Symmetry Quotes

Geometry is of much assistance in architecture, and in particular it teaches us the use of the rule and compasses, by which especially we acquire readiness in making plans for buildings in their grounds, and rightly apply the square, the level, and the plummet. By means of optics the light in buildings can be drawn from fixed quarters of the sky. Difficult questions involving symmetry are solved by means of geometrical theories and methods. (Vitruvius)
The design of a temple depends on symmetry, the principles of which must be most carefully observed by the architect. View quote
Vitruvius
Architecture depends on Order, Arrangement, Eurythmy, Symmetry, Propriety, and Economy. View quote
Vitruvius
Guided only by their feeling for symmetry, simplicity, and generality, and an indefinable sense of the fitness of things, creative mathematicians now, as in the past, are inspired by the art of mathematics rather than by any prospect of ultimate usefulness. View quote
Eric Temple Bell
Break a vase, and the love that reassembles the fragments is stronger than that love which took its symmetry for granted when it was whole. View quote
Derek Walcott
Borrowers of books -- those mutilators of collections, spoilers of the symmetry of shelves, and creators of odd volumes. View quote
Charles Lamb
Tiger Tiger burning bright In the forests of the night, What immortal hand or eye Could frame thy fearful symmetry. View quote
William Blake
The most general law in nature is equity-the principle of balance and symmetry which guides the growth of forms along the lines of the greatest structural efficiency. View quote
Herbert Read
When it appears that a work has been carried out sumptuously, the owner will be the person to be praised for the great outlay which ha has authorized; when delicately, the master workmen will be approved for his execution; but when proportions and symmetry lend it an imposing effect, then the glory of it will belong to the architect. View quote
Vitruvius
These are, of course, some things which, for utility's sake, must be made of the same size in a small theatre, and a large one: such as the steps, curved cross-aisles, their parapets, the passages, stairways, stages, tribunals, and any other things which occur that make it necessary to give up symmetry so as not to interfere with utility. View quote
Vitruvius
Taking courage and looking forward from the standpoint of higher ideas born of the multiplication of the arts, they gave up huts and began to build houses with foundations, having brick or stone walls, and roofs of timber and tiles; next, observation and application led them from fluctuating and indefinite conceptions to definite rules of symmetry. Perceiving that nature had been lavish in the bestowal of timber and bountiful in stores of building material, they... embellished them with luxuries. (Vitruvius)
I don't know if it's a sign of all the chaos that is happening out there or not, but I've lately craved the structure and order of classical music, the balance and symmetry. View quote
Helen Reddy
If you look at music, you see theme, variation, you see symmetry, asymmetry, you see structure, and these are related to skills in the real world. View quote
Dave Van Ronk
The musical scale is a convention which circumscribes the area of potentiality and permits construction within those limits in its own particular symmetry. View quote
Iannis Xenakis
Consistency is the enemy of enterprise, just as symmetry is the enemy of art. View quote
George Bernard Shaw
The universe is built on a plan the profound symmetry of which is somehow present in the inner structure of our intellect. View quote
Paul Valéry
The human brain has left and right brain symmetry with its own nature and can process information which initially appears to have no pattern or order. However, the brain has the ability to process visual information much more efficiently. View quote
Tony Buzan
Only the bad artists of the nineteenth century were frightened by the invention of photography; the good ones all welcomed it and used it. Degas liked it not only because it provided an accurate record, but because the snapshot showed him a means of escape from the classical rules of design. Through it he learnt to make a composition without the use of formal symmetry. View quote
Kenneth Clark
It is the harmony of the diverse parts, their symmetry, their happy balance; in a word it is all that introduces order, all that gives unity, that permits us to see clearly and to comprehend at once both the ensemble and the details. View quote
Henri Poincaré
Those who assert that the mathematical sciences say nothing of the beautiful or the good are in error. For these sciences say and prove a great deal about them; if they do not expressly mention them, but prove attributes which are their results or definitions, it is not true that they tell us nothing about them. The chief forms of beauty are order and symmetry and definiteness, which the mathematical sciences demonstrate in a special degree. View quote
Aristotle
Symmetry is overrated. Overrated is symmetry. (Larry Wall)
Animals are indeed more ancient, more complex and in many ways more sophisticated than us. They are more perfect because they remain within Nature's fearful symmetry just as Nature intended. They should be respected and revered, but perhaps none more so than the elephant, the world's most emotionally human land mammal. View quote
Daphne Sheldrick
In the table-and in nature-we find (leaving aside the antineutrino) fifteen fundamental fermions, with diverse strong, weak, and electromagnetic charges. ...They are so closely related by symmetry transformations that they are, so to speak, no more than different faces of the same cube. View quote
Frank Wilczek
The phase transition paradigm: The standard model of fundamental physics incorporates, as one of its foundational principles, the idea that "empty space” or "vacuum” can exist in different phases, typically associated with different amounts of symmetry. Moreover, the laws of the standard model itself suggest that phase transitions will occur, as functions of temperature. Extensions of the standard model to build in higher symmetry (gauge unification or especially supersymmetry) can support effective vacua with radically different properties, separated by great distance or by domain walls. That would be a form of failure of universality, in our sense, whose existence is suggested by the standard model. View quote
Frank Wilczek
Symmetry is what we see at a glance; based on the fact that there is no reason for any difference. View quote
Blaise Pascal