Mathematics is a terrible calling. It’s as merciless as gravity. It swallows the soul. There’s a point near a black hole called the last stable orbit. Once you drop below that radius, no force in the universe can stop you falling all the way in. That’s what happened to your mother — she swam too close to theory, fell below the last stable orbit. Alastair Reynolds
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  1. I should attempt to treat human vice and folly geometrically... the passions of hatred, anger, envy, and so on, considered in themselves, follow from the necessity and efficacy of nature... I shall, therefore, treat the nature and strength of the emotion in exactly the same... - Baruch Spinoza

  2. If you can't test it, it's not theorics -- it's metatheorics. A branch of philosophy. So, if you want to think of it this way, our test equipment is what defines the boundary separating theorics from philosophy. - Neal Stephenson

  3. Physicists have come to realize that mathematics, when used with sufficient care, is a proven pathway to truth. - Brian Greene

  4. The difference between the poet and the mathematician is that the poet tries to get his head into the heavens while the mathematician tries to get the heavens into his head. - G.k. Chesterton

  5. This is the team. We're trying to go to the moon. If you can't put someone up, please don't put them down. - NASA

More Quotes By Alastair Reynolds
  1. Cyphel knew exactly how he felt about her as well – it was there in her expression whenever they spoke that beguiling combination of amusement and haughtiness that she carried off so well. It was a look that expressed disdain at Campion’s guarded advances but...

  2. How did you .. . pass the time?’ Sunday asked. ‘You couldn’t just ching out of it, could you?’‘ We had a different form of chinging, ’ Eunice said. ‘An earlier type of virtual-reality technology, much more robust and completely unaffected by time lag. You...

  3. A city's only ever three hot meals away from anarchy.

  4. History is what we write, not what we remember. Why should we tarnish the memory of our planet by enshrining our less then noble deeds?

  5. Consider all the inanimate matter in the universe, all the dumb atoms, all the mindless molecules, all the oblivious dust grains and pebbles and rocks and iceballs and worlds and stars, all the unthinking galaxies and superclusters, wheeling through the oblivious time-haunted megaparsecs of the...

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