Math Quotes - Page 3

• [T]he different branches of Arithmetic - Ambition [G]eometry is not true, it is advantageous.

  Henri Poincare

  Ambition, Different, Branches

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• Logic doesn't apply to the real world.

  Marvin Minsky

  Real, Knowledge, Mind

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• ...from the same principles, I now demonstrate the frame of the System of the World.

  Isaac Newton

  Principles, World, Mathematics

  Sir Isaac Newton (1962). “Sir Isaac Newton's Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy and His System of the World: The system of the world”, p.397, Univ of California Press

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• In any case, do you really think kids even want something that is relevant to their daily lives? You think something practical like compound interest is going to get them excited? People enjoy fantasy, and that is just what mathematics can provide - a relief from daily life, an anodyne to the practical workaday world.

  Paul Lockhart

  Kids, Thinking, Want Something

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• ...a consistency proof for [any] system ... can be carried out only by means of modes of inference that are not formalized in the system ... itself.

  Kurt Gödel

  Mean, Consistency, Inference

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• Why do we believe that in all matters the odd numbers are more powerful?

  Pliny the Elder

  Powerful, Believe, Numbers

  Pliny (the Elder.) (1989). “Pliny: Natural History”

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• Mathematics is a body of knowledge, but it contains no truths.

  Morris Kline

  Knowledge, Body, Logic

  Morris Kline (1964). “Mathematics in Western Culture”, p.9, Oxford University Press

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• Number was the substance of all things.

  Pythagoras

  Numbers, Substance, All Things

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• The question you raise, 'How can such a formulation lead to computations?' doesn't bother me in the least! Throughout my whole life as a mathematician, the possibility of making explicit, elegant computations has always come out by itself, as a byproduct of a thorough conceptual understanding of what was going on. Thus I never bothered about whether what would come out would be suitable for this or that, but just tried to understand - and it always turned out that understanding was all that mattered.

  Alexander Grothendieck

  Understanding, Would Be, Possibility

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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, Science, Understanding

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

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• No human investigation can be called real science if it cannot be demonstrated mathematically.

  Leonardo da Vinci

  Real, Computer, Investigation

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• I had a feeling once about mathematics - that I saw it all... but it was after dinner and I let it go.

  Winston Churchill

  Feelings, Let It Go, Dinner

  Winston Churchill (2010). “My Early Life: 1874-1904”, p.45, Simon and Schuster

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• There are two ways to do great mathematics. The first is to be smarter than everybody else. The second way is to be stupider than everybody else - but persistent.

  Raoul Bott

  Two, Way, Firsts

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• Mathematics is the queen of science, and arithmetic the queen of mathematics.

  Carl Friedrich Gauss

  Queens, Arithmetic, Mathematics

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• It is not certain that everything is uncertain.

  Blaise Pascal

  Intelligence, Uncertain, Certainty

  Blaise Pascal (1850). “The Thoughts on religion, and evidences of Christianity, of Pascal; tr., with intr., notes, etc., by G. Pearce”, p.99

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• Math is the only place where truth and beauty mean the same thing.

  Danica McKellar

  Mean, Science, Truth And Beauty

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• Mathematics is the abstract key which turns the lock of the physical universe.

  John Polkinghorne

  Teaching, Keys, Locks

  John C. Polkinghorne (2010). “One World: The Interaction of Science and Theology”, p.55, Templeton Foundation Press

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• If anyone tells you it's impossible to be fabulous and smart and make a ton of money using math, well, they can just get in line behind you - and kiss your math.

  Danica McKellar

  Smart, Kissing, Lines

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• We use only 10% of our brains... Imagine how smart we would be if we used the other 60%!

  Ellen DeGeneres

  Education, Smart, Intelligence

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• But in the new (math) approach, the important thing is to understand what you're doing, rather than to get the right answer.

  Tom Lehrer

  Education, Knowledge, Important

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• The mathematician is entirely free, within the limits of the imagination, to construct what worlds he pleases.

  J. W. N. Sullivan

  Imagination, World, Limits

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• There is nothing strange in the circle being the origin of any and every marvel.

  Aristotle

  Circles, Strange

  Aristotle, (2014). “The Complete Works of Aristotle: The Revised Oxford Translation, One-Volume Digital Edition”, p.2254, Princeton University Press

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• I think, therefore I laugh.

  John Allen Paulos

  Education, Knowledge, Thinking

  John Allen Paulos (2007). “Irreligion: A Mathematician Explains Why the Arguments for God Just Don't Add Up”, p.2, Hill and Wang

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• ... mathematics is absolutely necessary and useful to the other sciences.

  Roger Bacon

  Mathematics

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

  Charles Darwin

  Discovery, Body, Guidance

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