Steven Strogatz Quotes

Man discovers truth by reason only, not by faith.

It is by logic that we prove, but by intuition that we discover. To know how to criticize is good, to know how to create is better.

In mathematics, our freedom lies in the questions we ask — and in how we pursue them — but not in the answers awaiting us.

Columbus's eggs lie around by the hundreds of thousands, but Columbuses are met with less frequency.

Mysteries lie all around us, even in the most familiar things, waiting only to be perceived.

These long chains of perfectly simple and easy reasonings by means of which geometers are accustomed to carry out their most difficult demonstrations had led me to fancy that everything that can fall under human knowledge forms a similar sequence; and that so long as we avoid accepting as true what is not so, and always preserve the right order of deduction of one thing from another, there can be nothing too remote to be reached in the end, or to well hidden to be discovered.

I'm afraid that the following syllogism may be used by some in the future. Turing believes machines think Turing lies with men Therefore machines do not think Yours in distress, Alan

Between the two men, somewhere, a truth is lying, and that is what I try to find.

God forbid that Truth should be confined to Mathematical Demonstration!

Following Korzybski, I put things in probabilities, not absolutes... My only originality lies in applying this zetetic attitude outside the hardest of the hard sciences, physics, to softer sciences and then to non-sciences like politics, ideology, jury verdicts and, of course, conspiracy theory.

The new world lies before her eyes like an opened chest of treasure, a flock of birds over Africa, a thousand TVs all playing at once.

Beyond each corner, new directions lie in wait.

Mathematicians create by acts of insights and intuition. Logic then sanctions the conquests of intuition.

All through the centuries scholars and scientists have been imprisoned, tortured and burned alive for some discovery which seemed to conflict with a petty text of Scripture. Surely the immutable laws of the universe can teach more impressive and exalted lessons than the holy books of all the religions on earth.

Perchance the time will come when we shall not be content to go back and forth upon a raft to some huge Homeric or Shakespearean Indiaman that lies upon the reef, but build a bark out of that wreck and others that are buried in the sands of this desolate island, and such new timber as may be required, in which to sail away to whole new worlds of light and life, where our friends are.

No more fiction, for now we calculate; but that we may calculate, we had to make fiction first.

The claws of Truth were painful. The lies tore away like scabs, and John bled there for hours, stifling his cries of pain in the sleeve of his overcoat - the overcoat he'd received from his father.

The constructs of the mathematical mind are at the same time free and necessary. The individual mathematician feels free to define his notions and set up his axioms as he pleases. But the question is will he get his fellow mathematician interested in the constructs of his imagination. We cannot help the feeling that certain mathematical structures which have evolved through the combined efforts of the mathematical community bear the stamp of a necessity not affected by the accidents of their historical birth.

Knowing can be a curse on a person's life. I'd traded in a pack of lies for a pack of truth, and I didn't know which one was heavier.

One of the nice things about math and science is it’s obvious, you get the answer or you don’t get the answer.

Deceit comes in through the ears, but usually leaves through the eyes.

It is easier to perceive error than to find truth, for the former lies on the surface and is easily seen, while the latter lies in the depth, where few are willing to search for it.

There's math, and everything else is debatable!

What world lies beyond that stormy sea I do not know, but every ocean has a distant shore, and I shall reach it.

To establish what is true is very difficult. Frequently it is easier to establish what is false. And, passing through the false, it's possible to understand something about truth.