Mathematical Quotes - Page 8

• If you had done something twice, you are likely to do it again.

  Brian Kernighan

  Done, Mathematics, Ifs

  Brian W. Kernighan, Rob Pike (1984). “The UNIX Programming Environment”, Prentice Hall

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• It is my experience that proofs involving matrices can be shortened by 50% if one throws the matrices out.

  Emil Artin

  Mathematics, Proof, Involving

  Emil Artin (2016). “Geometric Algebra”, p.14, Courier Dover Publications

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• And for mathematical science, he that doubts their certainty hath need of a dose of hellebore.

  Joseph Glanvill

  Math, Doubt, Needs

  Joseph Glanvill (1885). “Scepsis Scientifica: Or, Confest Ignorance, the Way to Science ; in an Essay of the Vanity of Dogmatizing and Confident Opinion”

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

  Joel Spencer

  Character, Mathematics, Method

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• Mathematics is not only real, but it is the only reality. That is that entire universe is made of matter, obviously. And matter is made of particles. It's made of electrons and neutrons and protons. So the entire universe is made out of particles. Now what are the particles made out of They're not made out of anything. The only thing you can say about the reality of an electron is to cite its mathematical properties. So there's a sense in which matter has completely dissolved and what is left is just a mathematical structure.

  Martin Gardner

  Real, Math, Justice

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• . . . She knew only that if she did or said thus-and-so, men would unerringly respond with the complimentary thus-and-so. It was like a mathematical formula and no more difficult, for mathematics was the one subject that had come easy to Scarlett in her schooldays.

  Margaret Mitchell

  Math, Men, Easy

  Margaret Mitchell (1975). “Gone With the Wind”, MacMillan Publishing Company

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• Counting pairs is the oldest trick in combinatorics... Every time we count pairs, we learn something from it.

  Gil Kalai

  Pairs, Mathematics, Counting

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• Mathematical Mark all mathematical heads, which be only and wholly bent to those sciences, how solitary they be themselves, how unfit to live with others, and how unapt to serve in the world.

  Roger Ascham

  Learning, Math, Science

  "The whole works of Roger Ascham".

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

  Ludwig Wittgenstein

  Philosophical, Math, Mountain

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• Most people have some appreciation of mathematics, just as most people can enjoy a pleasant tune; and there are probably more people really interested in mathematics than in music. Appearances suggest the contrary, but there are easy explanations. Music can be used to stimulate mass emotion, while mathematics cannot; and musical incapacity is recognized (no doubt rightly) as mildly discreditable, whereas most people are so frightened of the name of mathematics that they are ready, quite unaffectedly, to exaggerate their own mathematical stupidity

  G. H. Hardy

  Appreciation, Math, Names

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• I will not go so far as to say that to construct a history of thought without profound study of the mathematical ideas of successive epochs is like omitting Hamlet from the play which is named after him. That would be claiming too much. But it is certainly analogous to cutting out the part of Ophelia. This simile is singularly exact. For Ophelia is quite essential to the play, she is very charming . . . and a little mad.

  Alfred North Whitehead

  Success, Cutting, Math

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

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• If things are nice there is probably a good reason why they are nice: and if you do not know at least one reason for this good fortune, then you still have work to do.

  Richard Askey

  Nice, Reason Why, Mathematics

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• Mathematical discoveries, small or great are never born of spontaneous generation They always presuppose a soil seeded with preliminary knowledge and well prepared by labour, both conscious and subconscious.

  Henri Poincare

  Math, Discovery, Preparation

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• Mathematics is a collection of cheap tricks and dirty jokes.

  Lipman Bers

  Dirty, Mathematics, Tricks

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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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• 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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• 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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• It is not enough to have a good mind. The main thing is to use it well.

  Rene Descartes

  Inspirational, Education, Teaching

  "Discourse on the Method". Book by Rene Descartes (Part 1), 1637.

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• To speak algebraically, Mr. M. is execrable, but Mr. G. is (x + 1)- ecrable.

  Edgar Allan Poe

  Math, Speak, Mathematics

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• An unsophisticated forecaster uses statistics as a drunken man uses lamp-posts - for support rather than for illumination.

  Andrew Lang

  Funny, Humorous, Men

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• All mathematical laws which we find in Nature are always suspect to me, in spite of their beauty. They give me no pleasure. They are merely auxiliaries. At close range it is all not true.

  Georg C. Lichtenberg

  Beauty, Nature, Math

  "Lichtenberg: A Doctrine of Scattered Occasions". Book by Joseph Peter Stern, p. 84, 1959.

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• Life is an offensive, directed against the repetitious mechanism of the Universe.

  Alfred North Whitehead

  Life, Math, Offensive

  Adventures of Ideas (1933) pt. 1, ch. 5

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• There are two types of mind . . . the mathematical, and what might be called the intuitive. The former arrives at its views slowly, but they are firm and rigid; the latter is endowed with greater flexibility and applies itself simultaneously to the diverse lovable parts of that which it loves.

  Blaise Pascal

  Love, Math, Views

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