"There is an astonishing imagination, even in the science of mathematics. . . . We repeat, there was far more imagination in the head of Archimedes than in that of Homer."
"Show all these fanatics a little geometry, and they learn it quite easily. But, strangely enough, their minds are not thereby rectified. They perceive the truths of geometry, but it does not teach them to weigh probabilities. Their minds have set hard. They will reason in a topsy-turvy wall all their lives, and I am sorry for it."
"Le mieux est l’ennemi du bien. (The best is the enemy of the good.)"
"Letters on England (1733): On the Pens´ees of Pascal ‘Travaillons sans raisonner,’ dit Martin; ‘c’est le seul moyen de rendre la vie supportable’. (‘Let us work without theorising’, said Martin; ‘it’s the only way to make life endurable’.)"
"What is an idea? It’s an image that paints itself in my brain. So all your ideas are images? Assuredly; for the most abstract ideas are the consequences of all the objects I’ve perceived."
"Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd."
"Out of a hundred people in the world at least sixty have smallpox, and of these sixty, twenty die of it in the flower of their youth and twenty keep the unpleasant marks for ever."
"Letters on England (1733): On the Pens´ees of Pascal 130 This thought is a pure sophism, and the falsity consists in the word ignorance, used with two different meanings. A person who cannot read or write is ignorant, but a mathematician, because he is ignorant of the principles hidden in nature, is not at the degree of ignorance from which he set out when he began to learn to read."
"As long as people believe in absurdities they will continue to commit atrocities."
"We have admittedly defined the infinite in arithmetic by a loveknot, in this manner ∞; but we possess not therefore the clearer notion of it."
"It’s very sad to have so many ideas and not to know precisely the nature of ideas. I admit it; but it’s much sadder and much more foolish to think we know what we don’t know."
"Letters on England (1733): On Inoculation with Smallpox It is patently false to say: ‘Not to wager that God exists is to wager that He does not’, for the man who doubts and asks to be enlightened certainly does not wager for or against."
"Le mieux est l’ennemi du bien. (The best is the enemy of the good.)"
"Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd."
"Letters on England (1733): On the Pens´ees of Pascal 130 This thought is a pure sophism, and the falsity consists in the word ignorance, used with two different meanings. A person who cannot read or write is ignorant, but a mathematician, because he is ignorant of the principles hidden in nature, is not at the degree of ignorance from which he set out when he began to learn to read."
"We have admittedly defined the infinite in arithmetic by a loveknot, in this manner ∞; but we possess not therefore the clearer notion of it."
"As long as people believe in absurdities they will continue to commit atrocities."
"It’s very sad to have so many ideas and not to know precisely the nature of ideas. I admit it; but it’s much sadder and much more foolish to think we know what we don’t know."
"Letters on England (1733): On the Pens´ees of Pascal ‘Travaillons sans raisonner,’ dit Martin; ‘c’est le seul moyen de rendre la vie supportable’. (‘Let us work without theorising’, said Martin; ‘it’s the only way to make life endurable’.)"
"Letters on England (1733): On Inoculation with Smallpox It is patently false to say: ‘Not to wager that God exists is to wager that He does not’, for the man who doubts and asks to be enlightened certainly does not wager for or against."
"There is an astonishing imagination, even in the science of mathematics. . . . We repeat, there was far more imagination in the head of Archimedes than in that of Homer."
"Show all these fanatics a little geometry, and they learn it quite easily. But, strangely enough, their minds are not thereby rectified. They perceive the truths of geometry, but it does not teach them to weigh probabilities. Their minds have set hard. They will reason in a topsy-turvy wall all their lives, and I am sorry for it."
"Out of a hundred people in the world at least sixty have smallpox, and of these sixty, twenty die of it in the flower of their youth and twenty keep the unpleasant marks for ever."
"What is an idea? It’s an image that paints itself in my brain. So all your ideas are images? Assuredly; for the most abstract ideas are the consequences of all the objects I’ve perceived."