James A. Garfield Quotes

Don't hesitate to be as revolutionary as science. Don't hesitate to be as reactionary as the multiplication table.

I maintain that two and two would continue to make four, in spite of the whine of the amateur for three, or the cry of the critic for five.

Mathematics has the completely false reputation of yielding infallible conclusions. Its infallibility is nothing but identity. Two times two is not four, but it is just two times two, and that is what we call four for short. But four is nothing new at all. And thus it goes on and on in its conclusions, except that in the higher formulas the identity fades out of sight.

There exists, if I am not mistaken, an entire world which is the totality of mathematical truths, to which we have access only with our mind, just as a world of physical reality exists, the one like the other independent of ourselves, both of divine creation.

One cannot really argue with a mathematical theorem.

Not that the propositions of geometry are only approximately true, but that they remain absolutely true in regard to that Euclidean space which has been so long regarded as being the physical space of our experience.

Frankly, my fundamental beliefs have not changed.

I've never hidden my faith, but there are only a couple of issues I would die for. There are a few others I would dig my heels in on, and I've told my caucus that what they see is what they get.

My political opponents can have their pound of flesh … but they will not eat into my beliefs

I totally understand everyone else's view. They are obviously different to mine and I respect that but what I don't want to do is compromise what I believe in.

I have my principles. I'd rather die than change my principles.

People whose views are swung when you get into these ridiculous debates - I think they're all nonsense. You've got to have a fundamental belief, you've got to believe in what you believe in.

One thing that definitely did calculate properly for me was the mathematics that makes sense every day, no matter how I look at it, I can't get around it. I try to get around it, I keep trying to find one plus one is not two, somehow. I can't. People can talk about string theory, parallel realities, different dimensions, it's still one plus one is two, baby.

Florida is not going to vote for a con artist like Donald Trump.

[T]he 47th proposition in Euclid might now be voted down with as much ease as any proposition in politics; and therefore if Lord Hawkesbury hates the abstract truths of science as much as he hates concrete truth in human affairs, now is his time for getting rid of the multiplication table, and passing a vote of censure upon the pretensions of the hypotenuse.

I don't want to get into an argument with somebody about how they ought to vote.

Math is the only place where truth and beauty mean the same thing.

Consensus politics means that you cannot afford to give the many-headed beast, the public, anything to vote against, for voting against is what gargantuan pseudodemocracy has to come down to.

Yet we have a voting system that forbids us from actually bringing our values into our vote, which is, in my view, quite a disaster.

Euclid alone Has looked on Beauty bare. Fortunate they Who, though once only and then but far away, Have heard her massive sandal set on stone.

I'm a competitor. And I don't want to say, hey, just because this person is a woman or this person is a minority, that they're not going to get the white male vote.

I imagine that whenever the mind perceives a mathematical idea, it makes contact with Plato's world of mathematical concepts... When mathematicians communicate, this is made possible by each one having a direct route to truth, the consciousness of each being in a position to perceive mathematical truths directly, through the process of 'seeing'.

Mathematical demonstrations being built upon the impregnable Foundations of Geometry and Arithmetick are the only truths that can sink into the Mind of Man, void of all Uncertainty; and all other Discourses participate more or less of Truth according as their Subjects are more or less capable of Mathematical Demonstration.

I agree that two times two makes four is an excellent thing; but if we are dispensing praise, then two times two makes five is sometimes a most charming little thing as well.

As Bertrand Russell once wrote, two plus two is four even in the interior of the sun.