5 Leo Tolstoy Quotes on Science

Leo Tolstoy quotes on science

88. ...obsolete religious justification of violence which consisted in the recognition of the supernatural personality of the God-ordained ruler ('there is no power but of God') has been superseded by the 'scientific' justification which puts forward, first, the assertion that because the coercion of man by man has existed in all ages, it follows that such coercion must continue to exist. ...what 'science' calls 'the historic law'. A further 'scientific' justification lies in the statement that as among plants and wild beasts there is a constant struggle for existence which always results in the survival of the fittest, a similar struggle should be carried on among human -beings... The third... justification is, ...that in public life the suppression of some for the protection of the majority cannot be avoided - so that coercion is unavoidable... this justification by pseudo-science consists in the fact that, ...'Science' says that these decisions represent the will of the people...

89. Such are the scientific justifications of the principle of coercion. They are not merely weak but absolutely invalid, yet they are so much needed by those who occupy privileged positions that they believe in them as blindly... And the unfortunate majority of men bound to toil is so dazzled by the pomp with which these 'scientific truths' are presented, that ...it accepts these scientific stupidities for holy truth, ...and it continues to submit to the present holders of power who are just as hard-hearted but rather more numerous than before.

98. ...men can only recognize this truth to its full extent when they have completely freed themselves from all religious and scientific superstitions and from all the consequent misrepresentations and sophistical distortions by which its recognition has been hindered for centuries.

99. In order that men should embrace the truth - not in the vague way they did in childhood, nor in the one-sided and perverted way presented to them by their religious and scientific teachers, but embrace it as their highest law- the complete liberation of this truth from all and every superstition ...not such as was effected in the religious sphere by Guru Nanak, the founder of the sect of the Sikhs, and in the Christian world by Luther, and by similar reformers in other religions - but a fundamental cleansing of religious consciousness from all ancient religious and modern scientific superstitions.

100. If only people freed themselves from their beliefs in... Paradises and Hells, in reincarnations and resurrections, from belief in the interference of the Gods in the external affairs of the universe, and above all, ...from belief ...in the infallibility of ...the historic law, the economic laws, the law of struggle and survival ...futile exercises of our lower capacities of mind and memory called the 'Sciences', and from ...all this harmful, stupefying ballast; -the simple law of love, ...solving all questions and perplexities, would of itself become clear and obligatory.