Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
The whole of mathematics consists in the organization of a series of aids to the imagination in the process of reasoning.
[In many circumstances,] the most important thing about a proposition is not that it be true, but that it be interesting.
Man can acquire accomplishments or he can become an animal, whichever he wants. God makes the animals, man makes himself.
People almost invariably arrive at their beliefs not on the basis of proof but on the basis of what they find attractive.
The greatest single distinguishing feature of the omnipotence of God is that our imagination gets lost thinking about it.
The statements of atheists ought to be perfectly clear of doubt. Now it is not perfectly clear that the soul is material.
Notre nature est dans le mouvement; le repos entier est la mort. Our nature consists in movement; absolute rest is death.
It's evident God had no design to make a particular Enumeration in the Holy Scriptures, of all the Works of his Creation.
Many of the proofs in mathematics are very long and intricate. Others, though not long, are very ingeniously constructed.
There is no scorn more profound, or on the whole more justifiable, than that of the men who make for the men who explain.
I hold that it is only when we can prove everything we assert that we understand perfectly the thing under consideration.
Great mathematics is achieved by solving difficult problems not by fabricating elaborate theories in search of a problem.
We are all shot through with enough motives to make a massacre, any day of the week that we want to give them their head.
My specific goal is to revolutionize the future of the species. Mathematics is just another way of predicting the future.
If you want to be a reference librarian, you must learn to overcome not only your shyness but also the shyness of others!
What multitudes, O Lord, do this day join hands with Pelagius in contending for free will and in fighting ... free grace.
Intelligence is quickness to apprehend as distinct form ability, which is capacity to act wisely on the thing apprehended.
I have always noticed that deeply and truly religious persons are fond of a joke, and I am suspicious of those who aren't.
There are no whole truths: all truths are half-truths. It is trying to treat them as whole truths that plays to the devil.
Intelligence is quickness to apprehend as distinct from ability, which is capacity to act wisely on the thing apprehended.
Two magnitudes whether commensurable or incommensurable, balance at distances reciprocally proportional to the magnitudes.
If arithmetic overflow is a fatal error, some fascist pig with a read-only mind is trying to enforce machine independence.
The mind has its arrangement; it proceeds from principles to demonstrations. The heart has a different mode of proceeding.
Concupiscence and force are the source of all our actions; concupiscence causes voluntary actions, force involuntary ones.
Besides language and music, mathematics is one of the primary manifestations of the free creative power of the human mind.
When discussing complex systems like brains and other societies, it is easy to oversimplify: I call this Occam's lobotomy.
So long as the mother, Ignorance, lives, it is not safe for Science the offspring, to divulge the hidden causes of things.
Doctrine does matter. But one must ever be reminded that to be right on doctrine does not mean one is right with the Lord.
It has cost them but a moment to cut off that head; but a hundred years will not be sufficient to produce another like it.
I find discussing mathematics with colleagues of different backgrounds one of the most productive ways of making progress.
In mathematics, our freedom lies in the questions we ask — and in how we pursue them — but not in the answers awaiting us.
Human nature loses its most precious quality when it is robbed of its sense of things beyond, unexplored and yet insistent.
An open mind is all very well in its way, but it ought not to be so open that there is no keeping anything in or out of it.
Man is obviously made for thinking. Therein lies all his dignity and his merit; and his whole duty is to think as he ought.
Justice and power must be brought together, so that whatever is just may be powerful, and whatever is powerful may be just.
Desire and force between them are responsible for all our actions; desire causes our voluntary acts, force our involuntary.
If others would but reflect on mathematical truths as deeply and as continuously as I have, they would make my discoveries.
What a wonderful and amazing Scheme have we here of the magnificent Vastness of the Universe! So many Suns, so many Earths.
No Victor, you got it backwards, you should evaluate these integrals non-rigorously if you can, and rigorously if you must.
It is not worth an intelligent man's time to be in the majority. By definition, there are already enough people to do that.
All analysts spend half their time hunting through the literature for inequalities which they want to use and cannot prove.
We often hear that mathematics consists mainly of "proving theorems." Is a writer's job mainly that of "writing sentences?"
The older I get, the more I believe that at the bottom of most deep mathematical problems there is a combinatorial problem.
To imagine is the characteristic act, not of the poet's mind, or the painter's, or the scientist's, but of the mind of man.
By peace we mean the capacity to transform conflicts with empathy, without violence, and creatively- a never-ending process
It is true that a man who does this is a fool. I have only proved that a man who does anything else is an even bigger fool.
There is no short cut to truth, no way to gain a knowledge of the universe except through the gateway of scientific method.
The record of a month's roulette playing at Monte Carlo can afford us material for discussing the foundations of knowledge.
Whoever sees no other aim in the game than that of giving checkmate to one's opponent will never become a good Chess player
I believe that either Jupiter has life or it doesn't. But I neither believe that it does, nor do I believe that it doesn't.