“Simple methods will soon lead us to results of far reaching theoretical and practical importance. We shall encounter theoretical conclusions which not only are unexpected but actually come as a shock to intuition and common sense. They will reveal that commonly accepted notions concerning chance fluctuations are without foundation and that the implications of the law of large numbers are widely misconstrued.”

— William Feller

Source: An Introduction To Probability Theory And Its Applications (Third Edition), Chapter III, Fluctuations In Coin Tossing And Random Walks, p. 67.

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William Feller 30

Croatian-American mathematician 1906–1970

William Feller (1906–1970) Croatian-American mathematician

Note on the Use of this Book, p. xi-xii.
An Introduction To Probability Theory And Its Applications (Third Edition)

“It is good proof of Keynes’ intuitive genius that he reaches practical results that in many respects are very much superior to his deficient statements of certain theoretical problems.”

Gunnar Myrdal (1898–1987) Swedish economist

Source: Monetary Equilibrium (1939), p. 32

“Another evil, and one of the worst which arises from the separation of theoretical and practical knowledge, is the fact that a large number of persons”

William John Macquorn Rankine (1820–1872) civil engineer

"On the Harmony of Theory and Practice in Mechanics" (Jan. 3, 1856)
Context: Another evil, and one of the worst which arises from the separation of theoretical and practical knowledge, is the fact that a large number of persons, possessed of an inventive turn of mind and of considerable skill in the manual operations of practical mechanics, are destitute of that knowledge of scientific principles which is requisite to prevent their being misled by their own ingenuity. Such men too often spend their money, waste their lives, and it may be lose their reason in the vain pursuits of visionary inventions, of which a moderate amount of theoretical knowledge would be sufficient to demonstrate the fallacy; and for want of such knowledge, many a man who might have been a useful and happy member of society, becomes a being than whom it would be hard to find anything more miserable.
The number of those unhappy persons — to judge from the patent-lists, and from some of the mechanical journals — must be much greater than is generally believed.<!--p. 176

“We may think as we like theoretically, about man’s freedom of action, we must practically start from it as the foundation of the moral law, for only under this condition is social morality possible.”

Eduard Bernstein (1850–1932) German politician

Source: "Evolutionary Socialism" (1899) https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/bernstein/works/1899/evsoc/index.htm, Chapter III, The Tasks and Possibilities of Social Democracy

“Residues arise … naturally in several branches of analysis …. Their consideration provides simple and easy-to-use methods, which are applicable to a large number of diverse questions, and some new results ….”

Augustin Louis Cauchy (1789–1857) French mathematician (1789–1857)

Sur un nouveau genre de calcul, 1826.

“Attention must be given to the study of the given operations. Their study with due allowance made for the existing means of warfare will make it possible to reach a number of useful theoretical conclusions for conducting operations in the initial phase of a war.”

Matvei Zakharov (1898–1972) Soviet military commander

Quoted in "Timely Lessons of History: The Manchurian Model for Soviet Strategy" - Page 4 - by John Despres, Lilita Dzirkals, Barton Whaley - History - 1976