Math Quotes - Page 20

• All things began in Order, so shall they end, and so shall they begin again, according to the Ordainer of Order, and the mystical mathematicks of the City of Heaven.

  Thomas Browne

  Order, Cities, Heaven

  'The Garden of Cyrus' (1658) ch. 5

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• Algebra reverses the relative importance of the factors in ordinary language. It is essentially a written language, and it endeavors to exemplify in its written structures the patterns which it is its purpose to convey. The pattern of the marks on paper is a particular instance of the pattern to be conveyed to thought. The algebraic method is our best approach to the expression of necessity, by reason of its reduction of accident to the ghostlike character of the real variable.

  Alfred North Whitehead

  Real, Character, Expression

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• I love the psychology versus math and logic. In algebra, "X" means any possible variable. I sort of think about "X" in terms of the equation of my own life. Adding "X" to my own life has given me a freedom that I didn't have before in the equation of my own existence.

  Allie X

  Mean, Thinking, Psychology

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• The physical five oranges goes up the ladder to the picture of the five oranges which goes up to the representation of the five oranges as a numeral. This points in the direction of a definition of abstraction: when we abstract we voluntarily ignore details of a context, so that we can accomplish a goal.

  Dan Meyer

  Education, Orange, Goal

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• The greatest reward lies in making the discovery; recognition can add little or nothing to that.

  Franz Ernst Neumann

  Lying, Discovery, Littles

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• Prayers for the condemned man will be offered on an adding machine. Numbers constitute the only universal language.

  Nathanael West

  Prayer, Men, Numbers

  1933 Miss Lonely hearts.

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• Just as the introduction of the irrational numbers ... is a convenient myth [which] simplifies the laws of arithmetic ... so physical objects are postulated entities which round out and simplify our account of the flux of existence... The conceptional scheme of physical objects is [likewise] a convenient myth, simpler than the literal truth and yet containing that literal truth as a scattered part.

  Willard Van Orman Quine

  Numbers, Law, Entity

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• Make your mistakes work for you by learning from them.

  Donald Trump

  Mistake, Teaching

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• Figures don't lie, but liars figure.

  Mark Twain

  Liars, Lying, Teaching

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• The calculus was the first achievement of modern mathematics and it is difficult to overestimate its importance. I think it defines more unequivocally than anything else the inception of modern mathematics; and the system of mathematical analysis, which is its logical development, still constitutes the greatest technical advance in exact thinking.

  John von Neumann

  Teaching, Thinking, Achievement

  John Von Neumann, F. Bródy, Tibor Vámos (1995). “The Neumann Compendium”, p.620, World Scientific

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• Besides language and music, it [mathematics] is one of the primary manifestations of the free creative power of the human mind, and it is the universal organ for world understanding through theoretical construction. Mathematics must therefore remain an essential element of the knowledge and abilities which we have to teach, of the culture we have to transmit, to the next generation.

  Hermann Weyl

  Teaching, Creative, Understanding

  Hermann Weyl (1968). “Gesammelte Abhandlungen”

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• [Math] curriculum is obsessed with jargon and nomenclature seemingly for no other purpose than to provide teachers with something to test the students on.

  Paul Lockhart

  Teacher, Nomenclature, Purpose

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• The thing I want you especially to understand is this feeling of divine revelation. I feel that this structure was "out there" all along I just couldn't see it. And now I can! This is really what keeps me in the math game- the chance that I might glimpse some kind of secret underlying truth, some sort of message from the gods.

  Paul Lockhart

  Games, Feelings, Secret

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• Sometimes in studying Ramanujan's work, [George Andrews] said at another time, "I have wondered how much Ramanujan could have done if he had had MACSYMA or SCRATCHPAD or some other symbolic algebra package."

  Robert Kanigel

  Ramanujan, Done, Study

  Robert Kanigel (2016). “The Man Who Knew Infinity: A Life of the Genius Ramanujan”, p.349, Simon and Schuster

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• The errors of definitions multiply themselves according as the reckoning proceeds; and lead men into absurdities, which at last they see but cannot avoid, without reckoning anew from the beginning.

  Thomas Hobbes

  Truth, Knowledge, Men

  Thomas Hobbes (2016). “The Essential Leviathan: A Modernized Edition”, p.20, Hackett Publishing

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• 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

  School, Goes On, Fellowship

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• Once you hit 40, you start reexamining the math of it all. I'll trade wisdom for youth any day.

  Brad Pitt

  Age, Youth, Trade

  "Brad Pitt owes a debt to Benjamin Button" by Reed Johnson, articles.latimes.com. December 26, 2008.

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• Those who write against vanity want the glory of having written well, and their readers the glory of reading well, and I who write this have the same desire, as perhaps those who read this have also.

  Blaise Pascal

  Reading, Writing, Vanity

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• Absolute space, that is to say, the mark to which it would be necessary to refer the earth to know whether it really moves, has no objective existence.... The two propositions: "The earth turns round" and "it is more convenient to suppose the earth turns round" have the same meaning; there is nothing more in the one than in the other.

  Henri Poincare

  Moving, Two, Space

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• . . . we have overcome the notion that mathematical truths have an existence independent and apart from our own minds. It is even strange to us that such a notion could ever have existed.

  Edward Kasner

  Independent, Mind, Overcoming

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• So far as the mere imparting of information is concerned, no university has had any justification for existence since the popularization of printing in the fifteenth century.

  Alfred North Whitehead

  Information, Printing, Century

  "The Aims of Education". Book by Alfred North Whitehead, 1929.

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• I take great solace that Einstein failed math. I failed math. I also failed English and home economics. Einstein was an underachiever.

  Danny Bonaduce

  Education, Home, Learning

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• The pursuit of pretty formulas and neat theorems can no doubt quickly degenerate into a silly vice, but so can the quest for austere generalities which are so very general indeed that they are incapable of application to any particular.

  Eric Temple Bell

  Silly, Doubt, Vices

  Eric Temple Bell (1937). “Men of Mathematics”

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• The pragmatist knows that doubt is an art which hs to be acquired with difficulty.

  Charles Sanders Peirce

  Art, Doubt, Pragmatists

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• O Logic: born gatekeeper to the Temple of Science, victim of capricious destiny: doomed hitherto to be the drudge of pedants: come to the aid of thy master, Legislation

  Jeremy Bentham

  Destiny, Pedants, Temples

  Jeremy Bentham (1842). “The Works of Jeremy Bentham, Now First Collected: Under the Superintendence of His Executor, John Bowring ...”, p.145

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