The importance of the "New Mathematics" lies mainly in the fact that it has taught us the difference between the disc and the circle.
Rene ThomThe 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 ThomAll models divide naturally...into two a priori parts: one is kinematics, whose aim is to parameterize the forms of the states of the process under consideration, and the other is dynamics, describing the evolution in time of these forms.
Rene ThomTopology is precisely the mathematical discipline that allows the passage from local to global.
Rene Thom