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Do not imagine that mathematics is hard and crabbed, and repulsive to common sense. It is merely the etherealization of common sense.

— William Thomson Life of Lord Kelvin (1910)

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Mathematics

More quotes by William Thomson

The beauty and clearness of the dynamical theory, which asserts heat and light to be modes of motion, is at present obscured by two clouds.

Mathematics is the only true metaphysics.

Tesla has contributed more to electrical science than any man up to his time.

To live among friends is the primary essential of happiness.

I need scarcely say that the beginning and maintenance of life on earth is absolutely and infinitely beyond the range of sound speculation in dynamical science.

The Life of Lord Kelvin (1910)

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Anyone who believes exponential growth can go on forever in a finite world is either a madman or an economist.

Kenneth Boulding to Kenneth Boulding in: United States. Congress. House (1973)

If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear to man as it is: infinite.

William Blake The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (1790)

Pure mathematics consists entirely of assertions to the effect that, if such and such a proposition is true of anything, then such and such another proposition is true of that thing.

Bertrand Russell

The land of easy mathematics where he who works adds up and he who retires subtracts.

Núria Añó

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: William Thomson (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.