Math Quotes - Page 6

• The introduction of numbers as coordinates by reference to the particular division scheme of the open one-dimensional continuum is an act of violence whose only practical vindication is the special calculatory manageability of the ordinary number continuum with its four basic operations.

  Hermann Weyl

  Numbers, Violence, Introduction

  "Philosophy of Mathematics and Natural Science".

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• To all of us who hold the Christian belief that God is truth, anything that is true is a fact about God, and mathematics is a branch of theology.

  Hilda Phoebe Hudson

  Christian, Education, Branches

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• Proof is an idol before which the mathematician tortures himself.

  Arthur Eddington

  Education, Knowledge, Idols

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• A mathematician who can only generalise is like a monkey who can only climb up a tree, and a mathematician who can only specialise is like a monkey who can only climb down a tree. In fact neither the up monkey nor the down monkey is a viable creature. A real monkey must find food and escape his enemies and so must be able to incessantly climb up and down. A real mathematician must be able to generalise and specialise.

  George Polya

  Real, Tree, Enemy

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• You know we all became mathematicians for the same reason: we were lazy.

  Maxwell Rosenlicht

  Lazy, Laziness, Reason

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• A mathematician's reputation rests on the number of bad proofs he has given.

  Abram Samoilovitch Besicovitch

  Numbers, Reputation, Proof

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• What science can there be more noble, more excellent, more useful for men, more admirably high and demonstrative, than this of mathematics?

  Benjamin Franklin

  Education, Science, Men

  Benjamin Franklin, Jared Sparks (1836). “Works: containing several political and historical tracts not included in any former edition ...”, p.69

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• Mathematics is entirely free in its development, and its concepts are only linked by the necessity of being consistent, and are co-ordinated with concepts introduced previously by means of precise definitions.

  Georg Cantor

  Mean, Development, Definitions

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• Mechanics is the paradise of the mathematical sciences because by means of it one comes to the fruits of mathematics.

  Leonardo da Vinci

  Mean, Science, Paradise

  Leonardo da Vinci (2008). “Notebooks”, p.10, OUP Oxford

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• I am too good for philosophy and not good enough for physics. Mathematics is in between.

  George Polya

  Philosophy, Not Good Enough, Physics

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• The Mandelbrot set is the most complex mathematical object known to mankind.

  Benoit Mandelbrot

  Mankind, Complexes, Objects

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• "The most powerful single idea in mathematics is the notion of a variable."

  Alexander Dewdney

  Education, Powerful, Ideas

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• All the mathematical sciences are founded on relations between physical laws and laws of numbers.

  James Clerk Maxwell

  Education, Numbers, Law

  "The Scientific Papers of James Clerk Maxwell".

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• Algebra is generous; she often gives more than is asked of her.

  Jean le Rond d'Alembert

  Giving, Algebra, Generous

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• Mathematicians are like lovers. Grant a mathematician the least principle, and he will draw from it a consequence which you must also grant him, and from this consequence another.

  Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle

  Principles, Lovers, Grants

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• Wherever there is a number, there is beauty.

  Proclus

  Numbers

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• The mathematician's patterns, like the painter's or the poet's, must be beautiful.

  G. H. Hardy

  Beautiful, Patterns, Poet

  A Mathematician's Apology ch. 10 (1940)

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• The mathematical sciences particularly exhibit order symmetry and limitations; and these are the greatest forms of the beautiful.

  Aristotle

  Beautiful, Education, Order

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• The study of mathematics is apt to commence in disappointment.

  Alfred North Whitehead

  Disappointment, Molecules, Study

  Alfred North Whitehead (1958). “An Introduction to Mathematics”, p.1, New York : Oxford University Press, 1958 [c1948]

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• Pure mathematics is, in its way, the poetry of logical ideas.

  Albert Einstein

  Teaching, Science, Logical Ideas

  "Obituary for Emmy Noether". Letter to the Editor of The New York Times, www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk. May 5, 1935.

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• The life of a mathematician is dominated by an insatiable curiosity, a desire bordering on passion to solve the problems he is studying.

  Jean Dieudonne

  Teaching, Passion, Curiosity

  Underwood Dudley, Gerald L. Alexanderson, Nathan Altshiller-Court, John Aubry, Girolamo Cardano (2008). “Is mathematics inevitable?: a miscellany”, The Mathematical Association of America

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• Physics is to mathematics what sex is to masturbation.

  Richard P. Feynman

  Sex, Science, Physics

  "Fear of Physics: A Guide for the Perplexed". Book by Lawrence M. Krauss (p. 27), 1993.

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• A good mathematical joke is better, and better mathematics, than a dozen mediocre papers.

  John Edensor Littlewood

  Mediocrity, Paper, Dozen

  John Edensor Littlewood, Béla Bollobás (1986). “Littlewood's Miscellany”, p.24, Cambridge University Press

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• Mathematics are well and good but Nature keeps dragging us around by the nose.

  Albert Einstein

  Noses, Wells, Mathematics

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• Well done is better than well said.

  Benjamin Franklin

  Inspirational, Success, Motivational Sports

  Benjamin Franklin (2008). “The Way to Wealth and Poor Richard's Almanac”, Nayika Publishing

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