Augustus De Morgan Quotes

62 Sourced Quotes

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
Belief is but another name for imperfect knowledge...

Augustus De Morgan
This name [Uranus] is appropriate, inasmuch as Uranus is the father of Saturn, in mythology, as Saturn is of Jupiter, and Jupiter of Mars; but what will be done if a new planet should be discovered still more distant than Uranus?

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

Augustus De Morgan
Great fleas have little fleas upon their backs to bite 'em,
And little fleas have lesser fleas, and so ad infinitum.
And the great fleas themselves, in turn have, greater fleas to go on;
While these again have greater still, and greater still, and so on.

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

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
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 am far from saying that this Treatise will be easy; the subject is a difficult one, as all know who have tried it.

Augustus De Morgan
The work now before the reader is the most extensive which our language contains on the subject.

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