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God created infinity, and man, unable to understand infinity, had to invent finite sets.

— Gian-Carlo Rota

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Mathematics

More quotes by Gian-Carlo Rota

I wonder whether or when artificial intelligence will ever crash the barrier of meaning.

There are two kinds of mistakes. There are fatal mistakes that destroy a theory; but there are also contingent ones, which are useful in testing the stability of a theory.

The more experimental scientists and engineers are, the more common sense they have, and so on until you get to the mathematicians, who are totally devoid of common sense.

Mathematics is the study of analogies between analogies. All science is. Scientists want to show that things that don't look alike are really the same. That is one of their innermost Freudian motivations. In fact, that is what we mean by understanding.

Indiscrete Thoughts (2008)

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