Geometry Quotes - Page 10

• When I began my physical studies [in Munich in 1874] and sought advice from my venerable teacher Philipp von Jolly...he portrayed to me physics as a highly developed, almost fully matured science...Possibly in one or another nook there would perhaps be a dust particle or a small bubble to be examined and classified, but the system as a whole stood there fairly secured, and theoretical physics approached visibly that degree of perfection which, for example, geometry has had already for centuries.

  Max Planck

  Teacher, Science, Dust

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• The opinions of men should not be the object of any government. Our civil rights are no more dependent on our religious beliefs than they are dependent upon our thoughts about geometry or physics!

  Thomas Jefferson

  Religious, Men, Rights

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• If we concentrate our attention on trying to solve a problem of geometry, and if at the end of an hour we are no nearer to doing so than at the beginning, we have nevertheless been making progress each minute of that hour in another more mysterious dimension. Without knowing or feeling it, this apparent barren affort has brought more light into the soul.

  Simone Weil

  Light, Knowing, Soul

  Simone Weil (2009). “Waiting on God (Routledge Revivals)”, p.32, Routledge

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• Logic was to cognition as geometry was to landscape

  Kim Stanley

  Landscape, Cognition, Logic

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• Time was when all the parts of the subject were dissevered, when algebra, geometry, and arithmetic either lived apart or kept up cold relations of acquaintance confined to occasional calls upon one another; but that is now at an end; they are drawn together and are constantly becoming more and more intimately related and connected by a thousand fresh ties, and we may confidently look forward to a time when they shall form but one body with one soul.

  James Joseph Sylvester

  Life, Math, Ties

  James Joseph Sylvester (1870). “The Laws of Verse: Or Principles of Versification Exemplified in Metrical Translations, Together with an Annotated Reprint of the Inaugural Presidential Address to the Mathematical and Physical Section of the British Association at Exeter”, p.124

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• The purely formal language of geometry describes adequately the reality of space. We might say, in this sense, that geometry is successful magic. I should like to state a converse: is not all magic, to the extent that it is successful, geometry?

  Rene Thom

  Successful, Reality, Space

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• Mathematical demonstrations being built upon the impregnable Foundations of Geometry and Arithmetick are the only truths that can sink into the Mind of Man, void of all Uncertainty; and all other Discourses participate more or less of Truth according as their Subjects are more or less capable of Mathematical Demonstration.

  Christopher Wren

  Men, Mind, Foundation

  James ELMES, Sir Christopher Wren (1852). “Sir Christopher Wren and his times. With illustrative sketches and anecdotes of the most distinguished personages in the seventeenth century”, p.100

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• Cryptography has generated number theory, algebraic geometry over finite fields, algebra, combinatorics and computers.

  Vladimir Arnold

  Numbers, Fields, Cryptography

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• Celestial mechanics is the origin of dynamical systems, linear algebra, topology, variational calculus and symplectic geometry.

  Vladimir Arnold

  Mathematics, Mechanic, Topology

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• The world of shapes, lines, curves, and solids is as varied as the world of numbers, and it is only our long-satisfied possession of Euclidean geometry that offers us the impression, or the illusion, that it has, that world, already been encompassed in a manageable intellectual structure. The lineaments of that structure are well known: as in the rest of life, something is given and something is gotten; but the logic behind those lineaments is apt to pass unnoticed, and it is the logic that controls the system.

  David Berlinski

  Curves, Rest Of Life, Numbers

  David Berlinski (2000). “The Advent of the Algorithm: The Idea that Rules the World”, Houghton Mifflin

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• ... preliminary accounting, banking and surveying (known as arithmetic, algebra and geometry).

  Alan Watts

  Banking, Mathematics, Arithmetic

  Alan Watts (2011). “In My Own Way: An Autobiography”, p.43, New World Library

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• There are certain conceptual powers in this project, like the relationship of glass to sand, and the idea of putting glass back into the earth, which is where it comes from, which are related to the whole concept of I Am. So there's that one below-surface idea, and then there's these other practical and more pragmatic ideas about how the light functions and the geometry and mathematics behind the reverberation of light from the surface outward.

  Tavares Strachan

  Ideas, Glasses, Light

  "Tavares Strachan's desert explosion" by Matt Mullen, www.interviewmagazine.com. March 1, 2017.

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• At George Mason University I saw Hoppe present a lecture in which he claimed that Ludwig von Mises had set the intellectual foundation for not only economics, but for ethics, geometry, and optics, as well. This bizarre claim turned a serious scholar and profound thinker into a comical cult figure, a sort of Euro Kim Il Sung.

