Mathematical Quotes - Page 17

• A mathematical formula should never be "owned" by anybody! Mathematics belong to God.

  Donald Knuth

  Science, Technology, Mathematics

  "Digital Typography". Book by Donald Knuth, 1999.

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• The art of doing mathematics consists in finding that special case which contains all the germs of generality.

  David Hilbert

  Art, Math, Special

  "Hilbert". Book by Constance Reid, 1970.

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• Mathematics is like draughts in being suitable for the young, not too difficult, amusing, and without peril to the state.

  Plato

  Plato, Math, Amusing

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• Black holes result from God dividing the universe by zero.

  Steven Wright

  Zero, Math, Black

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• How happy the lot of the mathematician. He is judged solely by his peers, and the standard is so high that no colleague or rival can ever win a reputation he does not deserve.

  W. H. Auden

  Happiness, Math, Science

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• The principle is so perfectly general that no particular application of it is possible.

  George Polya

  Knowledge, Math, Principles

  George Pólya (1948). “How to solve it: a new aspect of mathematical method”

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• What is the difference between method and device? A method is a device which you use twice.

  George Polya

  Math, Differences, Use

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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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• Nature laughs at the difficulties of integration.

  Pierre-Simon Laplace

  Nature, Laughing, Mathematics

  "The Armchair Science Reader". Book by Isabel S. Gordon and Sophie Sorkin, 1959.

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• In order to solve this differential equation you look at it until a solution occurs to you.

  George Polya

  Math, Order, Looks

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  Truth is ever to be found in the simplicity, and not in the multiplicity and confusion of things.

  Isaac Newton

  Math, Confusion, Simplicity

  Isaac Newton (1994). “Trattato sull Apocalisse”

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• In a completely rational society, the best of us would aspire to be teachers and the rest of us would have to settle for something less, because passing civilization along from one generation to the next ought to be the highest honor and the highest responsibility anyone could have.

  Lee Iacocca

  Education, Teacher, Responsibility

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• Euclid taught me that without assumptions there is no proof. Therefore, in any argument, examine the assumptions.

  Eric Temple Bell

  Math, Intelligence, Taught

  Mathematics Magazine, Vol. 23-24, (p. 161), 1949.

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• There are many questions which fools can ask that wise men cannot answer.

  George Polya

  Wise, Knowledge, Science

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• Mathematics has the completely false reputation of yielding infallible conclusions. Its infallibility is nothing but identity. Two times two is not four, but it is just two times two, and that is what we call four for short. But four is nothing new at all. And thus it goes on and on in its conclusions, except that in the higher formulas the identity fades out of sight.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Math, Two, Sight

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• Mathematical reasoning may be regarded rather schematically as the exercise of a combination of two facilities, which we may call intuition and ingenuity.

  Alan Turing

  Exercise, Two, Intuition

  "Systems of Logic Based on Ordinals". Proceedings of the London Mathematical Society, Series 2, Volume 45, 1939.

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  Mathematical reasoning may be regarded.

  Alan Turing

  May, Mathematics, Reasoning

  Alan Mathison Turing, B. J. Copeland (2004). “The Essential Turing”, p.192, Oxford University Press

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• It is clear that the chief end of mathematical study must be to make the students think.

  John Wesley Young

  Math, Thinking, Students

  John Wesley Young, William Wells Denton, Ulysses Grant Mitchell (1930). “Lectures on fundamental concepts of algebra and geometry”

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• Sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.

  Lewis Carroll

  Children, Creativity, Ignorance

  Through the Looking-Glass ch. 5 (1872)

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• Perhaps the greatest paradox of all is that there are paradoxes in mathematics.

  Edward Kasner

  Math, Paradox, Mathematics

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• Mathematics is not yet capable of coping with the naïveté of the mathematician himself.

  Abraham Kaplan

  Vets, Coping, Mathematics

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• Mathematics is the only instructional material that can be presented in an entirely undogmatic way.

  Max Dehn

  Math, Way, Materials

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• It would be better for the true physics if there were no mathematicians on earth.

  Daniel Bernoulli

  Math, Science, Would Be

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• The measure of our intellectual capacity is the capacity to feel less and less satisfied with our answers to better and better problems.

  C. West Churchman

  Math, Intellectual, Answers

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• Perfect clarity would profit the intellect but damage the will.

  Blaise Pascal

  Math, Perfect, Damage

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