TODAY IN SCIENCE HISTORY ®  •  TODAYINSCI ®
Celebrating 24 Years on the Web
Find science on or your birthday

Today in Science History - Quickie Quiz
Who said: “God does not care about our mathematical difficulties. He integrates empirically.”
more quiz questions >>
Home > Category Index for Science Quotations > Category Index R > Category: Rashly

Rashly Quotes (2 quotes)

It may be observed of mathematicians that they only meddle with such things as are certain, passing by those that are doubtful and unknown. They profess not to know all things, neither do they affect to speak of all things. What they know to be true, and can make good by invincible arguments, that they publish and insert among their theorems. Of other things they are silent and pass no judgment at all, chusing [choosing] rather to acknowledge their ignorance, than affirm anything rashly. They affirm nothing among their arguments or assertions which is not most manifestly known and examined with utmost rigour, rejecting all probable conjectures and little witticisms. They submit nothing to authority, indulge no affection, detest subterfuges of words, and declare their sentiments, as in a Court of Judicature [Justice], without passion, without apology; knowing that their reasons, as Seneca testifies of them, are not brought to persuade, but to compel.
Mathematical Lectures (1734), 64.
Science quotes on:  |  Acknowledge (33)  |  Affection (44)  |  Affirm (3)  |  Apology (8)  |  Argument (145)  |  Authority (99)  |  Certain (557)  |  Choose (116)  |  Compel (31)  |  Confirm (58)  |  Conjecture (51)  |  Court (35)  |  Declare (48)  |  Detest (5)  |  Do (1905)  |  Doubt (314)  |  Doubtful (30)  |  Good (906)  |  Ignorance (254)  |  Indulge (15)  |  Invincible (6)  |  Judgment (140)  |  Justice (40)  |  Know (1538)  |  Knowing (137)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Known (453)  |  Little (717)  |  Manifestly (11)  |  Mathematician (407)  |  Meddle (3)  |  Most (1728)  |  Nature Of Mathematics (80)  |  Nothing (1000)  |  Observed (149)  |  Other (2233)  |  Pass (241)  |  Passing (76)  |  Passion (121)  |  Persuade (11)  |  Probable (24)  |  Profess (21)  |  Publish (42)  |  Reason (766)  |  Reject (67)  |  Rigour (21)  |  Lucius Annaeus Seneca (21)  |  Sentiment (16)  |  Silent (31)  |  Speak (240)  |  Submit (21)  |  Testify (7)  |  Theorem (116)  |  Thing (1914)  |  Truth (1109)  |  Unknown (195)  |  Witticism (2)  |  Word (650)

The Mathematics, I say, which effectually exercises, not vainly deludes or vexatiously torments studious Minds with obscure Subtilties, perplexed Difficulties, or contentious Disquisitions; which overcomes without Opposition, triumphs without Pomp, compels without Force, and rules absolutely without Loss of Liberty; which does not privately over-reach a weak Faith, but openly assaults an armed Reason, obtains a total Victory, and puts on inevitable Chains; whose Words are so many Oracles, and Works as many Miracles; which blabs out nothing rashly, nor designs anything from the Purpose, but plainly demonstrates and readily performs all Things within its Verge; which obtrudes no false Shadow of Science, but the very Science itself, the Mind firmly adhering to it, as soon as possessed of it, and can never after desert it of its own Accord, or be deprived of it by any Force of others: Lastly the Mathematics, which depends upon Principles clear to the Mind, and agreeable to Experience; which draws certain Conclusions, instructs by profitable Rules, unfolds pleasant Questions; and produces wonderful Effects; which is the fruitful Parent of, I had almost said all, Arts, the unshaken Foundation of Sciences, and the plentiful Fountain of Advantage to human Affairs.
Address to the University of Cambridge upon being elected Lucasian Professor of Mathematics (14 Mar 1664). In Mathematical Lectures (1734), xxviii.
Science quotes on:  |  Advantage (144)  |  Agreeable (20)  |  Arm (82)  |  Art (680)  |  Certain (557)  |  Chain (51)  |  Compel (31)  |  Conclusion (266)  |  Delude (3)  |  Demonstrate (79)  |  Depend (238)  |  Desert (59)  |  Design (203)  |  Difficulty (201)  |  Draw (140)  |  Effect (414)  |  Estimates of Mathematics (30)  |  Exercise (113)  |  Experience (494)  |  Faith (209)  |  False (105)  |  Force (497)  |  Foundation (177)  |  Fountain (18)  |  Fruitful (61)  |  Human (1512)  |  Inevitable (53)  |  Instruction (101)  |  Liberty (29)  |  Loss (117)  |  Mathematics (1395)  |  Mind (1377)  |  Miracle (85)  |  Never (1089)  |  Nothing (1000)  |  Obscure (66)  |  Obtain (164)  |  Opposition (49)  |  Oracle (5)  |  Other (2233)  |  Overcome (40)  |  Parent (80)  |  Perform (123)  |  Pomp (2)  |  Possess (157)  |  Principle (530)  |  Profitable (29)  |  Purpose (336)  |  Question (649)  |  Reach (286)  |  Reason (766)  |  Rule (307)  |  Say (989)  |  Science And Art (195)  |  Shadow (73)  |  Soon (187)  |  Studious (5)  |  Thing (1914)  |  Torment (18)  |  Total (95)  |  Triumph (76)  |  Verge (10)  |  Victory (40)  |  Weak (73)  |  Wonderful (155)  |  Word (650)  |  Work (1402)


