quotes about Mathematics
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Music is what mathematics does on a Saturday night.
-- Aaron Sorkin -
Mathematics is not yet capable of coping with the naïveté of the mathematician himself.
-- Abraham Kaplan -
All the truths of mathematics are linked to each other, and all means of discovering them are equally admissible.
-- Adrien-Marie Legendre -
I had drawings that were the first time that mathematics was put into visual form.
-- Agnes DenesSource : Source: www.interviewmagazine.com
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... preliminary accounting, banking and surveying (known as arithmetic, algebra and geometry).
-- Alan Watts -
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Mathematics are well and good but Nature keeps dragging us around by the nose.
-- Albert Einstein -
The new art must be based upon science - in particular, upon mathematics, as the most exact, logical, and graphically constructive of the sciences.
-- Albrecht DurerSource : "Dictionary of Scientific Biography". Book edited by M. Steck, 1970-1990.
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We know that nature is described by the best of all possible mathematics because God created it. So there is a chance that the best of all possible mathematics will be created out of physicists' attempts to describe nature.
-- Alexander Markovich Polyakov -
We know that nature is described by the best of all possible mathematics because God created it.
-- Alexander Markovich Polyakov -
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On the ostensible exactitude of certain branches of human knowledge, including mathematics. The exactness is a fake.
-- Alfred North Whitehead -
Mathematics as a science, commenced when first someone, probably a Greek, proved propositions about "any" things or about "some" things, without specifications of definite particular things.
-- Alfred North Whitehead -
If I feel unhappy, I do mathematics to become happy. If I am happy, I do mathematics to keep happy.
-- Alfred Renyi -
There is no smallest among the small and no largest among the large, but always something still smaller and something still larger.
-- Anaxagoras -
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I changed the course of my life, from the rigidity of mathematics and the corporate rhythm to a more bohemian world.
-- Andrea Hirata -
The definition of a good mathematical problem is the mathematics it generates rather than the problem itself.
-- Andrew WilesSource : "Andrew Wiles on Solving Fermat". The NOVA Interview, www.pbs.org. November 1, 2000.
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I'd like to take some calculus, too. I have absolutely no ability in that direction and not much interest, either, but there's something going on in mathematics that I don't understand, and I'd like to find out what it is.
-- Andy Rooney -
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I had the most beautiful set of theories you ever knew when I started out as a schoolma'am, but every one of them has failed me at some pinch or another.
-- Anne Shirley -
Mathematics reveals its secrets only to those who approach it with pure love, for its own beauty.
-- Archimedes -
There are things which seem incredible to most men who have not studied Mathematics.
-- Archimedes -
The so-called Pythagoreans, who were the first to take up mathematics, not only advanced this subject, but saturated with it, they fancied that the principles of mathematics were the principles of all things.
-- Aristotle -
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The mathematics is not there till we put it there.
-- Arthur Eddington -
I believe there are 15, 747, 724, 136, 275, 002, 577, 605, 653, 961, 181, 555, 468, 044, 717, 914, 527, 116, 709, 366, 231, 425, 076, 185, 631, 031, 296 protons in the universe and the same number of electrons.
-- Arthur Eddington -
A felicitous but unproved conjecture may be of much more consequence for mathematics than the proof of many a respectable theorem.
-- Atle Selberg -
In mathematics we find the primitive source of rationality; and to mathematics must the biologists resort for means to carry out their researches.
-- Auguste Comte -
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Mathematicians care no more for logic than logicians for mathematics.
-- Augustus De Morgan -
The moving power of mathematical invention is not reasoning but imagination.
-- Augustus De MorganSource : "The Life of Sir William Rowan Hamilton". Book by Robert Perceval Graves, Volume 3, p. 219, 1889.
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There is a very good saying that if triangles invented a god, they would make him three-sided.
-- Baron de Montesquieu -
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There is an underlying timelessness in the basic conversation that is mathematics.
-- Barry Mazur -
I studied mathematics which is the madness of reason.
-- Benjamin MoserSource : Benjamin Moser (2009). “Why This World: A Biography of Clarice Lispector”, p.77, Oxford University Press
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Mathematics is the science which draws necessary conclusions.
-- Benjamin PeirceSource : Edward Kasner, James Newman (2013). “Mathematics and the Imagination”, p.4, Courier Corporation
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The most complex object in mathematics, the Mandelbrot Set ... is so complex as to be uncontrollable by mankind and describable as 'chaos'.
-- Benoit Mandelbrot -
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Fractal geometry is not just a chapter of mathematics, but one that helps Everyman to see the same world differently.
-- Benoit Mandelbrot -
My special pleasure in mathematics rested particularly on its purely speculative part.
-- Bernard Bolzano -
Mathematics rightly viewed possesses not only truth but supreme beauty.
