Famous quotes
Quotes by famous people, credited to who said them. Your own quotes must not match any of these. More are added all the time. 1,158,269 quotes Who coined it · How we decide
EnglishItalianoPolskiעבריתFrançaisPortuguêsفارسیEspañol中文РусскийDeutschالعربيةहिन्दी日本語ΕλληνικάLatina
Eric Temple Bell
15 quotes
“The cowboys have a way of trussing up a steer or a pugnacious bronco which fixes the brute so that it can neither move nor think. This is the hog-tie, and it is what Euclid did to geometry.”
Eric Temple Bell (1883–1960) first seen 1934 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Search for Truth (1934), p. 191
“Euclid taught me that without assumptions there is no proof. Therefore, in any argument, examine the assumptions. Then, in the alleged proof, be alert for inexplicit assumptions. Euclid's notorious oversights drove this lesson home.”
Eric Temple Bell (1883–1960) first seen 1951 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Mathematics Magazine, Vol. 24, No. 3. (1951), p. 161
“Guided only by their feeling for symmetry, simplicity, and generality, and an indefinable sense of the fitness of things, creative mathematicians now, as in the past, are inspired by the art of mathematics rather than by any prospect of ultimate usefulness.”
Eric Temple Bell (1883–1960) said by 1960 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As quoted in 777 Mathematical Conversation Starters (2002) by John de Pillis, p. 172
“The pursuit of pretty formulas and neat theorems can no doubt quickly degenerate into a silly vice, but so also can the quest for austere generalities which are so very general indeed that they are incapable of application to any particular.”
Eric Temple Bell (1883–1960) said by 1960 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Out of fifty mathematical papers presented in brief at such a meeting, it is a rare mathematician indeed who really understands what more than half a dozen are about.”
Eric Temple Bell (1883–1960) said by 1960 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The so-called obvious was repeatedly scrutinized from every angle and was frequently found to be not obvious but false. "Obvious" is the most dangerous word in mathematics.”
Eric Temple Bell (1883–1960) said by 1960 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Fashion as king is sometimes a very stupid ruler. As was observed a little way back, the kernel of Plücker's theory of geometric dimensionality is that the dimensionality of a given space is not an absolute constant, but depends upon the elements, accepted as irreducible, in terms of which the space is described.”
Eric Temple Bell (1883–1960) said by 1960 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Some of his deepest discoveries were reasoned out verbally with very few if any symbols, and those for the most part mere abbreviations of words. Any impatient student of mathematics or science or engineering who is irked by having algebraic symbolism thrust on him should try to get on without it for a week.”
Eric Temple Bell (1883–1960) said by 1960 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Wherever groups disclosed themselves, or could be introduced, simplicity crystallized out of comparative chaos.”
Eric Temple Bell (1883–1960) said by 1960 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Some, of my unmathematical friends have incautiously urged me to include a note about the origin of modern calculating machines. This is the proper place to do so, as the Queen of queens has enslaved a few of these infernal things to do some of her more repulsive drudgery. What I shall say about these marvelous aids to the feeble human intelligence will be little indeed, for two reasons: I have always hated machinery, and the only machine I ever understood was a wheelbarrow, and that but imperfectly.”
Eric Temple Bell (1883–1960) said by 1960 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Science makes no pretension to eternal truth or absolute truth; some of its rivals do. That science is in some respects inhuman may be the secret of its success in alleviating human misery and mitigating human stupidity.”
Eric Temple Bell (1883–1960) said by 1960 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Abstractness, sometimes hurled as a reproach at mathematics, is its chief glory and its surest title to practical usefulness. It is also the source of such beauty as may spring from mathematics.”
Eric Temple Bell (1883–1960) said by 1960 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[[History of logarithms|[L]ogarithms]] are one of the most disorderly battlegrounds in mathematical history. ... Disputes like this and the other over the calculus have made more than one man of science envy his successors of ten thousand years hence, to whom Newton and Leibniz, Napier and Bürgi, and scores of lesser contestants for individual fame will be semimythical figures as indistinct as Pythagoras.”
Eric Temple Bell (1883–1960) said by 1960 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The mistakes and unresolved difficulties of the past in mathematics have always been the opportunities of its future; and should analysis ever appear to be without or blemish, its perfection might only be that of death.”
Eric Temple Bell (1883–1960) said by 1960 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Objections... inspired Kronecker and others to attack Weierstrass' "sequential" definition of irrationals. Nevertheless, right or wrong, Weierstrass and his school made the theory work. The most useful results they obtained have not yet been questioned, at least on the ground of their great utility in mathematical analysis and its implications, by any competent judge in his right mind. This does not mean that objections cannot be well taken: it merely calls attention to the fact that in mathematics, as in everything else, this earth is not yet to be confused with the Kingdom of Heaven, that perfection is a chimaera, and that, in the words of Crelle, we can only hope for closer and closer approximations to mathematical truth — whatever that may be, if anything — precisely as in the Weierstrassian theory of convergent sequences of rationals defining irrationals.”
Eric Temple Bell (1883–1960) said by 1960 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source