I am less desirous to explain phenomena than to establish their existence. - Adolphe Quetelet

Every social state supposes... a certain number and a certain order of crimes, these being merely the necessary consequences of its organisation. This observation, so discouraging at first sight, becomes, on the contrary, consolatory, when examined more nearly, by showing the possibility of ameliorating the human race, by modifying their institutions, their habits, the amount of their information, and, generally, all which influences their mode of existence.

Little by little his conversation, always instructive and animated, gave a special direction to my tastes, which would have led me by preference towards letters. I resolved to complete my scientific studies and followed the courses in advanced mathematics given by M. [Jean Guillaume] Gamier. It was at the same time agreed by us that, in order to relieve him in his work, I should give some of the other courses with which he was charged. I thus found myself his pupil and his colleague.

It is a remarkable fact in the history of science, that the more extended human knowledge has become, the more limited human power, in that respect, has constantly appeared. This globe, of which man imagines the haughty possessor, becomes, in the eyes of astronomer, merely a grain of dust floating in immensity of space: an earthquake, a tempest, an inundation, may destroy in an instant an entire people, or ruin the labours of twenty ages. ...But if each step in the career of science thus gradually diminishes his importance, his pride has a compensation in the greater idea of his intellectual power, by which he has been enabled to perceive those laws which seem to be, by their nature, placed for ever beyond his grasp.