Carl Sagan Thumbnail In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion. (1987) -- Carl Sagan
Quotations by:Albert EinsteinIsaac NewtonLord KelvinCharles DarwinSrinivasa RamanujanCarl SaganFlorence NightingaleThomas EdisonAristotleMarie CurieBenjamin FranklinWinston ChurchillGalileo GalileiSigmund FreudRobert BunsenLouis PasteurTheodore RooseveltAbraham LincolnRonald ReaganLeonardo DaVinciMichio KakuKarl PopperJohann GoetheRobert OppenheimerCharles Kettering  ... (more people)

Quotations about:Atomic  BombBiologyChemistryDeforestationEngineeringAnatomyAstronomyBacteriaBiochemistryBotanyConservationDinosaurEnvironmentFractalGeneticsGeologyHistory of ScienceInventionJupiterKnowledgeLoveMathematicsMeasurementMedicineNatural ResourceOrganic ChemistryPhysicsPhysicianQuantum TheoryResearchScience and ArtTeacherTechnologyUniverseVolcanoVirusWind PowerWomen ScientistsX-RaysYouthZoology  ... (more topics)
Sitewide search within all Today In Science History pages:
Visit our Science and Scientist Quotations index for more Science Quotes from archaeologists, biologists, chemists, geologists, inventors and inventions, mathematicians, physicists, pioneers in medicine, science events and technology.

Names index: | A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | J | K | L | M | N | O | P | Q | R | S | T | U | V | W | X | Y | Z |

Categories index: | 1 | 2 | A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | J | K | L | M | N | O | P | Q | R | S | T | U | V | W | X | Y | Z |
Thank you for sharing.
- 100 -
Sophie Germain
Gertrude Elion
Ernest Rutherford
James Chadwick
Marcel Proust
William Harvey
Johann Goethe
John Keynes
Carl Gauss
Paul Feyerabend
- 90 -
Antoine Lavoisier
Lise Meitner
Charles Babbage
Ibn Khaldun
Euclid
Ralph Emerson
Robert Bunsen
Frederick Banting
Andre Ampere
Winston Churchill
- 80 -
John Locke
Bronislaw Malinowski
Bible
Thomas Huxley
Alessandro Volta
Erwin Schrodinger
Wilhelm Roentgen
Louis Pasteur
Bertrand Russell
Jean Lamarck
- 70 -
Samuel Morse
John Wheeler
Nicolaus Copernicus
Robert Fulton
Pierre Laplace
Humphry Davy
Thomas Edison
Lord Kelvin
Theodore Roosevelt
Carolus Linnaeus
- 60 -
Francis Galton
Linus Pauling
Immanuel Kant
Martin Fischer
Robert Boyle
Karl Popper
Paul Dirac
Avicenna
James Watson
William Shakespeare
- 50 -
Stephen Hawking
Niels Bohr
Nikola Tesla
Rachel Carson
Max Planck
Henry Adams
Richard Dawkins
Werner Heisenberg
Alfred Wegener
John Dalton
- 40 -
Pierre Fermat
Edward Wilson
Johannes Kepler
Gustave Eiffel
Giordano Bruno
JJ Thomson
Thomas Kuhn
Leonardo DaVinci
Archimedes
David Hume
- 30 -
Andreas Vesalius
Rudolf Virchow
Richard Feynman
James Hutton
Alexander Fleming
Emile Durkheim
Benjamin Franklin
Robert Oppenheimer
Robert Hooke
Charles Kettering
- 20 -
Carl Sagan
James Maxwell
Marie Curie
Rene Descartes
Francis Crick
Hippocrates
Michael Faraday
Srinivasa Ramanujan
Francis Bacon
Galileo Galilei
- 10 -
Aristotle
John Watson
Rosalind Franklin
Michio Kaku
Isaac Asimov
Charles Darwin
Sigmund Freud
Albert Einstein
Florence Nightingale
Isaac Newton


by Ian Ellis
who invites your feedback
Thank you for sharing.
Today in Science History
Sign up for Newsletter
with quiz, quotes and more.