Georges Clemenceau Quotes
There are only two perfectly useless things in this world. One is an appendix and the other is Poincaré.
Georges Clemenceau, 1841-1929, Journalist & French Prime Minister, Referring to his rival politician, Raymond Poincaré, 1919
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
There was a major policy split between Secretary of State Colin Powell and the Vice President / Secretary of Defense. The latter, together with a number of neoconservatives, had been advocating invasion of Iraq and aggressive use of the military. Virtually all of these advocates had never served in the military and had no experience with war. Secretary Powell, in contrast, fought in Vietnam, was a General in the Gulf War, and served as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Wilkerson, his Chief of Staff at the State Department was also a senior military officer who had seen war and sent men into battle. They were much more reluctant to use military power unless the nation's vital interest demanded it. Hence, the quotation.
Referring to Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin, 1867-1947: 1st Baron & 1st Marquis Curzon of Kedleston
This problem is still with us. Nuclear proliferation, dirty radioactive bombs, and terrorism are potential down sides of radioactivity.
This was one of the great scientific predictions of how science would develop.
This is an amazing quotation. It was not until the last 50 years that biologists have come to realize that mathematics is essential to their understanding of the science, just like chemistry and physics. For years biology was a science that did not require mathematics as a prerequisite for study. With the exception of a few holdouts, biology had come of age—an age predicted by Comte. This has placed more pressure on the high schools which used to counsel students that if they did not like mathematics or take it, they could go into biology. No longer is that reality.
Napoleon recognized that technology and science were major factors in innovation and economic development and that mathematics was necessary for that and for economics, and therefore placed a great deal of emphasis on mathematics education. He was a fairly competent mathematically himself having been an artillery officer early in his career.
This quotation was from a mathematician who was in the midst of the expansion of mathematics in the late 19th century to include the then rapid and rich development of Probability. This required mathematicians, scientists and others who would use the new mathematics to think in a very different way. For the existing mathematicians his quote clearly states the dilemma for them. Today, scientists and mathematicians have little trouble with “laws of probability” and realize that Probability is governed and controlled in the same way as other fields of mathematics; they are comfortable with different results occurring under the exact same experimental conditions, and those different results are unpredictable in any particular instance, but exactly predictable in terms of frequency of each possible occurrence. This makes Quantum Mechanics rational. However, few non scientists have had their thinking expanded and are comfortable with this thinking. Law and public policy makers are particularly vexed by not being able to think and work in this paradigm where consequences of something can be described for a population precisely, and yet be impossible to describe for any particular individual. This will improve over time, as politicians and other community leaders become better educated mathematically and scientifically.
This quotation about George Washington is one of the best complements ever paid to any political leader.
Georges Eugène Benjamin Clemenceau was a French statesman who served as Prime Minister of France from 1906 to 1909 and again from 1917 until 1920. A popular figure of the Independent Radicals, he played a central role in the politics of the Third Republic, most notably successfully leading the country through the end of the First World War.
