concept of infinity Quotes

The real irony is that the view of infinity as some forbidden zone or road to insanity - which view was very old and powerful and haunted math for 2000+ years - is precisely what Cantor's own work overturned. Saying that infinity drove Cantor mad is sort of like mourning St. George's loss to the dragon: it's not only wrong but insulting.

At first sight nothing seems more obvious than that everything has a beginning and an end, and that everything can be subdivided into smaller parts. Nevertheless, for entirely speculative reasons the philosophers of Antiquity, especially the Stoics, concluded this concept to be quite unnecessary. The prodigious development of physics has now reached the same conclusion as those philosophers, Empedocles and Democritus in particular, who lived around 500 B.C.E. and for whom even ancient man had a lively admiration.

He considered it a shame when people couldn't grasp the infinite-a failure not just of imagination but of simple vision.

Where are the real sources of human dignity, freedom and modern democracy, if not in the concept of infinity to which all men are equal?

The solution of the difficulties which formerly surrounded the mathematical infinite is probably the greatest achievement of which our age has to boast.

An object, after all, is what makes infinity private.

My house is small, but you are learned men And by your arguments can make a place Twenty foot broad as infinite as space.