Quotes About Infinity and The Infinite
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What follows is a collection of interesting (and sometimes quite provocative) quotations about Infinity and the Infinite. Many of these can be found at http://thinkexist.com/quotes/with/keyword/infinity/ from which the descriptions of the authors were also taken.
<>Dip into this collection from time to time for enjoyment, wisdom, inspiration, and argument. DonÕt try to read them all through in one sitting!******************************************
"To see a world in a grain of sand and heaven in a wild flower Hold infinity in the palms of your hand and eternity in an hour."
William Blake (English visionary Mystic, Poet, Painter and Engraver. 1757-1827)
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"It is known that there are an infinte number of worlds, simply because there is an infinite amount of space for them to be in. However, not every one of them is inhabited. Any finite number divided by infinity is as near nothing as makes no odds, so the average population of all the planets in the Universe can be said to be zero. From this it follows that the population of the whole Universe is also zero, and that any people you may meet from time to time are merely products of a deranged imagination."
Douglas Adams (British comic Writer, 1952-2001)
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"There is a fifth dimension, beyond that which is known to man. It is a dimension as vast as space and as timeless as infinity. It is the middle ground between light and shadow, between science and superstition."
Rod Serling (American Producer, Host and Writer, for The Twilight Zone, 1924-1975)
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"The self-confidence of the warrior is not the self-confidence of the average man. The average man seeks certainty in the eyes of the onlooker and calls that self-confidence. The warrior seeks impeccability in his own eyes and calls that humbleness. The average man is hooked to his fellow men, while the warrior is hooked only to infinity."
Carlos Castaneda (Peruvian born American best-selling Author and Writer, 1925-1998)
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"The only way to comprehend what mathematicians mean by Infinity is to contemplate the extent of human stupidity."
Voltaire (French Philosopher and Writer. One of the greatest of all French authors, 1694-1778)
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"Falsehood has an infinity of combinations, but truth has only one mode of being."
Jean-Jacques Rousseau (French philosopher and writer whose novels inspired the leaders of the French Revolution, 1712-1778)
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"To infinity and beyond."
Buzz Lightyear
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"Suffering is permanent, obscure and dark, And shares the nature of infinity"
William Wordsworth (Major English Romantic Poet. 1770-1850)
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"We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far."
H. P Lovecraft (American Author of fantastic and macabre short novels and stories, one of the 20th century masters of the Gothic tale of terror. 1890-1937)
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"This is the truth: as from a fire aflame thousands of sparks come forth, even so from the Creator an infinity of beings have life and to him return again."
Marcus Tullius Cicero (Ancient Roman Lawyer, Writer, Scholar, Orator and Statesman, 106 BC-43 BC)
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"It seemed to be a necessary ritual that he should prepare himself for sleep by meditating under the solemnity of the night sky... a mysterious transaction between the infinity of the soul and the infinity of the universe."
Victor Hugo (French romantic Poet, Novelist and Dramatist, 1802-1885)
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"Yet it is in this loneliness that the deepest activities begin. It is here that you discover act without motion, labor that is profound repose, vision in obscurity, and, beyond all desire, a fulfillment whose limits extend to infinity."
Thomas Merton (American and Trappist Monk t Our Lady of Gethsemani Abbey in Trappist, Kentucky, 1915-1968)
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"The religious idea of God cannot do full duty for the metaphysical infinity."
Alan Watts (American Writer, Thinker and Interpreter of Zen Buddhism, 1915-1973)
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"You and I are essentially infinite choice-makers. In every moment of our existence, we are in that field of all possibilities where we have access to an infinity of choices."
Deepak Chopra (Indian ayurvedic Physician and Author, b.1947)
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"Mystery has its own mysteries, and there are gods above gods. We have ours, they have theirs. That is what's known as infinity."
Jean Cocteau (French Poet, Novelist, Actor, Film Director and Painter, 1889-1963)
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"By confronting us with irreducible mysteries that stretch our daily vision to include infinity, nature opens an inviting and guiding path toward a spiritual life."
Thomas More (English Humanist, Statesman and Chancellor of England, 1477-1535)
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"Meditation is the dissolution of thoughts in Eternal awareness or Pure consciousness without objectification, knowing without thinking, merging finitude in infinity."
Swami Sivananda (Indian Yoga master, Physician, Monk and Founder of The Divine Life Society, 1887-1963)
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"The principle of the Gothic architecture is infinity made imaginable."
Samuel Taylor Coleridge (English lyrical Poet, Critic and Philosopher. 1772-1834)
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"I'm only a four-dimensional creature. Haven't got a clue how to visualise infinity. Even Einstein hadn't. I know because I asked him."
Patrick Moore
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"Man is equally incapable of seeing the nothingness from which he emerges and the infinity in which he is engulfed."
Blaise Pascal (French Mathematician, Philosopher and Physicist, 1623-1662)
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"God is the tangential point between zero and infinity"
Alfred Jarry (French writer, 1873-1907)
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"I mistrust the satisfaction which makes a display of the possession of Infinity; that is called fatuity in philosophic terms."
