Polymath Quotes

Leonardo da Vinci

Rabindranath Tagore

Mikhail Lomonosov

Thomas Young

Al-Biruni

Thomas Browne

Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar

The tragedy of human life consists in our vain attempts to stretch the limits of things which can never become unlimited, to reach the infinite by absurdly adding to the rungs of the ladder of the finite.

Rabindranath Tagore

When the sun is covered by clouds, objects are less conspicuous, because there is little difference between the light and shade of the trees and the buildings being illuminated by the brightness of the atmosphere which surrounds the objects in such a way that the shadows are few, and these few fade away so that their outline is lost in haze.

Leonardo da Vinci

My final words of advice to you are educate, agitate and organize; have faith in yourself. With justice on our side I do not see how we can loose our battle. The battle to me is a matter of joy. The battle is in the fullest sense spiritual. There is nothing material or social in it. For ours is a battle not for wealth or for power. It is battle for freedom. It is the battle of reclamation of human personality.

Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar

They do most by Books, who could do much without them, and he that chiefly owes himself unto himself, is the substantial Man.

Never tell a story because it is true: tell it because it is a good story.

John Pentland Mahaffy

Modern mathematics can be kept alive only by a large number of mathematicians cultivating different parts of the same system of values: a community which can be kept coherent only by the passionate vigilance of universities, journals and meetings, fostering these values and imposing the same respect for them on all mathematicians.

Michael Polanyi

Hysteria is a chaotic and irrational emotional state caused by seeing how the world really operates.

Robert Anton Wilson

Radiant light consists in Undulations of the Luminiferous Ether.

Proposition IX

What was most repulsive at the meetings was the stench of the guild, which assailed me everywhere: intellectual proletariat, that labors on its humdrum articles in the sweat of its brow, that does not know that science is to make one free and happy.

Paul de Lagarde

There is at Paris likewife another sort of fodder which they call la lucern which is not inferior, but rather preferred before sainfoin. Every day produces some new things concerning it, not only in other countries but in our own.

Once a sage asked why scholars always flock to the doors of the rich, whilst the rich are not inclined to call at the doors of scholars. "The scholars" he answered, "are well aware of the use of money, but the rich are ignorant of the nobility of science".

Why should we limit by dogma or otherwise man's liberty to select his food and drink?...[T]he great practical rule of life in regard of human diet will not be found in enforcing limitation of the sources of food which Nature has abundantly provided.

Sir Henry Thompson, 1st Baronet

However profoundly we may penetrate the depths of space, there still remain innumerable systems, compared with which, those which seem so mighty to us must dwindle into insignificance, or even become invisible..

Mary Somerville

I value one experiment higher than a thousand opinions born of the imagination.

Mikhail Lomonosov

The fighting strength of a force may be broadly defined as proportional to the square of its numerical strength multiplied by the fighting value of its individual units.

Frederick W. Lanchester