Mathematics Quotes - Page 9

• I am interested in mathematics only as a creative art.

  G. H. Hardy

  Art, Creativity, Creative

  G. H. Hardy, C. P. Snow (2012). “A Mathematician's Apology”, p.115, Cambridge University Press

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• Don't just read it; fight it! Ask your own question, look for your own examples, discover your own proofs. Is the hypothesis necessary? Is the converse true? ... Where does the proof use the hypothesis?

  Paul Halmos

  Fighting, Example, Doe

  "I Want to be a Mathematician: An Automathography". Book by Paul Halmos, 1985.

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• The tantalizing and compelling pursuit of mathematical problems offers mental absorption, peace of mind amid endless challenges, repose in activity, battle without conflict, refuge from the goading urgency of contingent happenings, and the sort of beauty changeless mountains present to senses tried by the present day kaleidoscope of events.

  Morris Kline

  Teaching, Math, Challenges

  Morris Kline (1964). “Mathematics in Western Culture”, p.470, Oxford University Press

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• It is not of the essence of mathematics to be conversant with the ideas of number and quantity.

  George Boole

  Essence, Ideas, Numbers

  George Boole (1854). “An Investigation of the Laws of Thought: On which are Founded the Mathematical Theories of Logic and Probabilities”, p.12

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• It should seem that it is easier to square the circle than to get round a mathematician.

  Augustus De Morgan

  Education, Math, Squares

  "A Budget of Paradoxes".

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• Why waste words? Geometry existed before the Creation, is co-eternal with the mind of God, is God himself (what exists in God that is not God himself?): geometry provided God with a model for the Creation and was implanted into man, together with God's own likeness - and not merely conveyed to his mind through the eyes.

  Johannes Kepler

  Eye, Men, History

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• Thus God himself was too kind to remain idle and began to play the game of signatures signing his likeness unto the world: therefore I chance to think that all nature and the graceful sky are symbolized in the art of Geometria.

  Johannes Kepler

  Art, Thinking, Sky

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• Now, as God the maker play'd he taught the game to Nature whom he created in his image; taught her the selfsame game which he played to her.

  Johannes Kepler

  Games, Play, History

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• All these people that I used to know, they're an illusion to me now. Some are mathematicians, some are carpenters' wives.

  Bob Dylan

  People, Wife, Illusion

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• 

  Mathematical reasoning may be regarded.

  Alan Turing

  May, Mathematical, Reasoning

  Alan Mathison Turing, B. J. Copeland (2004). “The Essential Turing”, p.192, Oxford University Press

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• Premature optimization is the root of all evil.

  Donald Knuth

  Science, Roots, Evil

  Donald Ervin Knuth (1986). “TEX: The Program”, Addison-Wesley Professional

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• I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy.

  John Adams

  Education, Philosophy, War

  John Adams (2003). “The Letters of John and Abigail Adams”, p.264, Penguin

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• If I am given a formula, and I am ignorant of its meaning, it cannot teach me anything, but if I already know it what does the formula teach me?

  Saint Augustine

  Math, Ignorant, Doe

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• I hope that posterity will judge me kindly, not only as to the things which I have explained, but also to those which I have intentionally omitted so as to leave to others the pleasure of discovery.

  Rene Descartes

  Math, Science, Discovery

  Rene Descartes (2007). “The Geometry of Rene Descartes”, p.240, Cosimo, Inc.

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• And believe me, if I were again beginning my studies, I should follow the advice of Plato and start with the mathematical sciences, which proceed very cautiously and admit nothing as established until it has been rigorously demonstrated.

  Galileo Galilei

  Education, Plato, Math

  "The Essential Galileo".

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• We must admit with humility that, while number is purely a product of our minds, space has a reality outside our minds, so that we cannot completely prescribe its properties a priori.

  Carl Friedrich Gauss

  Humility, Math, Reality

  Letter to Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel, 1830.

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• If two wrongs don't make a right, try three.

  Laurence J. Peter

  Funny, Witty, Revenge

  Laurence J. Peter (1979). “Peter's people”, W. Morrow

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• If your experiment needs statistics, you ought to have done a better experiment.

  Ernest Rutherford

  Math, Science, Needs

  Quoted in N.T. Bailey's The Mathematical Approach to Biology and Medicine Chapter 2 (p. 23)

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• My work always tried to unite the true with the beautiful; but when I had to choose one or the other, I usually chose the beautiful.

  Tom Stoppard

  Beautiful, Truth, Work

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• Everything of importance has been said before by somebody who did not discover it.

  Alfred North Whitehead

  Wisdom, Math, Science

  "The Organization of Thought" (1917)

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• Our minds are finite, and yet even in these circumstances of finitude we are surrounded by possibilities that are infinite, and the purpose of life is to grasp as much as we can out of that infinitude.

  Alfred North Whitehead

  Life, Math, Mind

  Alfred North Whitehead, Lucien Price (2001). “Dialogues of Alfred North Whitehead”, p.160, David R. Godine Publisher

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• We often hear that mathematics consists mainly of "proving theorems." Is a writer's job mainly that of "writing sentences?"

  Gian-Carlo Rota

  Jobs, Writing, Math

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• Every moment dies a man,
  Every moment one is born.

  Alfred Lord Tennyson

  Time, Men, Born

  'The Vision of Sin' (1842) pt. 4, st. 9.

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• I often say that when you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it; but when you cannot measure it, when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meagre and unsatisfactory kind.

  Lord Kelvin

  Math, Science, Numbers

  Popular Lectures and Addresses "Electrical Units of Measurement" (1889).

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• How can it be that mathematics, being after all a product of human thought which is independent of experience, is so admirably appropriate to the objects of reality?

  Albert Einstein

  Independent, Science, Reality

  Albert Einstein, Stephen W. Hawking (2007). “A Stubbornly Persistent Illusion: The Essential Scientific Works of Albert Einstein”, p.249, Running Press

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