A Quote by Carl Friedrich Gauss

No contradictions will arise as long as Finite Man does not mistake the infinite for something fixed, as long as he is not led by an acquired habit of mind to regard the infinite as something bounded.

Carl Friedrich Gauss

Quote Topics

Acquired Arise Contradictions Does Finite Fixed Habit Infinite Led Long Man Mind Mistake Regard Something Will

Quote Author

Carl Friedrich Gauss
German - Mathematician
April 30, 1777 - February 23, 1855

The difficulties in the study of the infinite arise because we attempt, with our finite minds, to discuss the infinite, assigning to it those properties which we give to the finite and limited; but this... is wrong, for we cannot speak of infinite quantities as being the one greater or less than or equal to another.

Galileo Galilei

As long as man was small in numbers and limited in technology, he could realistically regard the earth as an infinite reservoir, an infinite source of inputs and an infinite cesspool for outputs. Today we can no longer make this assumption. Earth has become a space ship, not only in our imagination but also in the hard realities of the social, biological, and physical system in which man is enmeshed.

Kenneth E. Boulding

The Infinite alone exists and is Real; the finite is passing and false. The Original Whim in the Beyond caused the apparent descent of the Infinite into the realm of the seeming finite. This is the Divine Mystery and Divine Game in which Infinite Consciousness for ever plays on all levels of finite consciousness.

Meher Baba

As long as you wish to separate yourself from the immortal consciousness, you will suffer. You will experience the pain of the separation, the abridgment of infinite mind in finite form.

Frederick Lenz

For man to be able to live he must either not see the infinite, or have such an explanation of the meaning of life as will connect the finite with the infinite.

Leo Tolstoy

There's always going to be one more thing. Because that's what infinite feels like. And the difference between love and everything else is that it's infinite, it's built out of something infinite, or it feels like it is, anyway, which is the same thing to us. You think a million billion more things will come your way, a million billion more versions of everything. But no, everything that actually causes that infinite feeling, the circumstances of every infinite feeling, is so, so finite.

B. J. Novak

Man always worships something; always he sees the Infinite shadowed forth in something finite; and indeed can and must so see it in any finite thing, once tempt him well to fix his eyes thereon.

Thomas Carlyle

For the most part, it is true, ordinary men and women regard mathematics with energetic distaste, counting its concepts as rhapsodic as cauliflower. This is a mistake-there is no other word. Where else can the restless human mind find means to tie the infinite in a finite bow?

David Berlinski

More simply said, the finite does not add to the infinite but merely expresses the power of the infinite in a limited mode.

David Bentley

In this external world, which is full of finite things, it is impossible to see and find the Infinite. The Infinite must be sought in that alone which is infinite, and the only thing infinite about us is that which is within us, our own soul. Neither the body, nor the mind, nor even our thoughts, nor the world we see around us, is infinite.

Swami Vivekananda

From infinite awareness, something comes forward, a sense of infinite awareness and finite awareness. That perception is the birth of a being.

Frederick Lenz

To meditate with humility, consider existence. It is infinite. You are finite. You are a finite portion of infinite existence. Let this be your meditation.

Frederick Lenz

There are at least two kinds of games. One could be called finite, the other, infinite. A finite game is played for the purpose of winning, an infinite game for the purpose of continuing the play.

James P. Carse

Think of something finite molded into the infinite, and you think of man.

Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

When I speak of the aspiration towards the beautiful, of the ideal as the ultimate aim of art, which grows from a yearning for that ideal, I am not for a moment suggesting that art should shun the 'dirt' of the world. On the contrary! the artistic image is always a metonym, where one thing is substituted for another, the smaller for the greater. To tell of what is living, the artist uses something dead; to speak of the infinite, he shows the finite. Substitution... the infinite cannot be made into matter, but it is possible to create an illusion of the infinite: the image.