
“Growth itself contains the germ of happiness.”
To My Daughters, With Love (1967)
Quoted in Constance Reid, "Hilbert" (1970)
“Growth itself contains the germ of happiness.”
To My Daughters, With Love (1967)
“For, though in science much contained be,
In special cases practice more doth see.”
Stanza 152 (tr. Richard Fanshawe); the poet advising King Sebastian of Portugal, then eighteen years of age.
Epic poetry, Os Lusíadas (1572), Canto X
Context: Great Sir, let never the astonished Gall
The English, German, and Italian,
Have cause to say, the fainting Portugal
Could not advance the great work he began.
Let your advisers be experienced all,
Such as have seen the world, and studied man.
For, though in science much contained be,
In special cases practice more doth see.
Popularity had nothing to do with whether this avenue was worth taking.
Henry Flynt. " The Crystallization of Concept Art in 1961 http://www.henryflynt.org/meta_tech/crystal.html," at henryflynt.org, 1994.
"I think so-"
"Shut up! That was not a question!"
Source: The Keys to the Kingdom series, Sir Thursday (2006), p. 124.
Quoted in Hilbert's Die Grundlagen der Mathematik (1927)
One should not value elegant math above physical facts. As quoted by [Sundaram, R., 1998, December 10, K. S. Krishnan—the complete physicist, Current Science, 75, 11, 1263-1265]
Source: 1950s, General Systems Theory - The Skeleton of Science, 1956, p. 197: Opening sentences
“Mathematics… is the set of all possible self-consistent structures”
Source: Hyperspace (1995), Ch.15 Conclusion<!--p.328-->
Context: Mathematics... is the set of all possible self-consistent structures, and there are vastly more logical structures than physical principles.