Leonardo da Vinci - Collected Quotes

"[…] no human inquiry can be called science unless it pursues its path through mathematical exposition and demonstration." (Leonardo da Vinci)

"All our knowledge has its origins in our perceptions." (Leonardo da Vinci)

"Although nature commences with reason and ends in experience it is necessary for us to do the opposite, that is to commence with experience and from this to proceed to investigate the reason." (Leonardo da Vinci)

"Experience does not feed investigators on dreams, but always proceeds from accurately determined first principles, step by step in true sequence to the end." (Leonardo da Vinci)

"He who loves practice without theory is like the sailor who boards ship without a rudder and compass and never knows where he may cast." (Leonardo da Vinci)

"Inequality is the cause of all local movements." (Leonardo da Vinci)

"Mechanics is the paradise of mathematical science, because by means of it one comes to the fruits of mathematics." (Leonardo da Vinci)

"Nature is economical and her economy is quantitative." (Leonardo da Vinci)

"Science is the observation of things possible." (Leonardo da Vinci)

"Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication." (Leonardo da Vinci)

"The grandest pleasure is the joy of understanding." (Leonardo da Vinci)

"There is no certainty where one can neither apply any of the mathematical sciences nor any of those which are connected with the mathematical sciences." (Leonardo da Vinci)

"There is no higher or lower knowledge, but one only, flowing out of experimentation." (Leonardo da Vinci)

"Those who condemn the supreme certainty of mathematics feed on confusion, and can never silence the contradictions of the sophistical sciences which lead to eternal quackery." (Leonardo da Vinci)

"To me it seems that all sciences are vain and full of errors that are not born of Experience, mother of all certainty […] that is to say, that do not at their origin, middle or end, pass through any of the five senses." (Leonardo da Vinci)