Mathematics By Mathematicians Quotes - Page 2

• Mathematics is a game played according to certain simple rules with meaningless marks on paper.

  David Hilbert

  Math, Simple, Games

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• Biographical history, as taught in our public schools, is still largely a history of boneheads; ridiculous kings and queens, paranoid political leaders, compulsive voyagers, ignorant general the flotsam and jetsam of historical currents. The men who radically altered history, the great scientists and mathematicians, are seldom mentioned, if at all.

  Martin Gardner

  Queens, Kings, Teaching

  "Adventures Of a Mathematician" by Martin Gardner, www.nytimes.com. May 9, 1976.

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• A mathematician who can only generalise is like a monkey who can only climb up a tree, and a mathematician who can only specialise is like a monkey who can only climb down a tree. In fact neither the up monkey nor the down monkey is a viable creature. A real monkey must find food and escape his enemies and so must be able to incessantly climb up and down. A real mathematician must be able to generalise and specialise.

  George Polya

  Real, Math, Tree

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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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• [A mathematician is a] scientist who can figure out anything except such simple things as squaring the circle and trisecting an angle.

  Evan Esar

  Math, Simple, Circles

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• The mathematician's best work is art, a high perfect art, as daring as the most secret dreams of imagination, clear and limpid. Mathematical genius and artistic genius touch one another.

  Gosta Mittag-Leffler

  Dream, Art, Math

  "Mathematical Maxims and Minims". Book by Nicholas J. and John de Pillis Rose, 1988.

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• The union of the mathematician with the poet, fervor with measure, passion with correctness, this surely is the ideal.

  William James

  Passion, Math, Unions

  William James (1987). “Essays, Comments, and Reviews”, p.356, Harvard University Press

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• Mathematicians are like lovers. Grant a mathematician the least principle, and he will draw from it a consequence which you must also grant him, and from this consequence another.

  Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle

  Math, Principles, Lovers

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• Poets do not go mad; but chess-players do. Mathematicians go mad, and cashiers; but creative artists very seldom. I am not, as will be seen, in any sense attacking logic: I only say that this danger does lie in logic, not in imagination.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Lying, Science, Math

  Orthodoxy ch. 2 (1908)

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• Archimedes will be remembered when Aeschylus is forgotten, because languages die and mathematical ideas do not. "Immortality" may be a silly word, but probably a mathematician has the best chance of whatever it may mean.

  G. H. Hardy

  Silly, Mean, Math

  A Mathematician's Apology ch. 8 (1940)

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• What is this frog and mouse battle among the mathematicians?

  Albert Einstein

  Math, Battle, Frogs

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• Mathematicians have tried in vain to this day to discover some order in the sequence of prime numbers, and we have reason to believe that it is a mystery into which the human mind will never penetrate.

  Leonhard Euler

  Believe, Math, Order

  "Calculus Gems: Brief Lives and Memorable Mathematics". Book by George F. Simmons, 1992.

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• Mathematics is concerned with "all possible worlds."

  David Malet Armstrong

  World, Mathematics, Concerned

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• Mathematics is no more computation than typing is literature.

  John Allen Paulos

  Teaching, Math, Literature

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• The mathematician has reached the highest rung on the ladder of human thought.

  Havelock Ellis

  Math, Science, Ladders

  havelock ellis (1923). “the dance of life”

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• Mathematics is not only real, but it is the only reality.

  Martin Gardner

  Real, Math, Neutrons

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• Mathematicians do not deal in objects, but in relations between objects; thus, they are free to replace some objects by others so long as the relations remain unchanged. Content to them is irrelevant: they are interested in form only.

  Henri Poincare

  Long, Form, Relation

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• It is the perennial youthfulness of mathematics itself which marks it off with a disconcerting immortality from the other sciences.

  Eric Temple Bell

  Graphic Design, Immortality, Mathematics

  Eric Temple Bell (1938). “The queen of the sciences”

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• Mathematics is as much an aspect of culture as it is a collection of algorithms.

  Carl Benjamin Boyer

  Math, Science, Culture

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• The scientist does not study nature because it is useful; he studies it because he delights in it, and he delights in it because it is beautiful.

  Henri Poincare

  Beautiful, Math, Science

  Henri Poincare (2012). “The Value of Science: Essential Writings of Henri Poincare”, p.318, Modern Library

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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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• You know we all became mathematicians for the same reason: we were lazy.

  Maxwell Rosenlicht

  Math, Lazy, Laziness

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

  William Wordsworth

  Independent, Math, World

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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, in the common lay view, is a static discipline based on formulas...But outside the public view, mathematics continues to grow at a rapid rate...the guid to this growth is not calculation and formulas, but an open ended search for pattern.

  Lynn Steen

  Teaching, Math, Views

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