Leonardo da Vinci Quotes

Italian Renaissance polymath (1452−1519)

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Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci (15 April 1452 – 2 May 1519) was an Italian Renaissance painter, architect, inventor, engineer, sculptor, and musician. His best known painting is the Mona Lisa.

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Alternative Names: Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci • Leonardo • da Vinci • Leonard • Léonard • Leonardo Da Vinci

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Science is the captain, and practice the soldiers.

Any one who in discussion relies upon authority uses, not his understanding, but rather his memory. Good culture is born of a good disposition; and since the cause is more to be praised than the effect, I will rather praise a good disposition without culture, than good culture without the disposition.

There is no certainty in sciences where one of the mathematical sciences cannot be applied, or which are not in relation with these mathematics.

The man who blames the supreme certainty of mathematics feeds on confusion, and can never silence the contradictions of sophistical sciences which lead to an eternal quackery.

Every instrument requires to be made by experience.

Experience does not err; only your judgments err by expecting from her what is not in her power. Men wrongly complain of Experience; with great abuse they accuse her of leading them astray but they set Experience aside, turning from it with complaints as to our ignorance causing us to be carried away by vain and foolish desires to promise ourselves, in her name, things that are not in her power; saying that she is fallacious. Men are unjust in complaining of innocent Experience, constantly accusing her of error and of false evidence.

Experience never errs; it is only your judgments that err by promising themselves effects such as are not caused by your experiments.

Truth was the only daughter of Time.

Nature is full of infinite causes that have never occurred in experience.

Wisdom is the daughter of experience.

Experience, the interpreter between formative nature and the human race, teaches how that nature acts among mortals; and being constrained by necessity cannot act otherwise than as reason, which is its helm, requires her to act.

Science is the observation of things possible, whether present or past; prescience is the knowledge of things which may come to pass, though but slowly.

All our knowledge has its origin in our perceptions.

Every action needs to be prompted by a motive. To know and to will are two operations of the human mind. Discerning, judging, deliberating are acts of the human mind.

The senses are of the earth; Reason, stands apart in contemplation.