Mathematics Quotes - Page 4

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  It has become almost a cliché to remark that nobody boasts of ignorance of literature, but it is socially acceptable to boast ignorance of science and proudly claim incompetence in mathematics.

  Richard Dawkins

  Ignorance, Knowledge, Science

  "The Richard Dimbleby Lecture: Science, Delusion and the Appetite for Wonder". Lecture, BBC1 Television, November 12, 1996.

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• I like mathematics because it is not human and has nothing particular to do with this planet or with the whole accidental universe - because, like Spinoza's God, it won't love us in return.

  Bertrand Russell

  Math, Science, Return

  Bertrand Russell (1992). “The Selected Letters of Bertrand Russell: The private years, 1884-1914”, Allen Lane

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• Poets do not go mad; but chess-players do. Mathematicians go mad, and cashiers; but creative artists very seldom. I am not, as will be seen, in any sense attacking logic: I only say that this danger does lie in logic, not in imagination.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Lying, Science, Math

  Orthodoxy ch. 2 (1908)

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• The good Christian should beware the mathematician and all those who make empty prophecies. The danger already exists that the mathematicians have made a covenant with the devil to darken the spirit and to confine man in the bonds of hell.

  Saint Augustine

  Inspirational, Life, Education

  "Mathematics in Western Culture". Book by Morris Kline, 1953.

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• Medicine makes people ill, mathematics make them sad and theology makes them sinful.

  Martin Luther

  Math, Medicine, People

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• Mathematics is the art of giving the same name to different things.

  Henri Poincare

  Art, Science, Math

  Henri Poincare (2012). “The Value of Science: Essential Writings of Henri Poincare”, p.622, Modern Library

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• In most sciences one generation tears down what another has built and what one has established another undoes. In mathematics alone each generations adds a new story to the old structure.

  Hermann Hankel

  Math, Tears, Add

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• I have hardly ever known a mathematician who was capable of reasoning.

  Plato

  Plato, Math, Science

  Plato (2016). “The Complete Works of Plato (Unabridged): From the greatest Greek philosopher, known for The Republic, Symposium, Apology, Phaedrus, Laws, Crito, Phaedo, Timaeus, Meno, Euthyphro, Gorgias, Parmenides, Protagoras, Statesman and Critias”, p.1375, e-artnow (Open Publishing)

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• Mathematics - the unshaken Foundation of Sciences, and the plentiful Fountain of Advantage to human affairs.

  Isaac Barrow

  Math, Foundation, Affair

  Isaac Barrow (1734). “The Usefulness of Mathematical Learning Explained and Demonstrated: Being Mathematical Lectures Read in the Publick Schools at the University of Cambridge”, p.28

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• Mathematics is the handwriting on the human consciousness of the very Spirit of Life itself.

  Claude Fayette Bragdon

  Math, Handwriting, Spirit

  Claude Fayette Bragdon (2005). “Architecture and Democracy”, p.61, Cosimo, Inc.

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• As a graduate of the Zsa Zsa Gabor School of Creative mathematics, I honestly do not know how old I am.

  Erma Bombeck

  Creativity, School, Creative

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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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• Nature is an infinite sphere of which the center is everywhere and the circumference nowhere.

  Blaise Pascal

  Nature, Math, Garden

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• Angling may be said to be so like the mathematics that it can never be fully learned.

  Izaak Walton

  Learning, Math, Fishing

  'The Compleat Angler' (1653) 'Epistle to the Reader'

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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, Math

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• If a man's wit be wandering, let him study the mathematics; for in demonstrations, if his wit be called away never so little, he must begin again.

  Francis Bacon

  Math, Men, Littles

  Francis Bacon, Basil Montagu (1821). “A critique of Bacon's "Novum Organum," by Basil Montagu, extracted from the Retrospective Review, 1821. Few MS. notes”, p.285

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• But mathematics is the sister, as well as the servant, of the arts and is touched with the same madness and genius.

  Marston Morse

  Art, Math, Science

  Marston Morse, Raoul Bott (1981). “Selected papers”, Springer Verlag

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

  Philip J. Davis

  Beautiful, Math, Science

  Philip J. Davis, William G. Chinn (1985). “3.1416 and all that”, Birkhauser

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• The latest authors, like the most ancient, strove to subordinate the phenomena of nature to the laws of mathematics.

  Isaac Newton

  Math, Law, Ancient

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• The true spirit of delight...is to be found in mathematics as surely as in poetry.

  Bertrand Russell

  Delight, Spirit, Found

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• Mathematics may be compared to a mill of exquisite workmanship, which grinds your stuff to any degree of fineness.

  Thomas Huxley

  Math, Stuff, Degrees

  Thomas Henry Huxley, Henrietta A. Huxley (1908). “Aphorisms and reflections”

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

  G. H. Hardy

  Beautiful, Math, Patterns

  A Mathematician's Apology ch. 10 (1940)

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• The study of mathematics, like the Nile, begins in minuteness but ends in magnificence.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Math, Magnificence, Study

  Charles Caleb Colton (1824). “Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think”, p.164

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• In many cases, mathematics is an escape from reality. The mathematician finds his own monastic niche and happiness in pursuits that are disconnected from external affairs. Some practice it as if using a drug.

  Stanislaw Ulam

  Reality, Mathematical

  "Adventures of a Mathematician". Book by Stanislaw Ulam, 3rd edition. Chapter 6: "Transition And Crisis", p. 120, 1991.

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• No matter how correct a mathematical theorem may appear to be, one ought never to be satisfied that there was not something imperfect about it until it also gives the impression of being beautiful.

  George Boole

  Beautiful, Giving, May

  "Comic sections: the book of mathematical jokes, humour, and wisdom". Book by Des MacHale, p. 107, 1993.

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