Augustus De Morgan Quotes

62 Sourced Quotes

Infinity is a pertinacious meddler, who will not be turned out: we must find out what he wants, and give it him.

Augustus De Morgan
In all matters we have learnt to say that we do not know what things are, we only know something about them: that is, we have subjects with attributes, and therefore propositions which can be affirmed.

Augustus De Morgan
No part of mathematics or mathematical physics involves considerations so strange or so difficult to handle correctly, and there is no subject upon which opinions have been more freely hazarded by the ignorant, or rational dissent more unambiguously expressed by the learned.

Augustus De Morgan
Belief is but another name for imperfect knowledge...

Augustus De Morgan
A person of small knowledge is in danger of trying to make his little do the work of more; but a person without any is in more danger of making his no knowledge do the work of some.

Augustus De Morgan
Every science that has thriven has thriven upon its own symbols: logic, the only science which is admitted to have made no improvements in century after century, is the only one which has grown no symbols.

Augustus De Morgan
Great discoveries are always laughed at: but it is very often not the laugh of incredulity; it is a mode of distorting the sense of inferiority into a sense of superiority, or a mimicry of superiority interposed between the laughter and his feeling of inferiority.

Augustus De Morgan
Let him also say what this mysterious 3.14159...really is, which comes in at every door and window, and down every chimney, calling itself the circumference to a unit of diameter.

Augustus De Morgan
Would Mathematicals — forsooth — If true, have failed to prove truth? Would not they — if they could — submit Some overwhelming proofs of it?

Augustus De Morgan
The number of mathematical students, increased as it has been of late years, would be much augmented if those who hold the highest rank in science would condescend to give more effective assistance in clearing the elements of the difficulties which they present.

Augustus De Morgan
Madmen reason rightly upon wrong premises: Mr. Smith [a circle squarer] reasons wrongly upon no premises at all.

Augustus De Morgan
No person commences the study of mathematics without soon discovering that it is of a very different nature from those to which he has been accustomed.

Augustus De Morgan
There are no limits in mathematics, and those that assert there are, are infinite ruffians, ignorant, lying blackguards. There is no differential calculus, no Taylor's theorem, no calculus of variations, &c... in mathematics. There is no quackery whatever in mathematics.

Augustus De Morgan
I had expressed my wish to have a thermometer of probability, with impossibility at one end, as 2 plus 2 makes 5, and necessity at the other as 2 plus 2 make 4.

Augustus De Morgan
My opinion of mankind is founded upon the mournful fact that, so far as I can see, they find within themselves the means of believing in a thousand times as much as there is to believe in.

Augustus De Morgan
I don't quite hear what you say, but I beg to differ entirely with you.

Augustus De Morgan
Every kind of human knowledge has unanswerable questions at its end: and until the insoluble problems are revealed, we plume ourselves upon our progress.

Augustus De Morgan
There is no study which presents so simple a beginning as that of geometry, there is none in which difficulties grow more rapidly as we proceed, and what may appear at first rather paradoxical, the more acute the student the more serious will the impediments in the way of his progress appear.

Augustus De Morgan
Isaac Newton was born at Woolsthorpe, near Grantham, in Lincolnshire, on Christmas Day, 1642: a weakly and diminutive infant, of whom it is related that, at his birth, he might have found room in a quart mug. He died on March the 20th, 1727, after more than eighty-four years of more than average bodily health and vigour; it is a proper pendant to the story of the quart mug to state that he never lost more than one of his second teeth.

Augustus De Morgan
The greatest writers on mathematical subjects have a genius which saves them from their own slips, and guides them to true results through inaccurate expression, and sometimes through absolute error.

Augustus De Morgan
We know that mathematicians care no more for logic than logicians for mathematics. The two eyes of exact science are mathematics and logic: the mathematical sect puts out the logical eye, the logical sect puts out the mathematical eye, each believing that it can see better with one eye that with two.

Augustus De Morgan
Montucla remarked, that if any subject might be expected to baffle the mathematician, it would be chance.

Augustus De Morgan
We divide the visible universe into earth and heavens, just as an insect who is bred in a tree would, if it could, speak of the things within its knowledge as consisting of its native branch and all the rest of the forest.

Augustus De Morgan
The pseudomath is a person who handles mathematics as the monkey handled the razor.

Augustus De Morgan
Among the mere talkers, so far as mathematics are concerned, are to be ranked three out of four of those who apply mathematics to physics, who, wanting a tool only, are very impatient of everything which is not of direct aid to the actual methods which are in their hands.

Augustus De Morgan
I think the time may come when double algebra will be the beginner's tool; and quaternions will be where double algebra is no. The Lord only knows what will come above the quaternions.

Augustus De Morgan
I end with a word on the new symbols which I have employed. Most writers on logic strongly object to all symbols.... I should advise the reader not to make up his mind on this point until he has well weighed two facts which nobody disputes, both separately and in connexion. First, logic is the only science which has made no progress since the revival of letters; secondly, logic is the only science which has produced no growth of symbols.

Augustus De Morgan
Common integration is only the memory of differentiation, the different artifices by which integration is effected are changes, not from the known to the unknown, but from forms in which memory will not serve us to those in which it will.

Augustus De Morgan
If you wish to oppose a mathematician, confront him on some question in the parts of his subject which are supposed to be perfectly demonstrated.

Augustus De Morgan
Astronomers! What can avail Those who calumniate us; Experiment can never fail With such an apparatus.

Augustus De Morgan