Geometry Quotes - Page 11

• A tree nowhere offers a straight line or a regular curve, but who doubts that root, trunk, boughs, and leaves embody geometry?

  George Iles

  Science, Curves, Roots

  George Iles (1918). “Canadian Stories”

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• Descriptive geometry has two objects: the first is to establish methods to represent on drawing paper which has only two dimensions,-namely, length and width,-all solids of nature which have three dimensions,-length, width, and depth,-provided, however, that these solids are capable of rigorous definition.
  The second object is to furnish means to recognize accordingly an exact description of the forms of solids and to derive thereby all truths which result from their forms and their respective positions.

  Gaspard Monge

  Nature, Truth, Mean

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• The usual struggle squeezing my bloated Citroën, absurdly named “Picasso,” in or out of any old Italian town. I should be taking a year over this and doing it on a donkey. Eventually found the road to the church of the Madonna of San Biagio, a foursquare temple sitting all alone in the plain. Sangallo's fantasy of the Doric order in honey-colored sandstone, with shell-niches, rosettes, oculi under heavy entablatures. Any one ignorant of geometry scarcely dare enter this shrine to number, measure, and weight. So clean and crisp I could eat it for breakfast.

  Joscelyn Godwin

  Struggle, Italian, Order

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• It [ non-Euclidean geometry ] would be ranked among the most famous achievements of the entire [nineteenth] century, but up to 1860 the interest was rather slight.

  Ivor Grattan-Guinness

  Achievement, Would Be, Nineteenth Century

  "The Rainbow of Mathematics: A History of the Mathematical Sciences". Book by Ivor Grattan-Guinness, p. 400, 2000.

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• Music is the language of God. God's language, music, is not like mathematics or geometry. It is a language of love. If we love music, that is enough.

  Sri Chinmoy

  Language Of Love, Music Love, Enough

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• All the standard equations of mathematical physics can be separated and solved in Kerr geometry.

  Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar

  Physics, Standards, Mathematical

  "Proceedings of the Gibbs Symposium: Yale University, May 15-17, 1989" by D. G. Caldi, ‎George D. Mostow, (p. 230), 1989.

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• Whoever thinks algebra is a trick in obtaining unknowns has thought it in vain. No attention should be paid to the fact that algebra and geometry are different in appearance. Algebras (jabbre and maqabeleh) are geometric facts which are proved by propositions five and six of Book two of Elements.

  Omar Khayyam

  Book, Thinking, Two

  As quoted in "A Paper of Omar Khayyam" by A.R. Amir-Moez in "Scripta Mathematica", 26, 1963.

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• We find in the history of ideas mutations which do not seem to correspond to any obvious need, and at first sight appear as mere playful whimsies such as Apollonius' work on conic sections, or the non-Euclidean geometries, whose practical value became apparent only later.

  Arthur Koestler

  Sight, Ideas, Firsts

  "The First Nonlinear System of Differential and Integral Calculus". Book by Michael Grossman, 1979.

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• [Not enough is known about solid geometry] and for two reasons: in the first place, no government places value on it; this leads to a lack of energy in the pursuit of it, and it is difficult. In the second place, students cannot learn it unless they have a teacher. But then a teacher can hardly be found.

  Plato

  Teacher, Learning, Science

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• In the morning a man walks with his whole body; in the evening, only with his legs. RALPH WALDO EMERSON, Journals and Miscellaneous Notebooks Greek architecture is the perfect flowering of geometry.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Notebook, Morning, Men

  "Journals and Miscellaneous Notebooks: 1847-1848". Book by Ralph Waldo Emerson (p. 384), 1973.

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• I can't stop biting my nails. It's a bad habit of mine. I like anything to do with math and numbers. I know a lot of people don't like geometry, but for me it's fun.

  Khleo

  Fun, Math, Numbers

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• I'd been doing projects outdoors for the public. I made pigeons eat geometry by putting bread out in rhomboids and triangles. I don't know if this activity made sense, but the work was available.

  Jenny Holzer

  Triangles, Pigeons, Bread

  Interview with Kiki Smith, www.interviewmagazine.com. March 26, 2012.

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• Gregorian chant, Romanesque architecture, the Iliad , the invention of geometry were not, for the people through whom they were brought into being and made available to us, occasions for the manifestation of personality.

