Leonardo da Vinci Quotes

Experience seems to most of us to lead to conclusions, but empiricism has sworn never to draw them.

I enjoy science, and I'm a very curious person. I always want to know the reason behind everything, big or small.

Rhetoric and dialectics can't change what I have learned from observation and experience.

You have to do the research. If you don't know about something, then you ask the right people who do.

The scientific mind does not so much provide the right answers as ask the right questions.

A few observation and much reasoning lead to error; many observations and a little reasoning to truth.

All that I say is, examine, inquire. Look into the nature of things. Search out the grounds of your opinions, the for and against. Know why you believe, understand what you believe, and possess a reason for the faith that is in you.

Constant and frequent questioning is the first key to wisdom … For through doubting we are led to inquire, and by inquiry we perceive the truth.

Avoid the precepts of those thinkers whose reasoning is not confirmed by experience.

Science is for anyone who wants to explore their world and understand things.

I always looked at myself as a physicist learning new tricks by looking at nature.

Reason must approach nature with the view, indeed, of receiving information from it, not, however, in the character of a pupil, who listens to all that his master chooses to tell him, but in that of a judge, who compels the witnesses to reply to those questions which he himself thinks fit to propose. To this single idea must the revolution be ascribed, by which, after groping in the dark for so many centuries, natural science was at length conducted into the path of certain progress.

Science is about applying what we know and asking what we don't know.

Reason, observation, and experience; the holy trinity of science.

You have to experience life, make observations, and ask questions.

By doubting we are led to question, by questioning we arrive at the truth.

The scientist is not a person who gives the right answers, he is one who asks the right questions.

The reason I do workshops is so I can learn, and I am fortunate that I've probably gained more from the whole experience of teaching than any one participant has. It is all about asking.

Doubt, the essential preliminary of all improvement and discovery, must accompany the stages of man's onward progress. The faculty of doubting and questioning, without which those of comparison and judgment would be useless, is itself a divine prerogative of the reason.

I think that in the discussion of natural problems we ought to begin not with the Scriptures, but with experiments, and demonstrations.

Science is the systematic classification of experience.

I always say I have a Socratic approach to most things that I do. I pummel people with questions, because I need to know what they're thinking, what they're trying to achieve, what they believe the final outcome is going to be.

I have great hope and faith, but it's a humanistic faith based in facts; you have to believe that facts exist. We can all arrive at the same facts if we engage in the process of experimentation, observation, and verification, which can solve more of the world's major problems than a debate over whether God does or doesn't exist.

Children and scientists share an outlook on life. 'If I do this, what will happen?' is both the motto of the child at play and the defining refrain of the physical scientist.

Science is curiosity, testing and experimenting.