  Tom G. Palmer

  Profound, Intellectual, Foundation

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• I have no fault to find with those who teach geometry. That science is the only one which has not produced sects; it is founded on analysis and on synthesis and on the calculus; it does not occupy itself with the probable truth; moreover it has the same method in every country.

  Frederick The Great

  Country, Truth, Science

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• I approached the bulk of my schoolwork as a chore rather than an intellectual adventure. The tedium was relieved by a few courses that seem to be qualitatively different. Geometry was the first exciting course I remember. Instead of memorizing facts, we were asked to think in clear, logical steps. Beginning from a few intuitive postulates, far reaching consequences could be derived, and I took immediately to the sport of proving theorems.

  Steven Chu

  Sports, Adventure, Science

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• In the meantime, most noble Sir, you have assigned this question to the geometry of position, but I am ignorant as to what this new discipline involves, and as to which types of problem Leibniz and Wolff expected to see expressed in this way.

  Leonhard Euler

  Discipline, Ignorant, Noble

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• I love making object form; I wish I was doing more of it. I admire the research of my colleagues, and sometimes it makes me sad when their beautiful work - the deep dives into formal research and nuances of geometry and so on - ends up circling in more and more circumscribed contexts. I wish they were more powerful. It's not a modern proposition. Active form doesn't kill object form. I want my students to have all those skills related to geometry, shape, measure, scale, etc., plus skills for using space to manipulate power in the world.

  Keller Easterling

  Beautiful, Powerful, Wish

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• ... fain would I turn back the clock and devote to French or some other language the hours I spent upon algebra, geometry, and trigonometry, of which not one principle remains with me. Stay! There is one theorem painfully drummed into my head which seems to have inhabited some corner of my brain since that early time: "The square on the hypotenuse of a right-angled triangle is equal to the sum of the squares on the other two sides!" There it sticks, but what of it, ye gods, what of it?

  Jessie Belle Rittenhouse

  Squares, Two Sides, Brain

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• The detailed geometry of the coenzyme molecule as a whole is fascinating in its complexity.

  Dorothy Hodgkin

  Molecules, Complexity, Whole

  Dorothy Hodgkin, Guy Dodson (1994). “The collected works of Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin”

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• I find that I never lose Bach. I don't know why I have always loved him so. Except that he is so pure, so relentless and incorruptible, like a principle of geometry.

  Edna St. Vincent Millay

  Music, Principles, Relentless

  Edna St. Vincent Millay (1972). “Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay”

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• The problem, of course, was that turning into a monster was the brighter of my two choices. Choice Number 1: I turn into a vampyre, which equals a monster in just about any human’s mind. Choice Number 2: My body rejects the Change and I die. Forever. So the good news is that I wouldn’t have to take the geometry test tomorrow.

  P. C. Cast

  Two, Numbers, Choices

  P. C. Cast, Kristin Cast (2013). “House of Night Series”, p.14, Macmillan

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• Astronomy was born of superstition; eloquence of ambition, hatred, falsehood, and flattery; geometry of avarice; physics of an idle curiosity; and even moral philosophy of human pride. Thus the arts and sciences owe their birth to our vices.

  Jean-Baptiste Rousseau

  Art, Philosophy, Ambition

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• I presume that to the uninitiated the formulae will appear cold and cheerless; but let it be remembered that, like other mathematical formulae, they find their origin in the divine source of all geometry. Whether I shall have the satisfaction of taking part in their exposition, or whether that will remain for some more profound expositor, will be seen in the future.

  Benjamin Peirce

  Profound, Satisfaction, Cold

  "Linear Associative Algebra" by Benjamin Peirce, (Preface), 1882.

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• The classical theorists resemble Euclidean geometers in a non-Euclidean world who, discovering that in experience straight lines apparently parallel often meet, rebuke the lines for not keeping straight as the only remedy for the unfortunate collisions which are occurring. Yet, in truth, there is no remedy except to throw over the axiom of parallels and to work out a non-Euclidean geometry.

  John Maynard Keynes

  Work Out, World, Lines

  John Maynard Keynes (2006). “General Theory Of Employment , Interest And Money”, p.15, Atlantic Publishers & Dist

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• I regret that it has been necessary for me in this lecture to administer a large dose of four-dimensional geometry. I do not apologize, because I am really not responsible for the fact that nature in its most fundamental aspect is four-dimensional. Things are what they are.

  Alfred North Whitehead

  Nature, Regret, Lectures

  Alfred North Whitehead (1920). “The Concept of Nature: Tarner Lectures Delivered in Trinity College, November, 1919”, Cambridge University Press

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