Pythagoreans Quotes & Sayings

In ancient days the Pythagoreans were used to change names with each other,
fancying that each would share the virtues they admired in the other. — Henry David Thoreau

Many have argued with me that ambition is not the problem. Women are not less ambitious than men, they insist, but more enlightened with different and more meaningful goals. I do not dismiss or dispute this argument. There is far more to life than climbing a career ladder, including raising children, seeking personal fulfillment, contributing to society, and improving the lives of others. And there are many people who are deeply committed to their jobs but do not - and should not have to - aspire to run their organizations. Leadership roles are not the only way to have profound impact. — Sheryl Sandberg

When I was little, I always used to like to tell stories cuz it was entertaining to people. — Slick Rick

The so-called Pythagoreans, who were the first to take up mathematics, not only advanced this subject, but saturated with it, they fancied that the principles of mathematics were the principles of all things. — Aristotle.

Great talents ripen late; the highest notes are hard to hear. — Laozi

The Pythagoreans... were fascinated by certain specific ratios, ...The Greeks knew these as the 'golden' proportion and the 'perfect' proportion respectively. They may well have been learned from the Babylonians by Pythagoras himself after having been taken prisoner in Egypt. Ratios lay at the heart of the Pythagorean theory of music. — Graham Flegg

Aristotle suggests that the rotating Earth was a generally accepted tenet of Pythagorism: "While most of those who hold that the whole heaven is finite say that the earth lies at the center, the philosophers of Italy, the so-called Pythagoreans, assert the contrary. They say that in the middle there is fire, and that the earth is one of the stars, and by its circular motion round the center produces night and day." — Aristotle.

In the pentagram, the Pythagoreans found all proportions well-known in antiquity: arithmetic, geometric, harmonic, and also the well-known golden proportion, or the golden ratio. ... Probably owing to the perfect form and the wealth of mathematical forms, the pentagram was chosen by the Pythagoreans as their secret symbol and a symbol of health. - Alexander Voloshinov [As quoted in Stakhov] — Alexey Stakhov

Vegetarians have been around for a very long time - Pythagoreans forbade eating animals more than 2,500 years ago - but even as the environmental evidence mounted, they didn't appear to be winning the argument. — Tristram Stuart

I'm very faithful to myself. When you do things that are true it just comes out quite instinctively. — Riccardo Tisci

Getting to know someone else involves curiosity about where they have come from, who they are. — Penelope Lively

The combat environment has the effect of flattening out civilian identities. If you're young or old, or a graduate from Harvard or the son of a farmer from Alabama, or if you're gay or straight or good-looking or ugly: none of those things matters much in combat, as long as you can conform to the group expectations. — Sebastian Junger

The Pythagoreans, you have to remember, were extremely weird. Their philosophy was a chunky stew of things we'd now call mathematics, things we'd now call religion, and things we'd now call mental illness. — Jordan Ellenberg

The Polish people be allowed to have a voice in the kind of govt. they want. Under the Yalta Pact the Soviets agreed they & others would be allowed to do this. The Soviets have never honored that promise. — Ronald Reagan

Even the most carefully defined philosophical or mathematical concept, which we are sure does not contain more than we have put into it, is nevertheless more than we assume. It is a psychic event and as such partly unknowable. The very numbers you use in counting are more than you take them to be. They are at the same time mythological elements (for the Pythagoreans, they were even divine); but you are certainly unaware of this when you use numbers for a practical purpose. — C. G. Jung

Every soul and spirit has some degree of continuity with the universal spirit, which is recognized to be located not only where the individual soul lives and perceives, but also to be spread out everywhere in its essence and substance, as many Platonists and Pythagoreans have taught. — Giordano Bruno

Or an amicable pair," said Sam. "Sorry?" "In math, that's what we call two numbers each of which is equal to the sum of the divisors of the other. The smallest ones, 220 and 284, were regarded by the Pythagoreans as symbols of true friendship. — Reginald Hill

If you want to improve how you manage time - stop doing what doesn't need to be done! — Peter Drucker

Every period in history has its own peculiarities — Sunday Adelaja

The Pythagoreans degrade impious men into brutes and, if one is to believe Empedocles, even into plants. — Giovanni Pico Della Mirandola

Human beings are storytelling animals. That's what separates us from other creatures, not just having thumbs or using tools. — Marion Dane Bauer

The song which thrills to heaven, and seeks to emulate seraphic strains, hath human discords in it. The prayer which moves the arm of God is still a bruised and battered prayer — Charles Haddon Spurgeon

Your words smell of corpses. — Georg Buchner

The forms of mathematics, the harmonies of music, the motions of the planets, and the gods of the mysteries were all essentially related for Pythagoreans, and the meaning of that relation was revealed in an education that culminated in the human soul's assimilation to the world soul, and thence to the divine creative mind of the universe. — Richard Tarnas

I'm an amused observer. I don't bet or gamble; that's the worst thing. — Pablo Francisco

You fuck - you ate my cat! — Kendare Blake

They (i. e., the Pythagoreans ) did not advocate the free confrontation of conflicting points of view. Instead, like all orthodox religions, they practised a rigidity that prevented them from correcting their errors. — Carl Sagan