Lazare Carnot quotes

As result a new kind of theory to be applied on a class of motions ... these geometric motions are that which acquire different parts of a system of bodies, without neither perturb themselves nor the other and consequently these motions do not depend of the action or reaction among the bodies, but only upon the conditions of their connections, and thus being determined only by geometry and not dependent of the rules of dynamics. (Lazare Carnot)