Famous quotes containing the words actual, infinity and/or distinction:
“Mathematics ... would certainly have not come into existence if one had known from the beginning that there was in nature no exactly straight line, no actual circle, no absolute magnitude.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“The poetic notion of infinity is far greater than that which is sponsored by any creed.”
—Joseph Brodsky (b. 1940)
“Met face to face, these Indians in their native woods looked like the sinister and slouching fellows whom you meet picking up strings and paper in the streets of a city. There is, in fact, a remarkable and unexpected resemblance between the degraded savage and the lowest classes in a great city. The one is no more a child of nature than the other. In the progress of degradation the distinction of races is soon lost.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)