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Quotes by Mathematician
"Another mode of accumulating power arises from lifting a weight and then allowing it to fall."
38
"Man can acquire accomplishments or he can become an animal, whichever he wants. God makes the animals, man makes himself."
38
"I finally reached the conclusion that mathematics was the study I was best fitted to follow, though I did not clearly see in what way I should turn the subject to account."
38
"Intellect distinguishes between the possible and the impossible; reason distinguishes between the sensible and the senseless. Even the possible can be senseless."
38
"No more than these machines need the mathematician know what he does."
38
"The definition of a good mathematical problem is the mathematics it generates rather than the problem itself."
38
"The pursuit of pretty formulas and neat theorems can no doubt quickly degenerate into a silly vice, but so can the quest for austere generalities which are so very general indeed that they are incapable of application to any particular."
37
"The public character of every public servant is legitimate subject of discussion, and his fitness or unfitness for office may be fairly canvassed by any person."
37
"A man may imagine things that are false, but he can only understand things that are true, for if the things be false, the apprehension of them is not understanding."
37
"Nothing is more fairly distributed than common sense: no one thinks he needs more of it than he already has."
37
"A suggestion had been made to me looking toward a professorship in some Western college, but after due consideration, I declined to consider the matter."
37
"The numbers may be said to rule the whole world of quantity, and the four rules of arithmetic may be regarded as the complete equipment of the mathematician."
37
"The developing science departs at the same time more and more from its original scope and purpose and threatens to sacrifice its earlier unity and split into diverse branches."
37
"There's also a sense of freedom. I was so obsessed by this problem that I was thinking about if all the time - when I woke up in the morning, when I went to sleep at night, and that went on for eight years."
37
"There are no whole truths: all truths are half-truths. It is trying to treat them as whole truths that plays to the devil."
37
"It is far better to foresee even without certainty than not to foresee at all."
37
"It is in literature that the concrete outlook of humanity receives its expression."
36
"I have always hated machinery, and the only machine I ever understood was a wheelbarrow, and that but imperfectly."
36
"You know that I write slowly. This is chiefly because I am never satisfied until I have said as much as possible in a few words, and writing briefly takes far more time than writing at length."
36
"It is the weight, not numbers of experiments that is to be regarded."
36
"On two occasions I have been asked, 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question."
36
"The silly question is the first intimation of some totally new development."
36
"To unfold the secret laws and relations of those high faculties of thought by which all beyond the merely perceptive knowledge of the world and of ourselves is attained or matured, is a object which does not stand in need of commendation to a rational mind."
36
"If a belief is not realized immediately in open deeds, it is stored up for the guidance of the future."
36
"The half minute which we daily devote to the winding-up of our watches is an exertion of labour almost insensible; yet, by the aid of a few wheels, its effect is spread over the whole twenty-four hours."
36
"Until I was four years old I lived in the house of my paternal grandfather, about two miles from the pretty little village of Wallace, at the mouth of the river of that name."
36
"Religion is the last refuge of human savagery."
36
"Until a few years ago, the topics in my Ph.D. were unfashionable, but they are very popular today."
36
"Every philosophy is tinged with the coloring of some secret imaginative background, which never emerges explicitly into its train of reasoning."
36
"Think of color, pitch, loudness, heaviness, and hotness. Each is the topic of a branch of physics."
36
"The belief that there is only one truth, and that oneself is in possession of it, is the root of all evil in the world."
36
"The dark outside world of Paris under German occupation exerted a strong containing pressure."
36
"Aerial flight is one of that class of problems with which men will never have to cope."
36
"To such idle talk it might further be added: that whenever a certain exclusive occupation is coupled with specific shortcomings, it is likewise almost certainly divorced from certain other shortcomings."
35
"Let us consider that swearing is a sin of all others peculiarly clamorous, and provocative of Divine judgment."
35
"The mistakes and unresolved difficulties of the past in mathematics have always been the opportunities of its future."
35
"It is not of the essence of mathematics to be conversant with the ideas of number and quantity."
35
"I believe sanity and realism can be restored to the teaching of Mathematical Statistics most easily and directly by entrusting such teaching largely to men and women who have had personal experience of research in the Natural Sciences."
35
"Beauty is the first test: there is no permanent place in the world for ugly mathematics."
35
"Young men should prove theorems, old men should write books."
35
"A tool is usually more simple than a machine; it is generally used with the hand, whilst a machine is frequently moved by animal or steam power."
35
"Each problem that I solved became a rule, which served afterwards to solve other problems."
35
"Speech is human nature itself, with none of the artificiality of written language."
35
"An extraordinary amount of arrogance is present in any claim of having been the first in inventing something."
35
"At each increase of knowledge, as well as on the contrivance of every new tool, human labour becomes abridged."
35
"If I steal money from any person, there may be no harm done from the mere transfer of possession; he may not feel the loss, or it may prevent him from using the money badly. But I cannot help doing this great wrong towards Man, that I make myself dishonest."
35
"When the weather changes, nobody believes the laws of physics have changed. Similarly, I don't believe that when the stock market goes into terrible gyrations its rules have changed."
35
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