Occupation: Mathematician Birth: March 23, 1749 Death: March 5, 1827
The word 'chance' then expresses only our ignorance of the causes of the phenomena that we observe to occur and to succeed one another in no apparent….
To Napoleon on why his works on celestial mechanics make no mention of God: Your Highness, I have no need of this hypothesis..
The theory of probabilities is at bottom nothing but common sense reduced to calculus; it enables us to appreciate with exactness that which accurate….
Given for one instant an intelligence which could comprehend all the forces by which nature is animated and the respective positions of the beings wh….
All the effects of Nature are only the mathematical consequences of a small number of immutable laws..
The most important questions of life are indeed, for the most part, really only problems of probability..
Truth and justice are the immutable laws of social order..
What we know is not much. What we do not know is immense..
What we know is not much. What we don't know is enormous..
The weight of evidence for an extraordinary claim must be proportioned to its strangeness..
Probability theory is nothing but common sense reduced to calculation..
I have lived long enough to know what I did not at one time believe--that no society can be upheld in happiness and honor without the sentiment of re….
Nature laughs at the difficulties of integration..
What we know here is very little, but what we are ignorant of is immense..
Without any doubt, the regularity which astronomy shows us in the movements of the comets takes place in all phenomena. The trajectory of a simple mo….
Man follows only phantoms..
Your Highness, I have no need of this hypothesis..
However, the small probability of a similar encounter [of the earth with a comet], can become very great in adding up over a huge sequence of centuri….
I have no need for that hypothesis..
I see with much pleasure that you are working on a large work on the integral Calculus ... The reconciliation of the methods which you are planning t….
[Science] dissipates errors born of ignorance about our true relations with nature, errors the more damaging in that the social order should rest onl….