A Quote by James Hilton

And I believe that the Binomial Theorem and a Bach Fugue are, in the long run, more important than all the battles of history.

James Hilton

Quote Topics

Bach Battles Believe Fugue History I Believe Important Long Long Run More Run Than Theorem

Quote Author

James Hilton
English - Novelist
September 9, 1900 - December 20, 1954

How can you shorten the subject? That stern struggle with the multiplication table, for many people not yet ended in victory, how can you make it less? Square root, as obdurate as a hardwood stump in a pasturenothing but years of effort can extract it. You can't hurry the process. Or pass from arithmetic to algebra; you can't shoulder your way past quadratic equations or ripple through the binomial theorem. Instead, the other way; your feet are impeded in the tangled growth, your pace slackens, you sink and fall somewhere near the binomial theorem with the calculus in sight on the horizon.

Stephen Leacock

There is nothing like a Bach fugue to remove me from a discordant moment... only Bach hold up fresh and strong after repeated playing. I can always return to Bach when the other records weary me.

Edward Weston

The axiom of conditioned repetition, like the binomial theorem, is nothing but a piece of insolence.

Edward Abbey

The worst constructed play is a Bach fugue when compared to life.

Helen Hayes

In the short term, some deadly virus might be more important, but in the long run there is hardly anything more important than asteroids.

Rusty Schweickart

I can find something between sight and hearing and I can produce a fugue in colors as Bach has done in music.

Frantisek Kupka

I have a skepticism toward romance. I believe that decency and companionship are, in the long run, more important in life.

Edith Pearlman

I want Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D played at my funeral. If it isn't I shall jolly well want to know why.

Sybil Thorndike

There is no kind of music I don't listen to. Everything good is interesting. I am as happy with a Bach fugue as I am with a record by Thelonious Monk.

Maira Kalman

Combinatorial analysis, in the trivial sense of manipulating binomial and multinomial coefficients, and formally expanding powers of infinite series by applications ad libitum and ad nauseamque of the multinomial theorem, represented the best that academic mathematics could do in the Germany of the late 18th century.

Richard Askey

If you have to prove a theorem, do not rush. First of all, understand fully what the theorem says, try to see clearly what it means. Then check the theorem; it could be false. Examine the consequences, verify as many particular instances as are needed to convince yourself of the truth. When you have satisfied yourself that the theorem is true, you can start proving it.

George Polya

More history is made by secret handshakes than by battles, bills and proclamations.

John Barth

I believe that pluralistic secularism, in the long run, is a more deadly poison than straightforward persecution.

Francis Schaeffer

It is your mind that matters economically, as much or more than your mouth or hands. In the long run, the most important economic effect of population size and growth is the contribution of additional people to our stock of useful knowledge. And this contribution is large enough in the long run to overcome all the costs of population growth.