The first steps in the path of discovery, and the first approximate measures, are those which add most to the existing knowledge of mankind.
CHARLES BABBAGEThe quantity of meaning compressed into small space by algebraic signs, is another circumstance that facilitates the reasonings we are accustomed to carry on by their aid.
More Charles Babbage Quotes
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Whenever the work is itself light, it becomes necessary, in order to economize time, to increase the velocity.
CHARLES BABBAGE -
In turning from the smaller instruments in frequent use to the larger and more important machines, the economy arising from the increase of velocity becomes more striking.
CHARLES BABBAGE -
The tastes and pursuits of manhood will bear on them the traces of the earlier impressions of our education. It is therefore not unreasonable to suppose that some portion of the neglect of science in England, may be attributed to the system of education we pursue.
CHARLES BABBAGE -
I wish to God these calculations had been executed by steam.
CHARLES BABBAGE -
At each increase of knowledge, as well as on the contrivance of every new tool, human labour becomes abridged.
CHARLES BABBAGE -
Another mode of accumulating power arises from lifting a weight and then allowing it to fall.
CHARLES BABBAGE -
Telegraphs are machines for conveying information over extensive lines with great rapidity.
CHARLES BABBAGE -
Some kinds of nails, such as those used for defending the soles of coarse shoes, called hobnails, require a particular form of the head, which is made by the stroke of a die.
CHARLES BABBAGE -
The difference between a tool and a machine is not capable of very precise distinction; nor is it necessary, in a popular explanation of those terms, to limit very strictly their acceptation.
CHARLES BABBAGE -
The errors which arise from the absence of facts are far more numerous and more durable than those which result from unsound reasoning respecting true data.
CHARLES BABBAGE -
Whenever a man can get hold of numbers, they are invaluable: if correct, they assist in informing his own mind, but they are still more useful in deluding the minds of others. Numbers are the masters of the weak, but the slaves of the strong.
CHARLES BABBAGE -
The Council of the Royal Society is a collection of men who elect each other to office and then dine together at the expense of this society to praise each other over wine and give each other medals.
CHARLES BABBAGE -
Miracles may be, for anything we know to the contrary, phenomena of a higher order of God’s laws, superior to, and, under certain conditions, controlling the inferior order known to us as the ordinary laws of nature.
CHARLES BABBAGE -
There is, however, another purpose to which academies contribute. When they consist of a limited number of persons, eminent for their knowledge, it becomes an object of ambition to be admitted on their list.
CHARLES BABBAGE -
That science has long been neglected and declining in England, is not an opinion originating with me, but is shared by many, and has been expressed by higher authority than mine.
CHARLES BABBAGE