Mathematical Quotes - Page 4

• It is now quite lawful for a Catholic woman to avoid pregnancy by a resort to mathematics, though she is still forbidden to resort to physics or chemistry.

  H. L. Mencken

  Women, Pregnancy, Science

  Minority Report: H. L. Mencken's Notebooks (1956)

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• Mathematicians are like Frenchmen: whatever you say to them they translate into their own language and forthwith it is something entirely different.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Funny, Humorous, Math

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• The mathematical sciences particularly exhibit order symmetry and limitations; and these are the greatest forms of the beautiful.

  Aristotle

  Beautiful, Education, Math

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• One cannot escape the feeling that these mathematical formulas have an independent existence and an intelligence of their own, that they are wiser than we are, wiser even than their discoverers.

  Heinrich Hertz

  Independent, Math, Feelings

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• Young man, in mathematics you don't understand things. You just get used to them.

  John von Neumann

  Math, Science, Men

  Quoted in Gary Zukav, The DancingWu Li Masters (1979)

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• We are usually convinced more easily by reasons we have found ourselves than by those which have occurred to others.

  Blaise Pascal

  Freedom, Democracy, Reason

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• Numbers written on restaurant bills within the confines of restaurants do not follow the same mathematical laws as numbers written on any other pieces of paper in any other parts of the Universe. This single fact took the scientific world by storm.

  Douglas Adams

  Food, Science, Law

  Douglas Adams (2012). “The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Radio Scripts Volume 2: The Tertiary, Quandary and Quintessential Phases”, p.45, Pan Macmillan

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• The cowboys have a way of trussing up a steer or a pugnacious bronco which fixes the brute so that it can neither move nor think. This is the hog-tie, and it is what Euclid did to geometry.

  Eric Bell

  Moving, Math, Cowboy

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• Beauty is the first test: there is no permanent place in the world for ugly mathematics.

  G. H. Hardy

  Beauty, Math, Apology

  A Mathematician's Apology ch. 10 (1940)

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• Mathematics rightly viewed possesses not only truth but supreme beauty.

  Bertrand Russell

  Math, Western Philosophy, Mathematics

  "The Study of Mathematics" (1902)

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• Since the mathematicians have invaded the theory of relativity I do not understand it myself any more.

  Albert Einstein

  Math, Computer, Theory

  Albert Einstein (1970). “Albert Einstein: philosopher-scientist”

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• I tell them that if they will occupy themselves with the study of mathematics they will find in it the best remedy against the lusts of the flesh.

  Thomas Mann

  Math, Lust, Flesh

  Thomas Mann (1992). “The Magic Mountain”

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• I'm sorry to say that the subject I most disliked was mathematics. I have thought about it. I think the reason was that mathematics leaves no room for argument. If you made a mistake, that was all there was to it.

  Malcolm X

  Sorry, Mistake, Math

  Malcolm X (2015). “The Autobiography of Malcolm X”, p.39, Ballantine Books

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• The pursuit of mathematics is a divine madness of the human spirit.

  Alfred North Whitehead

  Math, Spirit, Madness

  Alfred North Whitehead (1997). “Science and the Modern World”, p.20, Simon and Schuster

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• Life is good for only two things, discovering mathematics and teaching mathematics.

  Simeon Denis Poisson

  Life, Teaching, Science

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• Our minds are finite, and yet even in these circumstances of finitude we are surrounded by possibilities that are infinite, and the purpose of life is to grasp as much as we can out of that infinitude.

  Alfred North Whitehead

  Life, Math, Mind

  Alfred North Whitehead, Lucien Price (2001). “Dialogues of Alfred North Whitehead”, p.160, David R. Godine Publisher

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• The shortest path between two truths in the real domain passes through the complex domain.

  Jacques Hadamard

  Real, Math, Two

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• We never know what we are talking about.

  Karl Popper

  Math, Talking, Mathematical Logic

  Karl Popper (2005). “Unended Quest: An Intellectual Autobiography”, p.26, Routledge

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• Statistics: the mathematical theory of ignorance.

  Morris Kline

  Ignorance, Math, Statistics

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• Mathematics is a game played according to certain simple rules with meaningless marks on paper.

  David Hilbert

  Math, Simple, Games

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• Alice laughed. 'There's no use trying,' she said. 'One can't believe impossible things.' I daresay you haven't had much practice,' said the Queen. 'When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast. There goes the shawl again!

  Lewis Carroll

  Inspirational, Queens, Believe

  Through the Looking-Glass ch. 5 (1872)

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• In many cases, mathematics is an escape from reality. The mathematician finds his own monastic niche and happiness in pursuits that are disconnected from external affairs. Some practice it as if using a drug.

  Stanislaw Ulam

  Reality, Mathematics

  "Adventures of a Mathematician". Book by Stanislaw Ulam, 3rd edition. Chapter 6: "Transition And Crisis", p. 120, 1991.

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• I like mathematics because it is not human and has nothing particular to do with this planet or with the whole accidental universe - because, like Spinoza's God, it won't love us in return.

  Bertrand Russell

  Math, Science, Return

  Bertrand Russell (1992). “The Selected Letters of Bertrand Russell: The private years, 1884-1914”, Allen Lane

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• The union of the mathematician with the poet, fervor with measure, passion with correctness, this surely is the ideal.

  William James

  Passion, Math, Unions

  William James (1987). “Essays, Comments, and Reviews”, p.356, Harvard University Press

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• If your experiment needs statistics, you ought to have done a better experiment.

  Ernest Rutherford

  Math, Science, Needs

  Quoted in N.T. Bailey's The Mathematical Approach to Biology and Medicine Chapter 2 (p. 23)

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