Quotes and Sayings About Math
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But Piglet is so small that he slips into a pocket, where it is very comfortable to feel him when you are not quite sure whether twice seven is twelve or twenty-two.
-- A. A. Milne -
The fact that logic cannot satisfy us awakens an almost insatiable hunger for the irrational.
-- A. N. Wilson -
Pray tell us, what's your favorite number?
-- Abraham Verghese -
I didn't mind studying. Obviously math and the physical science subjects interested me more than some of the more artistic subjects, but I think I was a pretty good student.
-- Alan Shepard -
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Pure mathematics is, in its way, the poetry of logical ideas.
-- Albert Einstein -
Since the mathematicians have invaded the theory of relativity I do not understand it myself any more.
-- Albert Einstein -
The formulation of the problem is often more essential than its solution, which may be merely a matter of mathematical or experimental skill.
-- Albert Einstein -
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Geometry is the foundation of all painting.
-- Albrecht Durer -
Some of the greatest advances in mathematics have been due to the invention of symbols, which it afterwards became necessary to explain; from the minus sign proceeded the whole theory of negative quantities.
-- Aldous Huxley -
"The most powerful single idea in mathematics is the notion of a variable."
-- Alexander Dewdney -
I am not really doing research, just trying to cultivate myself.
-- Alexander Grothendieck -
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The question you raise, 'How can such a formulation lead to computations?' doesn't bother me in the least! Throughout my whole life as a mathematician, the possibility of making explicit, elegant computations has always come out by itself, as a byproduct of a thorough conceptual understanding of what was going on. Thus I never bothered about whether what would come out would be suitable for this or that, but just tried to understand - and it always turned out that understanding was all that mattered.
-- Alexander Grothendieck -
One's work may be finished someday, but one's education never.
-- Alexandre DumasSource : Alexandre Dumas (2016). “My Memoirs (1802 to 1833)”, p.1444, Library of Alexandria
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The point about zero is that we do not need to use it in the operation of daily life. No one goes out to buy zero fish.
-- Alfred North Whitehead -
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The pursuit of mathematics is a divine madness of the human spirit.
-- Alfred North Whitehead -
Everything of importance has been said before by somebody who did not discover it.
-- Alfred North Whitehead -
The science of pure mathematics, in its modern developments, may claim to be the most original creation of the human spirit.
-- Alfred North Whitehead -
The whole of mathematics consists in the organization of a series of aids to the imagination in the process of reasoning.
-- Alfred North Whitehead -
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There is no more common error than to assume that, because prolonged and accurate mathematical calculations have been made, the application of the result to some fact of nature is absolutely certain.
-- Alfred North Whitehead -
Algebra reverses the relative importance of the factors in ordinary language.
-- Alfred North Whitehead -
I was an undergraduate at Princeton, and I was pressed by the math department to go on to graduate school. Actually they gave me fellowships that paid my way, otherwise I would not have been able to continue.
-- Alonzo Church -
Philosophy: A route of many roads leading from nowhere to nothing.
-- Ambrose Bierce -
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Lottery: A tax on people who are bad at math.
-- Ambrose Bierce -
Brain: an apparatus with which we think we think.
-- Ambrose Bierce -
It is the certainty that they possess the truth that makes men cruel.
-- Anatole France -
God exists since mathematics is consistent, and the Devil exists since we cannot prove it.
-- Andre WeilSource : "Mathematical Circles Adieu: A Fourth Collection of Mathematical Stories and Anecdotes". Book by Howard Whitley Eves, 1977.
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I don't believe we're hateful. I think mostly we're just asleep, but the math adds up the same.
-- Andrea Gibson -
I'd never been a teacher before, and here I was starting my first day with these eager students. There was a shortage of teachers, and they had been without a math teacher for six months. They were so excited to learn math.
-- Andrew Shue