Archimedes Quotes

Archimedes shows a grand, plain-spoken look at mathematical reasoning, ideal for readers craving clear, logical insight.

13 quotes

  1. The treatises are, without exception, monuments of mathematical exposition; the gradual revelation of the plan of attack, the masterly ordering of the propositions, the stern elimination of everything not immediately relevant to the purpose, the finish of the whole, are so impressive in their perfection as to create a feeling akin to awe in the mind of the reader.

  2. Having been the discoverer of many splendid things, he is said to have asked his friends and relations that, after his death, they should place on his tomb a cylinder enclosing a sphere, writing on it the proportion of the containing solid to that which is contained.

  3. Rise above oneself and grasp the world.

  4. Any solid lighter than a fluid will, if placed in the fluid, be so far immersed that the weight of the solid will be equal to the weight of the fluid displaced. On floating bodies I, prop 5.

  5. The perimeter of the earth is about 3,000,000 stadia and not greater.

  6. Give me but a firm spot on which to stand, and I shall move the earth.

  7. Give me a place to stand, and a lever long enough, and I will move the world.

  8. Two magnitudes whether commensurable or incommensurable, balance at distances reciprocally proportional to the magnitudes.

  9. Man has always learned from the past. After all, you can't learn history in reverse!

  10. Eureka! Eureka! Supposed to have been his cry, jumping naked from his bath and running in the streets, excited by a discovery about water displacement to solve a problem about the purity of a gold crown.

  11. Mathematics reveals its secrets only to those who approach it with pure love, for its own beauty.

  12. It follows at once from the last proposition that the centre of gravity of any triangle is at the intersection of the lines drawn from any two angles to the middle points of the opposite sides respectively.

  13. How many theorems in geometry which have seemed at first impracticable are in time successfully worked out!