“We must not pursue science for ends independent of science. It must be pursued for its own sake, and must lead to its own results.”
Private journal (1858), quoted in Gertrude Himmelfarb, Lord Acton: A Study in Conscience and Politics (1952), p. 40
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John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton 112
British politician and historian 1834–1902Related quotes
“We must do our work for its own sake, not for fortune or attention or applause.”
Source: The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks & Win Your Inner Creative Battles
Source: "The Theory and Practice of Administration", 1936, p. 409; as cited in: Albert Lepawsky (1949), Administration, p. 662-3

The Tragic Sense of Life (1913), III : The Hunger of Immortality
Context: The vain man is in like cause with the avaricious — he takes the mean for the end; forgetting the end he pursues the means for its own sake and goes no further. The seeming to be something, conducive to being it, ends by forming our objective. We need that others should believe in our superiority to them in order that we may believe in it ourselves, and upon their belief base our faith in our own persistence, or at least in the persistence of our fame. We are more grateful to him that congratulates us on the skill with which we defend a cause than we are to him who recognizes the truth or goodness of the cause itself. A rabid mania for originality is rife in the modern intellectual world and characterizes all individual effort. We would rather err with genius than hit the mark with the crowd.

Note, p. 58
1840s, The Concept of Anxiety (1844)

La scienza conduce a grandi conquiste, che, giustamente, colmano di gioia chi cerca la verità, ma, se approfondita, ci insegna che in altre fonti occorre cercare la verità ultima e trovare le risposte alle domande esistenziali sul senso della vita e sul mistero della morte.
Knowing the universe. For whom? at the XXVII edition of the “Meeting for Friendship Among Peoples”, Rimini meeting 2006, August 23, 2006.

" The intellectuals and the workers http://www.marxists.org/history/etol/revhist/backiss/vol1/no1/kautsky.html," Die Neue Zeit, vol. 22, no. 4 (1903)