-- Bertrand Russell -
The rules of logic are to mathematics what those of structure are to architecture.
-- Bertrand Russell -
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Bacon not only despised the syllogism, but undervalued mathematics, presumably as insufficiently experimental. He was virulently hostile to Aristotle , but he thought very highly of Democritus , Although he did not deny that the course of nature exemplifies a Divine purpose, he objected to any admixture of teleological explanation in the actual investigation of phenomena; everything, he held, should be explained as following necessarily from efficient causes .
-- Bertrand Russell -
Atheism is the opium of the mathematicians. Atheism is the religion of Mathematics.
-- Bill Gaede -
Over the centuries, monumental upheavals in science have emerged time and again from following the leads set out by mathematics.
-- Brian Greene -
I wasn't actually very naturally good at economics. My brain doesn't work very well, in terms of mathematics.
-- Brit MarlingSource : "Brit Marling Exclusive Interview Another Earth". Interview with Christina Radish, collider.com. July 18, 2011.
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It is not knowledge, but the act of learning, not possession but the act of getting there, which grants the greatest enjoyment.
-- Carl Friedrich Gauss -
Mathematics is the queen of the sciences
-- Carl Friedrich Gauss -
In mathematics there are no true controversies.
-- Carl Friedrich Gauss -
Mathematics is concerned only with the enumeration and comparison of relations.
-- Carl Friedrich Gauss -
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Mathematics is the queen of science, and arithmetic the queen of mathematics.
-- Carl Friedrich Gauss -
I protest against the use of infinite magnitude ..., which is never permissible in mathematics.
-- Carl Friedrich Gauss -
Wherever Mathematics is mixed up with anything, which is outside its field, you will find attempts to demonstrate these merely conventional propositions a priori, and it will be your task to find out the false deduction in each case.
-- Carl Gustav Jacob JacobiSource : "Vorlesungen über analytische Mechanik" edited by Helmut Pulte, 1996.
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Nature's economy shall be the base for our own, for it is immutable, but ours is secondary. An economist without knowledge of nature is therefore like a physicist without knowledge of mathematics.
-- Carl Linnaeus -
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Except in pure mathematics, nothing is known for certain (although much is certainly false).
-- Carl Sagan -
Mathematics seems to endow one with something like a new sense.
-- Charles Darwin -
We are servants rather than masters in mathematics.
-- Charles Hermite -
From a mathematical standpoint it is possible to have infinite space. In a mathematical sense space is manifoldness, or combinations of numbers. Physical space is known as the 3-dimension system. There is the 4-dimension system, the 10-dimension system.
-- Charles Proteus Steinmetz -
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Theoretically, I grant you, there is no possibility of error in necessary reasoning. But to speak thus "theoretically," is to uselanguage in a Pickwickian sense. In practice, and in fact, mathematics is not exempt from that liability to error that affects everything that man does.
-- Charles Sanders Peirce -
Another characteristic of mathematical thought is that it can have no success where it cannot generalize.
-- Charles Sanders Peirce -
Mathematics is purely hypothetical: it produces nothing but conditional propositions.
-- Charles Sanders Peirce -
In mathematics and science, there is no difference in the intelligence of men and women. The difference in genes between men and women is simply the Y chromosome, which has nothing to do with intelligence.
-- Christiane Nusslein-Volhard -
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My theology, briefly, is that the universe was dictated but not signed.
-- Christopher MorleySource : Christopher Morley (2013). “The Haunted Bookshop”, p.276, Melville House
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Arithmetic is where the content lies, and not logic; but logic prompts certainty, and not arithmetic.
-- David BerlinskiSource : David Berlinski (2000). “The Advent of the Algorithm: The Idea that Rules the World”, Houghton Mifflin
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My interests started about in science and in mathematics; I always thought I was going to be a mathematician.
-- David ChalmersSource : "The designer making Rihanna, Scarlett and Gwyneth look good". Interview with Felicia Taylor, www.cnn.com. May 10, 2012.
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No one shall expel us from the paradise which Cantor has created for us. Expressing the importance of Cantor's set theory in the development of mathematics.
-- David HilbertSource : Kurt Gödel, S. Feferman (1986). “Kurt Gödel: Collected Works: Volume I: Publications 1929-1936”, p.145, Oxford University Press
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Mathematics is concerned with "all possible worlds."
-- David Malet Armstrong -
Mathematics doesn’t care about those beyond the numbers.
-- Dejan Stojanovic -
My mathematics is simple: one plus one = one.
-- Dejan Stojanovic -
I sort of was good at writing essays. I was never very good at mathematics, and I was never very good at algebra. I loved science, but I wasn't sure of it.
-- Diane Cilento -
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What mathematics are to matter and force, occult science is to life and consciousness,
-- Dion Fortune -
James Brown is important because he decorates the clock correctly and he's good with lower mathematics. Don't get me wrong - he's good.
