Originally posted by royalchickenSome of my favourites
It appears that I have to submit some quote I like along with a picture of myself for inclusion in a yearbook. I've got some good, and potentially relevant ones, but decisions are in order. Evaluations of these, and other ideas, wou ...[text shortened]... en could possibly adopt them. -Bertrand Russell
Any more?
http://www.chrismo.com/quotes/
The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people are so full of doubts - Bertrand Russell
A good listener is not only popular everywhere, but after a while he gets to know something - Wilson Mizner
Quality is remembered long after the price is forgotten - Gucci family slogan
Life is what happens while you're busy making other plans - John Lennon
If all our misfortunes were laid in one common heap, whence everyone must take an equal portion, most people would be content to take their own and depart - Socrates
They may forget what you said, but they will never forget how you made them feel - Carl W. Buechner
I haven't failed, I've found 10,000 ways that don't work - Benjamin Franklin
I've been through some terrible things in my life, some of which actually happened - Mark Twain
I'm a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work, the more I have of it - Thomas Jefferson
Doubt is an unpleasant mental state, but certainty is a ridiculous one - Voltaire
If one is really a superior person, the fact is likely to leak out without too much assistance - John Andrew Holmes
If you are going through hell, keep going - Sir Winston Churchill
The true measure of a man is how he treats someone who can do him absolutely no good - Samuel Johnson
If you want to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe - Carl Sagan
Knowledge speaks, but wisdom listens - Jimi Hendrix
If everything seems under control, you're just not going fast enough - Mario Andretti
The mistakes are all waiting to be made - chessmaster Savielly Grigorievitch Tartakower
One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one's work is terribly important - Bertrand Russell
If women didn't exist, all the money in the world would have no meaning - Aristotle Onassis
Well done is better than well said - Benjamin Franklin
A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty - Sir Winston Churchill
Ending a sentence with a preposition is something up with which I will not put - Sir Winston Churchill
Fill the unforgiving minute with sixty seconds worth of distance run - Rudyard Kipling
The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who cannot read them - Mark Twain
Just one more:
Goethe.
Mathematics has the completely false reputation of yielding infallible conclusions. Its infallibility is nothing but identity. Two times two is not four, but it is just two times two, and that is what we call four for short. But four is nothing new at all. And thus it goes on and on in its conclusions, except that in the higher formulas the identity fades out of sight.
In J. R. Newman (ed.) The World of Mathematics, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1956, p. 1754.
Thomas Hobbes:
The errors of definitions multiply themselves according as the reckoning proceeds; and lead men into absurdities, which at last they see but cannot avoid, without reckoning anew from the beginning.
In J. R. Newman (ed.) The World of Mathematics, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1956.
I want to dedicate this Thomas Hobbes quotation to bbarr 😛
Oliver Wendell Holmes:
I was just going to say, when I was interrupted, that one of the many ways of classifying minds is under the heads of arithmetical and algebraical intellects. All economical and practical wisdom is an extension of the following arithmetical formula: 2 + 2 = 4. Every philosophical proposition has the more general character of the expression a + b = c. We are mere operatives, empirics, and egotists until we learn to think in letters instead of figures.
The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table.
... See you tomorrow ....... 😴
Originally posted by ivanhoeInteresting that you offer the quote in a spirit completely contrary to that in which it was offered by Hobbes. Here is the preceding sentence, of which you would have been aware had you actually read Leviathan:
Thomas Hobbes:
The errors of definitions multiply themselves according as the reckoning proceeds; and lead men into absurdities, which at last they see but cannot avoid, without reckoning anew from the beginning.
In J. R. Newman (ed.) The World of Mathematics, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1956.
I want to dedicate this Thomas Hobbes quotation to bbarr 😛
"By this it appears how necessary it is for any man that aspires to true knowledge to examine the definitions of former authors; and either to correct them, where they are negligently set down, or to make them himself."
Which is precisely what I try to do when confronted with your nonsense.
Originally posted by bbarr
Interesting that you offer the quote in a spirit completely contrary to that in which it was offered by Hobbes. Here is the preceding sentence, of which you would have been aware had you actually read Leviathan:
"By this it appears how necessary it is for any man that aspires to true knowledge to examine the definitions of former authors; and either to co ...[text shortened]... make them himself."
Which is precisely what I try to do when confronted with your nonsense.
... haven't heard much of you lately.
You reacted to my post in a spirit that is truly bbarrian.
... competitive, looking down on people and without any humour .......
If you're interested, there still is that thread called "A little Feud".
Thank you all for your suggestions. I quite enjoyed reading each of these.
Actually, Bennett, what you mention really applies to uncritical quoting in general--of the type with which I requested assistance. The dangers of taking others' words out of context are very real, but it is no better with paraphrasing or explaining others' thoughts, because the explainer may not have a complete comprehension (paraphrase from Bertran Russell 😛)
Ivanhoe, I like the math(s) ones. How about:
'Where are the zeros of zeta of s?
GFB Riemann has made a good guess.
They're all on the critical line saith he,
and they're density's one over two pi log t.'
Don't know where from, but quite funny in it's entirety.
I once referred to this statement by Albert Einstein in some post a long time ago:
How can it be that mathematics, being after all a product of human thought independent of experience, is so admirably adapted to the objects of reality?
It's one of my favourites, especially because it is a question.
I'm glad you liked my selection out of the interesting, bizarre, sometimes funny, sometimes hilarious but always entertaining collection of quotations.
😉