Pierre-Simon Laplace

“Probability theory is nothing but common sense reduced to calculation.”

“What we know is little, and what we are ignorant of is immense.”

“The most important questions of life are, for the most part, really only problems of probability.”

“All the effects of nature are only the mathematical consequences of a small number of immutable laws.”

“Such is the advantage of a well-constructed language that its simplified notation often becomes the source of profound theories.”

“The weight of evidence for an extraordinary claim must be proportioned to its strangeness.”

“I have no need of that hypothesis.”

“Read Euler, read Euler, he is the master of us all.”

“It is remarkable that a science which began with the consideration of games of chance should have become the most important object of human knowledge.”

“Man follows only phantoms.”

“The simplicity of the universe is very different from the simplicity of man.”