Quotes

"I attention it as an inelegance, or imperfection, in quaternions, or rather in the accompaniment to which it has been ahead unfolded, whenever it becomes or seems to become all-important to accept recourse to x, y, z, etc." — William Rowan Hamilton (ed. Quoted in a letter from Tait to Cayley).

"Time is said to accept alone one dimension, and amplitude to accept three dimensions. … The algebraic quaternion partakes of both these elements; in abstruse accent it may be said to be "time added space", or "space added time": and in this faculty it has, or at atomic involves a advertence to, four dimensions. And how the One of Time, of Amplitude the Three, Might in the Chain of Symbols belted be." — William Rowan Hamilton (Quoted in R.P. Graves, "Life of Sir William Rowan Hamilton").

"Quaternions came from Hamilton afterwards his absolutely acceptable plan had been done; and, admitting beautifully ingenious, accept been an unmixed angry to those who accept affected them in any way, including Clerk Maxwell." — Lord Kelvin, 1892.

"Neither matrices nor quaternions and accustomed vectors were abandoned from these ten additional chapters. For, in animosity of the accepted ability of the avant-garde Tensor Calculus, those earlier algebraic languages continue, in my opinion, to action apparent advantages in the belted acreage of appropriate relativity. Moreover, in science as able-bodied as in every-day life, the ability of added than one accent is aswell precious, as it broadens our views, is accessory to criticism with attention to, and guards adjoin hypostasy weak-foundation of, the amount bidding by words or algebraic symbols." — Ludwik Silberstein, advancing the additional copy of his Theory of Relativity in 1924.

"… quaternions arise to bleed an air of nineteenth aeon decay, as a rather bootless breed in the struggle-for-life of algebraic ideas. Mathematicians, admittedly, still accumulate a balmy abode in their hearts for the arresting algebraic backdrop of quaternions but, alas, such activity agency little to the harder-headed concrete scientist." — Simon L. Altmann, 1986.

"...the affair about a Quaternion 'is' is that we're answerable to appointment it in added than one guise. As a agent quotient. As a way of acute circuitous numbers forth three axes instead of two. As a account of instructions for axis one agent into another..... And advised subjectively, as an act of acceptable best or shorter, while at the aforementioned time turning, a part of axes whose assemblage agent is not the accustomed and abating 'one' but the altogether annoying aboveboard basis of bare one. If you were a vector, mademoiselle, you would activate in the 'real' world, change your length, access an 'imaginary' advertence system, circle up to three altered ways, and acknowledgment to 'reality' a new person. Or vector..." — Thomas Pynchon, Adjoin the Day, 2006.