Mathematics By Mathematicians Quotes - Page 2

• Mathematicians are like Frenchmen: whatever you say to them they translate into their own language and forthwith it is something entirely different.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Funny, Humorous, Math

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

  Albert Einstein

  Math, Battle, Frogs

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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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• 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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• 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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• 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 an independent world created out of pure intelligence.

  William Wordsworth

  Independent, Math, World

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

  Martin Gardner

  Real, Math, Neutrons

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• Mathematics, however, is, as it were, its own explanation; this, although it may seem hard to accept, is nevertheless true, for the recognition that a fact is so is the cause upon which we base the proof.

  Gerolamo Cardano

  Causes, Facts, May

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• Everyone knows what a curve is, until he has studied enough mathematics to become confused through the countless number of possible exceptions.

  Felix Klein

  Confused, Math, Numbers

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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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• 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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