There exists among the most primitive tribes of Australia and Africa a system of numeration which has neither 5, 10, nor 20 for base. It is a binary … - Tobias Dantzig

d'Alembert, who wrote the introduction to the Encyclopédie, resigned his editorship with the scathing remark that the work was like a harlequin's coat: some good stuff, but mostly rags.

One part of the dreams of the eighteenth century intellectuals was realized: the resources of nature did yield a magnificent harvest. But the thinkers who helped to tap these resources... failed to attend, detained in their studies and laboratories, lost in their dreams and calculations, seeking new fields, co-ordinating old and new, spinning abstract theories... the thinkers were unequal to the task of developing these vast resources, most of which they had themselves uncovered. The shrewd declassés, who had... the world to gain, pioneered this development and took possession of the earth.

His essays on the foundations of science are cases in point. They strike one as extemporaneous speeches rather than edited articles. ...those who knew him best insisted that he rarely, if ever, would revise a manuscript, even if he was fully aware of its stylistic shortcomings.