Quotes
From Complex Systems
- A life unexplored is not worth living. — Socrates
- Wir dürfen nicht denen glauben, die heute mit philosophischer Miene und überlegenem Tone den Kulturuntergang prophezeien und sich in dem Ignorabimus gefallen. Für uns gibt es kein Ignorabimus, und meiner Meinung nach auch für die Naturwissenschaft überhaupt nicht. Statt des törichten Ignorabimus heiße im Gegenteil unsere Losung: Wir müssen wissen — wir werden wissen! In English: We must not believe those, who today with philosophical bearing and deliberative tone prophesy the fall of culture and accept the ignorabimus. For us there is no ignorabimus, and in my opinion none whatever in natural science. In opposition to the foolish ignorabimus I offer our slogan: We must know — we shall know! — David Hilbert (in his address to the Society of German Scientists and Physicians in Königsberg)
- The scientist does not study nature because it is useful; he studies it because he delights in it, and he delights in it because it is beautiful. If nature were not beautiful, it would not be worth knowing, and if nature were not worth knowing, life would not be worth living. Of course I do not here speak of that beauty that strikes the senses, the beauty of qualities and appearances; not that I undervalue such beauty, far from it, but it has nothing to do with science; I mean that profounder beauty which comes from the harmonious order of the parts, and which a pure intelligence can grasp. — Jules Henri Poincaré
- Logic merely sanctions the conquests of the intuition. — Jacques Hadamard
- Thoughts without intuitions are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind. — Immanuel Kant
- The point of philosophy is to start with something so simple as not to seem worth stating, and to end with something so paradoxical that no one will believe it. — Bertrand Russell
- Empires die, but Euclid's theorems keep their youth forever. — Vito Volterra
