The mind has its illusions as the sense of sight; and in the same manner that the sense of feeling corrects the latter, reflection and calculation co….

It is India that gave us the ingenious method of expressing all numbers by means of ten symbols, each symbol receiving a value of position as well as….

The theory of probabilities is basically only common sense reduced to a calculus. It makes one estimate accurately what right-minded people feel by a….

Napoleon: You have written this huge book on the system of the world without once mentioning the author of the universe. Laplace: Sire, I had no need….

If an event can be produced by a number n of different causes, the probabilities of the existence of these causes, given the event (prises de l'événe….

Read Euler, read Euler. He is the master of us all..

We are so far from knowing all the forces of nature and their various modes of action that it would be unworthy of the philosopher to deny phenomena ….

The simplicity of nature is not to be measured by that of our conceptions. Infinitely varied in its effects, nature is simple only in its causes, and….

Do you believe in god? I have no need for that hypothesis, he may be around though..

The simplicity of the law by which the celestial bodies move, and the relations of their masses and distances, permit analysis to follow their motion….

The telescope sweeps the sky without finding God..

[It] may be laid down as a general rule that, if the result of a long series of precise observations approximates a simple relation so closely that t….

Said about Napier's logarithms: . . . by shortening the labors doubled the life of the astronomer..

Man follows only phantoms..

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….

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….

Your Highness, I have no need of this hypothesis..

I have no need for that 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….

[Science] dissipates errors born of ignorance about our true relations with nature, errors the more damaging in that the social order should rest onl….

Nature laughs at the difficulties of integration..