Edgar Quinet (French political Philosopher, Poet and Historian who made a significant contribution to the developing tradition of liberalism in France. 1803-1875)
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"I cannot help it;- in spite of myself, infinity torments me."
Alfred De Musset (French Romantic poet and playwright, 1810-1857)
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"The fear of infinity is a form of myopia that destroys the possibility of seeing the actual infinite, even though it in its highest form has created and sustains us, and in its secondary transfinite forms occurs all around us and even inhabits our minds."
Georg Cantor
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"The last function of reason is to recognize that there are an infinity of things which surpass it."
Blaise Pascal (French Mathematician, Philosopher and Physicist, 1623-1662)
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"The divine attributes are first developed in ourselves, and thence transferred to our Creator. The idea of God, sublime and awful as it is, is the idea of our own spiritual nature, purified and enlarged to infinity. In ourselves are the elements of the Divinity."
William Ellery Channing (American moralist, Unitarian Clergyman and Author, 1780-1842)
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"I think that the leaf of a tree, the meanest insect on which we trample, are in themselves arguments more conclusive than any which can be adduced that some vast intellect animates Infinity."
Percy Bysshe Shelley (English Romantic Poet whose passionate search for personal love and social justice was gradually channeled from overt actions into poems that rank with the greatest in the English language. 1792-1822)
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"The 'infinity' is spread all over!! The 'infinity' and the 'boundless one' (God) both meet at a point. "
Atharva Veda
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"One cannot long remain so absorbed in contemplation of emptiness without being increasingly attracted to it. In vain one bestows on it the name of infinity; this does not change its nature. When one feels such pleasure in non-existence, one's inclination can be completely satisfied only by completely ceasing to exist."
Emile Durkheim (French Sociologist; tudied anomie & social cohesion; wrote "The Division of Labor in Society" 1893, "Suicide" 1897 (also "Le Suicide"), 1858-1917)
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"Between religion's ''this is'' and poetry's ''but suppose this is,'' there must always be some kind of tension, until the possible and the actual meet at infinity."
Northrop Frye
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"It [the soul] is truly an image of the infinity of God, and no words can do justice to its grandeur."
William Ellery Channing (American moralist, Unitarian Clergyman and Author, 1780-1842)
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"The poetic notion of infinity is far greater than that which is sponsored by any creed."
Joseph Brodsky (Russian born American Poet and Writer. Nobel Prize for Literature in 1987. 1940-1996)
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"A single idea, if it is right, saves us the labor of an infinity of experiences"
Jacques Maritain
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"If any philosopher had been asked for a definition of infinity, he might have produced some unintelligible rigmarole, but he would certainly not have been able to give a definition that had any meaning at all."
Bertrand Russell (English Logician and Philosopher 1872-1970)
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"Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe."
Albert Einstein (German born American Physicist who developed the special and general theories of relativity. Nobel Prize for Physics in 1921. 1879-1955)
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"Our knowledge can only be finite, while our ignorance must necessarily be infinite."
Karl Popper
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"The investigation of nature is an infinite pasture-ground where all may graze, and where the more bite, the longer the grass grows, the sweeter is its flavor, and the more it nourishes."
Aldous Huxley (English Novelist and Critic, 1894-1963)
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"True love is eternal, infinite, and always like itself. It is equal and pure, without violent demonstrations: it is seen with white hairs and is always young in the heart."
Honore de Balzac (French Novelist He developed the realistic novel describing French society in Comedie Humaine (1841). 1799-1850)
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"Finite to fail, but infinite to venture."
Emily Dickinson (American Poet who has been called the New England mystic, 1830-1886)
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"There is an infinite difference between a little wrong and just right, between fairly good and the best, between mediocrity and superiority."
Orison Swett Marden
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"The primary imagination I hold to be the living power and prime agent of all human perception, and as a repetition in the finite mind of the eternal act of creation in the infinite I Am."
Samuel Taylor Coleridge (English lyrical Poet, Critic and Philosopher. 1772-1834)
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"Music is well said to be the speech of angels; in fact, nothing among the utterances allowed to man is felt to be so divine. It brings us near to the infinite."
Thomas Carlyle (Scottish Historian and Essayist, leading figure in the Victorian era. 1795-1881)
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"In the time of your life, live - so that in that wondrous time you shall not add to the misery and sorrow of the world, but shall smile to the infinite variety and mystery of it."
William Saroyan (American Writer known for his stories celebrating the joy of living in spite of poverty. 1908-1981)
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"I write from solitude and I speak from solitude...However I did not seek solitude. I found it. And from my solitude I think, work, and live - and I believe that I write and speak with almost infinite composure and resignation. In my solitude I consta"
Camilo Jose Cela (Spanish writer, 1989 Nobel Prize for Literature, 1916-2002)
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"Nature is full of infinite causes that have never occurred in experience."
Leonardo da Vinci (Italian draftsman, Painter, Sculptor, Architect and Engineer whose genius epitomized the Renaissance humanist ideal. 1452-1519)
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"Sharp nostalgia, infinite and terrible, for what I already possess."
