Quotes by Mathematicians

You and your husband have, I think, been very fortunate to know so little, by experience, in your own case or in that of your friends, of the wicked recklessness with which people repeat things to the disadvantage of others, without a thought as to whether they have grounds for asserting what they say. I have met with a good deal of utter misrepresentation of that kind. And another result of my experience is the conviction that the opinion of "people" in general is absolutely worthless as a test of right and wrong. The only two tests I now apply to such a question as the having some particular girl-friend as a guest are, first, my own conscience, to settle whether I feel it to be entirely innocent and right, in the sight of God; secondly, the parents of my friend, to settle whether I have their full approval for what I do. You need not be shocked at my being spoken against. Anybody, who is spoken about at all, is sure to be spoken against by somebody: and any action, however innocent in itself, is liable, and not at all unlikely, to be blamed by somebody. If you limit your actions in life to things that nobody can possibly find fault with, you will not do much
Lewis Carroll
No one gossips about other people’s secret virtues.
Bertrand Russell
I have been merely oppressed by the weariness and tedium and vanity of things lately: nothing stirs me, nothing seems worth doing or worth having done: the only thing that I strongly feel worth while would be to murder as many people as possible so as to diminish the amount of consciousness in the world. These times have to be lived through: there is nothing to be done with them.
Bertrand Russell
Do you wish people to think well of you? Don't speak well of yourself.
Blaise Pascal
I spent a long time in the study of the abstract sciences, and was disheartened by the small number of fellow-students in them. When I commenced the study of man, I saw that these abstract sciences are not suited to man, and that I was wandering further from my own state in examining them, than others in not knowing them. I pardoned their little knowledge; but I thought at least to find many companions in the study of man, and that it was the true study which is suited to him. I have been deceived; still fewer study it than geometry. It is only from want of knowing how to study this that we seek the other studies. But is it not that even here is not the knowledge which man should have, and that for the purposes of happiness it is better for him not to know himself?
Pascal
One of the causes of unhappiness among intellectuals in the present day is that so many of them, especially those whose skill is literary, find no opportunity for the independent exercise of their talents, but have to hire themselves out to rich corporations directed by Philistines, who insist upon their producing what they themselves regard as pernicious nonsense. If you were to inquire among journalists in either England or America whether they believed in the policy of the newspaper for which they worked, you would find, I believe, that only a small minority do so; the rest, for the sake of a livelihood, prostitute their skill to purposes which they believe to be harmful. Such work cannot bring any real satisfaction, and in the course of reconciling himself to the doing of it, a man has to make himself so cynical that he can no longer derive whole-hearted satisfaction from anything whatever. I cannot condemn men who undertake work of this sort, since starvation is too serious an alternative, but I think that where it is possible to do work that is satisfactory to man’s constructive impulses without entirely starving, he will be well advised from the point of view of his own happiness if he chooses it in preference to work much more highly paid but not seeming to him worth doing on its own account. Without self-respect genuine happiness is scarcely possible. And the man who is ashamed of his work can hardly achieve self-respect.
Bertrand Russell
God who gave Animals self motion beyond our understanding is without doubt able to implant other principles of motion in bodies [which] we may understand as little. Some would readily grant this may be a Spiritual one; yet a mechanical one might be showne, did not I think it better to pass it by.
Isaac Newton
The accusation of metaphysics has become in philosophy something like the accusation of being a security risk in the public service. I do not for my part know what is meant by the word 'metaphysics'. The only definition I have found that fits all cases is: 'a philosophical opinion not held by the present author'.
Bertrand Russell
Attaining consciousness is connected with the gradual liberation from mechanicalness, for man is fully and completely under mechanical laws.
P.D. Ouspensky
And just as the same town, when looked at from different sides, appears quite different and is, as it were, multiplied in perspective, so also it happens that because of the infinite number of simple substances, it is as if there were as many different universes, which are however but different perspective representations of a single universe form the different point of view of each monad.
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
If I were king, I would redress an abuse which cuts back, as it were, one half of human kind. I would have women participate in all human rights, especially those of the mind.
Émilie Du Châtelet
Information is information, not matter or energy.
Norbert Wiener
The deepest definition of youth is life as yet untouched by tragedy.
Alfred North Whitehead
I have only made this letter rather long because I have not had time to make it shorter.
Blaise Pascal
A man really writes for an audience of about ten persons. Of course if others like it that is clear gain. But if those ten are satisfied he is content.
Alfred North Whitehead
Take care of the sense and the sounds will take of care themselves.
Lewis Carroll
A great many worries can be diminished by realizing the unimportance of the matter which is causing anxiety.
Bertrand Russell
Worry is a form of fear.
