Top 100 Von Humboldt Quotes
#1. I came to Berlin not to visit its museums and galleries, its operas, its theaters ... but for the sake of seeing and speaking with the world's greatest living man - Alexander von Humboldt.
Bayard Taylor
#2. [Alexander von Humboldt was the] greatest scientific traveller who ever lived.
Charles Darwin
#3. I consider him [Alexander von Humboldt] the most important scientist whom I have met.
Thomas Jefferson
#4. Alexander von Humboldt's wide-ranging Views of Nature is a masterpiece of nineteenth-century natural history, at once science and art. Mark W. Person's stunning new translation makes the wonders of this classic accessible to the English-language world of the present.
Daniel Walker Howe
#6. Alexander von Humboldt, yet another friend, may have had Agassiz at least partly in mind when he observed that there are three stages in scientific discovery: first, people deny that it is true; then they deny that it is important; finally they credit the wrong person. At
Bill Bryson
#7. The real discoverer of South America was [Alexander von] Humboldt, since his work was more useful for our people than the work of all conquerors.
Simon Bolivar
#8. He [Alexander von Humboldt] was to science what Shakespeare was to the drama.
Robert G. Ingersoll
#11. I saw with regret, (and all scientific men have shared this feeling) that whilst the number of accurate instruments was daily increasing, we were still ignorant
Alexander Von Humboldt
#12. The philosophical study of nature endeavors, in the the vicissitudes of phenomena, to connect the present with the past.
Alexander Von Humboldt
#13. Faith can be interested in results only, for a truth once recognized as such puts an end to the believer's thinking.
Wilhelm Von Humboldt
#14. Collaboration operates through a process in which the successful intellectual achievements of one person arouse the intellectual passions and enthusiasms of others.
Alexander Von Humboldt
#15. When we ... devote ourselves to the strict and unsparing performance of duty, ihen happiness comes of itself.
Wilhelm Von Humboldt
#16. Coercion may prevent many transgressions; but it robs even actions which are legal of a part of their beauty. Freedom may lead to many transgressions, but it lends even to vices a less ignoble form.
Wilhelm Von Humboldt
#17. Women are in this respect more fortunate than men, that most of their employments are of such a nature that they can at the same time be thinking of quite different things.
Wilhelm Von Humboldt
#18. Our imagination is struck only by what is great; but the lover of natural philosophy should reflect equally on little things.
Alexander Von Humboldt
#19. To inquire and to create; these are the grand centres around which all human pursuits revolve, or at least to these objects do they all more or less directly refer.
Wilhelm Von Humboldt
#20. Even sleep is characteristic. How beautiful are children in their lovely innocence! how angel-like their blooming features! and how painful and anxious is the sleep of the guilty!
Wilhelm Von Humboldt
#22. People often say that I'm curious about too many things at once ... But can you really forbid a man from harbouring a desire to know and embrace everything that surrounds him?
Alexander Von Humboldt
#23. Providence certainly does not favor just certain individuals, but the deep wisdom of its counsel, instruction and ennoblement extends to all.
Wilhelm Von Humboldt
#24. So if a person produces an object on command, Humboldt wrote, we may admire what he did but we will despise what he is, not a true human being who acts in his own impulses and desires.
Noam Chomsky
#25. If we glance at the most important revolutions in history, we see at once that the greatest number of these originated in the periodical revolutions on the human mind.
Wilhelm Von Humboldt
#26. War seems to be one of the most salutary phenomena for the culture of human nature; and it is not without regret that I see it disappearing more and more from the scene.
Wilhelm Von Humboldt
#27. Wherever the citizen becomes indifferent to his fellows, so will the husband be to his wife, and the father of a family toward the members of his household.
Wilhelm Von Humboldt
#28. No matter how good or great a man may be, there is yet a better and a greater man within him.
Wilhelm Von Humboldt
#29. The sea has been called deceitful and treacherous, but there lies in this trait only the character of a great natural power, which, to speak according to our own feelings, renews its strength, and, without reference to joy or sorrow, follows eternal laws which are imposed by a higher Power.
Wilhelm Von Humboldt
#30. The price of apparent happiness and enjoyment is the neglect of the spontaneous active energies of the acting members.
Wilhelm Von Humboldt
#31. It is a characteristic of old age to find the progress of time accelerated. The less one accomplishes in a given time, the shorter does the retrospect appear.
Wilhelm Von Humboldt
#32. The mere reality of life would be inconceivably poor without the charm of fancy, which brings in its bosom, no doubt, as many vain fears as idle hopes, but lends much oftener to the illusions it calls up a gay flattering hue than one which inspires terror.
Wilhelm Von Humboldt
#33. It was a profound saying of Wilhelm Humboldt, that 'Man is man only by means of speech, but in order to invent speech he must be already man.'
Charles Lyell
#34. There are some races more cultured and advanced and ennobled by education than others; but there are no races nobler than others. All are equally destined for freedom.
