Mathematician Quotes - Page 9

• A well-known mathematician once told me that the great thing about liking both math and sex was that he could do either one while thinking about the other.

  Steven Landsburg

  Sex, Math, Thinking

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• Every good mathematician is at least half a philosopher, and every good philosopher is at least half a mathematician.

  Gottlob Frege

  Philosophy, Science, Analysis

  Attributed in "Mathematics as grammar: 'Grammar' in Wittgenstein's philosophy of mathematics during the Middle Period" by A. A. B. Aspeitia, Indiana University, (p. 25), 2000.

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• The greatest mathematicians, as Archimedes, Newton, and Gauss, always united theory and applications in equal measure.

  Felix Klein

  Newton, Theory, Equal

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• Every intelligent person, whether hes an artist or not - a mathematician, a doctor, a scientist - possesses a poetic way of seeing and describing the world.

  Yehuda Amichai

  Artist, Intelligent, Doctors

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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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• Although I am even now still a layman in the area of mathematics, and although I lack theoretical knowledge, the mathematicians, and in particular the crystallographers, have had considerable influence on my work of the last twenty years. The laws of the phenomena around us--order, regularity, cyclical repetition, and renewals--have assumed greater and greater importance for me. The awareness of their presence gives me peace and provides me with support. I try in my prints to testify that we live in a beautiful and orderly world, and not in a formless chaos, as it sometimes seems.

  M. C. Escher

  Beautiful, Years, Law

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• Mathematics consists in proving the most obvious thing in the least obvious way.

  George Polya

  Knowledge, Math, Obvious Things

  George Pólya (1968). “Mathematical discovery: on understanding, learning, and teaching problem solving”

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• What we do may be small, but it has a certain character of permanence; and to have produced anything of the slightest permanent interest, whether it be a copy of verses or a geometrical theorem, is to have done something utterly beyond the powers of the vast majority of men.

  G. H. Hardy

  Character, Science, Men

  G. H. Hardy (2012). “A Mathematician's Apology”, p.76, Cambridge University Press

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• It is a melancholy experience for a professional mathematician to find himself writing about mathematics. The function of a mathematician is to do something, to prove new theorems, to add to mathematics, and not to talk about what he or other mathematicians have done. Statesmen despise publicists, painters despise art-critics, and physiologists, physicists, or mathematicians have usually similar feelings: there is no scorn more profound, or on the whole more justifiable, than that of the men who make for the men who explain. Exposition, criticism, appreciation, is work for second-rate minds.

  G. H. Hardy

  Appreciation, Art, Writing

  G. H. Hardy (2012). “A Mathematician's Apology”, p.61, Cambridge University Press

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• No mathematician should ever allow himself to forget that mathematics, more than any other art or science, is a young man's game

  G. H. Hardy

  Art, Men, Games

  G. H. Hardy (2012). “A Mathematician's Apology”, p.70, Cambridge University Press

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• We know next to nothing with any certainty about Pythagoras, except that he was not really called Pythagoras. The name by which he is known to us was probably a nickname bestowed by his followers. According to one source, it meant ‘He who spoke truth like an oracle’. Rather than entrust his mathematical and philosophical ideas to paper, Pythagoras is said to have expounded them before large crowds. The world’s most famous mathematician was also its first rhetorician.

  Daniel Tammet

  Philosophical, Names, Ideas

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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 inner circle of pure mathematicians will respond to the book with delight.

  Philip J. Davis

  Book, Circles, Delight

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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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• Mathematics is the supreme judge; from its decisions there is no appeal.

  Tobias Dantzig

  Math, Judging, Decision

  Tobias Dantzig (2005). “Number: The Language of Science”, Dutton Juvenile

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• The mathematicians are the priests of the modern world.

  Bill Gaede

  World, Modern, Priests

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• The sacred writings excepted, no Greek has been so much read and so variously translated as Euclid.

  Augustus De Morgan

  Writing, Greek, Sacred

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• Euler - The unsurpassed master of analytic invention.

  Richard Courant

  Invention, Masters, Analytics

  Richard Courant (1948). “Lectures on the theory of functions”

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• A mathematician is an individual who calls himself a 'physicist' and does 'physics' and physical experiments with abstract concepts.

  Bill Gaede

  Doe, Physics, Individual

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