Rigour Quotes

• The rigour of science requires that we distinguish well the undraped figure of Nature itself from the gay-coloured vesture with which we clothe her at our pleasure.

  Heinrich Hertz

  Gay, Pleasure, Figures

  "Nature", Vol. 51, Nature Publishing Group, letter by Ludwig Boltzmann, 1895.

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• If Courtezans and Strumpets were to be prosecuted with as much Rigour as some silly People would have it, what Locks or Bars would be sufficient to preserve the Honour of our Wives and Daughters?

  Bernard de Mandeville

  Daughter, Silly, Wife

  Bernard de Mandeville (1723). “The Fable of the Bees”, p.48, Jazzybee Verlag

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• A clear fire, a clean hearth, and the rigour of the game.

  Charles Lamb

  Fire, Gambling, Games

  Charles Lamb (2008). “The Life, Letters, and Writings of Charles Lamb”, p.181, Cosimo, Inc.

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• In football as in watchmaking, talent and elegance mean nothing without rigour and precision.

  Lionel Messi

  Football, Motivational Sports, Mean

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• If one must choose between rigour and meaning, I shall unhesitatingly choose the latter.

  Rene Thom

  Math, Latter, Ifs

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• Rigour is to the mathematician what morality is to men.

  Andre Weil

  Math, Men, Morality

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• Laws and principles are not for the times when there is no temptation: they are for such moments as this, when body and soul rise in mutiny against their rigour ... If at my convenience I might break them, what would be their worth?

  Charlotte Bronte

  Law, Temptation, Soul

  Charlotte Bronte (2009). “Jane Eyre: Easyread Edition”, p.149, ReadHowYouWant.com

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• Besides it is an error to believe that rigour is the enemy of simplicity. On the contrary we find it confirmed by numerous examples that the rigorous method is at the same time the simpler and the more easily comprehended. The very effort for rigor forces us to find out simpler methods of proof.

  David Hilbert

  Believe, Math, Errors

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• I've grown so much, not just as an actor, but as a human being.

  Aaron Paul

  Actors, Humans, Decipher

  "Bryan Cranston and Aaron Paul discuss their cutthroat relationship on 'Breaking Bad'". Interview with Glenn Whipp, articles.latimes.com. June 10, 2010.

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• Whenever the offence inspires less horror than the punishment, the rigour of penal law is obliged to give way to the common feelings of mankind.

  Edward Gibbon

  Government, Law, Punishment

  Edward Gibbon (1846). “The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire”, p.444

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• If this were so; if the desert were 'home'; if our instincts were forged in the desert; to survive the rigours of the desert - then it is easier to understand why greener pastures pall on us; why possessions exhaust us, and why Pascal's imaginary man found his comfortable lodgings a prison.

  Bruce Chatwin

  Home, Men, Desert

  Bruce Chatwin (2012). “The Songlines”, p.162, Random House

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• In the broad light of day mathematicians check their equations and their proofs, leaving no stone unturned in their search for rigour. But, at night, under the full moon, they dream, they float among the stars and wonder at the miracle of the heavens. They are inspired. Without dreams there is no art, no mathematics, no life.

  Michael Atiyah

  Inspirational, Life, Dream

  Michael Atiyah (2014). “Michael Atiyah Collected Works: 2002-2013”, p.267, Oxford University Press, USA

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• The cuisine, it is all about putting generosity before rigour and pleasure before lucidity.

  Pierre Gagnaire

  Generosity, Cuisine, Pleasure

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• Pop music is not just a clumsy mass fanaticism, connected to a deceitful enchantment totally lacking in moral rigour.

  Paul Morley

  Enchantment, Moral, Deceitful

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• It really is worth the trouble to invent a new symbol if we can thus remove not a few logical difficulties and ensure the rigour of the proofs. But many mathematicians seem to have so little feeling for logical purity and accuracy that they will use a word to mean three or four different things, sooner than make the frightful decision to invent a new word.

  Gottlob Frege

  Mean, Science, Decision

  Gottlob Frege (1952). “Translations from the Philosophical Writings of Gottlob Frege”

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• One of the effects of civilization is to diminish the rigour of the application of the law of natural selection. It preserves weakly lives that would have perished in barbarous lands.

  Francis Galton

  Law, Land, Civilization

  "Hereditary Talent and Character". MacMillan's Magazine, 12, 1865.

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• How do we get a pantomime cow on set. Jeez, the rigours of satire.

  Mel Smith

  Cows, Satire, Pantomime

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• Modern economics is sick. Economics has increasingly become an intellectual game played for its own sake and not for its practical consequences for understanding the economic world. Economists have converted the subject into a sort of social mathematics in which analytical rigour is everything and practical relevance is nothing.

  Mark Blaug

  Games, Sick, Understanding

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• Every writer must reconcile, as best he may, the conflicting claims of consistency and variety, of rigour in detail and elegance in the whole. The present author humbly confesses that, to him, geometry is nothing at all, if not a branch of art.

  Julian Coolidge

  Art, Science, Consistency

  Julian Lowell Coolidge (2004). “A Treatise on Algebraic Plane Curves”, p.10, Courier Corporation

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• Her virtues, graced with external gifts, Do breed love's settled passions in my heart; And like as rigour of tempestuous gusts Provokes the mightiest hulk against the tide, So am I driven by breath of her renown Either to suffer shipwreck or arrive Where I may have fruition of her love.

  William Shakespeare

  Passion, Heart, Suffering

  William Shakespeare (1823). “The plays of William Shakspeare, pr. from the text of the corrected copies left by G. Steevens and E. Malone, with a selection of notes from the most eminent commentors by A. Chalmers”, p.343

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• We disliked the rigours of existence, the unfulfilled longings, the enshrined injustices of the world, the labyrinths of love, the ignorance of parents, the fact of dying, and the amazing indifference of the Living in the midst of the simple beauties of the universe. We feared the heartlessness of human beings, all of whom are born blind, few of whom ever learn to see.

  Ben Okri

  Ignorance, Simple, Parent

  "The Famished Road". Book by Ben Okri, 1991.

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• Rigour and purity in assembling words, however simple the result, create a vacuum.

  Theodor Adorno

  Simple, Vacuums, Purity

  Theodor W. Adorno, E. F. N. Jephcott (2005). “Minima Moralia: Reflections on a Damaged Life”, p.101, Verso

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• The Theatre of Cruelty has been created in order to restore to the theatre a passionate and convulsive conception of life, and it is in this sense of violent rigour and extreme condensation of scenic elements that the cruelty on which it is based must be understood. This cruelty, which will be bloody when necessary but not systematically so, can thus be identified with a kind of severe moral purity which is not afraid to pay life the price it must be paid.

  Antonin Artaud

  Order, Theatre, Passionate

  Antonin Artaud (1958). “The Theater and Its Double”, p.122, Grove Press

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• I am sure that hon. members will realize that I am not drawing on my imagination when I state that last fall there were children going to school in Saskatchewan with only sacking wrapped around their feet. We have gone into homes and found mothers and children lying on piles of bedding in the corner; they did not have the proper bedding equipment or the proper clothing to meet the rigours of a very cold winter.

  Tommy Douglas

  Mother, Children, Lying

  Tommy Douglas' maiden speech at the House of Commons in Ottawa, Ontario, February 11, 1936.

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• A philosophy can and must be worked out with the greatest rigour and discipline in the details, but can ultimately be founded on nothing but faith: and this is the reason, I suspect, why the novelties in philosophy are only in elaboration, and never in fundamentals.

  T. S. Eliot

  Faith, Philosophy, Discipline

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