Mathematician Quotes - Page 5

• The life of a mathematician is dominated by an insatiable curiosity, a desire bordering on passion to solve the problems he is studying.

  Jean Dieudonne

  Teaching, Passion, Math

  Underwood Dudley, Gerald L. Alexanderson, Nathan Altshiller-Court, John Aubry, Girolamo Cardano (2008). “Is mathematics inevitable?: a miscellany”, The Mathematical Association of America

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• The laws of nature are but the mathematical thoughts of God.

  Euclid

  God, Nature, Math

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• Mathematicians may flatter themselves that they possess new ideas which mere human language is as yet unable to express. Let them make the effort to express these ideas in appropriate words without the aid of symbols, and if they succeed they will not only lay us laymen under a lasting obligation, but, we venture to say, they will find themselves very much enlightened during the process, and will even be doubtful whether the ideas as expressed in symbols had ever quite found their way out of the equations into their minds.

  James Clerk Maxwell

  Science, Ideas, Effort

  James Clerk Maxwell, W. D. Niven (2003). “The Scientific Papers of James Clerk Maxwell”, p.328, Courier Corporation

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• [Mathematics] is an independent world created out of pure intelligence.

  William Wordsworth

  Independent, Math, World

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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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• 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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• Mathematics is the tool specially suited for dealing with abstract concepts of any kind and there is no limit to its power in this field.

  Paul Dirac

  Math, Power, Tools

  Paul Adrien Maurice Dirac (1995). “Sammlung”, p.457, Cambridge University Press

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• Young men should prove theorems, old men should write books.

  G. H. Hardy

  Book, Writing, Math

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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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• In India, I learned a proverb that says, 'Distrust the calculation seven times over, the mathematician a hundred times.'

  Julio Cesar de Mello e Souza

  India, Seven, Mathematics

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• Mathematics is the art of giving the same name to different things.

  Henri Poincare

  Art, Science, Math

  Henri Poincare (2012). “The Value of Science: Essential Writings of Henri Poincare”, p.622, Modern Library

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• Perfect numbers like perfect men are very rare.

  Rene Descartes

  Math, Men, Numbers

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• Mathematics is like draughts in being suitable for the young, not too difficult, amusing, and without peril to the state.

  Plato

  Plato, Math, Amusing

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• I knew a mathematician who said 'I do not know as much as God. But I know as much as God knew at my age'.

  Milton Shulman

  Science, Age, Said

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• A mathematician's reputation rests on the number of bad proofs he has given.

  Abram Samoilovitch Besicovitch

  Math, Numbers, Reputation

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• It would be better for the true physics if there were no mathematicians on earth.

  Daniel Bernoulli

  Math, Science, Would Be

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• Mathematics is the handwriting on the human consciousness of the very Spirit of Life itself.

  Claude Fayette Bragdon

  Math, Handwriting, Spirit

  Claude Fayette Bragdon (2005). “Architecture and Democracy”, p.61, Cosimo, Inc.

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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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• 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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• Mathematics may be defined as the subject in which we never know what we are talking about, nor whether what we are saying is true.

  Bertrand Russell

  Fake People, Math, Talking

  "Mathematics and Metaphysicians" (1901)

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• There is no branch of mathematics, however abstract, which may not some day be applied to phenomena of the real world.

  Nikolai Lobachevsky

  Real, Math, Science

  "The Foundations of Geometry and the Non-Euclidean Plane". Book by George Edward Martin, 1975.

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• Mathematics is no more computation than typing is literature.

  John Allen Paulos

  Teaching, Math, Literature

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• But mathematics is the sister, as well as the servant, of the arts and is touched with the same madness and genius.

  Marston Morse

  Art, Math, Science

  Marston Morse, Raoul Bott (1981). “Selected papers”, Springer Verlag

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• I do believe in simplicity. It is astonishing as well as sad, how many trivial affairs even the wisest thinks he must attend to in a day; how singular an affair he thinks he must omit. When the mathematician would solve a difficult problem, he first frees the equation of all incumbrances, and reduces it to its simplest terms. So simplify the problem of life, distinguish the necessary and the real. Probe the earth to see where your main roots run.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Running, Real, Believe

  Henry David Thoreau, Jeffrey S. Cramer (2007). “I to Myself: An Annotated Selection from the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau”, p.201, Yale University Press

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• The mathematician's patterns, like the painter's or the poet's, must be beautiful.

  G. H. Hardy

  Beautiful, Math, Patterns

  A Mathematician's Apology ch. 10 (1940)

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