Simon Singh · 315 pages
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“God exists since mathematics is consistent, and the Devil exists since we cannot prove it.”
― Simon Singh, quote from Fermat's Enigma: The Epic Quest to Solve the World's Greatest Mathematical Problem
“Pascal was even convinced that he could use his theories to justify a belief in God. He stated that ‘the excitement that a gambler feels when making a bet is equal to the amount he might win multiplied by the probability of winning it’. He then argued that the possible prize of eternal happiness has an infinite value and that the probability of entering heaven by leading a virtuous life, no matter how small, is certainly finite. Therefore, according to Pascal’s definition, religion was a game of infinite excitement and one worth playing, because multiplying an infinite prize by a finite probability results in infinity.”
― Simon Singh, quote from Fermat's Enigma: The Epic Quest to Solve the World's Greatest Mathematical Problem
“Pascal was even convinced that he could use his theories to justify a belief in God. He stated that ‘the excitement that a gambler feels when making a bet is equal to the amount he might win multiplied by the probability of winning it’.”
― Simon Singh, quote from Fermat's Enigma: The Epic Quest to Solve the World's Greatest Mathematical Problem
“What is the least number of weights that can be used on a set of scales to weigh any whole number of kilograms from 1 to 40?”
― Simon Singh, quote from Fermat's Enigma: The Epic Quest to Solve the World's Greatest Mathematical Problem
“Maths is one of the purest forms of thought, and to outsiders mathematicians may seem almost other-worldly.”
― Simon Singh, quote from Fermat's Enigma: The Epic Quest to Solve the World's Greatest Mathematical Problem
“Proof is what lies at the heart of maths, and is what marks it out from other sciences. Other sciences have hypotheses that are tested against experimental evidence until they fail, and are overtaken by new hypotheses. In maths, absolute proof is the goal, and once something is proved, it is proved forever, with no room for change.”
― Simon Singh, quote from Fermat's Enigma: The Epic Quest to Solve the World's Greatest Mathematical Problem
“Archimedes will be remembered when Aeschylus is forgotten, because languages die and mathematical ideas do not. ‘Immortality’ may be a silly word, but probably a mathematician has the best chance of whatever it may mean. G.H. Hardy 23”
― Simon Singh, quote from Fermat's Enigma: The Epic Quest to Solve the World's Greatest Mathematical Problem
“The mathematical life of a mathematician is short. Work rarely improves after the age of twenty-five or thirty. If little has been accomplished by then, little will ever be accomplished.”
― Simon Singh, quote from Fermat's Enigma: The Epic Quest to Solve the World's Greatest Mathematical Problem
“Although this may seem a paradox, all exact science is dominated by the idea of approximation.”
― Simon Singh, quote from Fermat's Enigma: The Epic Quest to Solve the World's Greatest Mathematical Problem
“Euclid discovered that perfect numbers are always the multiple of two numbers, one of which is a power of 2 and the other being the next power of 2 minus 1.”
― Simon Singh, quote from Fermat's Enigma: The Epic Quest to Solve the World's Greatest Mathematical Problem
Simon Singh
Born place: in Somerset, The United Kingdom
Born date January 1, 1964
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“Abandoned by a God in whom many of us believed, we lay prostrate and dazed in our demi-tomb. From time to time, one of us would look over the parapet to stare across the dusty plain into the east, from which death might bear down on us at any moment. We felt like lost souls, who had forgotten that men are made for something else, that time exists, and hope, and sentiments other than anguish; that friendship can be more than ephemeral, that love can sometimes occur, that the earth can be productive, and used for something other than burying the dead.”
― quote from The Forgotten Soldier
“...This is a place of learning where very few learn anything of value. That you, who have courage and intelligence, are held in contempt by most of your kind here because you have no sorcery... I have seen you protect others, though they consider you to be weaker than they. I have seen a very few decent people, like the boy we took from the tower. I have seen women trade pleasure for coin to feed their children, and others do the same so that they could ignore their children while making themselves foolish with wines and powders. I have seen men who labor as long as the sun is up go home to wives who hold them in contempt for never being there. I have seen men beat and use those whom they should protect, even their own children. I have seen your kind place others of their own in slavery. I have seen them fighting to be free of the same. I have seen men of the law betray it, men who hate the law be kind. I have seen gentle defenders, sadistic healers, creators of beauty scorned while craftsmen of destruction are worshiped. Your Kind, Aleran, are the most vicious and gentle, most savage and noble, most treacherous and loyal, most terrifying and fascinating creatures I have ever seen.”
― Jim Butcher, quote from Academ's Fury
“Would you die for her?
I do. Every Day.”
― Jessica Shirvington, quote from Emblaze
“So our efforts led us to become those perfect objects of a sense whose nature nobody quite knew yet, and which later became perfect precisely through the perfection of its object, which was, in fact, us. I'm talking about sight, the eyes; only I had failed to foresee one thing: the eyes that finally opened to see us didn't belong to us but to others.”
― Italo Calvino, quote from Cosmicomics
“Courage is a virtue appreciated in a male but considered a defect in our gender. Bold women are a threat to a world that is badly out of balance, in favor of men.”
― Isabel Allende, quote from Inés of My Soul
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