1001Philosophers

Ernst Mach Quotes on Knowledge

Ernst Mach was an Austrian physicist and philosopher of science whose work helped to inaugurate twentieth-century philosophy of science. This page collects quotes attributed to Ernst Mach on the topic of knowledge, drawn from across the philosopher's works.

Quotes

  • Attributed to Ernst Mach:

    “Physics is experience, arranged in economic order.”

  • Attributed to Ernst Mach:

    “All knowledge is for the sake of action.”

  • Attributed to Ernst Mach:

    “We hold a theory to be the most economical method of expressing the largest variety of facts in the simplest formulae.”

  • Attributed to Ernst Mach:

    “It is the goal of science to make the strangeness of the world disappear.”