“The author discusses valueless measures in pointless spaces.”
Proposal for a humorous first sentence to a review of a mathematical paper, rejected by editors.
I Want to be a Mathematician: An Automathography (1985)
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Paul R. Halmos9
American mathematician 1916–2006Related quotes
Friedrich Engels (1820–1895) German social scientist, author, political theorist, and philosopher
(1847)
António de Oliveira Salazar (1889–1970) Prime Minister of Portugal
Quoted in Salazar: Biographical Study - page 368; of Franco Nogueira - Published by Atlantis Publishing, 1977
Leonard Mlodinow book The Drunkard's Walk
Source: The Drunkard's Walk, Chapter 7, Measurement And The Law Of Errors, p. 129
William Lane Craig (1949) American Christian apologist and evangelist
Is There Meaning to Life? Jordan Peterson, Rebecca Goldstein, William Lane Craig, Debate at Wycliffe College at the University of Toronto
26 January 2018
YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pDDQOCXBrAw (9:07 into video)
Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) Canadian educator, philosopher, and scholar-- a professor of English literature, a literary critic, and a …
Source: 1980s, Laws of Media: The New Science (with Eric McLuhan) (1988), p. 40
“Whoever in discussion adduces authority uses not intellect but rather memory.”
Leonardo Da Vinci (1452–1519) Italian Renaissance polymath
Variant translations:
Anyone who conducts an argument by appealing to authority is not using his intelligence; he is just using his memory.
As quoted in The Book of Unusual Quotations (1957) by Rudolf Flesch, p. 12
Any one who in discussion relies upon authority uses, not his understanding, but rather his memory.
The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883), I Prolegomena and General Introduction to the Book on Painting
“Neither Dirac nor von Neumann discussed his measurements in physical terms.”
Willis Lamb (1913–2008) American Physicist
W. E. Lamb, Classical measurements on a quantum mechanical system, Nuclear Phys. B 6, 197-201 (1989).
“No creature loves an empty space;
Their bodies measure out their place.”
Andrew Marvell (1621–1678) English metaphysical poet and politician
Upon Appleton House, to My Lord Fairfax.
Howard P. Robertson (1903–1961) American mathematician and physicist
Geometry as a Branch of Physics (1949)