-- Don Van Vliet -
A mathematical formula should never be "owned" by anybody! Mathematics belong to God.
-- Donald Knuth -
Programming is much much harder than doing mathematics.
-- Doron ZeilbergerSource : "The Narrow-Minded and Ignorant Referee's Report [and Zeilberger's Response] of Zeilberger's Paper 'Automaric CounTilings'". Personal blog at Rutgers School of Arts and Design website, April 15, 2006.
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Regardless of whether or not God exists, God has no place in mathematics, at least in my book.
-- Doron ZeilbergerSource : "Randomness and Complexity: From Leibniz to Chaitin". Book edited by Cristian S. Calude, 2007.
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If you learn music, you'll learn history. If you learn music, you'll learn mathematics. If you learn music, you'll learn most all there is to learn.
-- Edgar Cayce -
Programming is one of the most difficult branches of applied mathematics; the poorer mathematicians had better remain pure mathematicians.
-- Edsger DijkstraSource : Edsger W. Dijkstra (2012). “Selected Writings on Computing: A personal Perspective”, p.129, Springer Science & Business Media
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There should be no such thing as boring mathematics.
-- Edsger Dijkstra -
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Perhaps the most surprising thing about mathematics is that it is so surprising.
-- Edward Charles Titchmarsh -
Where there is no mathematics, there is no freedom.
-- Edward FrenkelSource : Edward Frenkel (2014). “Love and Math: The Heart of Hidden Reality”, p.5, Basic Books
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It was as though applied mathematics was my spouse, and pure mathematics was my secret lover.
-- Edward FrenkelSource : Edward Frenkel (2014). “Love and Math: The Heart of Hidden Reality”, p.139, Basic Books
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Mathematics education is much more complicated than you expected, even though you expected it to be more complicated than you expected.
-- Edward G. Begle -
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Mathematics is an activity governed by the same rules imposed upon the symphonies of Beethoven, the paintings of DaVinci, and the poetry of Homer.
-- Edward KasnerSource : Edward Kasner, James Newman (2013). “Mathematics and the Imagination”, p.362, Courier Corporation
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Mathematics is man's own handiwork, subject only to the limitations imposed by the laws of thought.
-- Edward Kasner -
Perhaps the greatest paradox of all is that there are paradoxes in mathematics.
-- Edward Kasner -
Mathematicians seem to have no difficulty in creating new concepts faster than the old ones become well understood.
-- Edward Norton LorenzSource : "A scientist by choice". Speech by acceptance of the Kyoto Prize, 1991.
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Physics without mathematics is meaningless.
-- Edward Teller -
Obvious is the most dangerous word in mathematics.
-- Eric Temple BellSource : Eric Temple Bell (1938). “The queen of the sciences”
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The longer mathematics lives the more abstract - and therefore, possibly also the more practical - it becomes.
-- Eric Temple BellSource : Eric Temple Bell (1945). “Men of Mathematics”
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Poincaré was a vigorous opponent of the theory that all mathematics can be rewritten in terms of the most elementary notions of classical logic; something more than logic, he believed, makes mathematics what it is.
-- Eric Temple Bell -
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If indeed, as Hilbert asserted, mathematics is a meaningless game played with meaningless marks on paper, the only mathematical experience to which we can refer is the making of marks on paper.
-- Eric Temple BellSource : Eric Temple Bell (1988). “Mathematics, queen and servant of science”, Tempus Books
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It is the perennial youthfulness of mathematics itself which marks it off with a disconcerting immortality from the other sciences.
-- Eric Temple BellSource : Eric Temple Bell (1938). “The queen of the sciences”
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A line is length without breadth.
-- EuclidSource : 'Elementa' bk. 1, definition 2
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The unreasonable efficiency of mathematics in science is a gift we neither understand nor deserve.
-- Eugene Wigner -
I always smile when I hear that women cannot excel in mathematics.
-- Evelyn Boyd Granville -
Thus, in a sense, mathematics has been most advanced by those who distinguished themselves by intuition rather than by rigorous proofs.
-- Felix Klein -
In real life, I assure you, there is no such thing as algebra.
-- Fran Lebowitz -
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There is no problem that cannot be solved.
-- Francois Viete -
I am interested in mathematics only as a creative art.
-- G. H. HardySource : G. H. Hardy, C. P. Snow (2012). “A Mathematician's Apology”, p.115, Cambridge University Press
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[P]ure mathematics is on the whole distinctly more useful than applied. For what is useful above all is technique, and mathematical technique is taught mainly through pure mathematics.
-- G. H. Hardy -
As history proves abundantly, mathematical achievement, whatever its intrinsic worth, is the most enduring of all.
-- G. H. Hardy -