Mathematical Quotes - Page 3

• A beautiful problem is no joke!

  Marvin Knopp

  Beautiful, Problem, Mathematics

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• Twice two makes four seems to me simply a piece of insolence. Twice two makes four is a pert coxcomb who stands with arms akimbo barring your path and spitting. I admit that twice two makes four is an excellent thing, but if we are to give everything its due, twice two makes five is sometimes a very charming thing too.

  Fyodor Dostoevsky

  Math, Two, Giving

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• The chief forms of beauty are order and symmetry and definiteness, which the mathematical sciences demonstrate in a special degree.

  Aristotle

  Science, Engineering, Order

  Aristotle (2012). “The Metaphysics”, p.202, Roger Bishop Jones

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• The infinitely competent can be uncreative.

  John Edensor Littlewood

  Math, Mathematics, Competent

  John Edensor Littlewood, Béla Bollobás (1986). “Littlewood's Miscellany”, p.60, Cambridge University Press

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• To arrive at the simplest truth, as Newton knew and practiced, requires years of contemplation. Not activity Not reasoning. Not calculating. Not busy behaviour of any kind. Not reading. Not talking. Not making an effort. Not thinking. Simply bearing in mind what it is one needs to know.

  George Spencer-Brown

  Reading, Math, Thinking

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• 'When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, 'it means just what I choose it to mean - neither more nor less.'

  Lewis Carroll

  Mean Girls, Use, Tone

  'Through the Looking-Glass' (1872) ch. 6

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• When I am working on a problem, I never think about beauty but when I have finished, if the solution is not beautiful, I know it is wrong.

  R. Buckminster Fuller

  Beauty, Beautiful, Niece

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• I mean the word proof not in the sense of the lawyers, who set two half proofs equal to a whole one, but in the sense of a mathematician, where half proof = 0, and it is demanded for proof that every doubt becomes impossible.

  Carl Friedrich Gauss

  Mean, Math, Two

  Letter to Heinrich Wilhelm Matthias Olbers on May 14, 1826. "Calculus Gems". Book by George F. Simmons, 1992.

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• Science is what we understand well enough to explain to a computer. Art is everything else we do.

  Donald Knuth

  Art, Math, Science

  Foreword to the book "A=B" by Marko Petkovsek, Herbert S. Wilf and Doron Zeilberger, 1996.

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• In real life, I assure you, there is no such thing as algebra.

  Fran Lebowitz

  Inspirational, Real, Math

  Social Studies "Tips for Teens" (1981)

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• Men who are unhappy, like men who sleep badly, are always proud of the fact.

  Bertrand Russell

  Happiness, Sleep, Math

  Conquest of Happiness (1930) ch. 1

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• God is subtle but he is not malicious.

  Albert Einstein

  Life, Motivational, Math

  Remark made during a week at Princeton beginning 9 May 1921, later carved above the fireplace of the Common Room of Fine Hall (the Mathematical Institute), Princeton University - in R. W. Clark Einstein (1973) ch. 14

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• You can only find truth with logic if you have already found truth without it.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Spiritual, Witty, Truth

  Daily News, February 25, 1905.

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• Though this be madness, yet there is method in't.

  William Shakespeare

  Halloween, Math, Insanity

  'Hamlet' (1601) act 2, sc. 2, l. [211]

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• Philosophy [nature] is written in that great book which ever is before our eyes -- I mean the universe -- but we cannot understand it if we do not first learn the language and grasp the symbols in which it is written. The book is written in mathematical language, and the symbols are triangles, circles and other geometrical figures, without whose help it is impossible to comprehend a single word of it; without which one wanders in vain through a dark labyrinth.

  Galileo Galilei

  Philosophy, Book, Mean

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• It is a mathematical fact that the casting of this pebble from my hand alters the centre of gravity of the universe.

  Thomas Carlyle

  Science, Math, Hands

  Thomas Carlyle, Brendan King (1993). “The Sayings of Thomas Carlyle”, p.46, Lulu.com

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• 317 is a prime, not because we think so, or because our minds are shaped in one way rather than another, but because it is so, because mathematical reality is built that way.

  G. H. Hardy

  Reality, Thinking, Mind

  G. H. Hardy (1992). “A Mathematician's Apology”, p.130, Cambridge University Press

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• Every new body of discovery is mathematical in form, because there is no other guidance we can have.

  Charles Darwin

  Math, Discovery, Body

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• Just go on..and faith will soon return.

  Jean le Rond d'Alembert

  Math, Goes On, Return

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• 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.

  Rene Descartes

  Math, Principles, Might

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• There is more in Mersenne than in all the universities together.

  Thomas Hobbes

  Math, Together, University

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• Say what you know, do what you must, come what may.

  Sofia Kovalevskaya

  Math, May, Knows

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• Man follows only phantoms.

  Pierre-Simon Laplace

  Math, Science, Men

  "Budget of Paradoxes". Book by Augustus De Morgan, 1866.

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• Inequality is the cause of all local movements.

  Leonardo da Vinci

  Math, Movement, Causes

  Leonardo (da Vinci) (1958). “The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci”

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• ... mathematical knowledge ... is, in fact, merely verbal knowledge. "3" means "2+1", and "4" means "3+1". Hence it follows (though the proof is long) that "4" means the same as "2+2". Thus mathematical knowledge ceases to be mysterious.

  Bertrand Russell

  Mean, Numbers, Long

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