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A (38) B (43) C (35) D (64) E (52) F (14) G (42) H (79) I (3) J (22) K (29) L (47) M (29) N (18) O (4) P (89) Q (1) R (36) S (40) T (16) U (1) V (8) W (63) Y (1) Z (1)
##### H. G. Wells
Statistical thinking will one day be as necessary for efficient citizenship as the ability to read and write.
H. G. Wells
##### Huxley, Thomas Henry (1825-1895)
It is the first duty of a hypothesis to be intelligible.
##### Huxley, Thomas Henry (1825-1895)
The mathematician starts with a few propositions, the proof of which is so obvious that they are called self-evident, and the rest of his work consists of subtle deductions from them. The teaching of languages, at any rate as ordinarily practised, is of the same general nature: authority and tradition furnish the data, and the mental operations are deductive.
"Scientific Education - Notes of an After-dinner Speech." Macmillan's Magazine, Vol XX, 1869.
##### Huxley, Thomas Henry (1825-1895)
This seems to be one of the many cases in which the admitted accuracy of mathematical processes is allowed to throw a wholly inadmissible appearance of authority over the results obtained by them. Mathematics may be compared to a mill of exquisite workmanship, which grinds your stuff of any degree of fineness; but, nevertheless, what you get out depends on what you put in; and as the grandest mill in the world will not extract wheat flour from peascods, so pages of formulae will not get a definite result out of loose data.
Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society, 25,1869.
##### Huxley, Aldous
[He] was as much enchanted by the rudiments of algebra as he would have been if I had given him an engine worked by steam, with a methylated spirit lamp to heat the boiler; more enchanted, perhaps, for the engine would have got broken, and, remaining always itself, would in any case have lost its charm, while the rudiments of algebra continued to grow and blossom in his mind with an unfailing luxuriance. Every day he made the discovery of something which seemed to him exquisitely beautiful; the new toy was inexhaustible in its potentialities.
Young Archimedes.
##### Huxley, Aldous
I admit that mathematical science is a good thing. But excessive devotion to it is a bad thing.
Interview with J. W. N. Sullivan, Contemporary Mind, London, 1934.
##### Huxley, Aldous
If we evolved a race of Isaac Newtons, that would not be progress. For the price Newton had to pay for being a supreme intellect was that he was incapable of friendship, love, fatherhood, and many other desirable things. As a man he was a failure; as a monster he was superb.
Interview with J. W. N. Sullivan, Contemporary Mind, London, 1934.
##### Hume, David (1711 - 1776)
If we take in our hand any volume; of divinity or school metaphysics, for instance; let us ask, Does it contain any abstract reasoning concerning quantity or number?' No. Does it contain any experimental reasoning concerning matter of fact and existence?' No. Commit it then to the flames: for it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion.
Treatise Concerning Human Understanding.
##### Hughes, Richard
Science, being human enquiry, can hear no answer except an answer couched somehow in human tones. Primitive man stood in the mountains and shouted against a cliff; the echo brought back his own voice, and he believed in a disembodied spirit. The scientist of today stands counting out loud in the face of the unknown. Numbers come back to him - and he believes in the Great Mathematician.
In J. R. Newman (ed.) The World of Mathematics, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1956.
##### Hofstadter, Douglas R. (1945 - )
Hofstadter's Law: It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter's Law.
Godel, Escher, Bach 1979.