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There are no moral or intellectual merits. Homer composed the Odyssey; if we postulate an infinite period of time, with infinite circumstances and changes, the impossible thing is not to compose the Odyssey, at least once.

— Jorge Luis Borges The Immortal (1949)

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Mathematics

More quotes by Jorge Luis Borges

Every man should be capable of all ideas and I understand that in the future this will be the case.

Heaven and hell seem out of proportion to me: the actions of men do not deserve so much.

Borges Verbal (1999)

Poetry always remembers that it was an oral art before it was a written art. It remembers that it was first song.

The Divine Comedy (1977)

The Falklands thing was a fight between two bald men over a comb.

The minotaur more than justifies the existence of the labyrinth.

All Jorge Luis Borges quotes →

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