Favorite Quotations
Gleaned from the wiki:
- We're a weird species ... -- RonJeffries
Henri Poincaré once said:
- Doubt everything or believe everything: these are two equally convenient strategies. With either we dispense with the need for reflection.
- Science is no more a collection of facts than a house is a collection of bricks.
- If God speaks to man, he undoubtedly uses the language of mathematics. Language is one of our most powerful assets both in and out of the classroom.
- If nature were not beautiful, it would not be worth knowing, and if nature was not worth knowing, life would not be worth living.
- Just as houses are made out of stones, so is science made out of facts; and just as a pile of stones is not a house, a collection of facts is not necessarily science.
- Mathematics is a language in which one cannot express imprecise or nebulous thoughts.
- Sociologists discuss sociological methods; physicists discuss physics.
- The pursuit of an idea is as exciting as the pursuit of a whale.
- Facts do not speak. [Nevertheless, let me attempt to interpret the results presented here.]
- Great mathematicians are not made, they're born.
- He would let tough problems incubate in his mind for periods of time and solutions would just pop into his head at odd moments, such as when stepping off a curb.
- It is by logic that we prove. It is by intuition that we discover.
- Mathematicians do not destroy the obstacles with which their science is spiked, but simply push them toward its boundary.
- Mathematics is the art of saying the same thing in as many different ways as possible.
- Sociologists spend practically all of their time on their methods without ever applying them to anything.
- The key to investigating any new mathematical object is to look at its set of automorphisms.