Alexander Von Humboldt
#35. The legislator should keep two things constantly before his eyes: 1. The pure theory developed to its minutest details; 2. The particular condition of actual things which he designs to reform.
Wilhelm Von Humboldt
#37. I couldn't do my show without spending 12 years on the streets of Humboldt Park. It made me a better interrogator. Still, if they had taken me out of my squad car and gave me a show, I would've been terrible. But on 'Springer,' the spotlight was on Jerry and I got to grow up within the show.
Steve Wilkos
#38. Insight into universal nature provides an intellectual delight and sense of freedom that no blows of fate and no evil can destroy.
Alexander Von Humboldt
#39. As soon as one stops searching for knowledge, or if one imagines that it need not be creatively sought in the depths of the human spirit but can be assembled extensively by collecting and classifying facts, everything is irrevocably and forever lost.
Wilhelm Von Humboldt
#40. Human nature must be something which always remains one and the same, but which may be carried out in manifold ways.
Wilhelm Von Humboldt
#41. Statistical projections which speak to the senses without fatiguing the mind, possess the advantage of fixing the attention on a great number of important facts.
Alexander Von Humboldt
#42. If something possesses no capacity for activity whatever, it is nothing; it may be wholly penetrated, but it cannot be touched. Therefore passivity and reaction are everywhere equal.
Wilhelm Von Humboldt
#43. The very variety arising from the union of numbers of individuals is the highest good which social life can confer, and this variety is undoubtedly lost in proportion to the degree of State interference.
Wilhelm Von Humboldt
#45. This view of a living nature where man is nothing is both odd and sad. Here, in a fertile land, in an eternal greenness, you search in vain for traces of man; you feel you are carried into a different world from the one you were born into.
Alexander Von Humboldt
#46. Results are nothing; the energies which produce them and which again spring from them are everything.
Wilhelm Von Humboldt
#48. The science of Humboldt is one thing, poetry is another thing. The poet to-day, notwithstanding all the discoveries of science, and the accumulated learning of mankind, enjoys no advantage over Homer.
Henry David Thoreau
#49. Besides the pleasure derived from acquired knowledge, there lurks in the mind of man, and tinged with a shade of sadness, an unsatisfactory longing for something beyond the present, a striving towards regions yet unknown and unopened.
Wilhelm Von Humboldt
#50. Among men who are really free, every form of industry becomes more rapidly improved - all the arts flourish more gracefully - all the sciences extend their range.
Wilhelm Von Humboldt
#51. Samskrit is the unsurpassed zenith in the whole development of languages yet known to us.
Wilhelm Von Humboldt
#52. The State is not in itself an end, but is only a means towards human development.
Wilhelm Von Humboldt
#54. Freedom is but the possibility of a various and indefinite activity; while government, or the exercise of dominion, is a single, yet real activity. The longing for freedom, therefore, is at first only too frequently suggested by the deep-felt consciousness of its absence.
Wilhelm Von Humboldt
#55. Map reconciles himself to almost any event, however trying, if it happens in the ordinary course of nature. It is the extraordinary alone that he rebels against. There is a moral idea associated with this feeling; for the extraordinary appears to be something like an injustice of heaven.
Wilhelm Von Humboldt
#56. Real inward devotion knows no prayer but that arising from the depths of its own feelings.
Wilhelm Von Humboldt
#57. Happiness is so nonsynonymous with joy or pleasure that it is not infrequently sought and felt in grief and deprivation.
Wilhelm Von Humboldt
#58. The more a man acts on his own, the more he develops himself. In large associations he is too prone to become merely an instrument.
Wilhelm Von Humboldt
#59. The sorrow which calls for help and comfort is not the greatest, nor does it come from the depths of the heart.
Wilhelm Von Humboldt
#61. Cruelty to animals is one of the most significant vices of a low and ignoble people. Wherever one notices them, they constitute a sign of ignorance and brutality which cannot be painted over even by all the evidence of wealth and luxury.
Alexander Von Humboldt
#63. Absolutely nothing is so important for a nation's culture as its language.
Wilhelm Von Humboldt
#64. All situations in which the interrelationships between extremes are involved are the most interesting and instructive.
Wilhelm Von Humboldt
#65. The most beautiful, perhaps the only true philosophical song existing in any known tongue ... perhaps the deepest and loftiest thing the world has to show.
Wilhelm Von Humboldt
#66. True resignation, which always brings with it the confidence that unchangeable goodness will make even the disappointment of our hopes, and the contradictions of life, conducive to some benefit, casts a grave but tranquil light over the prospect of even a toilsome and troubled life.
Wilhelm Von Humboldt
#67. The expression of vanity and self-love becomes less offensive, when it retains something of simplicity and frankness.
Alexander Von Humboldt
#68. It is almost more important how a person takes his fate than what it is. And the best way is with gratitude while trying to improve it for the good of others and themselves.
Wilhelm Von Humboldt
#69. The most dangerous worldviews are the worldviews of those who have never viewed the world.
