Joseph Louis Lagrange Quotes

6 Sourced Quotes

As long as algebra and geometry proceeded along separate paths, their advance was slow and their applications limited. But when these sciences joined company, they drew from each other fresh vitality and thenceforward marched on at a rapid pace toward perfection.

Joseph Louis Lagrange
It took them only an instant to cut off that head, but France may not produce another like it in a century.

Joseph Louis Lagrange
An ancient writer said that arithmetic and geometry are the wings of mathematics; I believe one can say without speaking metaphorically that these two sciences are the foundation and essence of all the sciences which deal with quantity. Not only are they the foundation, they are also, as it were, the capstones; for, whenever a result has been arrived at, in order to use that result, it is necessary to translate it into numbers or into lines; to translate it into numbers requires the aid of arithmetic, to translate it into lines necessitates the use of geometry.

Joseph Louis Lagrange
Newton was the greatest genius that ever existed, and the most fortunate, for we cannot find more than once a system of the world to establish.

Joseph Louis Lagrange
I regarded as quite useless the reading of large treatises of pure analysis: too large a number of methods pass at once before the eyes. It is in the works of application that one must study them; one judges their utility there and appraises the manner of making use of them.

Joseph Louis Lagrange
In general, nothing measurable can be measured except by fractions expressing the result of the measurement, unless the measure be contained an exact number of times in the thing to be measured.

Joseph Louis Lagrange