Fourier Quotes

#1. For Dostoevsky, Fourier is one of the industrious ant-hill engineers, busy, protected by the delusion that his goal, the will-ordered society, is the summation of all his desires.

John Carroll

#2. Fourier's theorem has all the simplicity and yet more power than other familiar explanations in science. Stated simply, any complex pattern, whether in time or space, can be described as a series of overlapping sine waves of multiple frequencies and various amplitudes.

Bruce Hood

#3. Fourier is a mathematical poem.

Lord Kelvin

#4. Educated men - "civilized," as Fourier used to say with disdain - tremble at the idea that society might some day be without judges, police, or gaolers.

Peter Kropotkin

#5. A clever graduate student could teach Fourier something new, but
surely no one claims that he could teach Archimedes to reason
better.

Paul Halmos

#6. Fourier's theorem is not only one of the most beautiful results of modern analysis, but it may be said to furnish an indispensable instrument in the treatment of nearly every recondite question in modern physics.

Lord Kelvin

#7. [Referring to Fourier's mathematical theory of the conduction of heat] ... Fourier's great mathematical poem ...

Lord Kelvin

#8. True greatness is when your name is like ampere, watt, and fourier - when it's spelled with a lower case letter.

Richard Hamming

#9. He'd meant to take her apart with a kiss. How, then, did he wind up in pieces?

Julie Anne Long

#10. I couldn't control Arnold Palmer, Gary Player, Tom Watson or Lee Trevino. The only person I could control was me. The only person I could prepare for events was me. And if I didn't play well, I didn't play well, and I wasn't going to compete.

Jack Nicklaus

#11. Because no matter what had happened in the past, in this harrowing present, everybody needed everybody.

Blake Crouch

#12. Once upon a time people talked about the infallibility of the pope; today it is that of the merchant which they wish to establish.

Charles Fourier

#13. Who is wiser: the man who plants flowers along life's way or the man who makes it bristle with thorns?

Charles Fourier

#14. Humanity is a river of light running from the ex-eternity to eternity.

Khalil Gibran

#15. One could judge the degree of civilization of a country by the social and political position of its women

Charles Fourier

#16. Mathematics is the queen of science, and arithmetic the queen of mathematics.

Carl Friedrich Gauss

#17. The extension of women's rights is the basic principle of all social progress.

Charles Fourier

#18. The profound study of nature is the most fertile source of mathematical discovery.

Joseph Fourier

#19. Civilization is a social plague on the planet, and vices are just as necessary to it as is a virus to disease.

Charles Fourier

#20. Certainly in each social period, youth must be made to venerate the dominant absurdities.

Charles Fourier

#21. Today 23 years ago dear Grandmama died. I wonder what she would have thought of a Labour Government.

King George V

#22. Any civilized administration, however organized, prefers its own good to that of the people ...

Charles Fourier

#23. Despots prefer the friendship of the dog, who, unjustly mistreated and debased, still loves and serves the man who wronged him.

Charles Fourier

#24. Attractions are proportional to destinies.

Charles Fourier

#25. It is known that the best nations have always been those which concede the greatest amount of liberty to women.

Charles Fourier

#26. Hosts of merchants encumber the cities, and the streets are cluttered with solicitors who swarm without limit or purpose.

Charles Fourier

#27. Though hope is frail, it's hard to kill.

Stephen Schwartz

#28. Colloquial poetry is to the real art as the barber's wax dummy is to sculpture.

Ezra Pound

#29. Mathematical Analysis is as extensive as nature herself.

Joseph Fourier

#30. The method of doubt must be applied to civilization; we must doubt its necessity, its excellence, and its permanence.

Charles Fourier

#31. Never think that you need to protect God. Because anytime you think you need to protect God, you can be sure that you are worshipping an idol.

Stanley Hauerwas

#32. Commerce, which is mistakenly classified among the productive forms of work, ought to be ranked first among the parasitical professions like those of monk, soldier, lawyer etc.

Charles Fourier

#33. Because dead people don't get angry. They're dead.

J.D. Robb

#34. Mathematics compares the most diverse phenomena and discovers the secret analogies that unite them.

Joseph Fourier