Mathematics Quotes - Page 26

• In passing, I firmly believe that research should be offset by a certain amount of teaching, if only as a change from the agony of research. The trouble, however, I freely admit, is that in practice you get either no teaching, or else far too much.

  John Edensor Littlewood

  Change, Teaching, Believe

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• Since you are now studying geometry and trigonometry, I will give you a problem. A ship sails the ocean. It left Boston with a cargo of wool. It grosses 200 tons. It is bound for Le Havre. The mainmast is broken, the cabin boy is on deck, there are 12 passengers aboard, the wind is blowing East-North-East, the clock points to a quarter past three in the afternoon. It is the month of May. How old is the captain?

  Gustave Flaubert

  Ocean, Math, Boys

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• I read in the proof sheets of Hardy on Ramanujan: "As someone said, each of the positive integers was one of his personal friends." My reaction was, "I wonder who said that; I wish I had." In the next proof-sheets I read (what now stands), "It was Littlewood who said..."

  John Edensor Littlewood

  Friendship, Math, Wish

  John Edensor Littlewood, Béla Bollobás (1986). “Littlewood's Miscellany”, p.61, Cambridge University Press

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• In mathematics and science, there is no difference in the intelligence of men and women. The difference in genes between men and women is simply the Y chromosome, which has nothing to do with intelligence.

  Christiane Nusslein-Volhard

  Men, Differences, Genes

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• My specific goal is to revolutionize the future of the species. Mathematics is just another way of predicting the future.

  Ralph Abraham

  Goal, Way, Predicting The Future

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• Write as you like, use the rhythms that come out, try different instruments, sit at the piano, destroy the metric, shout instead of singing, blow your guitar and ring the horn. Hate mathematics, and love eddies. Creation is a bird without a flight plan, that will never fly in a straight line.

  Violeta Parra

  Hate, Writing, Blow

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• Science progresses best when observations force us to alter our preconceptions.

  Vera Rubin

  Science, Engineering, Progress

  "In Quest of the Universe". Book by Karl F. Kuhn, 2007.

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• Talk with M. Hermite. He never evokes a concrete image, yet you soon perceive that the more abstract entities are to him like living creatures.

  Henri Poincare

  Life, Math, Abstract

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• Time was when all the parts of the subject were dissevered, when algebra, geometry, and arithmetic either lived apart or kept up cold relations of acquaintance confined to occasional calls upon one another; but that is now at an end; they are drawn together and are constantly becoming more and more intimately related and connected by a thousand fresh ties, and we may confidently look forward to a time when they shall form but one body with one soul.

  James Joseph Sylvester

  Life, Math, Ties

  James Joseph Sylvester (1870). “The Laws of Verse: Or Principles of Versification Exemplified in Metrical Translations, Together with an Annotated Reprint of the Inaugural Presidential Address to the Mathematical and Physical Section of the British Association at Exeter”, p.124

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• Archimedes constructing his circle pays with his life for his defective biological adaptation to immediate circumstances.

  Ernst Mach

  Life, Math, Circles

  Ernst Mach (2012). “Knowledge and Error: Sketches on the Psychology of Enquiry”, p.45, Springer Science & Business Media

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• In the broad light of day mathematicians check their equations and their proofs, leaving no stone unturned in their search for rigour. But, at night, under the full moon, they dream, they float among the stars and wonder at the miracle of the heavens. They are inspired. Without dreams there is no art, no mathematics, no life.

  Michael Atiyah

  Inspirational, Life, Dream

  Michael Atiyah (2014). “Michael Atiyah Collected Works: 2002-2013”, p.267, Oxford University Press, USA

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• Mathematics is a collection of cheap tricks and dirty jokes.

  Lipman Bers

  Dirty, Tricks, Mathematical

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• There are two versions of math in the lives of many Americans: the strange and boring subject that they encountered in classrooms and an interesting set of ideas that is the math of the world, and is curiously different and surprisingly engaging. Our task is to introduce this second version to today's students, get them excited about math, and prepare them for the future.

  Jo Boaler

  Education, Teacher, Math

  Jo Boaler (2015). “What's Math Got to Do with It?: How Teachers and Parents Can Transform Mathematics Learning and Inspire Success”, p.5, Penguin

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• My special pleasure in mathematics rested particularly on its purely speculative part.

  Bernard Bolzano

  Special, Pleasure, Mathematical

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• Mathematics as we know it and as it has come to shape modern science could never have come into being without some disregard for the dangers of the infinite.

  David Bressoud

  Shapes, Infinite, Modern

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• The mathematical phenomenon always develops out of simple arithmetic, so useful in everyday life, out of numbers, those weapons of the gods: the gods are there, behind the wall, at play with numbers.

  Le Corbusier

  Wall, Simple, Play

  Le Corbusier (1968). “The modulor: a harmonious measure to the human scale, universally applicable to architecture and mechanics”

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• Mathematicians care no more for logic than logicians for mathematics.

  Augustus De Morgan

  Care, Logic, Mathematical

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• One cannot understand... the universality of laws of nature, the relationship of things, without an understanding of mathematics. There is no other way to do it.

  Richard P. Feynman

  Law, Understanding, Way

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• Die mathematische Forschung besteht aus 10% Intuition und 90% Arbeit.

  Edmund Hlawka

  Intuition, Mathematical, Dies

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• Every dimension is special.

  Jeffrey Lagarias

  Special, Dimensions, Mathematical

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• Mathematics has the inhuman quality of starlight, brilliant and sharp, but cold.

  Hermann Weyl

  Quality, Brilliant, Cold

  Hermann Weyl (2013). “Levels of Infinity: Selected Writings on Mathematics and Philosophy”, p.192, Courier Corporation

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• It is impossible to discuss realism in logic without drawing in the empirical sciences... A truly realistic mathematics should be conceived, in line with physics, as a branch of the theoretical construction of the one real world and should adopt the same sober and cautious attitude toward hypothetic extensions of its foundation as is exhibited by physics.

  Hermann Weyl

  Attitude, Real, Drawing

  Hermann Weyl, Frank Wilczek (2009). “Philosophy of Mathematics and Natural Science”, p.235, Princeton University Press

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• There is a beauty in discovery. There is mathematics in music, a kinship of science and poetry in the description of nature, and exquisite form in a molecule. Attempts to place different disciplines in different camps are revealed as artificial in the face of the unity of knowledge. All literate men are sustained by the philosopher, the historian, the political analyst, the economist, the scientist, the poet, the artisan and the musician.

  Glenn T. Seaborg

  Men, Discovery, Discipline

  "Biographical Memoirs" edited by Darleane C. Hoffman, (p. 252), 2000.

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• The so-called mysteries of quantum mechanics are in its philosophical interpretation, not in its mathematics.

  Victor J. Stenger

  Philosophical, Mystery, Mechanic

  Victor J. Stenger (2012). “God and the Folly of Faith: The Incompatibility of Science and Religion”, p.143, Prometheus Books

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• Algebraic geometry seems to have acquired the reputation of being esoteric, exclusive, and very abstract, with adherents who are secretly plotting to take over all the rest of mathematics. In one respect this last point is accurate.

  David Mumford

  Math, Lasts, Esoteric

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