Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
When I was seven or eight, whenever I was getting too rowdy at night, my parents would give me a maths workbook to work on to quieten me down.
In any case it is not normal to put into the satisfaction of mere curiosity the amount of time and effort that scientists put into their work.
Every philosophy is tinged with the coloring of some secret imaginative background, which never emerges explicitly into its train of reasoning.
To doubt is a misfortune, but to seek when in doubt is an indispensable duty. So he who doubts and seeks not is at once unfortunate and unfair.
Nothing is thoroughly approved but mediocrity. The majority has established this, and it fixes its fangs on whatever gets beyond it either way.
Our notion of symmetry is derived form the human face. Hence, we demand symmetry horizontally and in breadth only, not vertically nor in depth.
Even those who write against fame wish for the fame of having written well, and those who read their works desire the fame of having read them.
When the time is ripe for certain things, these things appear in different places in the manner of violets coming to light in the early spring.
Everyone knows what a curve is, until he has studied enough mathematics to become confused through the countless number of possible exceptions.
No discovery of mine has made, or is likely to make, directly or indirectly, for good or ill, the least difference to the amenity of the world.
Talk with M. Hermite. He never evokes a concrete image, yet you soon perceive that the more abstract entities are to him like living creatures.
Newton was the greatest genius that ever existed, and the most fortunate, for we cannot find more than once a system of the world to establish.
To be a scholar of mathematics you must be born with talent, insight, concentration, taste, luck, drive and the ability to visualize and guess.
Those who assume hypotheses as first principles of their speculations.....may indeed form an ingenious romance, but a romance it will still be.
Even in the realm of things which do not claim actuality, and do not even claim possibility, there exist beyond dispute sets which are infinite.
Time heals griefs and quarrels, for we change and are no longer the same persons. Neither the offender nor the offended are any more themselves.
If it is an extraordinary blindness to live without investigating what we are, it is a terrible one to live an evil life, while believing in God
No religion except ours has taught that man is born in sin; none of the philosophical sects has admitted it; none therefore has spoken the truth
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.
Induction makes you feel guilty for getting something out of nothing, and it is artificial, but it is one of the greatest ideas of civilization.
In geometric and physical applications, it always turns out that a quantity is characterized not only by its tensor order, but also by symmetry.
The world today is made, it is powered by science; and for any man to abdicate an interest in science is to walk with open eyes towards slavery.
People don't like preaching, but discussion, presenting a case, and that's important. Therefore, I think we need to learn to dialogue much more.
The stimulus of competition, when applied at an early age to real thought processes, is injurious both to nerve-power and to scientific insight.
I shall now recall to mind that the motion of the heavenly bodies is circular, since the motion appropriate to a sphere is rotation in a circle.
Recently, someone asked me if I believed in astrology. He seemed somewhat puzzled when I explained that the reason I don't is that I'm a Gemini.
But we have reason to think that the annihilation of work is no less a physical impossibility than its creation, that is, than perpetual motion.
... it can often be profitable to try a technique on a problem even if you know in advance that it cannot possibly solve the problem completely.
He who truly believes that which prompts him to an action has looked upon the action to lust after it, he has committed it already in his heart.
Those who claim to discover everything but produce no proofs of the same may be confuted as having actually pretended to discover the impossible.
Mathematical objects are determined by - and understood by - the network of relationships they enjoy with all the other objects of their species.
The fundamental problem of communication is that of reproducing at one point either exactly or approximately a message selected at another point.
love of learning is the most necessary passion ... in it lies our happiness. It's a sure remedy for what ails us, an unending source of pleasure.
Most people are so frightened of the name of mathematics that they are ready, quite unaffectedly, to exaggerate their own mathematical stupidity.
A random sequence is one that cannot be algorithmically compressed : the shortest description of a random sequence is simply the sequence itself.
The scientist does not study nature because it is useful; he studies it because he delights in it, and he delights in it because it is beautiful.
The paradox of knowledge is not confined to the small, atomic scale; on the contrary, it is as cogent on the scale of man, and even of the stars.
Die ganzen Zahlen hat der liebe Gatt gemacht, alles andere ist Menschenwerk. The dear God has made the whole numbers, all the rest is man's work.
Newton said, "If I have seen further than others, it is because I've stood on the shoulders of giants." These days we stand on each other's feet!
I tell you that studying humanities in high school is more important than mathematics - mathematics is too sharp an instrument, no good for kids.
Learning preserves the errors of the past, as well as its wisdom. For this reason, dictionaries are public dangers, although they are necessities.
The worst that happened to men of science was that Galileo suffered an honorable detention and a mild reproof, before dying peacefully in his bed.
Knowledge empowers people. If people know the rules, and are sensitized by art, humor, and creativity, they are much more likely to accept change.
Clouds are not spheres, mountains are not cones, coastlines are not circles, and bark is not smooth, nor does lightning travel in a straight line.
Where do I really belong? I avoid saying everywhere - which switches all too easily to nowhere. Instead, when pressed, I call myself a fractalist.
The last act is bloody, however pleasant all the rest of the play is: a little earth is thrown at last upon our head, and that is the end forever.
People are generally better persuaded by the reasons which they have themselves discovered than by those which have come in to the mind of others.
The mercury light doesn't show red. It makes the blood in your skin look blue-black. But see how splendidly it brings out the green in the plants.
Mathematics is an activity governed by the same rules imposed upon the symphonies of Beethoven, the paintings of DaVinci, and the poetry of Homer.
Even stranger things have happened; and perhaps the strangest of all is the marvel that mathematics should be possible to a race akin to the apes.