Mathematical Quotes - Page 9

• 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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• A modern mathematical proof is not very different from a modern machine, or a modern test setup: the simple fundamental principles are hidden and almost invisible under a mass of technical details.

  Hermann Weyl

  Simple, Simplicity, Principles

  Hermann Weyl (2013). “Levels of Infinity: Selected Writings on Mathematics and Philosophy”, p.33, Courier Corporation

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• The sciences do not try to explain, they hardly even try to interpret, they mainly make models. By a model is meant a mathematical construct which, with the addition of certain verbal interpretations, describes observed phenomena. The justification of such a mathematical construct is solely and precisely that it is expected to work-that is, correctly to describe phenomena from a reasonably wide area.

  John von Neumann

  Science, Trying, Mathematics

  John Von Neumann, F. Bródy, Tibor Vámos (1995). “The Neumann Compendium”, p.628, World Scientific

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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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• If all art aspires to the condition of music, all the sciences aspire to the condition of mathematics.

  George Santayana

  Art, Mathematics, Math And Science

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• Mere poets are sottish as mere drunkards are, who live in a continual mist, without seeing or judging anything clearly. A man should be learned in several sciences, and should have a reasonable, philosophical and in some measure a mathematical head, to be a complete and excellent poet.

  John Dryden

  Philosophical, Learning, Math

  John Dryden, George Saintsbury, Sir Walter Scott (1892). “The Works of John Dryden: Poetical works”

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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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• The mathematical life of a mathematician is short. Work rarely improves after the age of twenty-five or thirty. If little has been accomplished by then, little will ever be accomplished.

  Alfred Adler

  Life, Work, Math

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• We are not very pleased when we are forced to accept a mathematical truth by virtue of a complicated chain of formal conclusions and computations, which we traverse blindly, link by link, feeling our way by touch. We want first an overview of the aim and of the road; we want to understand the idea of the proof, the deeper context.

  Hermann Weyl

  Truth, Math, Ideas

  Hermann Weyl (2013). “Levels of Infinity: Selected Writings on Mathematics and Philosophy”, p.33, Courier Corporation

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• If we possessed a thorough knowledge of all the parts of the seed of any animal (e.g. man), we could from that alone, be reasons entirely mathematical and certain, deduce the whole conformation and figure of each of its members, and, conversely if we knew several peculiarities of this conformation, we would from those deduce the nature of its seed.

  Rene Descartes

  Nature, Math, Animal

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• . . . we have overcome the notion that mathematical truths have an existence independent and apart from our own minds. It is even strange to us that such a notion could ever have existed.

  Edward Kasner

  Independent, Math, Mind

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• When we ask for advice, we are usually looking for an accomplice.

  Saul Bellow

  Funny, Humor, Advice

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• Pure mathematics is on the whole distinctly more useful than applied... For what is useful above all is technique, and mathematical technique is taught mainly through pure mathematics.

  G. H. Hardy

  Sensual, Technique, Taught

  "A Mathematician's Apology". Book by G. H. Hardy, 1941.

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• The whole purpose of education is to turn mirrors into windows.

  Sydney J. Harris

  Graduation, Education, Wall

  Sydney J. Harris (1985). “Pieces of Eight Pa”, Mariner Books

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• The real danger is not that computers will begin to think like men, but that men will begin to think like computers.

  Sydney J. Harris

  Real, Math, Technology

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• He who loves practice without theory is like the sailor who boards ship without a rudder and compass and never knows where he may cast.

  Leonardo da Vinci

  Love, Math, Reality

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• Everything of importance has been said before by somebody who did not discover it.

  Alfred North Whitehead

  Wisdom, Math, Science

  "The Organization of Thought" (1917)

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• Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself, I am large, I contain multitudes.

  Walt Whitman

  Inspirational, Life, Change

  "Song of Myself " l. 1324 (written 1855)

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• 

  A human being is a part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feeling as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.

  Albert Einstein

  Inspirational, Beauty, Spiritual

  Letter of 1950, as quoted in "The New York Times", March 29, 1972.

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• Know what you are talking about.

  Pope John Paul II

  Knowledge, Knowing Jesus, Talking

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• If we take in our hand any volume; of divinity or school metaphysics, for instance; let us ask, Does it contain any abstract reasoning concerning quantity or number? No. Does it contain any experimental reasoning concerning matter of fact and existence? No. Commit it then to the flames: for it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion.

  David Hume

  School, Math, Numbers

  An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding sec. 12, pt. 3 (1748)

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• When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.’ ’The question is,’ said Alice, ‘whether you can make words mean so many different things.’ ’The question is,’ said Humpty Dumpty, ‘which is to be master — that’s all.

  Lewis Carroll

  Mean, Different, Wonderland

  1871 Through the Looking-Glass, ch.6,'Humpty Dumpty'.

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• You treat world history as a mathematician does mathematics, in which nothing but laws and formulas exist, no reality, no good and evil, no time, no yesterday, no tomorrow, nothing but an eternal, shallow, mathematical present.

  Hermann Hesse

  Reality, Law, Yesterday

  Hermann Hesse (2002). “The Glass Bead Game: (Magister Ludi) A Novel”, p.168, Macmillan

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• Few men speak humbly of humility, chastely of chastity, skeptically of skepticism.

  Blaise Pascal

  Humility, Pride, Math

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• Only mathematics and mathematical logic can say as little as the physicist means to say.

  Bertrand Russell

  Mean, Science, Mathematical Logic

  Bertrand Russell (1992). “The Basic Writings of Bertrand Russell, 1903-1959”, p.626, Psychology Press

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