Resignation Quotes (4 quotes)
At times the mathematician has the passion of a poet or a conqueror, the rigor of his arguments is that of a responsible statesman or, more simply, of a concerned father, and his tolerance and resignation are those of an old sage; he is revolutionary and conservative, skeptical and yet faithfully optimistic.
— Max Dehn
Address (18 Jan 1928) at the University of Frankfurt am Main, Germany. Trans. by Abe Schenitzer, and published in 'The Mentality of the Mathematician: A Characterization', The Mathematical Intelligencer (1983), 5, No. 2. As quoted in Michael Fitzgerald and Ioan James, The Mind of the Mathematician (2007), 6.
Botany is the school for patience, and it’s amateurs learn resignation from daily disappointments.
In letter to Madame de Tessé (25 Apr 1788). In Thomas Jefferson Correspondence: Printed from the Originals (1916), 7. The errant apostrophe in “it’s” appears in more than one texts checked by Webmaster.
My life as a surgeon-scientist, combining humanity and science, has been fantastically rewarding. In our daily patients we witness human nature in the raw–fear, despair, courage, understanding, hope, resignation, heroism. If alert, we can detect new problems to solve, new paths to investigate.
In Tore Frängsmyr and Jan E. Lindsten (eds.), Nobel Lectures: Physiology Or Medicine: 1981-1990 (1993), 565.
On the 25th of this month I remove to the SchoolHouse beyond Gray’s Ferry to succeed the present Teacher there. I shall recommence that painful profession once more with the same gloomy sullen resignation that a prisoner re-enters his Dungeon or a Malefactor mounts the Scaffold; Fate urges him, necessity me. … I shall have many difficulties to overcome in establishing my own Rules and authority. But perseverance overcometh all things.
From Letter to Charles Orr (14 Feb 1802), collected in Clark Hunter (ed.), The Life and Letters of Alexander Wilson (1983), 191-192.
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) -- 
