“… mathematicians progress only by doubt, through humble and constant attempts to impinge on the immense domain of the unknown.”

[Leopold Infeld, Whom the Gods Love: The Story of Évariste Galois, Whittlesey House, 1948, 9]

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 "… mathematicians progress only by doubt, through humble and constant attempts to impinge on the immense domain of the u…" by Leopold Infeld?
Leopold Infeld photo
Leopold Infeld 2
Polish physicist 1898–1968

Related quotes

Ursula K. Le Guin photo
Bram van Velde photo

“At is taking risks.... a sincere attempt to achieve the impossible, the unknown.”

Bram van Velde (1895–1981) Dutch painter

short quotes, 14 September 1967; p. 68
1960's, Conversations with Samuel Beckett and Bram van Velde' (1965 - 1969)

Benjamin Disraeli photo

“Change is inevitable. In a progressive country change is constant. ”

Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881) British Conservative politician, writer, aristocrat and Prime Minister
Leonid Brezhnev photo

“Today progress is so swift in all fields that the education received by young people is only a foundation that requires the constant acquisition of knowledge.”

Leonid Brezhnev (1906–1982) General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union

Cited in Soviet Youth and Socialism http://leninist.biz/en/1974/SYAS228/3.1-Youth.and.Culture

Ira Glass photo

“Progress' constant companion is nostalgia for the way things used to be.”

Ira Glass (1959) American radio personality

"Pandora's Box", This American Life, television season 1, installment 6, 26 April 2007.
This American Life

Friedrich List photo

“The world has not been hindered in its progress, but immensely aided in it, by England.”

Friedrich List (1789–1846) German economist with dual American citizenship

Source: The National System of Political Economy (1841), p. 365

Stanley Baldwin photo
Paul Karl Feyerabend photo

“Without a constant misuse of language, there cannot be any discovery, any progress.”

pg. 27.
Against Method (1975)
Source: Against Method: Outline of an Anarchistic Theory of Knowledge

Ayn Rand photo
Sri Aurobindo photo

“To attempt to penetrate through the indeterminate confusion of present tendencies and first efforts in order to foresee the exact forms the new creation will take, would be an effort of very doubtful utility.”

Sri Aurobindo (1872–1950) Indian nationalist, freedom fighter, philosopher, yogi, guru and poet

The Renaissance in India (1918)
Context: To attempt to penetrate through the indeterminate confusion of present tendencies and first efforts in order to foresee the exact forms the new creation will take, would be an effort of very doubtful utility. One might as well try to forecast a harmony from the sounds made by the tuning of the instrument. In one direction or another we may just detect certain decisive indications, but even these are only first indications and we may be quite sure that much lies behind them that will go far beyond anything that they yet suggest. This is true whether in religion and spirituality or thought and science, poetry and art or society and politics. Everywhere there is, at most, only a beginning of beginnings.

Related topics