A Quote by Martin Gardner

There is still a difference between something and nothing, but it is purely geometrical and there is nothing behind the geometry.

Martin Gardner

Quote Topics

Behind Between Difference Geometry Nothing Purely Something Still

Quote Author

Martin Gardner
American - Mathematician
Born: October 21, 1914

...to characterize the import of pure geometry, we might use the standard form of a movie-disclaimer: No portrayal of the characteristics of geometrical figures or of the spatial properties of relationships of actual bodies is intended, and any similarities between the primitive concepts and their customary geometrical connotations are purely coincidental.

Carl Gustav Hempel

Do you understand the difference between dying for something and dying for nothing? The only reason I fought so hard to stay alive in China was because I didn't want to die for nothing. Today, I can die for something. My way, my choice.

Jack Bauer

But there is nothing idealized or romantic about the difference between a society whose arrangements roughly serve all its citizens (something otherwise known as social justice) and one whose institutions have been converted into a stupendous fraud. That can be the difference between democracy and plutocracy.

Bill Moyers

What do you mean less than nothing? I don't think there is any such thing as less than nothing. Nothing is absolutely the limit of nothingness. It's the lowest you can go. It's the end of the line. How can something be less than nothing? If there were something that was less than nothing, then nothing would not be nothing, it would be something - even though it's just a very little bit of something. But if nothing is nothing, then nothing has nothing that is less than it is.

E. B. White

Geometry enlightens the intellect and sets one's mind right. All of its proofs are very clear and orderly. It is hardly possible for errors to enter into geometrical reasoning, because it is well arranged and orderly. Thus, the mind that constantly applies itself to geometry is not likely to fall into error. In this convenient way, the person who knows geometry acquires intelligence.

Ibn Khaldun

We were trying to make our lives easier, trying, with all our rules, to make life effortless. But a friction began to arise between Nothing and Something, in the morning the Nothing vase cast a Something shadow, like the memory of someone you've lost, what can you say about that, at night the Nothing light spilled from the guest room spilled under the Nothing door and stained the Something hallway, there's nothing to say.

Jonathan Safran Foer

Mothers know the difference between a broth and a consommé. And the difference between damask and chintz. And the difference between vinyl and Naugahyde. And the difference between a house and a home. And the difference between a romantic and a stalker. And the difference between a rock and a hard place.

Patricia Marx

The purely formal language of geometry describes adequately the reality of space. We might say, in this sense, that geometry is successful magic. I should like to state a converse: is not all magic, to the extent that it is successful, geometry?

Rene Thom

If nothing matters, then even the thought that nothing matters doesn't matter. And if it doesn't matter whether anything matters or not, then there's no real difference between believing nothing matters and believing something matters.

Ray Brassier

We require, as a species, the difference between what is safe and unsafe to define ourselves. Be it in darkness or in light, where we are means nothing without the comparison to the other place - where we are not. And thus it is the difference between them that tells us who and what we are.

Rick Tumlinson

Writing never comes easy. The difference between Page 2 and Page Nothing is the difference between life and death.

Aaron Sorkin

The difference between the Old and the New Testament is the difference between a man who said "There is nothing new under the sun" and a God who says "Behold, I make all things new.

Ronald Knox

When I get on the internet and hide behind a false identity, and then allow that hiding to free me from the standards of decency, to begin to use language I would never use in front of my mother, all of a sudden, there's nothing between me and you, but worse than that, there's nothing between me and my worst self.

Joan D. Chittister

In the world it is called Tolerance, but in hell it is called Despair...the sin that believes in nothing, cares for nothing, seeks to know nothing, interferes with nothing, enjoys nothing, hates nothing, finds purpose in nothing, lives for nothing, and remains alive because there is nothing for which it will die.

Dorothy L. Sayers

It all comes down to this: if your subconscious "financial blueprint" is not "set" for success, nothing you learn, nothing you know, and nothing you do will make much of a difference.