Percival Lowell Quotes

#1. Are physical forces alone at work there, or has evolution begotten something more complex, something not akin to what we know on Earth as life? It is in this that lies the peculiar interest of Mars.

Percival Lowell

#2. Imagination is as vital to any advance in science as learning and precision are essential for starting points.

Percival Lowell

#3. Bright points in the sky or a blow on the head will equally cause one to see stars.

Percival Lowell

#4. The whole object of science is to synthesize, and so simplify; and did we but know the uttermost of a subject we could make it singularly clear.

Percival Lowell

#5. War is a survival among us from savage times and affects now chiefly the boyish and unthinking element of the nation.

Percival Lowell

#6. That Mars is inhabited by beings of some sort or other we may consider as certain as it is uncertain what these beings may be.

Percival Lowell

#7. Formulae are the anaesthetics of thought, not its stimulants and to make any one think is far better worth while than cramming him with ill-considered, and therefore indigestible, learning.

Percival Lowell

#8. Now when we think that each of these stars is probably the centre of a solar system grander than our own, we cannot seriously take ourselves to be the only minds in it all.

Percival Lowell

#9. Ever since celestial mechanics in the skillful hands of Leverrier and Adams led to the world-amazed discovery of Neptune, a belief has existed begotten of that success that still other planets lay beyond, only waiting to be found.

Percival Lowell