"Man must cling to the belief that the incomprehensible is comprehensible. Else he would give up investigating. " (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, "Maxims and Reflections", 1829)
"So it happens at times that a person believes that he has a world-view, but that there is yet one particular phenomenon that is of such a nature that it baffles the understanding, and that he explains differently and attempts to ignore in order not to harbor the thought that this phenomenon might overthrow the whole view, or that his reflection does not possess enough courage and resolution to penetrate the phenomenon with his world-view." (Søren Kierkegaard, 1844)
"By degree of probability we really mean, or ought to mean, degree of belief [...] Probability then, refers to and implies belief, more or less, and belief is but another name for imperfect knowledge, or it may be, expresses the mind in a state of imperfect knowledge." (Augustus De Morgan, "Formal Logic: Or, The Calculus of Inference, Necessary and Probable", 1847)
"SYSTEM (to place together) - is a full and connected view of all the truths of some department of knowledge. An organized body of truth, or truths arranged under one and the same idea, which idea is as the life or soul which assimilates all those truths. No truth is altogether isolated. Every truth has relation to some other. And we should try to unite the facts of our knowledge so as to see them in their several bearings. This we do when we frame them into a system. To do so legitimately we must begin by analysis and end with synthesis. But system applies not only to our knowledge, but to the objects of our knowledge. Thus we speak of the planetary system, the muscular system, the nervous system. We believe that the order to which we would reduce our ideas has a foundation in the nature of things. And it is this belief that encourages us to reduce our knowledge of things into systematic order. The doing so is attended with many advantages. At the same time a spirit of systematizing may be carried too far. It is only in so far as it is in accordance with the order of nature that it can be useful or sound. (William Fleming, "Vocabulary of philosophy, mental, moral, and metaphysical; with quotations and references; for the use of students", 1857)
"The world is devoted to physical science, because it believes theses discoveries will increase its capacity of luxury and self-indulgence. But the pursuit of science only leads to the insoluble." (Benjamin Disraeli, "Lothair", 1870)
"The philosopher believes that the value of his philosophy lies in the whole, in the building: posterity discovers it in the bricks with which he built and which are then often used again for better building: in the fact, that is to say, that building can be destroyed and nonetheless possess value as material." (Friedrich Nietzsche, "Human, all-too-human", 1878)
"That which is provable, ought not to be believed in science without proof" (Richard Dedekind,"Was sind und was sollen die Zahlen?", 1888)
"Every probability - and most of our common, working beliefs are probabilities - is provided with buffers at both ends, which break the force of opposite opinions clashing against it; but scientific certainty has no spring in it, no courtesy, no possibility of yielding. All this must react on the minds which handle these forms of truth. (Oliver W Holmes, "The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table", 1891)
"Metaphysics is the finding of bad reasons for what we believe upon instinct, but to find these reasons is no less an instinct." (Francis H Bradley,"Appearance and Reality: A Metaphysical Essay", 1893)
"For the truly scientific man, the hypothesis is destined solely to enable him to get the facts of nature in some definite order, an order which shall make apparent their connection with the great order and harmony which is believed to be present in the universe." (James M Baldwin, "The Processes of Life Revealed by the Microscope: A Plea for Physiological Histology", Science N.S. Vol. 2 (34), 1895)
"Science for the past is a description, for the future a belief." (Karl Pearson, "The Grammar of Science", 1892)
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