Bolyai Matek Quotes

#1. From nothing I have created another entirely new world. #Quote by Janos Bolyai

#2. Detest it [a certain difficult mathematics problem] just as much as lewd intercourse; it can deprive you of all your leisure, your health, your rest, and the whole happiness of your life. #Quote by Farkas Bolyai

#3. When the time is ripe for certain things, these things appear in different places in the manner of violets coming to light in early spring. #Quote by Farkas Bolyai

#4. Many statements about God are confidently made by theologians on grounds that today at least sound specious. Thomas Aquinas claimed to prove that God cannot make another God, or commit suicide, or make a man without a soul, or even make a triangle whose interior angles do not equal 180 degrees. But Bolyai and Lobachevsky were able to accomplish this last feat (on a curved surface) in the nineteenth century, and they were not even approximately gods. #Quote by Carl Sagan

#5. The mathematical giant [Gauss], who from his lofty heights embraces in one view the stars and the abysses ... #Quote by Farkas Bolyai

#6. Please give it up. Fear it no less than the sensual passion, because it, too, may take up all your time and deprive you of your health, peace of mind and happiness in life.

[Having himself spent a lifetime unsuccessfully trying to prove Euclid's postulate that parallel lines do not meet, Farkas discouraged his son János from any further attempt.] #Quote by Farkas Bolyai

#7. It is a common misconception, in the spirit of the sentiments expressed in Q16, that Godel's theorem shows that there are many different kinds of arithmetic, each of which is equally valid. The particular arithmetic that we may happen to choose to work with would, accordingly, be defined merely by some arbitrarily chosen formal system. Godel's theorem shows that none of these formal systems, if consistent, can be complete; so-it is argued-we can keep adjoining new axioms, according to our whim, and obtain all kinds of alternative consistent systems within which we may choose to work. The comparison is sometimes made with the situation that occurred with Euclidean geometry. For some 21 centuries it was believed that Euclidean geometry was the only geometry possible. But when, in the eighteenth century, mathematicians such as Gauss, Lobachevsky, and Bolyai showed that indeed there are alternatives that are equally possible, the matter of geometry was seemingly removed from the absolute to the arbitrary. Likewise, it is often argued, Godel showed that arithmetic, also, is a matter of arbitrary choice, any one set of consistent axioms being as good as any other. #Quote by Roger Penrose

#8. I have created a new universe from nothing. #Quote by Janos Bolyai

#9. Do not try the parallels in that way: I know that way all along. I have measured that bottomless night, and all the light and all the joy of my life went out there. #Quote by Farkas Bolyai

#10. Mathematical discoveries, like springtime violets in the woods, have their season which no man can hasten or retard. #Quote by Janos Bolyai