Quotes From Famous People
What would life be without arithmetic, but a scene of horrors?
Syndey Smith, 1835
Certainly he who can digest a second or third fluxion need
not, methinks, be squeamish about any point in divinity.
George Berkeley, 1734
If a little knowledge is dangerous, where is the man who has
so much as to be out of danger?
Thomas Henry Huxley, 1877
Mathematics may be defined as the subject in which we never
know what we are talking about, nor whether what we are
saying is true.
Bertrand Russell, 1917
We should take care not to make the intellect our god; it has,
of course, great power, but no personality.
Albert Einstein, 1950
Ignorance is always ready to admire itself. Procure yourself
critical friends.
Nicolas Boileau, 1674
The mind of man is more intuitive than logical, and comprehends
more than it can coordinate.
Vauvenargues, 1746
Nothing is more dangerous than an idea, when it is the only
idea we have.
Alain, 1908
Ignoramus, n. A person unacquainted with certain kinds of
knowledge familiar to yourself, and having certain other kinds
that you know nothing about.
Ambrose Bierce, 1890
Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself.
I am large, I contain multitudes.
Walt Whitman, 1870
Let no one say I have said nothing new; the arrangement of
the subject is new.
Blaise Pascal, 1670
Examinations are formidable even to the best prepared, for
the greatest fool may ask more than the wisest man can answer.
Charles Caleb Colton, 1825
General and abstract ideas are the source of the greatest
errors of mankind.
Rousseau, 1762
Many a profound genius, I suppose, who fills the world with
fame of his exploding renowned errors, is yet every day
baffled by trivial questions at his own supper-table.
R. W. Emerson, 1832
Hope deceives more men than cunning does.
Vauvenargues, 1746
There is frequently more to be learned from the unexpected
questions of a child than the discourses of men, who talk
in a road, according to the notions and prejudices of their
education.
John Locke, 1693
I do hate sums. There is no greater mistake than to call
arithmetic an exact science. There are hidden laws of number
which it requires a mind like mine to perceive. For instance,
if you add a sum from the bottom up, and then again from the
top down, the result is always different.
Mrs. La Touche, 19th c.
A wise man is superior to any insults which can be put upon
him, and the best reply to unseemly behavior is patience and
moderation.
Moliere, 1670
The intellectuals' chief cause of anguish are one
another's works.
Jacques Barzun, 1959
all ignorance toboggans into know
and trudges up to ignorance again.
e.e.cummings, 1959
The test of interesting people is that subject matter doesn't
matter.
Louis Kronenberger, 1954
The perplexity of life arises from there being too many
interesting things in it for us to be interested properly
in any of them.
G. K. Chesterton, 1909
He who serves two masters has to lie to one.
Portuguese Proverb
That knowledge which stops at what it does not know, is the
highest knowledge.
Chuang Tzu, 4th c. B.C.
Intelligence is characterized by a natural incomprehension
of life.
Henri Bergson, 1907
Knowledge is two-fold, and consists not only in the affirmation
of what is true, but in the negation of that which is false.
Charles Caleb Colton, 1825
If I cannot brag of knowing something, then I brag of not
knowing it.
R. W. Emerson, 1866
Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember
from time to time that nothing worth knowing can be taught.
Oscar Wilde, 1891
The first mark of intelligence, to be sure, is not to start
things; the second mark of intelligence is to pursue to the
end what you have started.
Panchatantra, c. 5th c.
The sole cause of all human misery is the inability of people
to sit quietly in their rooms.
Blaise Pascal, 1670
The fairest thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is
the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true
art and true science.
Albert Einstein, 1934
Although to penetrate into the intimate mysteries of nature
and thence to learn the true causes of phenomena is not allowed
to us, nevertheless it can happen that a certain fictive
hypothesis may suffice for explaining many phenomena.
Leonhard Euler, 1748
The shortest path between two truths in the real domain
passes through the complex domain.
Jacques Hadamard
Such is the advantage of a well-constructed language that
its simplified notation often becomes the source of profound
theories.
P. S. Laplace
I hope that posterity will judge me kindly, not only as to
the things which I have explained, but also as to those
which I have intentionally omitted so as to leave to others
the pleasure of discovery.
Rene Descartes, 1637
It is easier to square a circle than to get round a
mathematician.
A. De Morgan, 1840
There is no excellent beauty that has not some strangeness
in the proportion.
Francis Bacon
In conclusion I wish to say that in working at the problem
here dealt with I have had the loyal assistance of my friend
and colleague M. Besso, and that I am indebted to him for
several valuable suggestions.
Albert Einstein, 1905
I see I have made myself a slave to Philosophy, but if I get
free of Mr. Linus's business I will resolutely bid adew to it
eternally, excepting for what I do for my private satisfaction
or leave to come out after me. For I see a man must either
resolve to put out nothing new or to become a slave to defend it.
Isaac Newton, 1677
There wanted not some beams of light to guide men in the
exercise of their Stocastick faculty.
John Owen, 1662
Of all the communities available to us there is not one that
I would devote myself to, except for the society of true
searchers, which has very few living members at any time.
Albert Einstein, 1949
The description of right lines and circles, upon which
geometry is founded, belongs to mechanics. Geometry does
not teach us to draw these lines, but requires them to
be drawn.
Isaac Newton, 1687
I am coming more and more to the conviction that the
necessity of our geometry cannot be demonstrated...geometry
should be ranked, not with arithmetic, which is purely
aprioristic, but with mechanics.
Carl Gauss, 1817
Among the great men who have philosophized about [the action
of the tides], the one who surprised me most is Kepler. He
was a person of independent genius, [but he] became interested
in the action of the moon on the water, and in other occult
phenomena, and similar childishness.
Galileo Galilie, 1632
Taking mathematics from the beginning of the world to the
time of Newton, what he has done is much the better half.
Gottfried Leibniz, 1688
I will sette as I doe often in woorke use, a paire of
paralleles, or [twin] lines of one lengthe, thus = ,
bicause noe 2. thynges, can be moare equalle.
Robert Recorde, 1557
That, if a straight line falling on two straight lines makes
the interior angles on the same side less than two right angles,
the two straight lines, if produced indefinitely, meet on that
side on which the angles are less than two right angles.
Euclid, c. 300 B.C.
Regarding your manuscript, it certainly contains things that
are correct, and things that are original. However, the things
that are correct are not original, and the things that are
original are not correct.
Traditional
S'io credessi che mia risposta fosse
a persona che mai tornasse al mondo,
questa fiamma staria senza piu scosse.
Ma per cio che giammai di questo fondo
non torno vivo alcun, s'i'odo il vero,
senza tema d'infamia ti rispondo.
Dante, 1302
