Politics

Actually, convicts: as close as I could get.

 … whoever could make two ears of corn, or two blades of grass, to grow upon a spot of ground where only one grew before, would deserve better of mankind, and do more essential service to his country, than the whole race of politicians put together.
— Jonathan Swift (1667 – 1745), ‘A Voyage to Brobdingnag’ in Gulliver’s Travels.

One of the greatest pains to human nature is the pain of a new idea.
— Walter Bagehot (1801 – 1859), Physics and Politics.

When in that house MPs divide,
If they’ve a brain and cerebellum too,
They have to leave their brain outside,
And vote just as their leaders tell ‘em to.
— W. S. Gilbert (1836 – 1911) Iolanthe

When you try to explain to politicians and civil servants what science does and how it works there’s a curious kind of switch-off. They say ‘yes’ as if in agreement, but you know they haven’t understood.
— David Weatherall, quoted in New Scientist 26 June 1993, 33.

It is very noticeable that the first time they [politicians] speak in public they apologise for not being a scientist, and they do it very publicly. But it’s not a real apology; it’s an essential qualification for the next job.
— Jean-Patrick Connerade, quoted in New Scientist 26 June 1993, 33.

… will the public and those in authority pay any attention to what you say, or will the politicians go on with their lunatic game of power politics, ignoring the fact that the world they are squabbling over will very shortly cease to exist in its old familiar form, but will be transformed, unless they mobilize all available intelligence and all available good will, into one huge dust bowl, inhabited by creatures whom hunger will make more and more sub-human?
— Aldous Huxley, letter to Fairfield Osborn, 16/1/1948, Letters of Aldous Huxley, Chatto and Windus, 1969, 578.

It is paradoxical: people in the age of science and technology live in the conviction that they can improve their lives because they are able to grasp and exploit the complexities of nature and the general laws of its functioning. Yet it is precisely these laws which, in the end, tragically catch up on them and get the better of them.
— Vaclav Havel, Czech playwright (and later president), ‘Politics and conscience’ in Living in Truth, Faber 1989, 141.

Geology is related to almost all the physical sciences, as history is to the moral. A historian should, if possible, be at once profoundly acquainted with ethics, politics, jurisprudence, the military art, theology; in a word with all branches of knowledge by which any insight into human affairs, or into the moral and intellectual nature of man, can be obtained. It would be no less desirable that a geologist should be well-versed in chemistry, natural philosophy, mineralogy, zoology, comparative anatomy, botany; in short, in every science relating to organic and inorganic nature.
— Sir Charles Lyell (1797 – 1875), quoted in A Thousand and One Gems of English Prose, selected by Charles Mackay, (19th century?).

Her statistics were more than a study, they were indeed her religion. For her Quetelet was the hero as scientist, and the presentation copy of his Physique sociale is annotated by her on every page. Florence Nightingale believed — and in all the actions of her life acted upon that belief — that the administrator could only be successful if he were guided by statistical knowledge. The legislator — to say nothing of the politician — too often failed for want of this knowledge. Nay, she went further; she held that the universe — including human communities — was evolving in accordance with a divine plan; that it was man’s business to endeavour to understand this plan and guide his actions in sympathy with it. But to understand God’s thoughts, she held we must study statistics, for these are the measure of His purpose. Thus the study of statistics was for her a religious duty.
— Karl Pearson The Life, Letters and Labours of Francis Galton, vol. 2, 1924.

Philosophy, astronomy, and politics were marked at zero, I remember. Botany variable, geology profound as regards the mud stains from any region within fifty miles of town, chemistry eccentric, anatomy unsystematic, sensational literature and crime records unique, violin player, boxer, swordsman, lawyer, and self-poisoner by cocaine and tobacco.
— Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930), Dr. Watson, in The Five Orange Pips (1892), describing Sherlock Holmes.

Theoretical physicists tend to talk only to each other, and, like so many Cabots, to God. Either in scientific politics or open politics, organic chemists much more often than not turn out to be conservative: the reverse is true of biochemists.
— C. P. Snow (1905 – 1980), The Two Cultures: a Second Look, 1963.

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