Charles Babbage - Collected Quotes

"For one person who is blessed with the power of invention, many will always be found who have the capacity of applying principles." (Charles Babbage, "Reflections on the Decline of Science in England, and on Some of Its Causes", 1830)

"It can happen to but few philosophers, and but at distant intervals, to snatch a science, like Dalton, from the chaos of indefinite combination, and binding it in the chains of number, to exalt it to rank amongst the exact. Triumphs like these are necessarily 'few and far between’." (Charles Babbage, "Reflections on the Decline of Science in England, and on Some of Its Causes", 1830)

"The first steps in the path of discovery, and the first approximate measures, are those which add most to the existing knowledge of mankind." (Charles Babbage, "Reflections on the Decline of Science in England", 1830)

"Science and knowledge are subject, in their extension and increase, to laws quite opposite to those which regulate the material world. Unlike the forces of molecular attraction, which cease at sensible distances; or that of gravity, which decreases rapidly with the increasing distance from the point of its origin; the farther we advance from the origin of our knowledge, the larger it becomes, and the greater power it bestows upon its cultivators, to add new fields to its dominions." (Charles Babbage, "On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures", 1832)

"The errors which arise from the absence of facts are far more numerous and more durable than those which result from unsound reasoning respecting true data." (Charles Babbage, "On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures", 1832)

"Remember that accumulated knowledge, like accumulated capital, increases at compound interest: but it differs from the accumulation of capital in this; that the increase of knowledge produces a more rapid rate of progress, whilst the accumulation of capital leads to a lower rate of interest. Capital thus checks its own accumulation: knowledge thus accelerates its own advance. Each generation, therefore, to deserve comparison with its predecessor, is bound to add much more largely to the common stock than that which it immediately succeeds." (Charles Babbage, "The Exposition of 1851: Or the Views of Industry, Science and Government of England", 1851)

"Mechanical Notation […] I look upon it as one of the most important additions I have made to human knowledge. It has placed the construction of machinery in the rank of a demonstrative science. The day will arrive when no school of mechanical drawing will be thought complete without teaching it." (Charles Babbage, "Passages From the Life of a Philosopher", 1864)

"The more man inquires into the laws which regulate the material universe, the more he is convinced that all its varied forms arise from the action of a few simple principles. These principles themselves converge, with accelerating force, towards some still more comprehensive law to which all matter seems to be submitted. Simple as that law may possibly be, it must be remembered that it is only one amongst an infinite number of simple laws: that each of these laws has consequences at least as extensive as the existing one, and therefore that the Creator who selected the present law must have foreseen the consequences of all other laws." (Charles Babbage, "Passages From the Life of a Philosopher", 1864)

"The whole of the developments and operations of analysis are now capable of being executed by machinery. […] As soon as an Analytical Engine exists, it will necessarily guide the future course of science." (Charles Babbage, "Passages from the Life of a Philosopher", 1864)

"Whenever a man can get hold of numbers, they are invaluable: if correct, they assist in informing his own mind, but they are still more useful in deluding the minds of others. Numbers are the masters of the weak, but the slaves of the strong." (Charles Babbage, "Passages from the Life of a Philosopher", 1864)

"I wish to God these calculations had been executed by steam." (Charles Babbage)