“Every mathematician worthy of the name has experienced the state of lucid exaltation in which one thought succeeds another as if miraculously.”
The Apprenticeship of a Mathematician (1992)
Context: Every mathematician worthy of the name has experienced the state of lucid exaltation in which one thought succeeds another as if miraculously. This feeling may last for hours at a time, even for days. Once you have experienced it, you are eager to repeat it but unable to do it at will, unless perhaps by dogged work.
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André Weil 11
French mathematician 1906–1998Related quotes
"Notice sur Halphen," Journal de l'École Polytechnique (Paris, 1890), 60ème cahier, p. 143. See also Tobias Dantzig, Henri Poincaré, Critic of Crisis: Reflections on His Universe of Discourse (1954) p. 8
Context: A scientist worthy of the name, above all a mathematician, experiences in his work the same impression as an artist; his pleasure is as great and of the same nature.... we work not only to obtain the positive results which, according to the profane, constitute our one and only affection, as to experience this esthetic emotion and to convey it to others who are capable of experiencing it.
Quoted in Leslie Halliwell, Halliwell's Who's Who in the Movies, 15th edition (Harper Collins, 2003, ISBN 0-060-53423-0, p. 312
Letter 2.
Advice to Young Men (1829)
“The mathematician has reached the highest rung on the ladder of human thought.”
Source: The Dance of Life http://www.gutenberg.net.au/ebooks03/0300671.txt (1923), Ch. 3
“There is no sociology worthy of the name which does not possess a historical character.”
Émile Durkheim, Debate on Explanation in History and Sociology (1908).
PART IV, SECTION II.
An Essay on the History of Civil Society (1767)
¶ 4
State Socialism and Anarchism: How Far They Agree, and Wherin They Differ (1888)
Context: The two principles referred to are Authority and Liberty, and the names of the two schools of Socialistic thought which fully and unreservedly represent one or the other of them are, respectively, State Socialism and Anarchism. Whoso knows what these two schools want and how they propose to get it understands the Socialistic movement. For, just as it has been said that there is no half-way house between Rome and Reason, so it may be said that there is no half-way house between State Socialism and Anarchism.
