Optics Quotes

• Music is the arithmetic of sounds as optics is the geometry of light.

  Claude Debussy

  Music, Beauty, Art

  "Greatness: Who Makes History and Why". Book by Dean Keith Simonton, May 20, 1994.

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• Beauty is a question of optics. All sight is illusion.

  Joyce Carol Oates

  Sight, Illusion

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• But concerning vision alone is a separate science formed among philosophers, namely, optics, and not concerning any other sense ... It is possible that some other science may be more useful, but no other science has so much sweetness and beauty of utility. Therefore it is the flower of the whole of philosophy and through it, and not without it, can the other sciences be known.

  Roger Bacon

  Philosophy, Flower, Vision

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• Optics, developing in us through study, teach us to see.

  Paul Cezanne

  Artist, Study, Teach

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• The difference is as great between The optics seeing as the objects seen. All manners take a tincture from our own; Or come discolor'd through out passions shown; Or fancy's beam enlarges, multiplies, Contracts, inverts, and gives ten thousand dyes.

  Alexander Pope

  Passion, Differences, Giving

  Alexander Pope (1846). “An Essay on Man: In Four Epistles to H. St. John (Lord Bolingbroke). To which are Added, The Universal Prayer, An Essay on the Knowledge and Character of Men, and Other Pieces, with Notes”, p.61

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• Optimism and pessimism are mere matters of optics, of how you look at things, and that can change from day to day, or with a new prescription for your glasses - or with a new set of ideological filters.

  George Weigel

  Glasses, Optimism, Filters

  George Weigel (2015). “Letters to a Young Catholic”, p.100, Basic Books

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• Descartes constructed as noble a road of science, from the point at which he found geometry to that to which he carried it, as Newton himself did after him. ... He carried this spirit of geometry and invention into optics, which under him became a completely new art.

  Voltaire

  Art, Science, Noble

  Voltaire (1824). “A philosophical dictionary: from the French”, p.110

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• Modern physics has changed nothing in the great classical disciplines of, for instance, mechanics, optics, and heat. Only the conception of hitherto unexplored regions, formed prematurely from a knowledge of only certain parts of the world, has undergone a decisive transformation. This conception, however, is always decisive for the future course of research.

  Werner Heisenberg

  Knowledge, Science, Discipline

  Werner Heisenberg (1979). “Philosophical problems of quantum physics”, Ox Bow Pr

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• Law, in its most general and comprehensive sense, signifies a rule of action; and is applied indiscriminately to all kinds of action, whether animate, or inanimate, rational or irrational. Thus we say, the laws of motion, of gravitation, of optics, or mechanics, as well as the laws of nature and of nations. And it is that rule of action, which is prescribed by some superior, and which the inferior is bound to obey.

  William Blackstone

  Law, Action, Kind

  Sir William Blackstone, Edward Christian, John Frederick Archbold, Joseph Chitty (1827). “Commentaries on the Laws of England”, p.25

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• It has never been in my power to study anything, mathematics, ethics, metaphysics, gravitation, thermodynamics, optics, chemistry, comparative anatomy, astronomy, psychology, phonetics, economics, the history of science, whist, men and women, wine, metrology, except as a study of semeiotic .

  Charles Sanders Peirce

  Wine, Men, Psychology

  Charles Sanders Peirce (1958). “Selected Writings (Values in a Universe of Chance)”, p.408, Courier Corporation

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• But optics sharp it needs, I ween, To see what is not to be seen.

  John Trumbull

  Needs

  John Trumbull (1839). “M'Fingal: a modern epic poem, in four cantos”, p.7

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• The camera introduces us to unconscious optics as does psychoanalysis to unconscious impulses.

  Walter Benjamin

  Photography, Cameras, Doe

  Walter Benjamin (1968). “Illuminations”, p.247, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• By the help of microscopes, there is nothing so small, as to escape our inquiry; hence there is a new visible world discovered to the understanding.

  Robert Hooke

  Understanding, Vision, Tools

  Robert Hooke (1667). “Micrographia: Or, Some Physiological Descriptions of Minute Bodies Made by Magnifying Glasses. With Observations and Inquiries Thereupon”, p.18

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• In things to be seen at once, much variety makes confusion, another vice of beauty. In things that are not seen at once, and have no respect one to another, great variety is commendable, provided this variety transgress not the rules of optics and geometry.

  Christopher Wren

  Respect, Confusion, Confusing

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• This part of optics, when well understood, shows us how we may make things a very long distance off appear as if placed very close, and large near things appear very small, and how we may make small things placed at a distance appear any size we want, so that it may be possible for us to read the smallest letters at incredible distances, or to count sand, or seed, or any sort or minute objects.

  Robert Grosseteste

  Distance, Long, Letters

  "De iride ('On the rainbow')". Treatise by Robert Grosseteste,

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• When asked about which scientist he'd like to meet, Neil deGrasse Tyson said, "Isaac Newton. No question about it. The smartest person ever to walk the face of this earth. The man was connected to the universe in spooky ways. He discovered the laws of motion, the laws of gravity, the laws of optics. Then he turned 26.

  Neil deGrasse Tyson

  Men, Law, Earth

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• In our judgment of human transactions, the law of optics is reversed, we see most dimly the objects which are close around us.

  Richard Whately

  Law, Judgment, Humans

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• Because I come from that old-school optics environment, I know stuff about depth of field and camera movement and things that are not necessarily a part of the curriculum for people who started on a box and have never done anything that wasn't on a box.

  John Dykstra

  Old School, People, Stuff

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• it may be in morals as it is in optics, the eye and the object may come too close to each other, to answer the end of vision. There are certain faults which press too near our self-love to be even perceptible to us.

  Hannah More

  Eye, Self, Vision

  Hannah More (1843). “Works, Complete”, p.183

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• Why has not Man a microscopic eye? For this plain reason, Man is not a Fly. Say what the use, were finer optics giv'n, T' inspect a mite, not comprehend the heav'n.

  Alexander Pope

  Eye, Men, Vision

  Alexander Pope, John Wilson Croker (1871). “The Works: Including Several Hundred Unpublished Letters, and Other New Materials”, p.363

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• Perspective is a law of optics... The Chinese did not have a system like it. Indeed, it is said they rejected the idea of the vanishing point in the eleventh century, because it meant the viewer was not there, indeed, had no movement, therefore was not alive.

  David Hockney

  Law, Ideas, Perspective

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• Only a fool would leave the enjoyment of rainbows to the opticians. Or give the science of optics the last word on the matter.

  Edward Abbey

  Giving, Rainbow, Matter

  Edward Abbey (2015). “A Voice Crying in the Wilderness”, p.13, RosettaBooks

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• Optimism is a matter optics, of seeing what you want to see and not seeing what you don't want to see. Hope, on the other hand, is a Christian virtue. It is the unblinking acknowledgment of all that militates against hope, and the unrelenting refusal to despair. We have not the right to despair, and, finally, we have not the reason to despair

  Richard John Neuhaus

  Christian, Hands, Optimism

  Richard John Neuhaus (2001). “The Best of "The Public Square".: Book two”, p.9, Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing

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• The sins we do, people behold with optics,
  Which shew them ten times more than common vices,
  And often multiply them.

  John William Fletcher

  People, Evil, Vices

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• The idea that we criminalize fellow human beings based on optics, based on the need to progress in politics and gain power, and for economic reasons and financial reasons, for financial gains, and we throw out humanization for criminalization.

  Ava DuVernay

  Ideas, Progress, Gains

  Source: deadline.com

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