The Opinion Which Is Fated To Be

Whenever A Man Acts Purposively, He Acts Under A Belief In Some Experimental Phenomenon. Consequently, The Sum Of The Experimental Phenomena That A Proposition Implies Makes Up Its Entire Bearing Upon Human Conduct.

Another Characteristic Of Mathematical Thought Is That It Can Have No Success Where It Cannot Generalize.

It Is The Man Of Science, Eager To Have His Every Opinion Regenerated, His Every Idea Rationalized, By Drinking At The Fountain Of Fact, And Devoting All The Energies Of His Life To The Cult Of Truth, Not As He Understands It, But As He Does Not Yet Understand It, That Ought Properly To Be Called A Philosopher.

A True Proposition Is A Proposition Belief Which Would Never Lead To Such Disappointment So Long As The Proposition Is Not Understood Otherwise Than It Was Intended.

Kepler's Discovery Would Not Have Been Possible Without The Doctrine Of Conics. Now Contemporaries Of Kepler-such Penetrating Minds As Descartes And Pascal-were Abandoning The Study Of Geometry ... Because They Said It Was So Utterly Useless. There Was The Future Of The Human Race Almost Trembling In The Balance; For Had Not The Geometry Of Conic Sections Already Been Worked Out In Large Measure, And Had Their Opinion That Only Sciences Apparently Useful Ought To Be Pursued, The Nineteenth Century Would Have Had None Of Those Characters Which Distinguish It From The Ancien Régime.