Able Quote by Rene Descartes

“It cannot be denied that he has had many exceptional ideas, and that he is a highly intelligent man. For my part, however, I…

— René Descartes

Man cannot make, or invent, or contrive principles; he can only discover them; and he ought to look through the discovery to the Author.

— Thomas Paine

The man whose genius qualifies him for great undertakings must at least be content to learn from books the present state of human knowledge;…

— Samuel Johnson

“I confess that Fermat 's Theorem as an isolated proposition has very little interest for me, for a multitude of such theorems can easily…

— Carl Friedrich Gauss

In the future, as in the past, the great ideas [of mathematics] must be simplifying ideas, the creator must always be one who clarifies,…

— Andre Weil

“...genius, having the widest experience of the human intelligence, can best understand the ideas most directly in opposition to those which form the foundation…

— Marcel Proust

“His idea was to begin with those broad truths that must underlie all conceivable mental existences and establish a basis on those. The great…

— H.G. Wells

How very seldom do you encounter in the world a man of great abilities, acquirements, experience, who will unmask his mind, unbutton his brains,…

— Benjamin Disraeli

This incomparable Author having at length been prevailed upon to appear in public, has in this Treatise given a most notable instance of the…

— Edmond Halley

“To think, analyze and invent are not anomalous acts, but the normal respiration of the intelligence.”

— Jorge Luis Borges

It is perhaps the most characteristic feature of the intellectual that he judges new ideas not by their specific merits but by the readiness…

— Friedrich August von Hayek

The great mathematician fully, almost ruthlessly, exploits the domain of permissible reasoning and skirts the impermissible. That his recklessness does not lead him into…

— Eugene Wigner