The aim of science is not things themselves, as the dogmatists in their simplicity imagine, but the relation between things.

It is a misfortune for a science to be born too late when the means of observation have become too perfect. That is what is happening at this moment with respect to physical chemistry; the founders are hampered in their general grasp by third and fourth decimal places.

Why is it that showers and even storms seem to come by chance, so that many people think it quite natural to pray for rain or fine weather, though they would consider it ridiculous to ask for an eclipse by prayer.

One would have to have completely forgotten the history of science so as to not remember that the desire to know nature has had the most constant and the happiest influence on the development of mathematics.

Chance ... must be something more than the name we give to our ignorance.

All great progress takes place when two sciences come together, and when their resemblance proclaims itself, despite the apparent disparity of their substance.

Sociology is the science with the greatest number of methods and the least results.