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Symmetry Quotes

Browse 191 quotes about Symmetry.

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Symmetry Quotes

“What I remember best from those times is the music itself. When it succeded, we took hold of the audience's attention, working it from a distracted, unshaped mass into spun beauty, passing the fine strands back and forth until we wove together something grander, not only music but memory, too-the particulars of past and present, stretched taut across a loom of timeless ideals. Harmony. Symmetry. Order.”

TogetherPastRememberOrderMemoriesAttentionAudienceFineMassIdealsHarmonyPassingPassingsPerformingWorking ItTimelessDistractedBack And ForthStrandsSymmetryPast And PresentSpun
Book:The Spanish Bow
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“Speaking about symmetry, look out our window, and you may see a cardinal attacking its reflection in the window. The cardinal is the only bird we have who often does this. If it has a nest nearby, the cardinal thinks there is another cardinal trying to invade its territory. It never realizes it is attacking its own reflection. Cardinals don't know much about mirror symmetry!”

IfsThinkingKnowsTryingLooksMayDoeRealizingBirdReflectionWindowMirrorsTerritoryAttackingNestsCardinalsSymmetry
Author:Martin Gardner
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“Guided only by their feeling for symmetry, simplicity, and generality, and an indefinable sense of the fitness of things, creative mathematicians now, as in the past, are inspired by the art of mathematics rather than by any prospect of ultimate usefulness.”

ArtFeelingsInspirationPastCreativeUltimateMathematicsInspiredSimplicityMathematicalMathematicianUsefulnessSymmetryGeneralitiesIndefinable
Book:The queen of the sciences
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“...Nature builds up her refined and invisible architecture, with a delicacy eluding our conception, yet with a symmetry and beauty which we are never weary of admiring.”

NatureArchitectureInvisibleConceptionWearyRefinedDelicacySymmetryAdmiring
Book:The Origins of Modern Philosophy of Science, 1830-1914: Preliminary discourse on the study of natural philosophy
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“What is especially striking and remarkable is that in fundamental physics, a beautiful or elegant theory is more likely to be right than a theory that is inelegant. A theory appears to be beautiful or elegant (or simple, if you prefer) when it can be expressed concisely in terms of mathematics we already have. Symmetry exhibits the simplicity. The Foundamental Law is such that the different skins of the onion resemble one another and therefore the math for one skin allows you to express beautifully and simply the phenomenon of the next skin.”

IfsDifferentBeautifulLawNextTermSimpleDesignTheorySkinsMathematicsFundamentalsSimplicityMathPhysicsRemarkablePhenomenonElegantGraphicExhibitsGraphic DesignOnionsSymmetry
Author:Murray Gell-Mann
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“We must cultivate and defend particularity, individuality, and irregularity-life. Human beings do not have a future in the collectivism of bureaucratic states or in the mass society created by capitalism. Every system, by virtue as much of its abstract nature as of its pretension to totality, is the enemy of life. As a forgotten Spanish poet, José Moreno Villa, put it with melancholy wit: "I have discovered in symmetry the root of much iniquity."”

LifeHumansStatesHuman BeingsEnemyVirtuePoetMassCapitalismRootsForgottenIndividualityWitAbstractMelancholyTotalityCollectivismPretensionSymmetryIniquityVillaIrregularity
Book:1904-1912
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“My small torrent of words dissipated into an elaborate sense of expanding and receding. It was my entrance into the radiance of imagination. This process was especially magnified within the fevers of influenza, measles, chickenpox, and mumps. I got them all and with each I was privileged with a new level of awareness. Lying deep within myself, the symmetry of a snowflake spinning above me, intensifying through my lids, I seized a most worthy souvenir, a shard of heaven’s kaleidoscope.”

LyingHeavenProcessImaginationLevelsAwarenessWorthyPrivilegedExpandingSpinningFeverEntrancesRadianceDeep WithinSymmetrySnowflakeSouvenirsKaleidoscopeMeaslesInfluenza
Book:Just Kids
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“Any schemes - such as 'think of symmetry laws', or 'put the information in mathematical form', or 'guess equations'- are known to everybody now, and they are all tried all the time. When you are stuck, the answer cannot be one of these, because you will have tried these right away...The next scheme, the new discovery, is going to be made in a completely different way.”

ThinkingWayMadeDifferentFormLawNextAnswersKnownInformationDiscoveryPhysicsStuckMathematicalDifferent WaysSchemesEquationsSymmetryNew Discoveries
Author:Richard P. Feynman
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