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Success, even in a comparatively limited field, is some compensation for failure in a wider field of endeavour.

— E. W. Hobson Squaring the Circle (1913)

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More quotes by E. W. Hobson

The quality of the human mind, considered in its collective aspect, which most strikes us, in surveying this record, is its colossal patience.

Squaring the Circle (1913)

The objects of abstract Geometry possess in absolute precision properties which are only approximately realized in the corresponding objects of physical Geometry.

Squaring the Circle (1913)

The history of our problem falls into three periods marked out by fundamentally distinct differences in respect of method, of immediate aims, and in equipment in possession of intellectual tools.

Squaring the Circle (1913)

If the question be raised, why such an apparently special problem as the quadrature of the circle, is deserving of the sustained interest which has attained to it, and which it still possesses, the answer is only to be found in a scrutiny of the history of the problem, and especially in the closeness of the connection of that history with the general history of Mathematical Science.

Squaring the Circle (1913)

Perhaps the least inadequate description of the general scope of modern Pure Mathematics—I will not call it a definition—would be to say that it deals with form, in a very general sense of the term; this would include algebraic form, functional relationship, the relations of order in any ordered set of entities such as numbers, and the analysis of the peculiarities of form of groups of operations.

Presidential Address British Association for the Advancement of Science, Section A (1910)

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We spend our lives fighting to get people very slightly more stupid than ourselves to accept truths that the great men have always known.

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To rank the effort above the prize may be called love.

Confucius

Greatness by nature includes a power, but not a will to power.

Martin Buber Between Man and Man (1965)

The weak shows his strength and hides his weaknesses; the magnificent exhibits his weaknesses like ornaments.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms (2010)

Attribution

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