Math Quotes

day

New member

• Mar 19, 2010

• #101

Adams, Douglas
(1952 - 2001)

Numbers written on restaurant bills within the confines of restaurants do not follow the same mathematical laws as numbers written on any other pieces of paper in any other parts of the Universe.
This single statement took the scientific world by storm. It completely revolutionized it. So many mathematical conferences got held in such good restaurants that many of the finest minds of a generation died of obesity and heart failure and the science of math was put back by years.

Life, the Universe and Everything. New York: Harmony Books, 1982.

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day

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• Mar 19, 2010

• #102

Aristotle
(ca 330 BC)
The whole is more than the sum of its parts.
Metaphysica 10f-1045a

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day

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• Mar 19, 2010

• #103

Browne, Sir Thomas (1605-1682)

God is like a skilful Geometrician.

Religio Medici I, 16.

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day

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• Mar 19, 2010

• #104

Browne, Sir Thomas
(1605-1682)
...indeed what reason may not go to Schoole to the wisdome of Bees, Aunts, and Spiders?
what wise hand teacheth them to doe what reason cannot teach us? ruder heads stand
amazed at those prodigious pieces of nature, Whales, Elephants, Dromidaries and Camels;
these I confesse,
are the Colossus and Majestick pieces of her hand; but in these narrow Engines there is
more curious Mathematicks, and the civilitie of these little Citizens more neatly sets forth
the wisedome of their Maker.

In J. R. Newman (ed.) The World of Mathematics, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1956, p. 1001.

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day

New member

• Mar 19, 2010

• #105

Byron

When Newton saw an apple fall, he found ...
A mode of proving that the earth turnd round
In a most natural whirl, called gravitation;
And thus is the sole mortal who could grapple
Since Adam, with a fall or with an apple.

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day

New member

• Mar 19, 2010

• #106

Davis, Philip J.
One of the endlessly alluring aspects of mathematics
is that its thorniest paradoxes have a way of blooming
into beautiful theories.

Number, Scientific American, 211, (Sept. 1964), 51 - 59.

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Last edited: Mar 19, 2010

day

New member

• Mar 19, 2010

• #107

Crowe, Michael

Revolutions never occur in mathematics.

Historia Mathematica. 1975.

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day

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• Mar 19, 2010

• #108

Dehn, Max

Mathematics is the only instructional material
that can be presented in an entirely undogmatic way.

In The Mathematical Intelligencer, v. 5, no. 2, 1983.

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day

New member

• Mar 19, 2010

• #109

Descartes, Renï
(1596-1650)

Each problem that I solved became a rule which
served afterwards to solve other problems.

Discours de la Mïhode. 1637.

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day

New member

• Mar 19, 2010

• #110

Descartes, Renï
(1596-1650)

I concluded that I might take as a general rule the principle
that all things which we very clearly and obviously conceive are true:
only observing, however,
that there is some difficulty in rightly determining
the objects which we distinctly conceive.

Discours de la Mïhode. 1637.

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day

New member

• Mar 19, 2010

• #111

Descartes, Renï
(1596-1650)

I concluded that I might take as a general rule the principle
that all things which we very clearly and obviously conceive are true:
only observing, however,
that there is some difficulty in rightly determining
the objects which we distinctly conceive.

Discours de la Mïhode. 1637.

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day

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• Mar 19, 2010

• #112

Einstein, Albert
(1879-1955)

"I don't believe in mathematics."
Quoted by Carl Seelig.
Albert Einstein.

 

day

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• Mar 19, 2010

• #113

Einstein, Albert
(1879-1955)

The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious.
It is the source of all true art and science.
What I Believe.

 

day

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• Mar 19, 2010

• #114

Einstein, Albert
(1879-1955)

The bitter and the sweet come from the outside,
the hard from within, from one's own efforts.

Out of My Later Years.

 

day

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• Mar 19, 2010

• #115

Einstein, Albert

(1879-1955)
How can it be that mathematics, being after all
a product of human thought independent of experience,
is so admirably adapted to the objects of reality?

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day

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• Mar 19, 2010

• #116

Einstein, Albert (1879-1955)

"The human mind has first to construct forms,
independently,
before we can find them in things"

 

day

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• Mar 19, 2010

• #117

Einstein, Albert
(1879-1955)]

"The truth of a theory is in your mind, not in your eyes."

In H. Eves Mathematical Circles Squared, Boston: Prindle, Weber and Schmidt, 1972.

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day

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• Mar 19, 2010

• #118

Einstein, Albert
(1879-1955)

These thoughts did not come in any verbal formulation.
I rarely think in words at all.
A thought comes, and I may try to express it in words afterward.

In H. Eves Mathematical Circles Adieu, Boston: Prindle, Weber and Schmidt, 1977.

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day

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• Mar 19, 2010

• #119

Einstein, Albert
(1879-1955)

A human being is a part of the whole, called by us "Universe," a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the resta kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty. Nobody is able to achieve this completely, but the striving for such achievement is in itself a part of the liberation and a foundation for inner security.
In H. Eves Mathematical Circles Adieu, Boston: Prindle, Weber and Schmidt, 1988

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day

New member

• Mar 19, 2010

• #120

Everett, Edward
(1794-1865)


In the pure mathematics we contemplate absolute truths
which existed in the divine mind before the morning stars sang together,
and which will continue to exist there
when the last of their radiant host shall have fallen from heaven.

Quoted by E.T. Bell in The Queen of the Sciences, Baltimore, 1931.

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Last edited: Mar 19, 2010