Quotations by Girolamo Cardano

To throw in a fair game at Hazards only three-spots, when something great is at stake, or some business is the hazard, is a natural occurrence and deserves to be so deemed; and even when they come up the same way for a second time if the throw be repeated. If the third and fourth plays are the same, surely there is occasion for suspicion on the part of a prudent man.
De Vita Propria Liber.

Scipio Ferro of Bologna well-nigh thirty years ago discovered this rule and handed it on to Antonio Maria Fior of Venice, whose contest with Niccolo Tartaglia of Brescia gave Niccolo occasion to discover it. He [Tartaglia] gave it to me in response to my entreaties, though withholding the demonstration. Armed with this assistance, I sought out its demonstration in [various] forms. This was very difficult.
Ars Magna (Basel, 1545)

Quinquies exscriptus, maneat tot millibus annis.
I wrote it out five times, may it last the same number of millennia.
The final line of Ars magna.

Those arts which are, to be sure, not finite, as geometry and arithmetic, do not suffer adornment; others, contrarily, are rather subject to division and embellishment, such as astronomy and jurisprudence.
The book of my life (New York, 2002).

Mathematics, however, is, as it were, its own explanation; this, although it may seem hard to accept, is nevertheless true, for the recognition that a fact is so is the cause upon which we base the proof.
The book of my life (New York, 2002).

JOC/EFR April 2011

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