Mathematician Quotes

“Undoubtedly equality of goods is just; but, being unable to cause might to obey justice, men has made it just to obey might. Unable to strengthen justice, they have justified might--so that the just and the strong should unite, and there should be peace, which is the sovereign good.”

“All the maxims have been written. It only remains to put them into practice.”

“Caesar was too old, it seems to me, to go off and amuse himself conquering the world. Such a pastime was all right for Augustus and Alexander; they were young men, not easily held in check, but Caesar ought to have been more mature.”

“Must we kill to prevent there being any wicked? This is to make both parties wicked instead of one.”

“Man's true nature being lost, everything becomes his nature; as, his true good being lost, everything becomes his good.”

“Since we cannot be universal and know all that is to be known of everything, we ought to know a little about everything. For it is far better to know something about everything than to know all about one thing. This universality is the best. If we can have both, still better; but if we must choose, we ought to choose the former.”

“The imagination disposes of everything. It creates beauty, justice, and happiness, which are the whole of the world.”

“Ugly deeds are most estimable when hidden.”

“What a chimera then is man. What a novelty! What a monster... what a contradiction, what a prodigy”

“In each action we must look beyond the action at our past, present, and future state, and at others whom it affects, and see the relations of all those things. And then we shall be very cautious.”

“Men are so necessarily mad, that not to be mad would amount to another form of madness.”

“The captain of a ship is not chosen from those of the passengers who comes from the best family.”

“I have spent much time in the study of the abstract sciences; but the paucity of persons with whom you can communicate on such subjects disgusted me with them. When I began to study man, I saw that these abstract sciences are not suited to him, and that in diving into them, I wandered farther from my real object than those who knew them not, and I forgave them for not having attended to these things. I expected then, however, that I should find some companions in the study of man, since it was so specifically a duty. I was in error. There are fewer students of man than of geometry.”

“Eloquence is a way of saying things in such a way, first, that those to whom we speak may listen to them without pain and with pleasure, and second, that they feel themselves interested, so that self-love leads them more willingly to reflection upon it.”

“Imagination decides everything.”

“Let man reawake and consider what he is compared with the reality of things; regard himself lost in this remote corner of Nature; and from the tiny cell where he lodges, to wit the Universe, weigh at their true worth earth, kingdoms, towns, himself. What is a man face to face with infinity?”

“By thought I embrace the universe.”

“When we do not know the truth of a thing, it is good that there should exist a common error which determines the mind of man, as, for example, the moon, to which is attributed the change of seasons, the progress of diseases, etc. For the chief malady of man is a restless curiosity about things which he cannot understand; and it is not so bad for him to be in error as to be curious to no purpose.”

“The present is never the mark of our designs. We use both past and present as our means and instruments, but the future only as our object and aim.”

“Let man then contemplate the whole of nature in her full and grand majesty... No idea approaches it. We may enlarge our conceptions beyond all imaginable space; we only produce atoms in comparison with the reality of things. It is an infinite sphere, the center of which is everywhere, the circumference nowhere.”

“Death is easier to bear without thinking of it, than the thought of death without peril.”

“If man should commence by studying himself, he would see how impossible it is to go further.”

“He who does not know his way to the sea should take a river for his guide.”

“Our nature consists in motion; complete rest is death.”

“What a difficult thing it is to ask someone's advice on a matter without coloring his judgment by the way in which we present our problem.”