Mathematical Quotes - Page 2

• Mathematics is not a deductive science - that's a cliché. When you try to prove a theorem, you don't just list the hypotheses, and then start to reason. What you do is trial and error, experimentation, guesswork.

  Paul Halmos

  Math, Science, Errors

  "I Want to be a Mathematician: An Automathography". Book by Paul Halmos, 1985.

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• Obvious is the most dangerous word in mathematics.

  Eric Temple Bell

  Knowledge, Math, Science

  Eric Temple Bell (1938). “The queen of the sciences”

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• Anyone who cannot cope with mathematics is not fully human. At best, he is a tolerable subhuman who has learned to wear his shoes, bathe, and not make messes in the house.

  Robert A. Heinlein

  Learning, Math, Shoes

  Time Enough for Love "Intermission" (1973)

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• I hope that posterity will judge me kindly, not only as to the things which I have explained, but also to those which I have intentionally omitted so as to leave to others the pleasure of discovery.

  Rene Descartes

  Math, Science, Discovery

  Rene Descartes (2007). “The Geometry of Rene Descartes”, p.240, Cosimo, Inc.

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• The simplest schoolboy is now familiar with truths for which Archimedes would have sacrificed his life.

  Ernest Renan

  Life, Education, Teaching

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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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• The study of mathematics is apt to commence in disappointment.

  Alfred North Whitehead

  Disappointment, Math, Molecules

  Alfred North Whitehead (1958). “An Introduction to Mathematics”, p.1, New York : Oxford University Press, 1958 [c1948]

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• Numbers constitute the only universal language.

  Nathanael West

  Communication, Math, Numbers

  1933 Miss Lonely hearts.

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• I certainly do care about measuring educational results. But what is an 'educational result?' The twinkling eyes of my students, together with their heartfelt and beautifully expressed mathematical arguments are all the results I need.

  Keith Devlin

  Educational, Eye, Math

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• Fourier is a mathematical poem.

  Lord Kelvin

  Math, Poetry, Fourier

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• The control of large numbers is possible, and like unto that of small numbers, if we subdivide them.

  Sun Tzu

  Math, Small Numbers, Large Numbers

  Sun Tzu (2015). “The Book of War”, p.29, Sun Tzu

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• Cell and tissue, shell and bone, leaf and flower, are so many portions of matter, and it is in obedience to the laws of physics that their particles have been moved, moulded and conformed. They are no exceptions to the rule that God always geometrizes. Their problems of form are in the first instance mathematical problems, their problems of growth are essentially physical problems, and the morphologist is, ipso facto, a student of physical science.

  D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson

  Flower, Math, Law

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• This paper gives wrong solutions to trivial problems. The basic error,however, is not new.

  Clifford Truesdell

  Math, Errors, Giving

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• No Roman ever died in contemplation over a geometrical diagram.

  Alfred North Whitehead

  Math, Contemplation, Diagrams

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• A book on the new physics, if not purely descriptive of experimental work, must essentially be mathematical.

  Paul Dirac

  Book, Math, Physics

  Paul Adrien Maurice Dirac (1995). “Sammlung”, p.457, Cambridge University Press

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• In presenting a mathematical argument the great thing is to give the educated reader the chance to catch on at once to the momentary point and take details for granted: two trivialities omitted can add up to an impasse). The unpractised writer, even after the dawn of a conscience, gives him no such chance; before he can spot the point he has to tease his way through a maze of symbols of which not the tiniest suffix can be skipped.

  John Edensor Littlewood

  Two, Giving, Add

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• The constructs of the mathematical mind are at the same time free and necessary. The individual mathematician feels free to define his notions and set up his axioms as he pleases. But the question is will he get his fellow mathematician interested in the constructs of his imagination. We cannot help the feeling that certain mathematical structures which have evolved through the combined efforts of the mathematical community bear the stamp of a necessity not affected by the accidents of their historical birth.

  Hermann Weyl

  Math, Imagination, Effort

  Hermann Weyl (1968). “Gesammelte Abhandlungen”

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• In the beginning (if there was such a thing), God created Newton's laws of motion together with the necessary masses and forces. This is all; everything beyond this follows from the development of appropriate mathematical methods by means of deduction.

  Albert Einstein

  God, Mean, Science

  Albert Einstein, Stephen W. Hawking (2007). “A Stubbornly Persistent Illusion: The Essential Scientific Works of Albert Einstein”, p.346, Running Press

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• Quite frankly, teachers are the only profession that teach our children.

  Dan Quayle

  Funny, Education, Teacher

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• I have often noticed that when people come to understand a mathematical proposition in some other way than that of the ordinary demonstration, they promptly say, "Oh, I see. That's how it must be." This is a sign that they explain it to themselves from within their own system.

  Georg C. Lichtenberg

  Math, People, Understanding

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• I constantly meet people who are doubtful, generally without due reason, about their potential capacity [as mathematicians]. The first test is whether you got anything out of geometry. To have disliked or failed to get on with other [mathematical] subjects need mean nothing; much drill and drudgery is unavoidable before they can get started, and bad teaching can make them unintelligible even to a born mathematician.

  John Edensor Littlewood

  Teaching, Failure, Mean

  "Littlewood's Miscellany".

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• In mathematical analysis we call x the undetermined part of line a: the rest we don't call y, as we do in common life, but a-x. Hence mathematical language has great advantages over the common language.

  Georg C. Lichtenberg

  Life, Math, Lines

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• The mathematical phenomenon always develops out of simple arithmetic, so useful in everyday life, out of numbers, those weapons of the gods: the gods are there, behind the wall, at play with numbers.

  Le Corbusier

  Wall, Simple, Play

  Le Corbusier (1968). “The modulor: a harmonious measure to the human scale, universally applicable to architecture and mechanics”

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• One cannot understand... the universality of laws of nature, the relationship of things, without an understanding of mathematics. There is no other way to do it.

  Richard P. Feynman

  Law, Understanding, Way

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• Die mathematische Forschung besteht aus 10% Intuition und 90% Arbeit.

  Edmund Hlawka

  Intuition, Mathematics, Dies

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