#generality

The D.H.C. for Central London always made a point of personally conducting his new students round the various departments. "Just to give you a general idea," hew would explain to them. For of course some soft of general idea they must have, if they were to do their work intelligently - though as little of one, if they were to be good and happy members of society, as possible. For particulars, as every one knows, make for virtue and happiness; generalities are intellectually necessary evils. Not philosophers but fretsawyers and stamp collectors compose the backbone of society. ↗

— Aldous Huxley

#happiness #huxley #society #intelligence

The generality of men are naturally apt to be swayed by fear rather than reverence, and to refrain from evil rather because of the punishment that it brings than because of its own foulness. ↗

— Aristotle

#because #brings #evil #fear #generality

The art of doing mathematics consists in finding that special case which contains all the germs of generality. ↗

— David Hilbert

#case #consists #contains #doing #finding

Even before string theory, especially as physics developed in the 20th century, it turned out that the equations that really work in describing nature with the most generality and the greatest simplicity are very elegant and subtle. ↗

— Edward Witten

#before #century #describing #developed #elegant

As soon as there is language, generality has entered the scen. ↗

— Jacques Derrida

#generality #language #soon

Since the generality of persons act from impulse, much more than from principle, men are neither so good nor so bad as we are apt to think them. ↗

— Augustus Hare

#apt #bad #generality #good #impulse

For parlor use, the vague generality is a life saver. ↗

— George Ade

#life #parlor #saver #use #vague

Guided only by their feeling for symmetry, simplicity, and generality, and an indefinable sense of the fitness of things, creative mathematicians now, as in the past, are inspired by the art of mathematics rather than by any prospect of ultimate usefulness. ↗

— E. T. Bell

#art #creative #feeling #fitness #generality

Because all of biology is connected, one can often make a breakthrough with an organism that exaggerates a particular phenomenon, and later explore the generality. ↗

— Thomas R. Cech

#biology #breakthrough #connected #exaggerates #explore

I am only conscious of any satisfaction in Scientific Reading or thinking when it rounds off into a poetical generality and vagueness. ↗

— Wilfred Owen

#any #conscious #generality #i #i am