Ernst Mach

Physics is experience, arranged in economical order.

— Ernst Mach

Science itself, therefore, may be regarded as a minimal problem, consisting of the completest possible presentment of facts with the least possible…

— Ernst Mach

In reality, the law always contains less than the fact itself, because it does not reproduce the fact as a whole but…

— Ernst Mach

The presentations and conceptions of the average man of the world are formed and dominated, not by the full and pure desire…

— Ernst Mach

“To us investigators, the concept 'soul' is irrelevant and a matter for laughter.”

— Ernst Mach

Scientists must use the simplest means of arriving at their results and exclude everything not perceived by the senses.

— Ernst Mach

Personally, people know themselves very poorly.

— Ernst Mach

“But we must not forget that all things in the world are connected with one another and depend on one another, and…

— Ernst Mach

If our dreams were more regular, more connected, more stable, they would also have more practical importance for us.

— Ernst Mach

Mathematics may be defined as the economy of counting. There is no problem in the whole of mathematics which cannot be solved…

— Ernst Mach

Strange as it may sound, the power of mathematics rests on its evasion of all unnecessary thought and on its wonderful saving…

— Ernst Mach

The acquisition of the most elementary truth does not devolve upon the individual alone: it is pre-effected in the development of the…

— Ernst Mach

The history of the development of mechanics is quite indispensable to a full comprehension of the science in its present condition. It…

— Ernst Mach

The task which we have set ourselves is simply to show why and for what purpose we hold that standpoint during most…

— Ernst Mach

All this, the positive and physical essence of mechanics, which makes its chief and highest interest for a student of nature, is…

— Ernst Mach

Science is the most complete presentment of facts with the least expenditure of thought

— Ernst Mach

The mathematician who pursues his studies without clear views of this matter, must often have the uncomfortable feeling that his paper and…

— Ernst Mach

What Mach calls a thought experiment is of course not an experiment at all. At bottom it is a grammatical investigation.

— Ernst Mach

Similarly, many a young man, hearing for the first time of the refraction of stellar light, has thought that doubt was cast…

— Ernst Mach

I can accept the theory of relativity as little as I can accept the existence of atoms and other such dogmas.

— Ernst Mach

Everyone is free to set up an opinion and to adduce proofs in support of it. Whether, though, a scientist shall find…

— Ernst Mach

Thing, body, matter, are nothing apart from the combinations of the elements, - the colours, sounds, and so forth - nothing apart…

— Ernst Mach

My table is now brightly, now dimly lighted. Its temperature varies. It may receive an ink stain. One of its legs may…

— Ernst Mach

The fact is, every thinker, every philosopher, the moment he is forced to abandon his one-sided intellectual occupation by practical necessity, immediately…

— Ernst Mach

When I recall today my early youth, I should take the boy that I then was, with the exception of a few…

— Ernst Mach