George Sarton

… science is the most revolutionary force in the world.

— George Sarton

The chief requisite for the making of a good chicken pie is chicken; no amount of culinary legerdemain can make up for the lack of chicken. In the same way, the chief requisite for the history of science is intimate scientific knowledge; no amount of philosophic legerdemain can make up for its absence.

— George Sarton

Arabic science was the fruit of Semitic genius fertilized by the Iranian genius.

— George Sarton

As I grew older my lectures became simpler; I tried to say fewer things and to say them better, with more humanity. This book continues in a different way the same evolution, but it is not yet as simple as I would have liked to have made it.

— George Sarton

The ability of nonintelligent people to understand the most complicated mechanisms and to use them has always been to me a cause of astonishment: their inability to understand simple questions is even more astonishing. The general acceptance of simple ideas is difficult and rare, and yet it is only when simple, fundamental, ideas have been accepted that further progress becomes possible on a higher level.

— George Sarton

Erudition without pedantry is as a rare as wisdom itself.

— George Sarton

It is childish to assume that science began in Greece; the Greek "miracle" was prepared by millenia of work in Egypt, Mesopotamia and possibly in other regions. Greek science was less an invention than a revival.

— George Sarton

Scientific achievements seem evanescent, because the very progress of science causes their supersedure; yet some of them are of so fundamental a nature that they are immortal in a deeper way.

— George Sarton

From the humanistic point of view every human achievement is unforgettable and immortal in its essence, even if it is replaced by a "better" one.

— George Sarton

Greek culture is pleasant to contemplate because of its great simplicity and naturalness, and because of the absence of gadgets, each of which is sooner or later a cause of servitude.

— George Sarton

The rationalism of the creative minds was tempered by abundant fantasies, and the supreme beauty of the monuments was probably spoiled by the circumambient vanities and ugliness; in a few cases the Greeks came as close to perfection as it was possible to do, yet they were human and imperfect.

— George Sarton

Our own culture, of Greek and Hebraic origin, is the one that interests us the most... We do not say that it is the best culture, but simply that it is ours. To claim that it of necessity superior would be wrong and evil. That attitude is the main source of international trouble in the world. ...Each nation prefers its own usages.

— George Sarton

My main interest... is the love of truth, whether pleasant or not. Truth is self-sufficient, and there is nothing to which it can be subordinated without loss. When truth is made subservient to anything else, however great (say religion), it becomes impure and sordid.

— George Sarton

Wisdom is not mathematical, nor astronomical, nor zoological; when it talks too much of any one thing it ceases to be itself. There are wise physicists, but wisdom is not physical; there are wise physicians, but wisdom is not medical.

— George Sarton

The historical order is very interesting, but accidental and capricious; if we would to understand the growth of knowledge, we cannot be satisfied with accidents, we must explain how knowledge was gradually built up.

— George Sarton

The history of science should not be an instrument to defend any kind of social or philosophic theory; it should be used only for its own purpose, to illustrate impartially the working of reason against unreason, the gradual unfolding of truth, in all its forms, whether pleasant or unpleasant, useful of useless, welcome or unwelcome.

— George Sarton

The Hellenistic world was international to a degree, polyglot and inspired by many religious faiths. ...the Greek ideals were pagan and the Hellenistic age witnessed their death struggle against Asiatic and Egyptian mysteries, on the one side, and against Judaism, on the other.

— George Sarton

The intensity of a national culture should be represented by... the general education level and... the exceptional merit of a small elite of pioneers.

— George Sarton

The whole past and the whole world are alive in my heart, and I shall do my part to communicate their presence to my readers.

— George Sarton

A deed happens in a definite place at a definite time, but if it be sufficiently great and pregnant, its virtue radiates everywhere in time and space.

— George Sarton

If we are generous enough, we can stretch our souls everywhere and everywhen else. If we succeed in doing so, we shall discover that our present embraces the past and the future and that the whole world is our province.

— George Sarton

All men are our brothers. As far as the discovery of the truth is concerned, they are all working for the same purpose; they may be separated by the accidents of space and time, and by the exigencies of race, religion, nationality, and other groupings; from the point of view of eternity they are working together.

— George Sarton

Men of science have made abundant mistakes of every kind; their knowledge has improved only because of their gradual abandonment of ancient errors, poor approximations, and premature conclusions.

— George Sarton

I am obliged to deal with hundreds of men and to make them live without killing the reader.

— George Sarton

Ancient portraits are symbolic images without any immediate relation to the individuals represented; they are not portraits as we understand them. ...It is remarkable that philologists who are capable of carrying accuracy to the extremes in the case of words are as credulous as babies when it comes to "images," and yet an image is so full of information that ten thousands words would not add up to it.

— George Sarton

The whole iconography of ancient science is simply the fruit of wishful thinking.

— George Sarton

Some forty years of experience in my field as a scholar and as a teacher have given me great confidence mixed with greater humility.

— George Sarton

My gratitude to them [my first teachers] grows as I myself grow older.

— George Sarton