Mathematics Quotes
389 quotes
"Mathematics expresses values that reflect the cosmos, including orderliness, balance, harmony, logic, and abstract beauty."
"The difference between the poet and the mathematician is that the poet tries to get his head into the heavens while the mathematician tries to get the heavens into his head."
"My first feeling was that there was no way to continue. Writing isn't like math;in math, two plus two always equals four no matter what your mood is like. With writing, the way you feel changes everything."
"The ‘Muse’ is not an artistic mystery, but a mathematical equation. The gift are those ideas you think of as you drift to sleep. The giver is that one you think of when you first awake."
"What comes, is called."
"I couldn't claim that I was smarter than sixty-five other guys--but the average of sixty-five other guys, certainly!"
"[When asked why are numbers beautiful?]It’s like asking why is Ludwig van Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony beautiful. If you don't see why, someone can't tell you. I know numbers are beautiful. If they aren't beautiful, nothing is."
"But in my opinion, all things in nature occur mathematically."
"Infinite is a meaningless word: except – it states / The mind is capable of performing / an endless process of addition."
"I should attempt to treat human vice and folly geometrically... the passions of hatred, anger, envy, and so on, considered in themselves, follow from the necessity and efficacy of nature... I shall, therefore, treat the nature and strength of the emotion in exactly the same manner, as though I were concerned with lines, planes, and solids."
"Geometry has two great treasures; one is the Theorem of Pythagoras; the other, the division of a line into extreme and mean ratio. The first we may compare to a measure of gold; the second we may name a precious jewel."
"The study of mathematics is apt to commence in disappointment... We are told that by its aid the stars are weighed and the billions of molecules in a drop of water are counted. Yet, like the ghost of Hamlet's father, this great science eludes the efforts of our mental weapons to grasp it."
"This is the team. We're trying to go to the moon. If you can't put someone up, please don't put them down."
"Your Excellency, I have no need of this hypothesis."
"Mathematics is the cheapest science. Unlike physics or chemistry, it does not require any expensive equipment. All one needs for mathematics is a pencil and paper."
"Although personally, I think cyberspace means the end of our species."
"Seni sama pentingnya dengan matematika. Seni memanusiakan manusia. Seni menciptakan rasa empati"
"Its a mathematical fact that two negatives make a positive so even under adverse circumstances think positively."
"Neglect of mathematics work injury to all knowledge, since he who is ignorant of it cannot know the other sciences or things of this world. And what is worst, those who are thus ignorant are unable to perceive their own ignorance, and so do not seek a remedy."
"When the time is ripe for certain things, these things appear in different places in the manner of violets coming to light in early spring."
"Mathematical Knowledge adds a manly Vigour to the Mind, frees it from Prejudice, Credulity, and Superstition."
"If you can't test it, it's not theorics -- it's metatheorics. A branch of philosophy. So, if you want to think of it this way, our test equipment is what defines the boundary separating theorics from philosophy."
"Plenty of mathematicians, Hardy knew, could follow a step-by-step discursus unflaggingly—yet counted for nothing beside Ramanujan. Years later, he would contrive an informal scale of natural mathematical ability on which he assigned himself a 25 and Littlewood a 30. To David Hilbert, the most eminent mathematician of the day, he assigned an 80. To Ramanujan he gave 100."
"College is the grinding machine of the Mathematical Establishment, a conveyor belt that takes individuals from one cookie cutter to another so that the product comes within tight control limits out of the assembly line."
"If in other sciences we should arrive at certainty without doubt and truth without error, it behooves us to place the foundations of knowledge in mathematics."
"For the things of this world cannot be made known without a knowledge of mathematics."
"If the institution of mathematics told a story . . . how would it end?"
"As the several items can be exchanged, they must be equal; but in what terms? Not in pounds, yards, or hours; they are equal in value. Then what is wanted is a unit of value to reckon by."
"When we are young, we spend much time and pains in filling our note-books with all definitions of Religion, Love, Poetry, Politics, Art, in the hope that, in the course of a few years, we shall have condensed into our encyclopaedia the net value of all the theories at which the world has yet arrived. But year after year our tables get no completeness, and at last we discover that our curve is a parabola, whose arcs will never meet."
"Physicists have come to realize that mathematics, when used with sufficient care, is a proven pathway to truth."
Brian Greene, The Fabric of the Cosmos: Space, Time, and the Texture of Reality
"Mathematics and poetry are the two ways to drink the beauty of truth."
"The mathematicians are the priests of the modern world."
"If you can't illustrate 'it', 'it' doens't belong in Physics as a noun! You can't put an article in front. You can't put a verb after!"
"A mathematician is an individual who believes that prophesying that his dog will die if he deprives it of food constitutes a prediction."
"Atheism is the opium of the mathematicians. Atheism is the religion of Mathematics."
"Mathematically, the purpose of life is to produce a result. In human terms, it is called Happiness."
"Education makes your maths better, not necessarily your manners."
"I lose faith in mathematics, logical and rigid. What with those that even zero doesn’t accept?"
"Teaching mathematics, like teaching any art, requires the ability to inspire the student. Inspiration requires marketing, and marketing requires stirring communication."
Hartosh Singh Bal, A Certain Ambiguity: A Mathematical Novel
"The thing I want you especially to understand is this feeling of divine revelation. I feel that this structure was "out there" all along I just couldn't see it. And now I can! This is really what keeps me in the math game-- the chance that I might glimpse some kind of secret underlying truth, some sort of message from the gods."
"The distance between your Dreams and Reality is inversely proportional to your Efforts."
"There cannot be a language more universal and more simple, more free from errors and obscurities...more worthy to express the invariable relations of all natural things [than mathematics]. [It interprets] all phenomena by the same language, as if to attest the unity and simplicity of the plan of the universe, and to make still more evident that unchangeable order which presides over all natural causes"
"No mathematician in the world would bother making these senseless distinctions: 2 1/2 is a "mixed number " while 5/2 is an "improper fraction." They're EQUAL for crying out loud. They are the exact same numbers and have the exact same properties. Who uses such words outside of fourth grade?"
"I abandoned the assigned problems in standard calculus textbooks and followed my curiosity. Wherever I happened to be--a Vegas casino, Disneyland, surfing in Hawaii, or sweating on the elliptical in Boesel's Green Microgym--I asked myself, "Where is the calculus in this experience?"
"Please give it up. Fear it no less than the sensual passion, because it, too, may take up all your time and deprive you of your health, peace of mind and happiness in life.[Having himself spent a lifetime unsuccessfully trying to prove Euclid's postulate that parallel lines do not meet, Farkas discouraged his son János from any further attempt.]"
"In a Sense, we all are Time Travelers! We are Surviving each and every Active Time-Point in this Timeline......."
"The apex of mathematical achievement occurs when two or more fields which were thought to be entirely unrelated turn out to be closely intertwined. Mathematicians have never decided whether they should feel excited or upset by such events."
"We have a closed circle of consistency here: the laws of physics produce complex systems, and these complex systems lead to consciousness, which then produces mathematics, which can then encode in a succinct and inspiring way the very underlying laws of physics that gave rise to it."
Roger Penrose, The Road to Reality: A Complete Guide to the Laws of the Universe
"In every department of physical science there is only so much science, properly so-called, as there is mathematics."
"A mathematician is an individual who calls himself a 'physicist' and does 'physics' and physical experiments with abstract concepts."
Showing 50 of 389 quotes