“In the universe there is room for an infinite series of beginnings.”
Advice to Clever Children (1981)
"The Flower of Coleridge" ["La flor de Coleridge"] — The title of this work makes reference to a line by Samuel Coleridge in Anima Poetæ : From the Unpublished Note-books of Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1895), p. 282 : "If a man could pass through Paradise in a dream, and have a flower presented to him as a pledge that his soul had really been there, and if he found that flower in his hand when he awake — Aye, what then?"
Other Inquisitions (1952)
“In the universe there is room for an infinite series of beginnings.”
Advice to Clever Children (1981)
“Memory peters out like the infinite series of a ζ-function.”
"The Mathematical Theory of the Top" (April 8, 1898)
Context: Turning to Klein's little book, one is astonished in finding the most general aspects of the subject treated almost without computation and in so little space.... It would have cost little to give the expanded form of the σ-function.... Weierstrass's original notation was in terms of Abelian functions. The tremendous development of s is out of proportion with their application to natural phenomena. Meeting them rarely one forgets them. Memory peters out like the infinite series of a ζ-function.
That which is seen and that which is not seen (Ce qu'on voit et ce qu'on ne voit pas, 1850), the Introduction.
Context: In the department of economy, an act, a habit, an institution, a law, gives birth not only to an effect, but to a series of effects. Of these effects, the first only is immediate; it manifests itself simultaneously with its cause — it is seen. The others unfold in succession — they are not seen: it is well for us, if they are foreseen. Between a good and a bad economist this constitutes the whole difference: the one takes account only of the visible effect; the other takes account of both the effects which are seen and those which it is necessary to foresee. Now this difference is enormous, for it almost always happens that when the immediate consequence is favourable, the ultimate consequences are fatal, and the converse. Hence it follows that the bad economist pursues a small present good, which will be followed by a great evil to come, while the true economist pursues a great good to come, at the risk of a small present evil.
As quoted in Familiar Medical Quotations (1968) by Maurice Benjamin Strauss, p. 288
1960s
The Shorter Leibniz Texts (2006) http://books.google.com/books?id=oFoCY3xJ8nkC&dq edited by Lloyd H. Strickland, p. 111
Source: Lectures on Philosophy (1959), p. 87
T. W. Anderson. The Statistical Analysis of Time Series http://books.google.com/books?hl=nl&lr=&id=rCOzXIC8ZLkC&oi=fnd&pg=PR11, (1971/2011), p. 1. Introduction; Cited in: American Sociological Association (1974), Sociological Methodology, p. 310