"Mathematics may be compared to a mill of exquisite workmanship, which grinds your stuff of any degree of fineness; but, nevertheless, what you get out depends upon what you put in; and as the grandest mill in the world will not extract wheat flour from peascods, so pages of formulæ will not get a definite result out of loose data."
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Original Language: English
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Thomas Henry Huxley, "Anniversary Address of the President", Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society of London (1869) Vol. 25, p. l in p. xxviii-liii; as reprinted in Aphorisms and Reflections (1908) CCXXVI, p. 93 ed., Henrietta A. Huxley Huxley, and in Discourses, Biological and Geological essays (1909), pp. 335–336.
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