Miguel de Unamuno Quotes

We are vanishing from the earth, yet I cannot think we are useless or Usen [God] would not have created us.

I do not conceive of any manifestation of culture, of science, of art, as purposes in themselves. I think the purpose of science and culture is man.

Whether man is a product of evolution or is 'created' becomes the question, 'Who is man? Is he part of the world or something different from it?'

Science began as one of the noblest expressions of man's reason. It will continue to serve humanity so long as it never forgets that human beings remain the heart of its purpose.

One of my optimistic prophecies is based on the assumption that machines could have the best algorithms in the universe, but it will never have purpose. And the problem for us to explain purpose to a machine is because we don't know what our purpose is. We have the purpose, but we still ... When we look at this global picture, a universal picture, to understand what is our purpose being here on this planet? We don't know.

Did science promise happiness? I do not believe it. It promised truth, and the question is to know if we will ever make happiness with truth.

Purpose does not need to involve calculations or numbers. Purpose is about the quality of life. Purpose is human, not economic.

Nos numeros sumus et fruges consumere nati. We are but ciphers, born to consume earth's fruits.

Tolstoi explains somewhere in his writings why, in his opinion, “Science for Science's sake” is an absurd conception. We cannot know all the facts, since they are practically infinite in number. We must make a selection. Is it not better to be guided by utility, by our practical, and more especially our moral, necessities?

You are right in speaking of the moral foundations of science, but you cannot turn around and speak of the scientific foundations of morality.

If all our common-sense notions about the universe were correct, then science would have solved the secrets of the universe thousands of years ago. The purpose of science is to peel back the layer of the appearance of the objects to reveal their underlying nature. In fact, if appearance and essence were the same thing, there would be no need for science.

Science not only purifies the religious impulse of the dross of its anthropomorphism but also contributes to a religious spiritualization of our understanding of life.

Science is not just there for technology. It's part of what addressing who you are in the universe and understanding your place in the cosmos. Good art, good literature, good music - all of that is for that and science is a part of it.

Science always goes abreast with the just elevation of the man, keeping step with religion and metaphysics; or, the state of science is an index of our self-knowledge.

It is because the method of physics does not satisfy the comprehension that we have to go on further.

To see what is general in what is particular, and what is permanent in what is transitory, is the aim of scientific thought.

Science...has become identified with a philosophy known as materialism or scientific naturalism. This philosophy insists that nature is all there is, or at least the only thing about which we can have any knowledge. It follows that nature had to do its own creating, and that the means of creation must have included any role for God.

The starting-point and chief principle of every science, and hence of theology also, is not only methodical doubt, but positive doubt. One can believe only what one has perceived to be true from reasonable grounds, and consequently one must have the courage to continue doubting until one has found reliable grounds to satisfy the reason.

It has never been in my power to study anything, mathematics, ethics, metaphysics, gravitation, thermodynamics, optics, chemistry, comparative anatomy, astronomy, psychology, phonetics, economics, the history of science, whist, men and women, wine, metrology, except as a study of semeiotic .

In Christ and through Christ man has acquired full awareness of his dignity, of the heights to which he is raised, of the surpassing worth of his own humanity, and of the meaning of his existence.

They [scientists of centuries past] call on God only from the lonely and precarious edge of incomprehension. Where they feel certain about their explanations, however, God gets hardly a mention.

In science, obsessiveness under psychological control can be a virtue.

Science strives for answers, but art is happy with a good question.

The aims of scientific thought are to see the general in the particular and the eternal in the transitory.

Our lives are unique stones in the mosaic of human existence -- priceless and irreplaceable.