Pierre-Simon Laplace Quotes

French mathematician and astronomer (1749–1827)

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Pierre-Simon Laplace (23 March 1749 – 5 March 1827) was a French mathematician and astronomer, discoverer of the Laplace transform and Laplace's equation.

From: Wikiquote (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Native Name: Pierre Simon Laplace

Alternative Names: Pierre Simon, Marquis de Laplace • Pierre Simon Marquis de Laplace • Pierre-Simon, Marquis de Laplace • Pierre-Simon de Laplace • Laplace • P.S. de Laplace • P.-S. de Laplace

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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 an absolute value; a profound and important idea which appears so simple to us now that we ignore its true merit.But its very simplicity and the great ease which it has lent to computations put our arithmetic in the first rank of useful inventions; and we shall appreciate the grandeur of the achievement the more when we remember that it escaped the genius of Archimedes and Apollonius, two of the greatest men produced by antiquity.

Translation: "It is therefore obvious that..."

Il est facile de voir que...

Nature laughs at the difficulties of integration.

Translation: "Read Euler, read Euler, he is the master of us all." (Sometimes freely translated as: "Read Euler: he is our master in everything.")

Lisez Euler, lisez Euler, c'est notre maître à tous.

L'homme ne poursuit que des chimères.

Translation: "What we know is not much. What we do not know is immense."

Ce que nous connaissons est peu de chose, ce que nous ignorons est immense.

Translation: "The last thing we expect of you, General, is a lesson in geometry!"

La dernière chose que nous attendions de vous, Général, est une leçon de géométrie !

Translation: "Life's most important questions are, for the most part, nothing but problems of chance."

"Les questions les plus importantes de la vie ne sont en effet, pour la plupart, que des problèmes de probabilité." Théorie analytique des probabilités, 1812.

Said the great and magnanimous Laplace: 'It is India that gave us the ingenious method of expressing all numbers by ten symbols, each receiving a value of position as well as an absolute value; a profound and important idea which appears so simple to us now that we ignore its true merit. But its very simplicity, the great ease which it has lent to all computations, puts our arithmetic in the first rank of useful inventions; and we shall appreciate the grandeur of this achievement the more when we remember that it escaped the genius of Archimedes and Apollonius, two of the greatest men produced by antiquity.'

Translation: "One sees, from this Essay, that the theory of probabilities is basically just common sense reduced to calculus; it makes one appreciate with exactness that which accurate minds feel with a sort of instinct, often without being able to account for it."