“He who refuses to do arithmetic is doomed to talk nonsense.”
John McCarthy (1927–2011) American computer scientist and cognitive scientist
PROGRESS AND ITS SUSTAINABILITY http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/progress/ (1995 – ) <br class="br">1990s
Source: 1910s, An Introduction to Mathematics (1911), ch. 15.
“He who refuses to do arithmetic is doomed to talk nonsense.”
John McCarthy (1927–2011) American computer scientist and cognitive scientist
PROGRESS AND ITS SUSTAINABILITY http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/progress/ (1995 – ) <br class="br">1990s
“No man ruleth safely but that he is willingly ruled.”
Thomas à Kempis book The Imitation of Christ
Book I, ch. 20.
The Imitation of Christ (c. 1418)
“But he discovered his success later, when he began to write just like he talked.”
William McKeen (1954) American academic
Source: Outlaw Journalist (2008), Chapter 5, Observer, p. 74
“Tis the privilege of friendship to talk nonsense, and to have her nonsense respected.”
Charles Lamb (1775–1834) English essayist
Source: The Life, Letters and Writings of Charles Lamb
Ludwig Feuerbach book The Essence of Christianity
Preface to Second Edition (1843)
The Essence of Christianity (1841)
Alan O. Ebenstein (1959) American political scientist, educator and author
Hayek's Journey: The Mind of Friedrich Hayek (2003)
Leonardo Da Vinci (1452–1519) Italian Renaissance polymath
The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883), XIX Philosophical Maxims. Morals. Polemics and Speculations.
J. R. Partington (1886–1965) British chemist
Introduction
Higher Mathematics for Chemical Students (1911)
Context: The philosopher Comte has made the statement that chemistry is a non-mathematical science. He also told us that astronomy had reached a stage when further progress was impossible. These remarks, coming after Dalton's atomic theory, and just before Guldberg and Waage were to lay the foundations of chemical dynamics, Kirchhoff to discover the reversal of lines in the solar spectrum, serve but to emphasize the folly of having "recourse to farfetched and abstracted Ratiocination," and should teach us to be "very far from the litigious humour of loving to wrangle about words or terms or notions as empty".
Hermann Weyl (1885–1955) German mathematician
Symmetry (1952) (quote on p. 138; referring to a letter by Évariste Galois to Auguste Chevalier from May 29, 1832, two days before Galois’ death, containing a testamentary summary of Galois’ discoveries)