Pierre-Simon Laplace Quotes & Sayings

Probability theory is nothing but common sense reduced to calculation. — Pierre-Simon Laplace

To Napoleon on why his works on celestial mechanics make no mention of God: Your Highness, I have no need of this hypothesis. — Pierre-Simon Laplace

The theory of probabilities is basically only common sense reduced to a calculus. It makes one estimate accurately what right-minded people feel by a sort of instinct, often without being able to give a reason for it. — Pierre-Simon Laplace

Napoleon: You have written this huge book on the system of the world without once mentioning the author of the universe. Laplace: Sire, I had no need of that hypothesis. Later when told by Napoleon about the incident, Lagrange commented: Ah, but that is a fine hypothesis. It explains so many things. — Pierre-Simon Laplace

Given for one instant an intelligence which could comprehend all the forces by which nature is animated and the respective positions of the beings which compose it, if moreover this intelligence were vast enough to submit these data to analysis, it would embrace in the same formula both the movements of the largest bodies in the universe and those of the lightest atom; to it nothing would be uncertain, and the future as the past would be present to its eye. — Pierre-Simon Laplace

...by shortening the labours doubled the life of the astronomer.

{On the benefit of John Napier's logarithms.} — Pierre-Simon Laplace

The weight of evidence for an extraordinary claim must be proportioned to its strangeness. — Pierre-Simon Laplace

Read Euler, read Euler, he is the master of us all. — Pierre-Simon Laplace

All the effects of Nature are only the mathematical consequences of a small number of immutable laws. — Pierre-Simon Laplace

His last words, according to De Morgan: Man follows only phantoms. — Pierre-Simon Laplace

The theory of probabilities is at bottom nothing but common sense reduced to calculus; it enables us to appreciate with exactness that which accurate minds feel with a sort of instinct for which of times they are unable to account. — Pierre-Simon Laplace

"Read Euler: he is our master in everything." — Pierre-Simon Laplace

Such is the advantage of a well constructed language that its simplified notation often becomes the source of profound theories. — Pierre-Simon Laplace

Probability theory is nothing more than common sense reduced to calculation. -1819 — Pierre-Simon Laplace

[Science] dissipates errors born of ignorance about our true relations with nature, errors the more damaging in that the social order should rest only on those relations. TRUTH! JUSTICE! Those are the immutable laws. Let us banish the dangerous maxim that it is sometimes useful to depart from them and to deceive or enslave mankind to assure its happiness. — Pierre-Simon Laplace

What we know is not much. What we don't know is enormous. — Pierre-Simon Laplace

Truth and justice are the immutable laws of social order. — Pierre-Simon Laplace

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. — Pierre-Simon Laplace

I have lived long enough to know what I did not at one time believe
that no society can be upheld in happiness and honor without the sentiment of religion. — Pierre-Simon Laplace

The simplicity of nature is not to be measured by that of our conceptions. Infinitely varied in its effects, nature is simple only in its causes, and its economy consists in producing a great number of phenomena, often very complicated, by means of a small number of general laws. — Pierre-Simon Laplace

Man follows only phantoms. — Pierre-Simon Laplace

Do you believe in god? I have no need for that hypothesis, he may be around though. — Pierre-Simon Laplace

It is interesting thus to follow the intellectual truths of analysis in the phenomena of nature. This correspondence, of which the system of the world will offer us numerous examples, makes one of the greatest charms attached to mathematical speculations. — Pierre-Simon Laplace

Without any doubt, the regularity which astronomy shows us in the movements of the comets takes place in all phenomena. The trajectory of a simple molecule of air or vapour is regulated in a manner as certain as that of the planetary orbits; the only difference between them is that which is contributed by our ignorance. Probability is relative in part to this ignorance, and in part to our knowledge. — Pierre-Simon Laplace

We are so far from knowing all the forces of nature and their various modes of action that it would be unworthy of the philosopher to deny phenomena simply because they are inexplicable at the present state of our knowledge. The more difficult it is to acknowledge their existence, the greater the care with which we must study these phenomena. — Pierre-Simon Laplace

What we know is not much. What we do not know is immense. — Pierre-Simon Laplace

The telescope sweeps the sky without finding God. — Pierre-Simon Laplace

The simplicity of the law by which the celestial bodies move, and the relations of their masses and distances, permit analysis to follow their motions up to a certain point; and in order to determine the state of the system of these great bodies in past or future centuries, it suffices for the mathematician that their position and their velocity be given by observation for any moment in time. — Pierre-Simon Laplace

The ingenious method of expressing every possible number using a set of ten symbols (each symbol having a place value and an absolute value) emerged in India. The idea seems so simple nowadays that its significance and profound importance is no longer appreciated ... The importance of this invention is more readily appreciated when one considers that it was beyod the two greatest men of antiquity, Archimedes and Apollonius. — Pierre-Simon Laplace

Nature laughs at the difficulties of integration. — Pierre-Simon Laplace