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In their field they [mathematicians] do what we ought to be doing in ours. Therein lies the significant lesson … of their existence. They are an analogy for the intellectual of the future.

— Robert Musil Mathematical man (1913)

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Mathematics

More quotes by Robert Musil

Mathematics is the bold luxury of pure reason, one of the few that remain today.

Mathematical man (1913)

We do not have too much intellect and too little soul, but too little intellect in matters of the soul.

Helpless Europe (1922)

Modernism is the attempt to permeate religion with middle-class reason.

Mathematics is the source of a wicked intellect that, while making man the lord of the earth, also makes him the slave of the machine.

With its claims to profundity, boldness and originality, thinking still limits itself provisionally to the exclusively rational and scientific. … As soon as it lays hold of the feelings, it becomes spirit.

Mathematical man (1913)

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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: Robert Musil (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.