“The student of mathematics often finds it hard to throw off the uncomfortable feeling that his science, in the person of his pencil, surpasses him in intelligence,—an impression which the great Euler confessed he often could not get rid of. This feeling finds a sort of justification when we reflect that the majority of the ideas we deal with were conceived by others, often centuries ago. In a great measure it is really the intelligence of other people that confronts us in science.—Mach, Ernst.”

— Ernst Mach

Source: 20th century, Popular Scientific Lectures, (Chicago, 1910), p. 196: Mathematics seems possessed of intelligence

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Ernst Mach 12

Austrian physicist and university educator 1838–1916

Jay Lemke (1946) American academic

Source: Talking Science: Language, Learning, and Values. 1990, p. 175

“Menippus is a bird decked in various feathers which are not his. He neither says nor feels anything, but repeats the feelings and sayings of others; it is so natural for him to make use of other people’s minds that he is the first deceived by it, and often believes he speaks his own mind or expresses his own thoughts when he is but the echo of some man he just parted with.”

Jean de La Bruyère book Les Caractères

Ménippe est l'oiseau paré de divers plumages qui ne sont pas à lui. Il ne parle pas, il ne sent pas; il répète des sentiments et des discours, se sert même si naturellement de l'esprit des autres qu'il y est le premier trompé, et qu'il croit souvent dire son goût ou expliquer sa pensée, lorsqu'il n'est que l'écho de quelqu'un qu'il vient de quitter.
Aphorism 40
Les Caractères (1688), Du mérite personnel

“We had principles in mathematics that were granted to be absolute in mathematics for over 800 years, but new science has gotten rid of those absolutism, gotten — forward other different logics of looking at mathematics, and sort of turned the way we look at it as a science altogether after 800 years.”

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (1956) 6th President of the Islamic Republic of Iran

Columbia University speech, 24 September 2007
[24 September 2007, http://www.azstarnet.com/sn/hourlyupdate/202820.php, "Iran's president at Columbia University - a transcript", azstarnet.com, 2007-09-25]
2007

“And the best way to know who we are is often to find out how others see us.”

Paulo Coelho (1947) Brazilian lyricist and novelist

Source: The Witch Of Portobello

“First impressions are often the truest, as we find (not unfrequently) to our cost when we have been wheedled out of them by plausible professions or actions. A man's look is the work of years, it is stamped on his countenance by the events of his whole life, nay, more, by the hand of nature, and it is not to be got rid of easily.”

William Hazlitt (1778–1830) English writer

"On the Knowledge of Character"
Table Talk: Essays On Men And Manners http://www.blupete.com/Literature/Essays/TableHazIV.htm (1821-1822)

“We are too often influenced by other people's opinions. We worry too much about what others think of us. We feel called to satisfy other people's expectations, when we know that's definitely not the kind of life we want to live.”

Titon Rahmawan

“Great results in science and engineering are "bunched" in the same person too often for success to be a matter of random luck.”

Richard Hamming (1915–1998) American mathematician and information theorist

The Art of Doing Science and Engineering: Learning to Learn (1991)

“Science is no stranger to controversy. The pursuit of discovery, of knowledge, is often uncomfortable and disconcerting.”

James D. Watson (1928) American molecular biologist, geneticist, and zoologist.

Source: To question genetic intelligence is not racism (2007)
Context: Science is no stranger to controversy. The pursuit of discovery, of knowledge, is often uncomfortable and disconcerting. I have never been one to shy away from stating what I believe to be the truth, however difficult it might prove to be. This has, at times, got me in hot water.
Rarely more so than right now, where I find myself at the centre of a storm of criticism. I can understand much of this reaction. For if I said what I was quoted as saying, then I can only admit that I am bewildered by it. To those who have drawn the inference from my words that Africa, as a continent, is somehow genetically inferior, I can only apologise unreservedly. That is not what I meant. More importantly from my point of view, there is no scientific basis for such a belief.
I have always fiercely defended the position that we should base our view of the world on the state of our knowledge, on fact, and not on what we would like it to be. This is why genetics is so important. For it will lead us to answers to many of the big and difficult questions that have troubled people for hundreds, if not thousands, of years.
But those answers may not be easy, for, as I know all too well, genetics can be cruel. My own son may be one of its victims. Warm and perceptive at the age of 37, Rufus cannot lead an independent life because of schizophrenia, lacking the ability to engage in day-to-day activities.

“The feeling of having free will is deep in us and we are reluctant to give it up for ourselves—but we are often willing to deny it to others!”

Richard Hamming (1915–1998) American mathematician and information theorist

The Art of Doing Science and Engineering: Learning to Learn (1991)

“Do we find happiness so often that we should turn it off the box when it happens to sit there?”

E.M. Forster book A Room with a View

Source: A Room with a View

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Ernst Mach 12

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