Quote#Children
Every boy... should be able by the age of 12 to write his own…
Quote byWilliam Thomson, 1st Baron Kelvin · 1825–1907
Commonly attributed — not confirmed in an authoritative edition. Cited on Wikiquote to: At a Glasgow University Club dinner, as quoted by William Ramsay, The Life and Letters of Joseph Black, M.D. (1918) pp. 7-8..
English (original)
Every boy... should be able by the age of 12 to write his own language with accuracy and some elegance; he should have a reading knowledge of French, and be able to translate Latin and easy Greek authors, and have some acquaintance with German. Having learned thus the meaning of words... a boy should study Logic, so as to be able to apply his words sensibly.
— William Thomson, 1st Baron Kelvin
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Quaternions came from Hamilton after his really good work had been done, and though beautifully ingenious, have been an unmixed evil to those who have touched them in any way.
Do not imagine that mathematics is hard and crabbed, and repulsive to common sense. It is merely the etherealization of common sense.