The Universe Ought To Be Presumed Too

It Is Not Too Much To Say That Next After The Passion To Learn There Is No Quality So Indispensable To The Successful Prosecutionof Science As Imagination. Find Me A People Whose Early Medicine Is Not Mixed Up With Magic And Incantations, And I Will Find You A People Devoid Of All Scientific Ability.

It Is Terrible To See How A Single Unclear Idea, A Single Formula Without Meaning, Lurking In A Young Man's Head, Will Sometimes Act Like An Obstruction Of Inert Matter In An Artery, Hindering The Nutrition Of The Brain And Condemning Its Victim To Pine Away In The Fullness Of His Intellectual Vigor And In The Midst Of Intellectual Plenty.

Kepler's Discovery Would Not Have Been Possible Without The Doctrine Of Conics. Now Contemporaries Of Kepler-such Penetrating Minds As Descartes And Pascal-were Abandoning The Study Of Geometry ... Because They Said It Was So Utterly Useless. There Was The Future Of The Human Race Almost Trembling In The Balance; For Had Not The Geometry Of Conic Sections Already Been Worked Out In Large Measure, And Had Their Opinion That Only Sciences Apparently Useful Ought To Be Pursued, The Nineteenth Century Would Have Had None Of Those Characters Which Distinguish It From The Ancien Régime.

This Branch Of Mathematics [probability] Is The Only One, I Believe, In Which Good Writers Frequently Get Results Which Are Entirely Erroneous.

The Difference Between A Pessimistic And An Optimistic Mind Is Of Such Controlling Importance In Regard To Every Intellectual Function, And Especially For The Conduct Of Life, That It Is Out Of The Question To Admit That Both Are Normal, And The Great Majority Of Mankind Are Naturally Optimistic.