Quotable Mathematics

"Since a given system can never of its own accord go over into another equally probable state but into a more probable one, it is likew...

“It is important to realize that it is not the one measurement, alone, but its relation to the rest of the sequence that is of interest.” (...

"The largest views are not always the clearest, and that he who is short-sighted will be obliged to draw the object nearer, and may, pe...

"If physics leads us today to a world view which is essentially mystical, it returns, in a way, to its beginning, 2,500 years ago. […] ...

“Mathematics is a self-contained microcosm, but it also has the potentiality of mirroring and modeling all the processes of thought and perh...

"A spirit is one simple, undivided, active being: as it perceives ideas, it is called the understanding, and as it produces or otherwis...

"In experimental science facts of the greatest importance are rarely discovered accidentally: more frequently new ideas point the way t...

"Just as ‘beauty is its own excuse for being’, so mathematics needs no apology for existing." (Eric T Bell, "The Queen of the...

"[Arithmetic] has a very great and elevating effect, compelling the soul to reason about abstract numbers, and rebelling against the in...

"A deduction is a demonstration when the premisses from which the deduction starts are true and primitive, or are such that our knowled...