Juan Ramon Jimenez (Spanish poet, 1956 Nobel Prize for Literature, 1881-1958)
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"But Nature flies from the infinite, for the infinite is unending or imperfect, and Nature ever seeks an end."
Aristotle (Ancient Greek Philosopher, Scientist and Physician, 384 BC-322 BC)
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"Our account does not rob mathematicians of their science, by disproving the actual existence of the infinite in the direction of increase, in the sense of the untraceable. In point of fact they do not need the infinite and do not use it. They postula"
Aristotle
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"I cannot conceive otherwise than that He, the Infinite Father, expects or requires no worship or praise from us, but that he is even infinitely above it."
Benjamin Franklin (American Statesman, Scientist, Philosopher, Printer, Writer and Inventor. 1706-1790)
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"The ages roll Forward; and forward with them draw my soul Into Time's infinite sea"
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"Read it as you would any other book; think of it as you would of any other; get the bandage of reverence from your eyes; drive from your heart the phantom of fear; push from the throne of your brain the cowled form of superstition - then read the Holy Bible, and you will be amazed that you ever, for one moment, supposed a being of infinite wisdom, goodness, and purity to be the author of such ignorance and of such atrocity."
Robert Green Ingersoll (American Statesman and Orator, noted for his broad range of culture and his defense of atheism. 1833-1899)
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"Every true man is a cause, a country, and an age; requires infinite spaces and numbers and time fully to accomplish his design; - and posterity seem to follow his steps as a train of clients"
Ralph Waldo Emerson (American Poet, Lecturer and Essayist, 1803-1882)
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"It was certainly not by design that the particles fell into order, they did not work out what they were going to do, but because many of them by many chances struck one another in the course of infinite time and encountered every possible form and mo"
Lucretius
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"The impotence of God is infinite"
Anatole France (French Writer, member of the French Academy and Nobel Prize for Literature in 1921, 1844-1924)
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"By the time you swear you are his, shivering and sighing,
And he vows his passion is infinite and undying-
Lady, make a note of this: One of you is lying"
Dorothy Parker (American short-story Writer and Poet, 1893-1967)
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"Genius is an infinite capacity for taking life by the scruff of the neck"
Christopher Quill
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"The infinite is in the finite of every instant"
Zen Proverb
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"Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale Her infinite variety.
William Shakespeare (English Dramatist, Playwright and Poet, 1564-1616)
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"For these fellows of infinite tongue that can rhyme themselves into ladies' favors, they do always reason themselves out again"
William Shakespeare
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"Our minds are finite, and yet even in these circumstances of finitude we are surrounded by possibilities that are infinite, and the purpose of life is to grasp as much as we can out of that infinitude"
Alfred North Whitehead (British Mathematician and Philosopher, 1861-1947)
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"Music fills the infinite between two souls"
Rabindranath Tagore (Indian Poet, Playwright and Essayist, Won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1913, 1861-1941)
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"Life is full of infinite absurdities, which, strangely enough, do not even need to appear plausible, since they are true"
Luigi Pirandello (Italian short-story Playwright, Writer, Dramatist and Novelist, who became famous as an innovator in modern drama with his creation of the "theater within the theater" in the 1920s, 1867-1936)
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"Even the standard example of ancient nonsense - the debate about angels on pinheads - makes sense once you realize that theologians were not discussing whether five or eighteen would fit, but whether a pin could house a finite or an infinite number"
Stephen Jay Gould
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"No finite point has meaning without an infinite reference point"
Jean-Paul Sartre (French existentialist philosopher and writer, 1905-1980)
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"Once the realization is accepted that even between the closest human beings infinite distances continue, a wonderful living side by side can grow, if they succeed in loving the distance between them which makes it possible for each to see the other whole against the sky."
Rainer Maria Rilke (Austro-German lyric poet, author of Duino Elegies and Sonnets to Orpheus, 1875-1926)
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"If you tell the truth, you have infinite power supporting you; but if not, you have infinite power against you"
Charles Gordon (British general and colonial administrator 1833-1885)
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"Reason's last step is the recognition that there are an infinite number of things which are beyond it"
Blaise Pascal (French Mathematician, Philosopher and Physicist, 1623-1662)
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"The most tranquil house, with the most serene inhabitants, living upon the utmost regularity of system, is yet exemplifying infinite diversities"
Henry Ward Beecher (Liberal US Congregational minister, 1813-1887)
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"Not in books only, nor yet in oral discourse, but often also in words there are boundless stores of moral and historic truth, and no less of passion and imagination laid up, from which lessons of infinite worth may be derived"
Richard Whately
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"What is man in nature? Nothing in relation to the infinite, all in relation to nothing, a mean between nothing and everything"
Blaise Pascal (French Mathematician, Philosopher and Physicist, 1623-1662)
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"She knew her distance and did angle for me, Madding my eagerness with her restraint, As all impediments on fancy's course Are motives of more fancy; and in fine, her infinite cunning, with her modern grace Subdued me to her rate"
William Shakespeare
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"Silently one by one, in the infinite meadows of heaven, Blossomed the lovely stars, the forget-me-nots of the angels"
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (the most popular American Poet in the 19th century, 1807-1882
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