Thus metaphysics and mathematics are, among all the sciences that belong to reason, those in which imagination has the greatest role. I beg pardon of those delicate spirits who are detractors of mathematics for saying this . . . . The imagination in a mathematician who creates makes no less difference than in a poet who invents. . . . Of all the great men of antiquity, Archimedes may be the one who most deserves to be placed beside Homer.
Jean le Rond d'AlembertThe true system of the World has been recognized, developed and perfected...Everything has been discussed and analysed, or at least mentioned.
Jean le Rond d'AlembertI am worn out by the insults and vexations that this work brings down on us.
Jean le Rond d'AlembertJust go on . . . and faith will soon return. To a friend hesitant with respect to infinitesimals.
Jean le Rond d'AlembertHigh office, is like a pyramid; only two kinds of animals reach the summit — reptiles and eagles.
Jean le Rond d'AlembertGeometry, which should only obey Physics, when united with it sometimes commands it. If it happens that the question which we wish to examine is too complicated for all the elements to be able to enter into the analytical comparison we wish to make, we separate the more inconvenient [elements], we substitute others for them, less troublesome but also less real, and we are surprised to arrive, notwithstanding a painful labour, only at a result contradicted by nature; as if after having disguised it, cut it short or altered it, a purely mechanical combination could give it back to us.
Jean le Rond d'AlembertA philosopher is a fool who torments himself while he is alive, to be talked of after he is dead.
Jean le Rond d'AlembertGaming is the destruction of all decorum; the prince forgets at it his dignity, and the lady her modesty.
Jean le Rond d'AlembertIn England it was enough that Newton was the greatest mathematican of his century; in France he would have been expected to be agreeable too.
Jean le Rond d'Alembert