Mathematician Quotes

“Justice and truth are two such subtle points, that our tools are too blunt to touch them accurately.”

“The origins of disputes between philosophers is, that one class of them have undertaken to raise man by displaying his greatness, and the other to debase him by showing his miseries.”

“All of our reasoning ends in surrender to feeling.”

“Philosophers.-We are full of things which take us out of ourselves.”

“We run heedlessly into the abyss after putting something in front of us to stop us from seeing it.”

“All the unhappiness of men arises from one single fact, that they cannot stay quietly in their own chamber.”

“All our reasoning boils down to yielding to sentiment.”

“Who confers reputation? who gives respect and veneration to persons, to books, to great men? Who but Opinion? How utterly insufficient are all the riches of the world without her approbation!”

“If magistrates had true justice, and if physicians had the true art of healing, they would have no occasion for square caps; the majesty of these sciences would itself be venerable enough.”

“All man's troubles come from not knowing how to sit still in one room.”

“We are so presumptuous that we wish to be known to all the world, even to those who come after us; and we are so vain that the esteem of five or six persons immediately around us is enough to amuse and satisfy us.”

“We never live, but we hope to live; and as we are always arranging to be happy, it must be that we never are so.”

“To speak freely of mathematics, I find it the highest exercise of the spirit; but at the same time I know that it is so useless that I make little distinction between a man who is only a mathematician and a common artisan. Also, I call it the most beautiful profession in the world; but it is only a profession.”

“Since [man] is infinitely removed from comprehending the extremes, the end of things and their beginning are hopelessly hidden from him in an impenetrable secret; he is equally incapable of seeing the nothing from which he was made, and the infinite in which he is swallowed up.”

“The philosophers talk to you about the dignity of man, and they tempt you to pride, or they talk to you about the misery of man, and they tempt you to despair.”

“Those who do not hate their own selfishness and regard themselves as more important than the rest of the world are blind because the truth lies elsewhere”

“It is not permitted to the most equitable of men to be a judge in his own cause.”

“If a man loves a woman for her beauty, does he love her? No; for the smallpox, which destroys her beauty without killing her, causes his love to cease. And if any one loves me for my judgment or my memory, does he really love me? No; for I can lose these qualities without ceasing to be.”

“It is not good to be too free. It is not good to have everything one wants.”

“Making fun of philosophy is really philosophising.”

“Opinion is the queen of the world.”

“Once your soul has been enlarged by a truth, it can never return to its original size.”

“Instinct teaches us to look for happiness outside ourselves.”

“Nothing is so insufferable to man as to be completely at rest, without passions, without business, without diversion, without study. He then feels his nothingness, his forlornness, his insufficiency, his dependence, his weakness, his emptiness. There will immediately arise from the depth of his heart weariness, gloom, sadness, fretfulness, vexation, despair.”

“The parts of the universe ... all are connected with each other in such a way that I think it to be impossible to understand any one without the whole.”