Mathematician Quotes - Page 11

• Mathematicians create by acts of insights and intuition. Logic then sanctions the conquests of intuition.

  Morris Kline

  Education, Knowledge, Math

  Morris Kline (1964). “Mathematics in Western Culture”, p.408, Oxford University Press

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• One does not, by knowing all the physical laws as we know them today, immediately obtain an understanding of anything much. I love only nature, and I hate mathematicians.

  Richard P. Feynman

  Hate, Law, Knowing

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• Should I not be proud, when for twenty years I have had to admit to myself that the great Newton and all the mathematicians and noble calculators along with him were involved in a decisive error with respect to the doctrine of color, and that I among millions was the only one who knew what was right in this great subject of nature?

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Errors, Color, Years

  Letter to Eckermann, December 30, 1823.

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• An axiomatic system establishes a reverberating relationship between what a mathematician assumes (the axioms) and what he or she can derive (the theorems). In the best of circumstances, the relationship is clear enough so that the mathematician can submit his or her reasoning to an informal checklist, passing from step to step with the easy confidence the steps are small enough so that he cannot be embarrassed nor she tripped up.

  David Berlinski

  Steps, Assuming, Enough

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• Oh these mathematicians make me tired! When you ask them to work out a sum they take a piece of paper, cover it with rows of A's, B's, and X's and Y's ... scatter a mess of flyspecks over them, and then give you an answer that's all wrong!

  Thomas A. Edison

  Tired, Science, Giving

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• The calculus of probabilities, when confined within just limits, ought to interest, in an equal degree, the mathematician, the experimentalist, and the statesman.

  Francois Arago

  Science, Degrees, Limits

  François Arago, Robert GRANT (F.R.A.S.), Baden Powell, William Henry SMYTH (Rear Admiral.) (1857). “Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men ... Translated by ... W. H. Smyth ... the Rev. Baden Powell ... and R. Grant”, p.235

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• Mathematics may be likened to a large rock whose interior composition we wish to examine. The older mathematicians appear as persevering stone cutters slowly attempting to demolish the rock from the outside with hammer and chisel. The later mathematicians resemble expert miners who seek vulnerable veins, drill into these strategic places, and then blast the rock apart with well placed internal charges.

  Howard Whitley Eves

  Math, Rocks, Wish

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• The bottom line for mathematicians is that the architecture has to be right. In all the mathematics that I did, the essential point was to find the right architecture. It's like building a bridge. Once the main lines of the structure are right, then the details miraculously fit. The problem is the overall design.

  Freeman Dyson

  Math, Bridges, Design

  "Freeman Dyson: Mathematician, Physicist, and Writer". The College Mathematics Journal Interview with Donald J. Albers, January 1994.

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• I like words and numbers. I'm obsessed with them. You know, I think I would've been a mathematician had I kept up, but it's the stuff in your head, you know? It's like being technologically adept. You have it or you don't. You can learn it, but some people just have it. They go to sleep, wake up, and know everything. I like games, too. I love playing games.

  Jackee Harry

  Sleep, Thinking, Playing Games

  "Jackée Harry on 227, Ladybugs, and why she wants to be the next Maggie Smith". Interview with Marah Eakin, tv.avclub.com. February 26, 2016.

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• When the mathematician says that such and such a proposition is true of one thing, it may be interesting, and it is surely safe. But when he tries to extend his proposition to everything, though it is much more interesting, it is also much more dangerous. In the transition from one to all, from the specific to the general, mathematics has made its greatest progress, and suffered its most serious setbacks, of which the logical paradoxes constitute the most important part. For, if mathematics is to advance securely and confidently, it must first set its affairs in order at home.

  Edward Kasner

  Home, Order, Interesting

  "Mathematics and the Imagination".

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• Unfortunately, the world has not been designed for the convenience of mathematicians.

  Benoit Mandelbrot

  World, Convenience

  Benoit B. Mandelbrot, Richard Hudson (2010). “The (Mis)Behaviour of Markets: A Fractal View of Risk, Ruin and Reward”, p.41, Profile Books

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• When a student comes and asks, "Should I become a mathematician?" the answer should be no. If you have to ask, you shouldn't even ask.

  Paul Halmos

  Math, Answers, Students

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• Geniuses of certain kinds - mathematicians, chess players, computer programmers - seem, if not mad, at least lacking in the social skills most easily identified with sanity.

  James Gleick

  Player, Skills, Mad

  James Gleick (1992). “Genius: the life and science of Richard Feynman”, Pantheon

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• What is the origin of the urge, the fascincation that drives physicists, mathematicians, and presumably other scientists as well? Psychoanalysis suggests that it is sexual curiosity. You start by asking where little babies come from, one thing leads to another, and you find yourself preparing nitroglycerine or solving differential equations. This explanation is somewhat irritating, and therefore probably basically correct.

  David Ruelle

  Baby, Science, Finding Yourself

  David Ruelle (1993). “Chance and Chaos”, p.164, Princeton University Press

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• A Noah's Ark of mathematicians, their lives, loves, hard times, and madnesses, Loving and Hating Mathematics shows our community with all its warts as well as its triumphs. I especially liked the chapter on much-hated school mathematics, 'Almost All Children Left Behind.'

  David Mumford

  Children, Hate, School

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• Sometimes a line of mathematical research extending through decades can be thought of as one long conversation in which many mathematicians take part. This is fortunately true at present.

  Barry Mazur

  Long, Research, Lines

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• Rigour is to the mathematician what morality is to men.

  Andre Weil

  Math, Men, Morality

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• First rate mathematicians choose first rate people, but second rate mathematicians choose third rate people.

  Andre Weil

  People, Firsts, Rate

  "Comic Sections: Book of Mathematical Jokes, Humour, Wit and Wisdom". Book by Des MacHale, 1993.

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• The Mathematician's Shiva is a brilliant and compelling family saga full of warmth, pathos, history, and humor, not to mention a cast of delightfully quirky characters, and a math lesson or two; all together, a winning equation! When Rojstaczer writes about mathematics, you'd think he was writing about poetry.

  Jonathan Evison

  Writing, Character, Math

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• A jazz musician is a combination orator, dialectician, mathematician, athlete, entertainer, poet, singer, dancer, diplomat, educator, student, comedian, artist, seducer, public masturbator, and general all-round good fellow.

  Steve Lacy

  Athlete, Artist, Dancer

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• Even though I am a mathematician, I look at [fetal development] with marvel: How do these instruction sets not make mistakes as they build what is us?

  Alexander Tsiaras

  Motivation, Mistake, Inspiration

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• The physicists defer only to mathematicians, and the mathematicians defer only to God.

  Leon M. Lederman

  Physicist

  Leon M. Lederman, Dick Teresi (1993). “The God Particle: If the Universe is the Answer, what is the Question?”, p.13, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• The mathematicians are the priests of the modern world.

  Bill Gaede

  World, Modern, Priests

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• A mathematician is a magician who converts adjectives into nouns: continuous into continuum, infinite into infinity, infinitesimal into location, 0D into point, 1D into line, curved into geodesic.

  Bill Gaede

  Location, Infinity, Adjectives

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• Atheism is the opium of the mathematicians. Atheism is the religion of Mathematics.

  Bill Gaede

  Atheist, Atheism, Mathematics

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