![[H]e had a difficulty in deciding between classics and mathematics, and there is a story to the effect that he finally solved the difficulty by tossing up a penny. He certainly used the expression: but the reasons which determined his choice in favor of mathematics were first, his weak sight, which made thinking preferable to reading, and secondly the opportunity... (Henry John Stephen Smith)](https://cdn.quotesdtb.com/img/quotes_images_webp/36/henry-john-stephen-smith-1015036.webp)
[H]e had a difficulty in deciding between classics and mathematics, and there is a story to the effect that he finally solved the difficulty by tossing up a penny. He certainly used the expression: but the reasons which determined his choice in favor of mathematics were first, his weak sight, which made thinking preferable to reading, and secondly the opportunity...
Henry John Stephen SmithRelated topics
choice deciding difficulty favor mathematics opportunity penny reading sight story thinking classicsRelated quotes
I used to stay up very late at night, much later than I probably should have for such a youngster, and I used to watch very old black-and-white movies with, you know, Bette Davis and Joan Crawford, but I remember watching them thinking 'I could do that'... Even though I wasn't inclined at all to actually become an actress. I mean, that wasn't something that was... in the stars for me, no pun intended.
Michelle Pfeiffer
The written word, obviously, is very inward, and when we're reading, we're thinking. It's a sort of spiritual, meditative activity. When we're looking at visual objects, I think our eyes are obviously directed outward, so there's not as much reflective time. And it's the reflectiveness and the spiritual inwardness about reading that appeals to me.
Joyce Carol Oates
The present age has witnessed an extraordinary increase of a thinking public, by the facilities afforded to the diffusion of reading; the former happy resignation to ignorance begins to make way for a state of half-enlightenment, and few persons are willing to remain in the condition in which their birth has placed then.
Friedrich Schiller
The calculus was the first achievement of modern mathematics and it is difficult to overestimate its importance. I think it defines more unequivocally than anything else the inception of modern mathematics; and the system of mathematical analysis, which is its logical development, still constitutes the greatest technical advance in exact thinking.
John von Neumann
Serialism is like a sailless ship, driven out to sea by its captain, who has grown tired of its being used only as a pontoon, and who is privately convinced that by subjecting life aboard to the rules of an elaborate protocol, he will prevent the crew from thinking nostalgically either of their home port or of their ultimate destination....
Claude Lévi-Strauss