James Joseph Sylvester Quotes

41 Sourced Quotes

It is not without a feeling of surprise and trepidation at my own temerity that I find myself in the position of one about to address this numerous and distinguished assembly.

James Joseph Sylvester
Most, if not all, of the great ideas of modern mathematics have had their origin in observation.

James Joseph Sylvester
Aspiring to these wide generalizations, the analysis of quadratic functions soars to a pitch from whence it may look proudly down on the feeble and vain attempts of geometry proper to rise to its level or to emulate it in its flights.

James Joseph Sylvester
As the prerogative of Natural Science is to cultivate a taste for observation, so that of Mathematics is, almost from the starting point, to stimulate the faculty of invention.

James Joseph Sylvester
The interval between the two [geometry and analysis] is as wide as between empiricism and science, as between the understanding and the reason; or as between the finite and the infinite.

James Joseph Sylvester
Mathematical pursuits unfit a person for the discharge of the common duties of life and cut him off from the exercise of Man's highest prerogative, "discourse of reason and faculty of speech divine,".

James Joseph Sylvester
The mathematician lives long and lives young; the wings of his soul do not early drop off, nor do its pores become clogged with the earthy particles blown from the dusty highways of vulgar life.

James Joseph Sylvester
It is difficult to estimate the lengths to which human self-delusion can be carried.

James Joseph Sylvester
When called upon to speak in public [the mathematician] feels as a man might... who has passed all his life in peering through a microscope, and is suddenly called upon to take charge of an astronomical observatory. He has to get out of himself, as it were, and change the habitual focus of his vision.

James Joseph Sylvester
No mathematician now-a-days sets any store on the discovery of isolated theorems, except as affording hints of an unsuspected new sphere of thought, like meteorites detached from some undiscovered planetary orb of speculation.

James Joseph Sylvester
May not Music be described as the Mathematic of Sense, Mathematics as Music of the Reason?

James Joseph Sylvester
The object of pure Physic[s] is the unfolding of the laws of the intelligible world; the object of pure Mathematic[s] that of unfolding the laws of human intelligence.

James Joseph Sylvester
Perhaps I may without immodesty lay claim to the appellation of Mathematical Adam, as I believe that I have given more names (passed into general circulation) of the creatures of the mathematical reason than all the other mathematicians of the age combined.

James Joseph Sylvester
The early study of Euclid made me a hater of geometry.

James Joseph Sylvester
Geometry may sometimes appear to take the lead over analysis but in fact precedes it only as a servant goes before the master to clear the path and light him on his way.

James Joseph Sylvester
For what is the theory of determinants? It is an algebra upon algebra; a calculus which enables us to combine and foretell the results of algebraical operations, in the same way as algebra itself enable us to dispense with the performance of the special operations of arithmetic. All analysis must ultimately clothe itself under this form.

James Joseph Sylvester
I think it would be desirable that this form of word [mathematics] should be reserved for the applications of the science, and that we should use mathematic in the singular to denote the science itself, in the same way as we speak of logic, rhetoric, or (own sister to algebra) music.

James Joseph Sylvester
It often happens that the pursuit of the beautiful and appropriate, or, as it may be otherwise expressed, the endeavor after the perfect, is rewarded with a new insight into the true.

James Joseph Sylvester
Geometry formerly was the chief borrower from arithmetic and algebra, but it has since repaid its obligations with abundant usury...

James Joseph Sylvester
Algebraists (who are wont to regard each other as the flower and salt of the earth) are a set of mere calculating-machines endowed with organs of locomotion, or, at best, a sort of poor visionary dumb creatures only capable of communicating by signs and symbols with the outer world.

James Joseph Sylvester
The theory of ramification is one of pure colligation, for it takes no account of magnitude or position; geometrical lines are used, but these have no more real bearing on the matter than those employed in genealogical tables have in explaining the laws of procreation.

James Joseph Sylvester
As lightning clears the air of impalpable vapours, so an incisive paradox frees the human intelligence from the lethargic influence of latent and unsuspected assumptions. Paradox is the slayer of Prejudice.

James Joseph Sylvester
The two functions of teaching and working in science should never be divorced.

James Joseph Sylvester
Would it sound too presumptuous to speak of perception as a quintessence of sensation, language (that is, communicable thought) [as that] of perception, mathematics [as that] of language? We should then have four terms differentiating from inorganic matter and from each other: the Vegetable, Animal, Rational, and Supersensual models of existence.

James Joseph Sylvester
No endeavor that is worthwhile is simple in prospect; if it is right, it will be simple in retrospect.

James Joseph Sylvester