It is difficult to estimate the misery inflicted upon thousands of persons, and the absolute pecuniary penalty imposed upon multitudes of intellectual workers by the loss of their time, destroyed by organ-grinders and other similar nuisances.
CHARLES BABBAGEThe fatigue produced on the muscles of the human frame does not altogether depend on the actual force employed in each effort, but partly on the frequency with which it is exerted.
More Charles Babbage Quotes
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If we look at the fact, we shall find that the great inventions of the age are not, with us at least, always produced in universities.
CHARLES BABBAGE -
Perhaps the most important principle on which the economy of a manufacture depends, is the division of labour amongst the persons who perform the work.
CHARLES BABBAGE -
Errors using inadequate data are much less than those using no data at all.
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 -
Whenever the work is itself light, it becomes necessary, in order to economize time, to increase the velocity.
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 -
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 -
I have no desire to write my own biography, as long as I have strength and means to do better work.
CHARLES BABBAGE -
What is there in a name? It is merely an empty basket, until you put something into it.
CHARLES BABBAGE -
No person will deny that the highest degree of attainable accuracy is an object to be desired, and it is generally found that the last advances towards precision require a greater devotion of time, labour, and expense, than those which precede them.
CHARLES BABBAGE -
Perhaps it would be better for science, that all criticism should be avowed.
CHARLES BABBAGE -
Scientific knowledge scarcely exists amongst the higher classes of society. The discussion in the Houses of Lords or of Commons, which arise on the occurrence of any subjects connected with science, sufficiently prove this fact.
CHARLES BABBAGE -
An object is frequently not seen, from not knowing how to see it, rather than from any defect of the organ of vision.
CHARLES BABBAGE -
The 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.
CHARLES BABBAGE -
The accumulation of skill and science which has been directed to diminish the difficulty of producing manufactured goods, has not been beneficial to that country alone in which it is concentrated distant kingdoms have participated in its advantages.
CHARLES BABBAGE