"The more I study, the more insatiable do I feel my genius for it to be."
"We might even invent laws for series or formula in an arbitrary manner, and set the engine to work upon them, and thus deduce numerical results which we might not otherwise have thought of obtaining; but this would hardly perhaps in any instance be productive of any great practical utility, or calculated to rank higher than as a philosophical amusement."
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Source: Sketch of the Analytical Engine Invented by Charles Babbage. Book by L.F. Menabrea. Scientific Memoirs (Richard Taylor): 694, 1842.
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"Understand well as I may, my comprehension can only be an infinitesimal fraction of all I want to understand."
"That brain of mine is something more than merely mortal; as time will show."
"If you can't give me poetry, can't you give me poetical science?"
"I never am really satisfied that I understand anything; because, understand it well as I may, my comprehension can only be an infinitesimal fraction of all I want to understand about the many connections and relations which occur to me, how the matter in question was first thought of or arrived at, etc., etc."
"The Analytical Engine might act upon other things besides number, were objects found whose mutual fundamental relations could be expressed by those of the abstract science of operations, and which should be also susceptible of adaptations to the action of the operating notation and mechanism of the engine… Supposing, for instance, that the fundamental relations of pitched sounds in the science of harmony and of musical composition were susceptible of such expression and adaptations, the engine might compose elaborate and scientific pieces of music of any degree of complexity or extent."