Christiaan Huygens Quotes

I believe that we do not know anything for certain, but everything probably.

The taste of music with the inhabitants of Venus and Jupiter is at a high level, similar to that of Frenchmen or Italians.

...the power of this line [the cycloid] to measure time.

One finds in this subject a kind of demonstration which does not carry with it so high a degree of certainty as that employed in geometry; and which differs distinctly from the method employed by geometers in that they prove their propositions by well-established and incontrovertible principles, while here principles are tested by inferences which are derivable from them. The nature of the subject permits of no other treatment. It is possible, however, in this way to establish a probability which is little short of certainty. This is the case when the consequences of the assumed principles are in perfect accord with the observed phenomena, and especially when these verifications are numerous; but above all when one employs the hypothesis to predict new phenomena and finds his expectations realized.

How vast those Orbs must be, and how inconsiderable this Earth, the Theatre upon which all our mighty Designs, all our Navigations, and all our Wars are transacted, is when compared to them. A very fit consideration, and matter of Reflection, for those Kings and Princes who sacrifice the Lives of so many People, only to flatter their Ambition in being Masters of some pitiful corner of this small Spot.

We shall be less apt to admire what this World calls Great, shall nobly despise those Trifles the generality of Men set their Affections on, when we know that there are a multitude of such Earths inhabited and adorned as Well as our own.

A Man that is of Copernicus’s Opinion, that this Earth of ours is a Planet, carry’d round and enlighten’d by the Sun, like the rest of the Planets, cannot but sometimes think, that it’s not improbable that the rest of the Planets have their Dress and Furniture, and perhaps their Inhabitants too as well as this Earth of ours...

It's evident God had no design to make a particular Enumeration in the Holy Scriptures, of all the Works of his Creation.

I had not thought of this regular decrease of gravity, namely that it is as the inverse square of the distance; this is a new and highly remarkable property of gravity.

Here we may mount from this dull Earth, and viewing it from on high, consider whether Nature has laid out all her Cost and Finery upon this small Speck of Dirt.

I esteem his [Newton's] understanding and subtlety highly, but I consider that they have been put to ill use in the greater part of this work, where the author studies things of little use or when he builds on the improbable principle of attraction.

There are many degrees of Probable, some nearer Truth than others, in the determining of which lies the chief exercise of our Judgment.

Now since in so many Things they... agree, what can be more probable than that in others they agree too; and that the other Planets are as beautiful and as well stock'd with Inhabitants as the Earth? Or what shadow of Reason can there be why they should not?

I do not mind at all that [Newton] is not a Cartesian provided he does not offer us suppositions like that of attraction.

These Gentlemen must be told, that they take too much upon themselves when they pretend to appoint how far and no farther Men shall go in their Searches, and to set bounds to other Mens Industry; as if they knew the Marks that God has placed to Knowledge...