Classical: Greco-Roman, Pre-Christian

 

"Blessed is he who learns how to engage in inquiry, with no impulse to harm his countrymen or to pursue wrongful actions, but perceives order of immortal and ageless nature, how it is structured."  -- Euripides, fragment of unnamed play, 5th Cent. BC

 

 

"This then seems to be what happens with regard to the generation of bees, judging from theory (logos/logic) and from what are thought to be the facts about them. But the facts have not been sufficiently ascertained, and if they ever are ascertained, then we must trust perception rather than theories, and theories, too, so long as what they show agrees with what appears to be the case."   -- Aristotle, (4th Cent. BC)

 

"If anyone wishes to observe the works of Nature, he should put his trust not in books on anatomy but in his own eyes...[and] industriously practice exercises in dissection, but so long as he only reads, he will be likely to believe all the earlier anatomists because there are many of them."  -- Galen, (2nd Century AD)

Judaism and Middle Ages Christian

 

"And the LORD God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil: and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever: Therefore the LORD God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from whence he was taken. So he drove out the man; and he placed at the east of the garden of Eden Cherubims, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life."  -- Genesis 3, King James Bible

"Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see."  Hebrews 11:1

 

"There is another form of temptation, even more fraught with danger. This is the disease of curiosity…It is this which drives us to try and discover the secrets of nature, those secrets which are beyond our understanding, which can avail us nothing and which man should not wish to learn."  -- Augustine, 5th Cent. AD

 

"The bliss of Man (could Pride that blessing find)
Is not to act or think beyond mankind. (VI)
...
Cease then, nor ORDER Imperfection name:
Our proper bliss depends on what we blame.
Know thy own point: this kind, this due degree
Of blindness, weakness, Heaven bestows on thee.

Submit.  ...

WHATEVER IS, IS RIGHT." (X)  -- Alexander Pope Essay On Man, Epistle One, 1733

Enlightenment

 

"I had remarked for long that, in conduct, it is sometimes necessary to follow opinions known to be very uncertain, just as if they were indubitable…but then, because I desired to devote myself only to the research of truth, I thought it necessary to do exactly the contrary, and reject as absolutely false all in which I could conceive the least doubt, in order to see if afterwards there did not remain in my belief something which was indubitable."  -- Descartes, Discourse On Method (1637)