“If one would understand the Greek genius fully, it would be a good plan to begin with their geometry.”

— Thomas Little Heath

Preface p. vi
A History of Greek Mathematics (1921) Vol. 1. From Thales to Euclid

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 "If one would understand the Greek genius fully, it would be a good plan to begin with their geometry." by Thomas Little Heath?

Thomas Little Heath 46

British civil servant and academic 1861–1940

Related quotes

“Perhaps genius alone understands genius fully.”

Robert Schumann (1810–1856) German composer, aesthete and influential music critic

Sometimes translated as: Perhaps only genius fully understands genius

Original: Vielleicht versteht nur der Genius den Genius ganz, Robert Schumann, Advice to Young Musicians, translation of Musikalische Haus- und Lebens-Regeln, translated by Henry Hugo Pierson, Leipsic & New York: J. Schuberth & Co., 1860.

“The people going by would gaze at him,
and one would ask the other if he knew him,
if he was a Greek from Syria, or a stranger.
But some who looked more carefully
would understand and step aside”

Constantine P. Cavafy (1863–1933) Greek poet

One of Their Gods http://www.cavafy.com/poems/content.asp?id=40&cat=1
Collected Poems (1992)
Context: The people going by would gaze at him,
and one would ask the other if he knew him,
if he was a Greek from Syria, or a stranger.
But some who looked more carefully
would understand and step aside;
and as he disappeared under the arcades,
among the shadows and the evening lights,
going toward the quarter that lives
only at night, with orgies and debauchery,
with every kind of intoxication and desire,
they would wonder which of Them it could be,
and for what suspicious pleasure
he had come down into the streets of Selefkia
from the August Celestial Mansions.

“Don't expect them to fully understand you. They won't: So? Demonstrate with results what they would not understand with words!”

Chinmayananda Saraswati (1916–1993) Indian spiritual teacher

Quotations from Gurudev’s teachings, Chinmya Mission Chicago

“If understanding followed no rule at all, there would be no good in the understanding nor in the matter understood, and to remain in ignorance would be the greatest good.”

Ramon Llull (1232–1316) Majorcan writer and philosopher

The Hundred Names of God cited in: Margaret A. Boden (2006) Mind As Machine: A History of Cognitive Science. Vol 1. p. 56

“Genius is the ability to independently arrive at and understand concepts that would normally have to be taught by another person.”

Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) German philosopher

“Though a state of affairs that would contravene the laws of physics can be represented by us spatially, one that would contravene the laws of geometry cannot.”

Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951) Austrian-British philosopher

3.0321
Original German: Wohl können wir einen Sachverhalt räumlich darstellen, welcher den Gesetzen der Physik, aber keinen, der den Gesetzen der Geometrie zuwiderliefe.
1920s, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1922)