Alexander Von Humboldt
#70. Mere communion with nature, mere contact with the free air, exercise a soothing yet comforting and strengthening influence on the wearied mind, calm the storm of passion, and soften the heart when shaken by sorrow to its inmost depths.
Alexander Von Humboldt
#71. Only what we have wrought into our character during life can we take with us.
Wilhelm Von Humboldt
#72. Whatever does not spring from a man's free choice, or is only the result of instruction and guidance, does not enter into his very being, but still remains alien to his true nature; he does not perform it with truly human energies, but merely with mechanical exactness.
Wilhelm Von Humboldt
#73. God, I just love 'A Journey to the End of the Millennium,' by A. B. Yehoshua. My favorite novel by an American Jew is probably 'Humboldt's Gift.'
Michael Chabon
#74. However benevolent may be the intentions of Providence, they do not always advance the happiness of the individual. Providence has always higher ends in view, and works in a pre-eminent degree on the inner feelings and disposition.
Wilhelm Von Humboldt
#75. To judge a man means nothing other than to ask: What content does he give to the form of humanity? What concept should we have of humanity if he were its only representative?
Wilhelm Von Humboldt
#76. A man must seek his happiness and inward peace from objects which cannot be taken away from him.
Wilhelm Von Humboldt
#77. What we glean from travellers' vivid descriptions has a special charm; whatever is far off and suggestive excites our imagination; such pleasures tempt us far more than anything we may daily experience in the narrow circle of sedentary life.
Alexander Von Humboldt
#78. If it were not somewhat fanciful to suppose that every human excellence is presented, as it were, in one kind of being, we might believe that the whole treasure of morality and order is enshrined in the female character.
Wilhelm Von Humboldt
#79. True enjoyment comes from activity of the mind and exercise of the body; the two are ever united.
Wilhelm Von Humboldt
#80. For even if we know very little that is certain about spirit or soul, the true nature of the body, of materiality, is totally unknown and incomprehensible to us.
Wilhelm Von Humboldt
#81. In the moral world there is nothing impossible if we can bring a thorough will to it. Man can do everything with himself, but he must not attempt to do too much with others.
Wilhelm Von Humboldt
#82. Life, in all ranks and situations, is an outward occupation, an actual and active work.
Wilhelm Von Humboldt
#83. But when on shore, & wandering in the sublime forests, surrounded by views more gorgeous than even Claude ever imagined, I enjoy a delight which none but those who have experienced it can understand - If it is to be done, it must be by studying Humboldt.
Charles Darwin
#84. Government, religion, property, books, are nothing but the scaffolding to build men. Earth holds up to her master no fruit like the finished man.
Wilhelm Von Humboldt
#85. Petroleum is the product of a distillation from great depth and issues from the primitive rocks beneath which the forces of all volcanic action lie.
Alexander Von Humboldt
#86. We have not the remotest realistic inkling of a consciousness which is not self-consciousness.
Wilhelm Von Humboldt
#87. Governmental regulations all carry coercion to some degree, and even where they don't, they habituate man to expect teaching, guidance and help outside himself, instead of formulating his own.
Wilhelm Von Humboldt
#88. If it were possible to make an accurate calculation of the evils which police regulations occasion, and of those which they prevent, the number of the former would, in all cases, exceed that of the latter.
Wilhelm Von Humboldt
#89. Nobody, said Humboldt, had a destiny. One simply decided to feign one until one came to believe in it oneself. But so many things didn't fit in with it, one had to really force oneself.
Daniel Kehlmann
#90. This aspect of animated nature, in which man is nothing, has something in it strange and sad ... Here, in a fertile country, adorned with eternal verdure, we seek in vain the traces of the power of man; we seem to be transported into a world different from that which gave us birth.
Alexander Von Humboldt
#91. Every man, however good he may be, has a yet better man dwelling in him, which is properly himself, but to whom nevertheless he is often unfaithful. It is to this interior and less mutable being that we should attach ourselves, not to be changeable, every-day man.
Wilhelm Von Humboldt
#93. If the mind loves solitude, it has thereby acquired a loftier character, and it becomes still more noble when the taste is indulged in.
Wilhelm Von Humboldt
#94. When we are not too anxious about happiness and unhappiness, but devote ourselves to the strict and unsparing performance of duty, then happiness comes of itself
nay, even springs from the midst of a life of troubles and anxieties and privations.
Wilhelm Von Humboldt
#96. Joy mingled with sadness, even with grief, is the deepest human joy. It winds itself about the soul with indescribable sweetness, with a dim but unerring sense for what will some day be born of it.
Wilhelm Von Humboldt
#97. Man is more disposed to domination than freedom; and a structure of dominion not only gladdens the eye of the master who rears and protects it, but even its servants are uplifted by the thought that they are members of a whole, which rises high above the life and strength of single generations.
Wilhelm Von Humboldt
#98. The study of maps and the perusal of travel books aroused in me a secret fascination that was at times almost irresistible.
Alain De Botton
#99. Knowledge, Humboldt believed, had to be shared, exchanged and made available to everybody.
Andrea Wulf