Bertrand A. Russell
Continuity of purpose is one of the most essential ingredients of happiness in the long run and for most men this comes chiefly through their work.
Bertrand Russell
Routine is the god of every social system it is the seventh heaven of business the essential component in the success of every factory the ideal of every statesman.
Alfred North Whitehead
Work is of two kinds: first altering a position of matter at or near the earth's surface relatively to other such matter second telling other people to do so. The first kind is unpleasant and ill-paid the second is pleasant and highly paid.
Bertrand Russell
No matter how eloquently a dog may bark he cannot tell you that his parents were poor but honest.
Bertrand Russell
Let it not be said that I have said nothing new. The arrangement of the material is new.
Blaise Pascal
Simpson succeeded in proving that there was no harm in giving anaesthetics to men because God put Adam into a deep sleep when He extracted his rib. But male ecclesiastics remained unconvinced as regards the sufferings of women at any rate in childbirth.
Bertrand Russell
My father used to say: Son if you are not bright you've got to be methodical (defusing argument when challenged and proved right)
Robert Sachs
It's one of the most serious things that can possibly happen to one in a battle - to get one's head cut off.
Lewis Carroll
Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dee Agreed to have a battle For Tweedle Dum said Tweedle Dee Had spoiled his nice new rattle.
Lewis Carroll
We are all shot through with enough motives to make a massacre any day of the week that we want to give them their head.
Jacob Bronowski
Well-adjusted means you can make the same mistakes over and over again and keep smiling.
George Bergman
All mankind's unhappiness derives from one thing: his inability to know how to remain in repose in one room.
Blaise Pascal
Whenever one finds oneself inclined to bitterness it is a sign of emotional failure.
Bertrand Russell
What I tell you three times is true.
Lewis Carroll
There are no whole truths. All truths are half-truths. It is trying to treat them as whole truths that plays the devil.
Alfred North Whitehead
Tomorrow! - Why tomorrow I may be Myself with yesterday's sev'n thousand years.
Omar Khayyám
The bird of time has but a little way To flutter - and the bird is on the wing.
Omar Khayyám
We think in generalities but we live in detail.
Alfred North Whitehead
All movements go too far.
Bertrand Russell
I think therefore I am.
René Descartes
The habit of looking into the future and thinking that the whole meaning of the present lies in what it will bring forth is a pernicious one. There can be no value in the whole unless there is value in the parts.
Bertrand Russell
The past and present are only our means the future is always our end. Thus we never really live but only hope to live.
Blaise Pascal
As we are always preparing to be happy it is inevitable that we should never be so.
Blaise Pascal
The present contains all that there is. It is holy ground for it is the past and it is the future.
Alfred North Whitehead
How the past perishes is how the future becomes.
Alfred North Whitehead
The only use of a knowledge of the past is to equip us for the present.
Alfred North Whitehead
One must care about a world one will not see.
Bertrand Russell
The total absence of humour in the Bible is one of the most singular things in all literature.
Alfred North Whitehead
The time has come the Walrus said "To talk of many things Of shoes - and ships - and sealing-wax - Of cabbages - and kings - And why the sea is boiling hot - And whether pigs have wings."
Lewis Carroll
Unless a man has been taught what to do with success after getting it the achievement of it must inevitably leave him a prey to boredom.
Bertrand Russell
The struggle alone pleases us not the victory.
Blaise Pascal
If you limit your actions in life to things that nobody can possibly find fault with you will not do much.
Charles Lutwidge Dodgson
Yet Ah that Spring should vanish with the Rose. That Youth's sweetscented manuscript should close! The Nightingale that in the branches sang Ah whence and whither flown again who knows?
Omar Khayyám
I sent my Soul through the Invisible Some letter of that After-life to spell And by and by my Soul returned to me And answered "I Myself am Heav'n and Hell."
Omar Khayyám
Men who are unhappy like men who sleep badly are always proud of the fact.
Bertrand Russell
The thoughtful Soul to Solitude retires.
Omar Khayyám
Vigorous societies harbour a certain extravagance of objectives.
Alfred North Whitehead
And that inverted Bowl they call the Sky Whereunder crawling coop'd we live and die Lift not your hands to it for help - for it As impotently moves as you or I.
Omar Khayyám
0 thou who didst with pitfall and with gin Beset the road I was to wander in Thou wilt not with predestin'd evil round Enmesh and then impute my fall to sin.
Omar Khayyám
The whole is simpler than the sum of its parts.
Willard Gibbs
The most difficult thing in life is to know yourself.
Thales
Self-respect will keep a man from being abject when he is in the power of enemies and will enable him to feel that he may be in the right when the world is against him.
Bertrand Russell