Geometric Quotes - Page 3

• So all night long the storm roared on: The morning broke without a sun; In tiny spherule traced with lines Of Nature’s geometric signs, In starry flake, and pellicle, All day the hoary meteor fell; And, when the second morning shone, We looked upon a world unknown, On nothing we could call our own. Around the glistening wonder bent The blue walls of the firmament, No cloud above, no earth below,— A universe of sky and snow!

  John Greenleaf Whittier

  Morning, Wall, Night

  John Greenleaf Whittier (2012). “Poems of Nature, Poems Subjective and Reminiscent and Religious Poems, Complete Volume II., the Works of Whittier”, p.87, tredition

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• These abnormal aspects included the shapes of UFOs and their behavior. Most of the UFOs seen in the daytime were said to have had simple geometric shapes-discs, ovals, spheres, cylinders-and surfaces that looked like metal. Such shapes are not only nonexistent among known aircraft, but contrary to all known theories of flight, in most cases offering control and performance disadvantages rather than advantages.

  Don Berliner

  Simple, Offering, Geometric Shapes

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• In many cases a dull proof can be supplemented by a geometric analogue so simple and beautiful that the truth of a theorem is almost seen at a glance.

  Martin Gardner

  Beautiful, Simple, Dull

  "Mathematical Games". Scientific American (October 1973), later quoted in Roger B. Nelson "Proofs Without Words: Exercises in Visual Thinking" ("Introduction", p. 5), 1993.

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• I don't see how it's doing society any good to have so many members walking around with vague memories of algebraic formulas and geometric diagrams and clear memories of hating them.

  Paul Lockhart

  Memories, Hate, Diagrams

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• I always found it satisfying that gravity was described by Einstein's geometric theory of general relativity.

  Antony Garrett Lisi

  Gravity, Found, Theory

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• We humans have a wide range of abilities that help us perceive and analyze mathematical content. We perceive abstract notions not just through seeing but also by hearing, by feeling, by our sense of body motion and position. Our geometric and spatial skills are highly trainable, just as in other high-performance activities. In mathematics we can use the modules of our minds in flexible ways - even metaphorically. A whole-mind approach to mathematical thinking is vastly more effective than the common approach that manipulates only symbols.

  William Thurston

  Math, Thinking, Skills

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• Within the human consciousness is the unique ability to perceive the transparency between absolute, permanent relationships, contained in the insubstantial forms of a geometric order, and the transitory, changing forms of our actual world. The content of our experience results from an immaterial, abstract, geometric architecture which is composed of harmonic waves of energy, nodes of relationality, melodic forms springing forth from the eternal realm of geometric proportion.

  Robert Lawlor

  Unique, Order, World

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• I feel more and more as if time did not exist at all... only various spaces interlocking according to the rules of a higher form of stereometry[the geometric measurement of solid bodies], between which the living and the dead can move back and forth as they like, and the longer I think about it the more it seems to me that we who are still alive are unreal in the eyes of the dead.

  W. G. Sebald

  Moving, Eye, Thinking

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• ... if one were to refuse to have direct, geometric, intuitive insights, if one were reduced to pure logic, which does not permit a choice among every thing that is exact, one would hardly think of many questions, and certain notions ... would escape us completely.

  Henri Lebesgue

  Math, Thinking, Choices

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• What does it mean when you hook up your work to that of a late modernist giant working in a reductive vein - Ad Reinhardt, Agnes Martin, Robert Ryman, Ellsworth Kelly, Frank Stella, or Donald Judd, for example - like a caboose? I am not talking about engaging directly with another artist's work or ideas, but of perpetuating a look or, in the case of Wade Guyton, the various monochromatic, striped and geometric surfaces we associate with Minimalism.

  John Yau

  Mean, Artist, Talking

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• Keep it simple: In general, interfaces should use simple geometric forms, minimal contours, and a restricted color palette comprised primarily of less-saturated or neutral colors balanced with a few high contrast accent colors that emphasize important information. Typography should not vary widely in an interface.

  Alan Cooper

  Simple, Color, Simplicity

  Alan Cooper, Robert Reimann, David Cronin (2012). “About Face 3: The Essentials of Interaction Design”, p.308, John Wiley & Sons

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• Rosemary and Guy Woodhouse had signed a lease on a five-room apartment in a geometric white house on First Avenue when they received word, from a woman named Mrs. Cortez, that a four-room apartment in the Bramford had become available.

  Ira Levin

  White, House, Guy

  Ira Levin (1985). “Three by Ira Levin”, Random House (NY)

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• The regular division of the plane into congruent figures evoking an association in the observer with a familiar natural object is one of these hobbies or problems...I have embarked on this geometric problem again and again over the years, trying to throw light on different aspects each time. I cannot imagine what my life would be like if this problem had never occurred to me; one might say that I am head over heels in love with it, and I still don't know why.

  M. C. Escher

  Years, Light, Trying

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• Antarctic symphony has a geometric relationship to the landscape. It's saying that this landscape and the minimal kind of, you know I'm talking like seeing ice, is visually kind of eerily minimal.

  DJ Spooky

  Talking, Ice, Symphony

  Big Think Interview, bigthink.com. April 8, 2010.

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• Some songs seem to achieve the quality of a geometric object - a ball, box, or cone - and I don't mess with 'em.

  Peter Blegvad

  Song, Quality, Balls

  Interview with Franklin Bruno, believermag.com. November 1, 2009.

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• Of course, I could never suggest that only poor people are misogynistic; too many rich folk are just as hateful of women as any poor person might be. I don't know if social problems are only circular; perhaps other geometric metaphors might better describe the triangular effects of social vulnerability, political oppression, and racial disadvantage. I think you're right - we've got to focus on both analyses and solutions. And sometimes, an adequate analysis goes far along in suggesting a suitable solution.

  Michael Eric Dyson

  Thinking, People, Focus

  Source: www.washingtonpost.com

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• One way to think about a pure hyperbolic surface is that it's the geometric opposite of a sphere. If you look at a sphere, the curvature is the same everywhere, as opposed to, say, an egg, which clearly does not curve the same everywhere. This is what makes spheres geometrically important. Mathematically speaking, a sphere has positive curvature and a hyperbolic surface has negative curvature, but both have constant curvature everywhere.

  Margaret Wertheim

  Thinking, Important, Negative

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• Organic planning does not begin with a preconceived goal; it moves from need to need, from opportunity to opportunity, in a series of adaptations that themselves become increasingly coherent and purposeful, so that they generate a complex final design, hardly less unified than a pre-formed geometric pattern.

  Lewis Mumford

  Moving, Opportunity, Goal

  LEWIS MUMFORD (1961). “THE CITY IN HISTORY”

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• During the late afternoon and early evening there is a specific dimension that interconnects with our physical world. This particular dimension can be visualized as series of horizontally shaped geometric planes that extent out into infinity.

  Frederick Lenz

  Buddhism, Other Worlds, Afternoon

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