Zero: The Biography Of A Dangerous Idea Quotes
"Warships are designed to withstand the strike of a torpedo or the blast of a mine. Though it was armored against weapons, nobody had thought to defend the Yorktown from zero. It was a grave mistake."
"Zero is powerful because it is infinity’s twin. They are equal and opposite, yin and yang. They are equally paradoxical and troubling."
"The biggest questions in science and religion are about nothingness and eternity, the void and the infinite, zero and infinity."
"Zero was at the heart of the battle between East and West."
"Zero became the language of nature and the most important tool in mathematics."
"Zero has always defeated those who opposed it. Humanity could never force zero to fit its philosophies. Instead, zero shaped humanity’s view of the universe—and of God."
"The story of zero is an ancient one. Its roots stretch back to the dawn of mathematics, in the time thousands of years before the first civilization, long before humans could read and write."
"Zero was so abhorrent to some cultures that they chose to live without it."
"In the history of culture the discovery of zero will always stand out as one of the greatest single achievements of the human race."
"Where there is the Infinite there is joy. There is no joy in the finite." —THE CHANDOGYA UPANISHAD
"In the earliest age of the gods, existence was born from non-existence." —THE RIG VEDA
"Does man forget that We created him out of the void?" —THE KORAN
"Nothingness is being and being nothingness…. Our limited mind can not grasp or fathom this, for it joins infinity." —AZRAEL OF GERONA
"O God, I could be bounded in a nutshell and count myself a king of infinite space, were it not that I have bad dreams." —WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, HAMLET
"What is man in nature? Nothing in relation to the infinite, everything in relation to nothing, a mean between nothing and everything." —BLAISE PASCAL, PENSÉES
"God made integers; all else is the work of man." — LEOPOLD KRONECKER
"…a fine and wonderful refuge of the divine spirit—almost an amphibian between being and non-being." — GOTTFRIED WILHELM LEIBNIZ
"One will then see the simplicity with which these concepts lead to properties already known and to an infinity of others which ordinary geometry does not seem to touch easily." — JEAN-VICTOR PONCELET
"My theory stands as firm as a rock; every arrow directed against it will return quickly to its archer. How do I know this? I have studied it…I have followed its roots, so to speak, to the first infallible cause of all created things." — GEORG CANTOR
"Sensible mathematics involves neglecting a quantity when it is small—not neglecting it because it is infinitely great and you do not want it!" — P. A. M. DIRAC
"Alien they seemed to be: No mortal eye could see The intimate welding of their later history…" — THOMAS HARDY, "THE CONVERGENCE OF THE TWAIN"
"In string theory different particles are really the same type of string, just wiggling in different ways."
"In string theory, zero has been banished from the universe; there is no such thing as zero distance or zero time."
"Out of the void, out of nothing at all, came a cataclysmic explosion that created all the matter and energy that the entire universe is made of."
"Zero is behind all of the big puzzles in physics."
"The universe begins and ends with zero."