A Quote by Hugo Grotius

Even God cannot make two times two not make four.

Hugo Grotius

Quote Topics

Cannot Even Four God Make Times Two

Quote Author

Hugo Grotius
Dutch - Lawyer
April 10, 1583 - August 28, 1645

Two times two is twenty-two, four times four is forty-four. When numbers get serious, they leave a mark on your door.

Paul Simon

But again and again there comes a time in history when the man who dares to say that two and two make four is punished with death. The schoolteacher is well aware of this. And the question is not one of knowing what punishment or reward attends the making of this calculation. The question is one of knowing whether two and two do make four

Albert Camus

I agree that two and two make four is an excellent thing; but to give everything its due, two and two make five is also a very fine thing.

Fyodor Dostoevsky

Men cannot count, they do not know that two and two make four if women do not tell them so.

Gertrude Stein

Mathematics has the completely false reputation of yielding infallible conclusions. Its infallibility is nothing but identity. Two times two is not four, but it is just two times two, and that is what we call four for short. But four is nothing new at all. And thus it goes on and on in its conclusions, except that in the higher formulas the identity fades out of sight.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

A radical thinks two and two makes five. A liberal is more conservative. he knows two and two make four, but he's unhappy about it.

Herbert V. Prochnow

The game of life does not proceed like a mathematical calculation on the principle that two and two make four. Sometimes they make five, or minus four, and sometimes the blackboard topples over in the middle of the sum and the pedagogue is left with a black eye.

Winston Churchill

In philosophy, or religion, or ethics, or politics, two and two might make five, but when one was designing a gun or an aeroplane they had to make four.

George Orwell

Doubt everything at least once, even the sentence "Two times two is four."

Georg C. Lichtenberg

My whole life . . . two and two has made four.”... “But now . . . it’s all gone wrong.” She shook her head. “It doesn’t make four anymore. It makes you.

Sarah MacLean

The real issue is not whether two and two make four or whether two and two make five, but whether life advances by men who love words or by men who love living.

Colin Wilson

I agree that two times two makes four is an excellent thing; but if we are dispensing praise, then two times two makes five is sometimes a most charming little thing as well.

Fyodor Dostoevsky

How absurd to try to make two men think alike on matters of religion, when I cannot make two timepieces agree.

Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor

[I am fascinated by stupidity] because normal intelligence is boring. Two plus two makes four - finished. You have no possibilities! Stupidity is infinite. Two plus two can make billions of different numbers.

Umberto Eco

There are no words to express the abyss between isolation and having one ally. It may be conceded to the mathematician that four is twice two. But two is not twice one; two is two thousand times one.