Mathematical Quotes - Page 7

• Spoon feeding in the long run teaches us nothing but the shape of the spoon.

  E. M. Forster

  Inspirational, Education, Running

  "The BBC Talks of E.M. Forster, 1929-1960: A Selected Edition". Book by Edward Morgan Forster, ‎Mary Lago, ‎Linda K. Hughes, June 3, 2008.

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• The profound study of nature is the most fertile source of mathematical discovery.

  Joseph Fourier

  Teaching, Math, Discovery

  Joseph Fourier (2007). “The Analytical Theory of Heat (Unabridged)”, p.7, Cosimo, Inc.

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• But there is another reason for the high repute of mathematics: it is mathematics that offers the exact natural sciences a certain measure of security which, without mathematics, they could not attain.

  Albert Einstein

  Math, Reason, Natural

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• Suppose that you want to teach the 'cat' concept to a very young child. Do you explain that a cat is a relatively small, primarily carnivorous mammal with retractible claws, a distinctive sonic output, etc.? I'll bet not. You probably show the kid a lot of different cats, saying 'kitty' each time, until it gets the idea. To put it more generally, generalizations are best made by abstraction from experience.

  Ralph P. Boas, Jr.

  Children, Cat, Kids

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• First, it is necessary to study the facts, to multiply the number of observations, and then later to search for formulas that connect them so as thus to discern the particular laws governing a certain class of phenomena. In general, it is not until after these particular laws have been established that one can expect to discover and articulate the more general laws that complete theories by bringing a multitude of apparently very diverse phenomena together under a single governing principle.

  Augustin-Louis Cauchy

  Numbers, Law, Class

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• Mathematics is a logical method. . . . Mathematical propositions express no thoughts. In life it is never a mathematical proposition which we need, but we use mathematical propositions only in order to infer from propositions which do not belong to mathematics to others which equally do not belong to mathematics.

  Ludwig Wittgenstein

  Life, Math, Order

  Ludwig Wittgenstein, Charles Kay Ogden (1998). “Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus”, p.98, Courier Corporation

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• Nothing has afforded me so convincing a proof of the unity of the Deity as these purely mental conceptions of numerical and mathematical science which have been by slow degrees vouchsafed to man, and are still granted in these latter times by the Differential Calculus, now superseded by the Higher Algebra, all of which must have existed in that sublimely omniscient Mind from eternity.

  Mary Somerville

  Math, Men, Unity

  Kathryn A. Neeley, Mary Somerville (2001). “Mary Somerville: Science, Illumination, and the Female Mind”, p.180, Cambridge University Press

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  Today's scientists have substituted mathematics for experiments, and they wander off through equation after equation, and eventually build a structure which has no relation to reality.

  Nikola Tesla

  Inspirational, Nature, Reality

  "Radio Power Will Revolutionize the World". Modern Mechanics and Inventions, July 1934.

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• If I feel unhappy, I do mathematics to become happy. If I am happy, I do mathematics to keep happy.

  Alfred Renyi

  Happiness, Math, Unhappy

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• Reductio ad absurdum, which Euclid loved so much, is one of a mathematician's finest weapons. It is a far finer gambit than any chess play: a chess player may offer the sacrifice of a pawn or even a piece, but a mathematician offers the game.

  G. H. Hardy

  Love, Sacrifice, Math

  G. H. Hardy, C. P. Snow (2012). “A Mathematician's Apology”, p.94, Cambridge University Press

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• The Reader may here observe the Force of Numbers, which can be successfully applied, even to those things, which one would imagine are subject to no Rules. There are very few things which we know, which are not capable of being reduc'd to a Mathematical Reasoning, and when they cannot, it's a sign our Knowledge of them is very small and confus'd; and where a mathematical reasoning can be had, it's as great folly to make use of any other, as to grope for a thing in the dark when you have a Candle standing by you.

  John Arbuthnot

  Success, Knowledge, Dark

  Of the Laws of Chance Preface

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• Where there is matter, there is geometry.

  Johannes Kepler

  Math, Science, Matter

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• Music is the pleasure the human mind experiences from counting without being aware that it is counting.

  Gottfried Leibniz

  Music, Math, Science

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• The very term 'combinatorial methods' has an oxymoronic character.

  Joel Spencer

  Character, Mathematics, Method

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• Numbers are intellectual witnesses that belong only to mankind.

  Honore de Balzac

  Math, Numbers, Intellectual

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• If you think it's simple, then you have misunderstood the problem.

  Bjarne Stroustrup

  Simple, Thinking, Misunderstood

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• I never use a computer.

  Andrew Wiles

  Use, Computer, Mathematics

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• Nature does not count nor do integers occur in nature. Man made them all, integers and all the rest, Kronecker to the contrary notwithstanding.

  Percy Williams Bridgman

  Math, Men, Doe

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• Mechanics is the paradise of the mathematical sciences because by means of it one comes to the fruits of mathematics.

  Leonardo da Vinci

  Mean, Science, Math

  Leonardo da Vinci (2008). “Notebooks”, p.10, OUP Oxford

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• With my full philosophical rucksack I can only climb slowly up the mountain of mathematics.

  Ludwig Wittgenstein

  Philosophical, Math, Mountain

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• Everyone else would climb a peak by looking for a path somewhere in the mountain. Nash would climb another mountain altogether and from that distant peak would shine a searchlight back onto the first peak.

  Donald J. Newman

  Shining, Mountain, Path

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• I don't agree with mathematics; the sum total of zeros is a frightening figure.

  Stanislaw Jerzy Lec

  Math, Figures, Agree

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• [A mathematician is a] scientist who can figure out anything except such simple things as squaring the circle and trisecting an angle.

  Evan Esar

  Math, Simple, Circles

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• When I entered graduate school I had carried out the instructions given to me by my father and had knocked on both Murray Gell-Mann's and Feynman's doors and asked them what they were currently doing. Murray wrote down the partition function for the three-dimensional Ising model and said it would be nice if I could solve it (at least that is how I remember the conversation). Feynman's answer was 'nothing'.

  Kenneth G. Wilson

  Father, Nice, School

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• When I give this talk to a physics audience, I remove the quotes from my 'Theorem'.

  Brian Greene

  Giving, Physics, Mathematics

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