Quote#World
Mathematics may be compared to a mill of exquisite workmanship, which…
Quote byThomas Henry Huxley · 1825–1895
Commonly attributed — not confirmed in an authoritative edition. Cited on Wikiquote to: "Geological Reform", Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society of London, Vol. 25 (1869); as reprinted in Huxley, Discourses, Biological and Geological essays (1909), pp. 335–336.
English (original)
Mathematics may be compared to a mill of exquisite workmanship, which grinds you stuff of any degree of fineness; but, nevertheless, what you get out depends upon what you put in; and as the grandest mill in the world will not extract wheat-flour from peascod, so pages of formulae will not get a definite result out of loose data.
— Thomas Henry Huxley
More from Thomas Henry Huxley
Extinguished theologians lie about the cradle of every science as the strangled snakes beside that of Hercules
A man has no reason to be ashamed of having an ape for his grandfather.
I cannot but think that he who finds a certain proportion of pain and evil inseparably woven up in the life of the very worms, will bear his own share with more courage and submission
To a person uninstructed in natural history, his country or sea-side stroll is a walk through a gallery filled with wonderful works of art, nine-tenths of which have their faces turned to the wall.
But orthodoxy is the Bourbon of the world of thought.
Life is too short to occupy oneself with the slaying of the slain more than once.