
“The true alchemists do not change lead into gold; they change the world into words.”
Source: A Temple of Texts
Cognitive Surplus : Creativity and Generosity in a Connected Age (2010)
“The true alchemists do not change lead into gold; they change the world into words.”
Source: A Temple of Texts
in Robert Halleux, ‘The Reception of Arabic Alchemy in the West', in Encyclopaedia of the History of Arabic Science, vol. 3, pp. 896-7
“Labor is the true alchemist that beats out in patient transmutation the baser metals into gold.”
Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 367.
Source: Understanding International Conflicts: An Introduction to Theory and History (6th ed., 2006), Chapter 4, The Failure of Collective Security and World War II, p. 111.
“In every instance, it is not my method that is defective; proper observations alone fail me.”
Preface of M. Quetelet
A Treatise on Man and the Development of His Faculties (1842)
Context: In every instance, it is not my method that is defective; proper observations alone fail me. But will it be ever impossible to have them perfectly precise? I believe that even at present we have them sufficiently so to enter, at least, on the great problem under consideration. Name them as you will, the actions which society stamps as crimes, and of which it punishes the authors, are reproduced every year, in almost exactly the same numbers; examined more closely, they are found to divide themselves into almost exactly the same categories; and, if their number were sufficiently large, we might carry farther our distinctions and subdivisions, and should always find there the same regularity. It will then remain correct to say, that a given species of actions is more common at one given age than at any other given age.
The Rubaiyat (1120)
Source: The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy