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Judged by the only standards which are admissible in a pure doctrine of numbers i is imaginary in the same sense as the negative, the fraction, and the irrational, but in no other sense; all are alike mere symbols devised for the sake of representing the results of operations even when these results are not numbers (positive integers).

— Henry Burchard Fine The Number-System of Algebra (1890)

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Number is that property of a group of distinct things which remains unchanged during any change to which the group may be subjected which does not destroy the distinctness of the individual things.

The Number-System of Algebra (1890)

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