Jacques Ozanam: Quotes about knowledge

Jacques Ozanam was French mathematician. Explore interesting quotes on knowledge.

Jacques Ozanam: 20 quotes0 likes

“To be perfectly ignorant in all the Terms of them is only tolerable in those, who think their Tongues of as little Use to them, as generally their Understandings are. Those whom Necessity has obliged to get their Bread by Manual Industry, where some Degree of Art is required to go along with it, and who have had some Insight into these Studies, have very often found Advantages from them sufficient to reward the Pains they were at in acquiring them. And whatever may have been imputed (how justly I'm not now to determine) to some other Studies, under the Notion of Insignificancy and Loss of Time; yet these, I believe, never caused Repentance in any, except it was for their Remissness in the Prosecution of them. And though Plato's Censure, that those who did not understand the 117 Prop. of the 10th Element, ought not to be ranked among Rational Creatures, wax unreasonable and unjust: Yet to give a Man the Character of Universal Learning that is destitute of a competent Knowledge in the Mathematics, is no less so.”

Preface
A Mathematical Dictionary: Or; A Compendious Explication of All Mathematical Terms, 1702

“By Science is understood a Knowledge acquired by, or founded on clear and self evident Principles, whence it follows that the Mathematicks may truly be stiled such.”

Source: A Mathematical Dictionary: Or; A Compendious Explication of All Mathematical Terms, 1702, p. 1, The Introduction

“The Usefulness of the Mathematicks in General, and of some Parts of them in Particular, in the common Affairs of Humane Life, has rendered some competent Knowledge of them very necessary to a great Part of Mankind, and very convenient to all the Rest that are any way conversant beyond the Limits of their own particular callings.”

Preface; lead paragraph
A Mathematical Dictionary: Or; A Compendious Explication of All Mathematical Terms, 1702