in chemistry with a strong inclination toward math.

I had a great chemistry teacher and found it really interesting to learn how things are made up and how they work.

For the things of this world cannot be made known without a knowledge of mathematics.

Wisdom alone is the science of other sciences.

Man's achievements rest upon the use of symbols

There is no excuse for letting another generation be as vastly ignorant, or as devoid of understanding … as we are ourselves.

I don’t think anything about Einstein’s theory because I don’t understand it.

Yes, from the time I was in junior high school I decided I wanted to be a chemist. I didn't quite know what a chemist was, but I kept it up and got my Ph.D. in physical chemistry.

Chemistry is not torture but instead the amazing and beautiful science of stuff, and if you give it a chance, it will not only blow your mind but also give you a deeper understanding of your world.

The Universe is a grand book which cannot be read until one first learns to comprehend the language and become familiar with the characters in which it is composed. It is written in the language of mathematics.

Angling may be said to be so like the Mathematics that it can never be fully learnt; at least not so fully but that there will still be more new experiments left for the trial of other men that succeed us.

Don't know much about history Don't know much biology.

I can only regard with bewilderment an educated man who is also religious

There are four great sciences, without which the other sciences cannot be known nor a knowledge of things secured ... Of these sciences the gate and key is mathematics ... He who is ignorant of this [mathematics] cannot know the other sciences nor the affairs of this world.

Mathematics is the only true metaphysics.

Mathematics is a more powerful instrument of knowledge than any other that has been bequeathed to us by human agency.

Languages are the keys of science.

Knowing without seeing is at the heart of chemistry.

As soon as the circumstances of an experiment are well known, we stop gathering statistics. ... The effect will occur always without exception, because the cause of the phenomena is accurately defined. Only when a phenomenon includes conditions as yet undefined,Only when a phenomenon includes conditions as yet undefined, can we compile statistics. ... we must learn therefore that we compile statistics only when we cannot possibly help it; for in my opinion, statistics can never yield scientific truth.

The step between practical and theoretic science, is the step between the miner and the geologist, the apocathecary and the chemist.

It is an object of vast magnitude that systems of education should be adopted and pursued which may not only diffuse a knowledge of the sciences but may implant in the minds of the American youth the principles of virtue and of liberty and inspire them with just and liberal ideas of government and with an inviolable attachment to their own country.