Reflective Quotes (3 quotes)
A peculiar beauty reigns in the realm of mathematics, a beauty which resembles not so much the beauty of art as the beauty of nature and which affects the reflective mind, which has acquired an appreciation of it, very much like the latter.
From Berliner Monatsberichte (1867), 395. As translated in Robert Édouard Moritz, Memorabilia Mathematica; Or, The Philomath’s Quotation-book (1914), 185.
Forc’d by reflective Reason, I confess,
Human science is uncertain guess.
Human science is uncertain guess.
From poem, 'Solomon', Collected in Samuel Johnson (ed.), The Works of the English Poets: Volume the Thirty-First: The Poems of Prior: Volume II (1760), 126.
The ideal government of all reflective men, from Aristotle onward, is one which lets the individual alone–one which barely escapes being no government at all. This ideal, I believe, will be realized in the world twenty or thirty centuries after I have passed from these scenes and taken up my public duties in Hell.
…...
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) -- 
