William Rowan Hamilton Quotes

10 Sourced Quotes

It is the individual man who thinks and who discovers; not any aggregate or mass of men.

William Rowan Hamilton
Astronomers... if they would be more than mere artisans, must be more or less mathematicians, and must separately study the mathematical grounds of their science...

William Rowan Hamilton
I think there is nothing that so exalts the mind, or so raises one man above his fellow-creatures, as the researches of Science. Who would not rather have the fame of Archimedes than that of his conqueror Marcellus, or than any of those learned commentators on the Classics, whose highest ambition was to be familiar with the thoughts of other men?

William Rowan Hamilton
The highest reach of human science is the scientific recognition of human ignorance...

William Rowan Hamilton
Each mathematician for himself, and not anyone for any other, not even all for one, must tread that more than royal road which leads to the palace and sanctuary of mathematical truth.

William Rowan Hamilton
… an undercurrent of thought was going on in my mind which gave at last a result, whereof it is not too much to say that I felt at once the importance. An electric circuit seemed to close; and a spark flashed forth the herald (as I foresaw immediately) of many long years to come of definitely directed thought and work by myself, if spared, and, at all events, on the part of others if I should even be allowed to live long enough distinctly to communicate the discovery. Nor could I resist the impulse - unphilosophical as it may have been - to cut with a knife on a stone of Brougham Bridge, as we passed it, the fundamental formula which contains the Solution of the Problem, but, of course, the inscription has long since mouldered away.

William Rowan Hamilton
In physical sciences the discovery of new facts is open to any blockhead with patience and manual dexterity and acute senses.

William Rowan Hamilton
We are naturally disposed to refer everything we do not know to principles with which we are familiar.

William Rowan Hamilton
In every science which rests partly on the observation of nature, and not solely on the mind of man, a faith in testimony is required, that the human race may not be stationary, and that the accumulated treasures of one man or of one generation of men may not be lost to another.

William Rowan Hamilton
Instead of seeking to attain consistency and uniformity of system, as some modern writers have attempted, by banishing this thought of time from the higher Algebra, I seek to attain the same object, by systematically introducing it into the lower or earlier parts of the science.

William Rowan Hamilton