Symmetry Quotes

• Tidiness is a virtue, symmetry is often a constituent of beauty.

  Winston Churchill

  Philosophy, Virtue, Constituents

  Winston Churchill (1949). “The Sinews of Peace: Post-war Speeches”

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• The desire for symmetry, for balance, for rhythm in form as well as in sound, is one of the most inveterate of human instincts.

  Edith Wharton

  Balance, Desire, Sound

  Edith Wharton, Ogden Codman (2015). “The Decoration of Houses”, p.33, Courier Dover Publications

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• ...we take comfort in the symmetries we find in life because they suggest a design where there is none.

  Nicole Krauss

  Design, Comfort

  Nicole Krauss (2011). “Great House: A Novel”, p.82, W. W. Norton & Company

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• Beauty is rather a light that plays over the symmetry of things than that symmetry itself.

  Plotinus

  Beauty, Light, Play

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• Symmetry is what we see at a glance; based on the fact that there is no reason for any difference.

  Blaise Pascal

  Differences, Facts, Reason

  Blaise Pascal (2007). “Thoughts”, p.15, Cosimo, Inc.

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• If measure and symmetry are absent from any composition in any degree, ruin awaits both the ingredients and the composition... Measure and symmetry are beauty and virtue the world over.

  Socrates

  Degrees, World, Ruins

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• Reality favors symmetry.

  Jorge Luis Borges

  Reality, Favors

  Richard Burgin, Jorge Luis Borges (1969). “Conversations with Jorge Luis Borges”, Not Avail

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• Tyger! Tyger! burning bright In the forests of the night, What immortal hand or eye Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

  William Blake

  Motivational, Eye, Night

  Songs of Experience "The Tiger" (1794)

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• Symmetry, as wide or as narrow as you may define its meaning, is one idea by which man through the ages has tried to comprehend and create order, beauty and perfection.

  Hermann Weyl

  Math, Science, Men

  Hermann Weyl (2015). “Symmetry”, p.5, Princeton University Press

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• Symmetry is overrated. Overrated is symmetry.

  Larry Wall

  Overrated

  Usenet article <6vhq4r%24a6i@kiev.wall.org>, groups.google.com. October 8, 1998.

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• You can't chop down a symmetry

  Jane Siberry

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• The chief forms of beauty are order and symmetry and definiteness, which the mathematical sciences demonstrate in a special degree.

  Aristotle

  Science, Engineering, Order

  Aristotle (2012). “The Metaphysics”, p.202, Roger Bishop Jones

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• There is no symmetry in nature. One eye is never exactly the same as the other.

  Edouard Manet

  Eye

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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.

  John Herschel

  Nature, Delicacy, Architecture

  Sir John Frederick William Herschel, William Whewell, George Henry Lewes, Hermann von Helmholz, James Clerk Maxwell (1996). “The Origins of Modern Philosophy of Science, 1830-1914: Preliminary discourse on the study of natural philosophy”

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• Symmetry is pleasing but not as sexy. Einstein is cool but Picasso knows what I'm talking about.

  Amy Poehler

  Sexy, Talking, Knows

  Amy Poehler (2014). “Yes Please”, p.141, Pan Macmillan

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• Reality is partial to symmetry and slight anachronisms

  Jorge Luis Borges

  Reality, Anachronism, Partiality

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• The universe is built on a plan the profound symmetry of which is somehow present in the inner structure of our intellect.

  Paul Valery

  Science, Profound, Structure

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• Humanity enveloped in entropy desperately seeking symmetry for peace of mind

  Dean Cavanagh

  Humanity, Mind, Entropy

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• Symmetry is ennui, and ennui is the very essence of grief and melancholy. Despair yawns.

  Victor Hugo

  Grief, Order, Essence

  Victor Hugo, Charles Edwin Wilbour (1862). “Cosette”, p.84

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• Man is all symmetry, Full of proportions, one limb to another.

  George Herbert

  Men, Limbs, Proportion

  'Man', collected in The Temple, Sacred Poems and Private Ejaculations (published posthumously, 1633).

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• Everybody has two legs, two lobes to the brain which is why we tend to be interested in symmetry, always balancing things.

  Gore Vidal

  Two, Brain, Legs

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• Symmetry looks good to us; we want more of it.

  Susan Messing

  Looks, Want

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• Consistency is the enemy of enterprise, just as symmetry is the enemy of art.

  George Bernard Shaw

  Inspirational, Life, Art

  George Bernard Shaw (1988). “Collected letters: 1926-1950”, Vintage

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• The mathematical sciences particularly exhibit order symmetry and limitations; and these are the greatest forms of the beautiful.

  Aristotle

  Beautiful, Education, Math

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• It is the harmony of the diverse parts, their symmetry, their happy balance; in a word it is all that introduces order, all that gives unity, that permits us to see clearly and to comprehend at once both the ensemble and the details.

  Henri Poincare

  Order, Giving, Unity

  "Ultra Low Power Bioelectronics". Book by Rahul Sarpeshkar (p. 3), 2010.

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