  Simone Weil

  People, Personality, Architecture

  Simone Weil (2015). “Selected Essays, 1934-1943: Historical, Political, and Moral Writings”, p.13, Wipf and Stock Publishers

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• Life is merely a fracas on an unmapped terrain, and the universe a geometry stricken with epilepsy.

  Emile M. Cioran

  Epilepsy, Life Is, Terrain

  Emile M. Cioran (1975). “A short history of decay”, Viking Books

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• A musical audience is at best uninspiring, at worst definitely drab. ... Respectability hangs like a pall over the orchestra and the boxes; a sort of sterile sobriety ill-fitted to the passionate geometry of music.

  Marya Mannes

  Sobriety, Musical, Passionate

  Marya Mannes (1948). “Message from a Stranger: A Novel”

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• Either one or the other [analysis or synthesis] may be direct or indirect. The direct procedure is when the point of departure is known-direct synthesis in the elements of geometry. By combining at random simple truths with each other, more complicated ones are deduced from them. This is the method of discovery, the special method of inventions, contrary to popular opinion.

  Andre-Marie Ampere

  Knowledge, Science, Simple

  "André-Marie Ampère: Enlightenment and Electrodynamics". Book by James R. Hofmann, p. 159, 1996.

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• For it is the duty of an astronomer to compose the history of the celestial motions or hypotheses about them. Since he cannot in any certain way attain to the true causes, he will adopt whatever suppositions enable the motions to be computed correctly from the principles of geometry for the future as well as for the past.

  Andreas Osiander

  Future, Science, Past

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• We do not live in a time when knowledge can be extended along a pathway smooth and free from obstacles, as at the time of the discovery of the infinitesimal calculus, and in a measure also when in the development of projective geometry obstacles were suddenly removed which, having hemmed progress for a long time, permitted a stream of investigators to pour in upon virgin soil. There is no longer any browsing along the beaten paths; and into the primeval forest only those may venture who are equipped with the sharpest tools.

  Heinrich Burkhardt

  Knowledge, Science, Discovery

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• As astronomy is the daughter of idleness, geometry is the daughter of property.

  Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle

  Daughter, Science, Astronomy

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• I then began to study arithmetical questions without any great apparent result, and without suspecting that they could have the least connexion with my previous researches. Disgusted at my want of success, I went away to spend a few days at the seaside, and thought of entirely different things. One day, as I was walking on the cliff, the idea came to me, again with the same characteristics of conciseness, suddenness, and immediate certainty, that arithmetical transformations of indefinite ternary quadratic forms are identical with those of non-Euclidian geometry.

  Henri Poincare

  Success, Science, Ideas

  Henri Poincare (2012). “The Value of Science: Essential Writings of Henri Poincare”, p.649, Modern Library

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• Aspiring to these wide generalizations, the analysis of quadratic functions soars to a pitch from whence it may look proudly down on the feeble and vain attempts of geometry proper to rise to its level or to emulate it in its flights.

  James Joseph Sylvester

  Analysis, Looks, Levels

  James Joseph Sylvester (2005). “The Collected Mathematical Papers of James Joseph Sylvester”, p.150, American Mathematical Soc.

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• Fortunate are the nations that can build wooden houses. Because wood breathes, transforms, deteriorates, like us. It is also important to have flowers and plants where we live, because they breathe, too. Contemplating a flower for three seconds can be a captivating solitary journey back to original geometry, which is always revitalizing.

  Henryk Skolimowski

  Flower, Journey, House

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• The method of Fluxions is the general key by help whereof the modern mathematicians unlock the secrets of Geometry, and consequently of Nature.

  George Berkeley

  Keys, Secret, Helping

  George Berkeley (2016). “The Analyst: A Discourse Addressed to an Infidel Mathematician”, p.3, Library of Alexandria

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• Truth is disputable; not taste: what exists in the nature of things is the standard of our judgement; what each man feels within himself is the standard of sentiment. Propositions in geometry may be proved, systems in physics may be controverted; but the harmony of verse, the tenderness of passion, the brilliancy of wit, must give immediate pleasure. No man reasons concerning another's beauty; but frequently concerning the justice or injustice of his actions.

  David Hume

  Passion, Men, Giving

  David Hume (2016). “An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding: Revision of Great Book”, p.131, VM eBooks

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• Geometry alone is not enough to portray human desires, expressions, aspirations, joys. We need more.

  Akira Yoshizawa

  Expression, Joy, Desire

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