D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson famous quotes

Last updated: Sep 5, 2024

The harmony of the world is made manifest in Form and Number, and the heart and soul and all the poetry of Natural Philosophy are embodied in the concept of mathematical beauty.
-- D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson

#Education #Philosophy #Heart
Cell and tissue, shell and bone, leaf and flower, are so many portions of matter, and it is in obedience to the laws of physics that their particles have been moved, moulded and conformed. They are no exceptions to the rule that God always geometrizes. Their problems of form are in the first instance mathematical problems, their problems of growth are essentially physical problems, and the morphologist is, ipso facto, a student of physical science.
-- D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson

#Flower #Math #Law
The perfection of mathematical beauty is such...that whatsoever is most beautiful and regular is also found to be most useful and excellent.
-- D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson

#Beautiful #Perfection #Excellent
Numerical precision is the very soul of science.
-- D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson

#Education #Math #Soul
Sagging wrinkles, hanging breasts and many another sign of age are part of gravitation's slow relentless handiwork.
-- D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson

#Wrinkles #Age #Sagging
It is success that colours all in life, Success makes fools admir'd, makes villains honest.
-- D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson

#Fool #Honest #Success In Life
We call a thing big or little with reference to what it is wont to be, as we speak of a small elephant or a big rat.
-- D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson

#Elephants #Littles #Rats

To the uneducated, an A is just three sticks.
I know that knowledge and intelligence are not the same thing - but they do live in the same neighborhood. I know once again, firsthand, the joy of learning.
In universities and intellectual circles, academics can guarantee themselves popularity -- or, which is just as satisfying, unpopularity -- by being opinionated rather than by being learned.
True, a little learning is a dangerous thing, but it still beats total ignorance.
If an ignorant person is attracted by the things of the world, that is bad. But if a learned person is thus attracted, it is worse.
The folkish state must not adjust its entire educational work primarily to the inoculation of mere knowledge, but to the breeding of absolutely healthy bodies. The training of mental abilities is only secondary. And here again, first place must be taken by the development of character, especially the promotion of will-power and determination, combined with the training of joy in responsibility, and only in last place comes scientific schooling.
I am not a pessimist but a pejorist (as George Eliot said she was not an optimist but a meliorist); and that philosophy is founded on my observation of the world, not on anything so trivial and irrelevant as personal history.
The pretended physical philosophy of modern days strips Man of all his moral attributes, or holds them of no account in the estimate of his origin and place in the created world.
He would not stay for me, and who can wonder? He would not stay for me to stand and gaze. I shook his hand, and tore my heart in sunder, And went with half my life about my ways.
To truly find God, truth needs to be found independently from the opinions of others. The truth has to be found in our hearts.

D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson famous quotes

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