Roger Bacon Quotes

I am not a mathematician, but I was aware that for centuries, mathematics was considered the queen of the sciences because it claimed certainty. It was grounded on some fundamental certainties - axioms - that led to others.

You can't criticize geometry. It's never wrong.

Irrefragability, thy name is mathematics.

Mathematics is, I believe, the chief source of the belief in eternal and exact truth, as well as a sensible intelligible world.

I want to represent possibilities. I want to represent magic, right, that you're in a universe, and two plus two equals four.

The truth shall set you free. When you hear the truth, it sets you free. So mathematics is truth. It adds up. There's no error. Only time there's an error is when man miscalculates his own problems or his own equations.

Numbers are the most certain things we have.

Arithmetic is where the content lies, and not logic; but logic prompts certainty, and not arithmetic.

Our aim as scientists is objective truth; more truth, more interesting truth, more intelligible truth. We cannot reasonably aim at certainty. Once we realize that human knowledge is fallible, we realize also that we can never be completely certain that we have not made a mistake.

When speculation has done its worst, two and two still make four.

Except in pure mathematics, nothing is known for certain (although much is certainly false).

But again and again there comes a time in history when the man who dares to say that two and two make four is punished with death. The schoolteacher is well aware of this. And the question is not one of knowing what punishment or reward attends the making of this calculation. The question is one of knowing whether two and two do make four

Those who condemn the supreme certainty of mathematics feed on confusion, and can never silence the contradictions of the sophistical sciences which lead to eternal quackery.

What's important is that twice two is four and all the rest's nonsense.

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

Whatever we thought was certain is no longer certain, and therefore in science probably certain things must be correct, but in human behaviour I am not so sure.

Of course I shall go astray often...for who does not make mistakes? But I cannot go far wrong for I have seen the truth.

Physicists have come to realize that mathematics, when used with sufficient care, is a proven pathway to truth.

All the martyrs in the history of the world are not sufficient to establish the correctness of an opinion. Martyrdom, as a rule, establishes the sincerity of the martyr, - never the correctness of his thought. Things are true or false in themselves. Truth cannot be affected by opinions; it cannot be changed, established, or affected by martyrdom. An error cannot be believed sincerely enough to make it a truth.

There is not a single truth of science upon which we ought to bet more than about a million of millions to one.

Knowledge being to be had only of visible and certain truth, error is not a fault of our knowledge, but a mistake of our judgment, giving assent to that which is not true.

..., twice two is four is not life, gentlemen, but the beginning of death.

In mathematics there are no true controversies.

An equation is a prophecy that always comes true.

A great man, who was convinced that the truths of political and moral science are capable of the same certainty as those that form the system of physical science, even in those branches like astronomy that seem to approximate mathematical certainty. He cherished this belief, for it led to the consoling hope that humanity would inevitably make progress toward a state of happiness and improved character even as it has already done in its knowledge of the truth.