A mathematician, like a painter or a poet, is a maker of patterns. If his patterns are more permanent than theirs, it is because they are made with ideas.
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Nationality: British Type: Mathematician Born: February 7, 1877 Death: December 1, 1947 |
On two occasions I have been asked, 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question.
There are intangible realities which float near us, formless and without words; realities which no one has thought out, and which are excluded for lack of interpreters.