16 quotes
The lowest steps of the ladder are as useful as the highest.
On the Study and Difficulties of Mathematics (1831)
The moving power of mathematical invention is not reasoning, but imagination.
If much difficulty should be experienced in the elementary chapters, I know of no work which I can so confidently recommend to be used with the present one, as that of M. Duhamel.
The Differential and Integral Calculus (1836)
The work now before the reader is the most extensive which our language contains on the subject.
The Differential and Integral Calculus (1836)
I am far from saying that this Treatise will be easy; the subject is a difficult one, as all know who have tried it.
The Differential and Integral Calculus (1836)
A large quantity of examples is indispensable.
The Differential and Integral Calculus (1836)
The two races which have founded the mathematics, those of the Sanscrit and Greek languages, have been the two which have independently formed systems of logic.
There never has been, and till we see it we never shall believe that there can be, a system of geometry worthy of the name, which has any material departures (we do not speak of corrections or extensions or developments) from the plan laid down by Euclid.
All existing things upon this earth, which have knowledge of their own existence, possess, some in one degree and some in another, the power of thought, accompanied by perception, which is the awakening of thought by the effects of external objects upon the senses.
Formal Logic (1847)
I did not hear what you said, but I absolutely disagree with you.
to Augustus De Morgan in: August Stern (1994)
The two eyes of exact science are mathematics and logic: the mathematical sect puts out the logical eye, the logical sect puts out the mathematical eye; each believing that it can see better with one eye than with two.
Great fleas have little fleas upon their backs to bite 'em,
And little fleas have lesser fleas, and so ad infinitum,
And the great fleas themselves, in turn, have greater fleas to go on,
While these again have greater still, and greater still, and so on.
A Budget of Paradoxes (1850)
During the last two centuries and a half, physical knowledge has been gradually made to rest upon a basis which it had not before. It has become mathematical.
A Budget of Paradoxes (1872)
We know that mathematicians care no more for logic than logicians for mathematics. The two eyes of exact science are mathematics and logic: the mathematical sect puts out the logical eye, the logical sect puts out the mathematical eye; each believing that it can see better with one eye than with two.
They [the English] forget that at this moment there still exists [in India] a body of literature and science which might well be the nucleus of a new civilisation, though every trace of Christian and Mohammedan civilization were blotted out of existence.
I will not, from henceforward, talk to any squarer of the circle, trisector of the angle, duplicator of the cube, constructor of perpetual motion, subverter of gravitation, stagnator of the earth, builder of the universe, etc.
A Budget of Paradoxes (1872)