Mathematical Quotes - Page 12

• To Thales the primary question was not what do we know, but how do we know it.

  Aristotle

  Math, Statistics, Knows

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• A human being is a part of the whole called by us universe; a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts, and his feelings as something separate from the rest - a kind of optical delusion of consciousness.

  Albert Einstein

  Nature, Compassion, Animal

  Albert Einstein (2010). “The Ultimate Quotable Einstein”, p.339, Princeton University Press

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• I read in the proof sheets of Hardy on Ramanujan: "As someone said, each of the positive integers was one of his personal friends." My reaction was, "I wonder who said that; I wish I had." In the next proof-sheets I read (what now stands), "It was Littlewood who said..."

  John Edensor Littlewood

  Friendship, Math, Wish

  John Edensor Littlewood, Béla Bollobás (1986). “Littlewood's Miscellany”, p.61, Cambridge University Press

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

  Leonardo da Vinci

  Real, Math, Computer

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• His epitaph: Who, by vigor of mind almost divine, the motions and figures of the planets, the paths of comets, and the tides of the seas first demonstrated.

  Isaac Newton

  Sea, Mind, Vigor

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• Mathematics compares the most diverse phenomena and discovers the secret analogies that unite them.

  Joseph Fourier

  Math, Science, Secret

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• We often hear that mathematics consists mainly of "proving theorems." Is a writer's job mainly that of "writing sentences?"

  Gian-Carlo Rota

  Jobs, Writing, Math

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• The study of mathematics is apt to commence in disappointment... We are told that by its aid the stars are weighed and the billions of molecules in a drop of water are counted. Yet, like the ghost of Hamlet's father, this great science eludes the efforts of our mental weapons to grasp it.

  Alfred North Whitehead

  Stars, Disappointment, Father

  "An Introduction to Mathematics" by Alfred North Whitehead, Ch. 1, 1911.

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• One can't believe impossible things.

  Lewis Carroll

  Believe, Math, Impossible Things

  1871 Through the Looking-Glass, ch. 5,'Wool and Water'.

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• He is unworthy of the name of man who is ignorant of the fact that the diagonal of a square is incommensurable with its side.

  Plato

  Plato, Math, Men

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• Mathematics is the science which draws necessary conclusions.

  Benjamin Peirce

  Math, Science, Definitions

  "Linear Associative Algebra" (1870)

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• Many who have never had an opportunity of knowing any more about mathematics confound it with arithmetic, and consider it an arid science. In reality, however, it is a science which requires a great amount of imagination.

  Sofia Kovalevskaya

  Science, Opportunity, Reality

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• Poets do not go mad, but chess players do.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Player, Mad, Chess

  Orthodoxy ch. 2 (1908)

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• I am acutely aware of the fact that the marriage between mathematics and physics, which was so enormously fruitful in past centuries, has recently ended in divorce.

  Freeman Dyson

  Marriage, Divorce, Math

  Freeman J. Dyson (1996). “Selected Papers of Freeman Dyson with Commentary”, p.169, American Mathematical Soc.

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• One of the big misapprehensions about mathematics that we perpetrate in our classrooms is that the teacher always seems to know the answer to any problem that is discussed.

  Leon Henkin

  Teacher, Math, Answers

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• Pure mathematics, may it never be of any use to anyone.

  Henry John Stephen Smith

  Math, Use, May

  Quoted in Alexander Macfarlane, Ten British Mathematicians of the Nineteenth Century (1916). "Pure mathematics; may it never be of use to any man!" is cited as the toast of the Mathematical Society of England in Science, 10 Dec. 1886.

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

  Maxwell Rosenlicht

  Math, Lazy, Laziness

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• Mathematics seems to endow one with something like a new sense.

  Charles Darwin

  Math, Seems, Mathematics

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• [Mathematics] is an independent world created out of pure intelligence.

  William Wordsworth

  Independent, Math, World

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• Logic is invincible, because in order to combat logic it is necessary to use logic.

  Pierre Boutroux

  Knowledge, Math, Order

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• It is not certain that everything is uncertain.

  Blaise Pascal

  Math, Intelligence, Uncertain

  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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• The highest form of pure thought is in mathematics.

  Plato

  Math, Form, Pure

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• It is not the job of mathematicians... to do correct arithmetical operations. It is the job of bank accountants.

  Samuil Shatunovsky

  Jobs, Math, Arithmetic

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• Logic is the hygiene the mathematician practices to keep his ideas healthy and strong.

  Hermann Weyl

  Strong, Math, Practice

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• One of the big misapprehensions about mathematics that we perpetrate in our classrooms is that the teacher always seems to know the answer to any problem that is discussed. This gives students the idea that there is a book somewhere with all the right answers to all of the interesting questions, and that teachers know those answers. And if one could get hold of the book, one would have everything settled. That's so unlike the true nature of mathematics.

  Leon Henkin

  Teacher, Book, Math

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