“To ascend to the origin of things and speculate on the creation, is not the business of the natural philosopher.”

Source: Natural Right and History (1953), p. 12

Source: Contributions to Modern Economics (1978), Chapter 5, The Rate of Interest, p. 46

"Originals Graphics Multiples" (1973) <!-- as quoted in Man Ray : American Artist (1988) by Neil Baldwin, p. 323 -->
Context: An original is a creation motivated by desire.
Any reproduction of an original is motivated by necessity.
The original is the result of an automatic process, the reproduction, of a mechanical process. In other words: Inspiration then information; each validates the other.
All other considerations are beyond the scope of these statements.
It is marvelous that we are the only species that creates gratuitous forms. To create is divine, to reproduce is human.

As translated by Arthur Imerti (1964)
The Expulsion of the Triumphant Beast (1584)
Context: Animals and plants are living effects of Nature; this Nature... is none other than God in things... Diverse living things represent diverse divinities and diverse powers, which, besides the absolute being they possess, obtain the being communicated to all things according to their capacity and measure. Whence all of God is in all things (although not totally, but in some more abundantly and in others less) … Think thus, of the sun in the crocus, in the narcissus, in the heliotrope, in the rooster, in the lion…. To the extent that one communicates with Nature, so one ascends to Divinity through Nature.

Variant: He was a dreamer, a thinker, a speculative philosopher... or, as his wife would have it, an idiot.

“What is liberal education,” pp. 4-5
Liberalism Ancient and Modern (1968)
Context: It was once said that democracy is the regime that stands or falls by virtue: a democracy is a regime in which all or most adults are men of virtue, and since virtue seems to require wisdom, a regime in which all or most adults are virtuous and wise, or the society in which all or most adults have developed their reason to a high degree, or the rational society. Democracy, in a word, is meant to be an aristocracy which has broadened into a universal aristocracy. … There exists a whole science—the science which I among thousands of others profess to teach, political science—which so to speak has no other theme than the contrast between the original conception of democracy, or what one may call the ideal of democracy, and democracy as it is. … Liberal education is the ladder by which we try to ascend from mass democracy to democracy as originally meant.

"So Cleverly Kind an Animal", p. 267
Ever Since Darwin (1977)

Ostriker, J.P. and Mitton, Simon (2013) Heart of Darkness p.9.
De Magnete (1600), quote about science

How to Read a Poem And Fall in Love with Poetry (1998)