[His second motto:]
Thou, nature, art my goddess; to thy laws my services are bound...
W. Shakespeare King Lear.
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Loci: Convergence
Mathematical Quotations
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Aristotle
The mathematical sciences particularly exhibit order, symmetry, and limitation; and these are the greatest forms of the beautiful.
Aristotle
It is not once nor twice but times without number that the same ideas make their appearance in the world.
Aristotle
The so-called Pythagoreans, who were the first to take up mathematics, not only advanced this subject, but saturated with it, they fancied that the principles of mathematics were the principles of all things.
Aristotle (ca 330 BC)
The whole is more than the sum of its parts.
Aristotle (ca 330 BC)
Now that practical skills have developed enough to provide adequately for material needs, one of these sciences which are not devoted to utilitarian ends [mathematics] has been able to arise in Egypt, the priestly caste there having the leisure necessary for disinterested research.
Ascham, Roger (1515-1568)
Mark all mathematical heads which be wholly and only bent on these sciences, how solitary they be themselves, how unfit to live with others, how unapt to serve the world.
Aubrey, John (1626-1697)
[About Thomas
Hobbes:]
He was
40 years old before
he looked on
geometry; which
happened
accidentally. Being
in a gentleman's
library, Euclid's
Elements lay
open, and "twas the
47 El. libri
I" [Pythagoras'
Theorem]. He read
the proposition. "By
God," sayd he, "this
is impossible." So
he read the
demonstration of it,
which referred him
back to such a
proposition; which
proposition he read.
That referred him
back to another,
which he also read.
Et sic
deinceps, that
at last he was
demonstratively
convinced of that
trueth. This made
him in love with
geometry.
Auden, W. H. (1907-1973)
Thou shalt not
answer
questionnaires
Or quizzes upon
world affairs,
Nor with
compliance
Take
any test. Thou shalt
not sit
with
statisticians nor
commit
A social
science.
Auden, W. H. (1907-1973)
How happy the lot of the mathematician. He is judged solely by his peers, and the standard is so high that no colleague or rival can ever win a reputation he does not deserve.
Augarten, Stan
Computers are composed of nothing more than logic gates stretched out to the horizon in a vast numerical irrigation system.
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