Lev N Tolstoy - Collected Quotes

"A modern branch of mathematics, having achieved the art of dealing with the infinitely small, can now yield solutions in other more complex problems of motion, which used to appear insoluble. This modern branch of mathematics, unknown to the ancients, when dealing with problems of motion, admits the conception of the infinitely small, and so conforms to the chief condition of motion (absolute continuity) and thereby corrects the inevitable error which the human mind cannot avoid when dealing with separate elements of motion instead of examining continuous motion. In seeking the laws of historical movement just the same thing happens. The movement of humanity, arising as it does from innumerable human wills, is continuous. To understand the laws of this continuous movement is the aim of history." (Lev N Tolstoy, “War and Peace”, 1867)

"Arriving at infinitesimals, mathematics, the most exact of sciences, abandons the process of analysis and enters on the new process of the integration of unknown, infinitely small, quantities." (Lev N Tolstoy, “War and Peace”, 1867)

“Man’s mind cannot grasp the causes of events in their completeness, but the desire to find those causes is implanted in man’s soul. And without considering the multiplicity and complexity of the conditions any one of which taken separately may seem to be the cause, he snatches at the first approximation to a cause that seems to him intelligible and says: ‘This is the cause!’” (Lev N Tolstoy, “War and Peace”, 1867)

"Only by taking infinitesimally small units for observation (the differential of history, that is, the individual tendencies of men) and attaining to the art of integrating them (that is, finding the sum of these infinitesimals) can we hope to arrive at the laws of history."  (Lev N Tolstoy," War and Peace", 1867)

“Truth, like gold, is to be obtained not by its growth, but by washing away from it all that is not gold.” (Lev N Tolstoy, “War and Peace”, 1867)

"Science may fall back on its stupid excuse that science works for science, and that when it has been developed by the scientists it will become accessible to the people also; but art, if it be art, should be accessible to all, and particularly to those for whom it is produced. And the position of our art strikingly arraigns the producers of art for not wishing, not knowing how, and being unable, to serve the people." (Lev N Tolstoy, "What then must we do?", 1886)

"True art and true science possess two unmistakable marks: the first, an inward mark, which is this, that the servitor of art and science will fulfil his vocation, not for profit but with self- sacrifice; and the second, an external sign, his productions will be intelligible to all the people whose welfare he has in view." (Lev N Tolstoy,"What to Do?: Thoughts Evoked by the Census of Moscow", 1887)

"Science and art are as closely bound together as the lungs and heart, so that if one organ is vitiated the other cannot act rightly." (Leo Tolstoy, "What Is Art?", 1897)

"What is called science today consists of a haphazard heap of information, united by nothing, often utterly unnecessary, and not only failing to present one unquestionable truth, but as often as not containing the grossest errors, today put forward as truths, and tomorrow overthrown." (Leo Tolstoy, "What Is Art?", 1897)

"The relation of word to thought, and the creation of new concepts is a complex, delicate and enigmatic process unfolding in our soul." (Lev N Tolstoy, "Pedagogical Writings", 1903)

"Art is the uniting of the subjective with the objective, of nature with reason, of the unconscious with the conscious, and therefore art is the highest means of knowledge."  (Lev N Tolstoy)

"Real wisdom is not the knowledge of everything, but the knowledge of which things in life are necessary, which are less necessary, and which are completely unnecessary to know." (Lev N Tolstoy)

"The highest wisdom has but one science-the science of the whole-the science explaining the whole creation and man's place in it." (Lev N Tolstoy)

"True science investigates and brings to human perception such truths and such knowledge as the people of a given time and society consider most important. Art transmits these truths from the region of perception to the region of emotion." (Lev N Tolstoy)