“A geometrician has learned to perform the most difficult demonstrations and calculations, as a monkey has learned to take his little hat off and on…”

—  Julien Offray de La Mettrie , book Man a Machine

Man a Machine (1747)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "A geometrician has learned to perform the most difficult demonstrations and calculations, as a monkey has learned to ta…" by Julien Offray de La Mettrie?
Julien Offray de La Mettrie photo
Julien Offray de La Mettrie 42
French physician and philosopher 1709–1751

Related quotes

E. W. Howe photo

“One of the most difficult things in the world is to learn to take a hint easily.”

E. W. Howe (1853–1937) Novelist, magazine and newspaper editor

County Town Sayings (1911), p111.

“Everyone has learning difficulties, because learning to speak French or understanding relativity is difficult.”

Mark Haddon book The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

Source: The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart photo

“She will never learn the most necessary, most difficult and principal thing in music, that is time, because from childhood she has designedly cultivated the habit of ignoring the beat.”

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756–1791) Austrian Romantic composer

"Sie wird das nothwendigste und härteste und die hauptsache in der Musique niemahlen bekommen, nämlich das tempo, weil sie sich vom jugend auf völlig befliessen hat, nicht auf den tact zu spiellen."
Letter to Leopold Mozart (24 October 1777), from Mozart: The Man and the Artist, as Revealed in his own Words by Friedrich Kerst, trans. Henry Edward Krehbiel (1906) http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext03/wamma11.txt

Raymond Chandler photo

“Everything a writer learns about the art or craft of fiction takes just a little away from his need or desire to write at all. In the end he knows all of the tricks and has nothing to say.”

Raymond Chandler (1888–1959) Novelist, screenwriter
Susan Kay photo

“And it's really very difficult to kill someone when all your inner instincts would oblige you to take off your hat first!”

Susan Kay Phantom

Source: Phantom

Harry Schwarz photo

“My Lord, it is difficult to reply in a restrained fashion. My learned friend must not use words such as 'Communist' lightly, when he refers to Kantor. Kantor is not a Communist. My learned friend has used the tactics of McCarthyism in an endeavour to smear him. I think, with respect, my learned friend is allowing himself to run away with facts that are not there. His complaint in count one is not that they found files with evidence. Oh not, he says that we found files with nothing in them. Not in Kantor's office, but in the office of Wolpe. Then my learned friend that the practice had been ruined and liquidated Knator's practice, my lord, it is not Kantor. It is not Kantor! Why I say it is so difficult to be restrained, is that my learned friend has thrown in everything hat concerns every accused in this case, and says 'that is why I don't want Kantor to get bail'.”

Harry Schwarz (1924–2010) South African activist

Jimmy Kantor in 'A healthy grave' (1967).
Rivonia Trial

“In the final analysis, the one quality that all successful people have (and which is the most difficult one of all to learn or fake) is the ability to take on responsibility.”

Michael Korda (1933) British writer

Source: Success! (1977), p. 14; often quoted in the form: Success on any major scale requires you to accept responsibility... in the final analysis, the one quality that all successful people have... is the ability to take on responsibility.
Context: Success on any major scale requires you to accept responsibility. You have to assume all the problems, difficulties and doubts of other people, and to reflect back your capacity for decision-making and action, and for enduring without visible signs of worry or panic. In the final analysis, the one quality that all successful people have (and which is the most difficult one of all to learn or fake) is the ability to take on responsibility. It is easy to be responsible for things you control and are sure of; but to be successful you must make yourself responsible for the blunders of the people who work for you as well. Responsibility requires a highly developed ego and a good deal of courage, but it is ultimately the one test you cannot afford to fail. You must be willing to accept personal responsibility, for the success of your assignments, for the actions of the people who work for you and for the goals you have accepted or been given.

Raymond Chandler photo

“You can always tell a detective on TV. He never takes his hat off.”

Raymond Chandler book Playback

Source: Playback (1958), chapter 14

Archibald Macleish photo

“A real writer learns from earlier writers the way a boy learns from an apple orchard -- by stealing what he has a taste for, and can carry off”

Archibald Macleish (1892–1982) American poet and Librarian of Congress
Don Marquis photo

“Of middle age the best that can be said is that a middle aged person has likely learned how to have a little fun in spite of his troubles.”

Don Marquis (1878–1937) American writer

The Almost Perfect State (1921)
Context: Of middle age the best that can be said is that a middle aged person has likely learned how to have a little fun in spite of his troubles.
It is to old age that we look for reimbursement, the most of us. And most of us look in vain. For the most of us have been wrenched and racked, in one way or another, until old age is the most trying time of all.
In the Almost Perfect State every person shall have at least ten years before he dies of easy, carefree, happy living... things will be so arranged economically that this will be possible for each individual.

Related topics