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Mathematics may be compared to a mill of exquisite workmanship, which grinds you stuff of any degree of fineness; but, nevertheless, what you get out depends upon what you put in; and as the grandest mill in the world will not extract wheat-flour from peascod, so pages of formulae will not get a definite result out of loose data.

— Thomas Henry Huxley

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Mathematics

More quotes by Thomas Henry Huxley

The man of science has learned to believe in justification, not by faith, but by verification.

On the advisableness of improving natural knowledge (1866)

Life is too short to occupy oneself with the slaying of the slain more than once.

The method of scientific investigation is nothing but the expression of the necessary mode of working of the human mind.

Our Knowledge of the Causes of the Phenomena of Organic Nature (1863)

Try to learn something about everything and everything about something.

The great end of life is not knowledge but action.

Technical Education (1877)

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

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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.

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Attribution

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