A Quote by David Foster Wallace
The real irony is that the view of infinity as some forbidden zone or road to insanity - which view was very old and powerful and haunted math for 2000+ years - is precisely what Cantor's own work overturned. Saying that infinity drove Cantor mad is sort of like mourning St. George's loss to the dragon: it's not only wrong but insulting.
Related Quotes
The study of infinity is much more than a dry academic game. The intellectual pursuit of the absolute infinity is, as Georg Cantor realized, a form of the soul's quest for God. Whether or not the goal is ever reached, an awareness of the process brings enlightenment.
The car shot forward straight into the circle of light, and suddenly Arthur had a fairly clear idea of what infinity looked like. It wasn’t infinity in fact. Infinity itself looks flat and uninteresting. Looking up into the night sky is looking into infinity—distance is incomprehensible and therefore meaningless. The chamber into which the aircar emerged was anything but infinite, it was just very very very big, so big that it gave the impression of infinity far better than infinity itself.
No one shall expel us from the paradise which Cantor has created for us.
Expressing the importance of Cantor's set theory in the development of mathematics.
In my neighborhood, everyone had an opinion on the local cantor. You didn't go to a synagogue to listen to the rabbi's sermon. You went to listen to the cantor. It was like a concert.
Nonmathematical people sometimes ask me, “You know math, huh? Tell me something I’ve always wondered, What is infinity divided by infinity?” I can only reply, “The words you just uttered do not make sense. That was not a mathematical sentence. You spoke of ‘infinity’ as if it were a number. It’s not. You may as well ask, 'What is truth divided by beauty?’ I have no clue. I only know how to divide numbers. ‘Infinity,’ ‘truth,’ ‘beauty’—those are not numbers.
Love is like infinity: You can't have more or less infinity, and you can't compare two things to see if they're "equally infinite." Infinity just is, and that's the way I think love is, too.
Only he who possesses a personal religion, an original view of infinity, can be an artist.
A googolplex is precisely as far from infinity as is the number 1... no matter what number you have in mind, infinity is larger still.
Each work has its own space, which should neither be conceived as a sort of cage nor regarded as extending to infinity.
[Georg Cantor was the first to prove that there could be a series of infinities; that infinities come in an infinite number of sizes.] Thus Cantor's Absolute is a perfect image for what we experience of God. When I speak of a Big Enough God I am not merely thinking of an Infinite God, but the God of infinities, the Absolute, which either chooses to reveal itself or remains veiled in mystery. Modern mathematics does begin to feel like the language that God talks.
My first tattoo was for my son, just a little infinity symbol. Because every time we go apart, we stay together in infinity, so it's a tiny infinity symbol.
We are like droplets of water in an ocean of consciousness; individual to an extent, but those droplets together make up the ocean -- without the droplets there is no ocean. It is the same with this infinite energy mind we call creation/god. We are not part of that infinity -- we are that infinity if we open ourselves up to reconnect with it. Wherever you stand in infinity, you are at the center of infinity. So everything that exists is everything that exists. I am everything that exists; and so are you -- the more you realize that, the more you open up to the full infinity of who you are.
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. The clashes over zero were the battles that shook the foundations of philosophy,
of science, of mathematics, and of religion. Underneath every revolution lay a
zero – and an infinity.
The idea of infinity cannot be expressed in words or even described, but it can be apprehended through art, which makes infinity tangible. The absolute is only attainable through faith and in the creative act.
The infinity of God is not mysterious, it is only unfathomable; not concealed, but incomprehensible; it is a clear infinity, the darkness of the pure unsearchable sea.
To infinity then. (Bubba) What’s that mean? (Nick) It’s something my dad used to say when I was a kid. To infinity, meaning you’d see something through to the end. (Bubba) Infinity is never-ending. (Nick) That’s right, which means you keep going and going no matter what happens or what obstacles you meet. Over, under, around or through. There’s always a way. And if you have to chase something to infinity, strap on your big-boy pants, hiking boots, and go. (Bubba)
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