Mathematics Quotes - Page 2

It becomes the urgent duty of mathematicians, therefore, to meditate about the essence of mathematics, its motivations and goals and the ideas that must bind divergent interests together.

Luck is the grand equalizer.

Amusement if one of humankind's strongest motivational forces.

Schools were started to train human talents... The Guild... emphasizes almost pure mathematics. Bene Gesserit performs... politics. The original Bene Gesserit school was directed by those who saw the need of a thread of continuity in human affairs. They saw there count be no such continuity without separating human stock from animal stock - for breeding purposes.

See appendix A for a proof that Winston Churchill was a carrot.

Do not imagine that mathematics is hard and crabbed, and repulsive to common sense. It is merely the etherealization of common sense.

Really, there was only one problem with Mr. Davis, as far as Gregory was concerned; He taught math.

The mathematicians are the priests of the modern world.

Jack had wondered how geometers could be so inventive as to produce so many types and families of curves. Later he had come to perceive that of curves there was no end, and the true miracle was that poets, or writers, or whoever it was that was in charge of devising new words, could keep pace with those hectic geometers, and slap names on all the whorls and snarls in the pages of the Doctor's geometry-books.

[Benjamin Peirce's] lectures were not easy to follow. They were never carefully prepared. The work with which he rapidly covered the blackboard was very illegible, marred with frequent erasures, and not infrequent mistakes (he worked too fast for accuracy). He was always ready to digress from the straight path and explore some sidetrack that had suddenly attracted his attention, but which was likely to have led nowhere when the college bell announced the close of the hour and we filed out, leaving him abstractedly staring at his work, still with chalk and eraser in his hands, entirely oblivious of his departing class.

With me, everything turns into mathematics.

Some mathematics problems look simple, and you try them for a year or so, and then you try them for a hundred years, and it turns out that they're extremely hard to solve. There's no reason why these problems shouldn't be easy, and yet they turn out to be extremely intricate. [Fermat's] Last Theorem is the most beautiful example of this.

Education makes your maths better, not necessarily your manners.

Do you know what the mathematical expression is for longing? ... The negative numbers. The formalization of the feeling that you are missing something.

99 percent of all statistics only tell 49 percent of the story.

I only know that when I study mathematics, I transport myself to another world, a world of exquisite beauty and truth. And in that world I am the person I like to be.

[Regarding mathematics,] there are now few studies more generally recognized, for good reasons or bad, as profitable and praiseworthy. This may be true; indeed it is probable, since the sensational triumphs of Einstein, that stellar astronomy and atomic physics are the only sciences which stand higher in popular estimation.

If the institution of mathematics told a story . . . how would it end?

If you plug in a number and the math starts getting creepy (anything involving fractions or negative numbers is creepy)...

Like Molière’s M. Jourdain, who spoke prose all his life without knowing it, mathematicians have been reasoning for at least two millennia without being aware of all the principles underlying what they were doing. The real nature of the tools of their craft has become evident only within recent times A renaissance of logical studies in modern times begins with the publication in 1847 of George Boole’s 'The Mathematical Analysis of Logic'.

Mathematics is Open Source.

A mathematician is an individual who proves his beliefs with equations.

The Golden Number is a mathematical definition of a proportional function which all of nature obeys, whether it be a mollusk shell, the leaves of plants, the proportions of the animal body, the human skeleton, or the ages of growth in man.

Mathematics expresses values that reflect the cosmos, including orderliness, balance, harmony, logic, and abstract beauty.

The world of being is unchangeable, rigid, exact, delightful to the mathematician, the logician, the builder of metaphysical systems, and all who love perfection more than life. The world of existence is fleeting, vague, without sharp boundaries, without any clear plan or arrangement, but it contains all thoughts and feelings, all the data of sense, and all physical objects, everything that can do either good or harm, everything that makes any difference to the value of life and the world. According to our temperaments, we shall prefer the contemplation of the one or of the other.

You too can make the golden cut, relating the two poles of your being in perfect golden proportion, thus enabling the lower to resonate in tune with the higher, and the inner with the outer. In doing so, you will bring yourself to a point of total integration of all the separate parts of your being, and at the same time, you will bring yourself into resonance with the entire universe....Nonetheless the universe is divided on exactly these principles as proven by literally thousands of points of circumstantial evidence, including the size, orbital distances, orbital frequencies and other characteristics of planets in our solar system, many characteristics of the sub-atomic dimension such as the fine structure constant, the forms of many plants and the golden mean proportions of the human body, to mention just a few well known examples. However the circumstantial evidence is not that on which we rely, for we have the proof in front of us in the pure mathematical principles of the golden mean.

...in pure mathematics the mind deal only with its own creations and imaginations. The concepts of number and form have not been derived from any source other than the world of reality. The ten fingers on which men learned to count, that is, to carry out the first arithmetical operation, may be anything else, but they are certainly not only objects that can be counted, but also the ability to exclude all properties of the objects considered other than their number-and this ability is the product of a long historical evolution based on experience. Like the idea of number, so the idea of form is derived exclusively from the external world, and does not arise in the mind as a product of pure thought.

Nature seems to take advantage of the simple mathematical representations of the symmetry laws. When one pauses to consider the elegance and the beautiful perfection of the mathematical reasoning involved and contrast it with the complex and far-reaching physical consequences, a deep sense of respect for the power of the symmetry laws never fails to develop.

With mathematics we stand precisely at that intersection of bondage and freedom that is the essence of the human itself.

... This is a major theme in mathematics: things are what you want them to be. You have endless choices; there is no reality to get in your way.On the other hand, once you have made your choices then your new creations do what they do, whether you like it or not. This is the amazing thing about making imaginary patterns: they talk back!

Physicists believe that the Gaussian law has been proved in mathematics while mathematicians think that it was experimentally established in physics.

I don't believe any scientific field to be superior to another.

There are two ways to do great mathematics. The first is to be smarter than everybody else. The second way is to be stupider than everybody else — but persistent.

The mathematical giant [Gauss], who from his lofty heights embraces in one view the stars and the abysses …

Mathematics isn’t just science, it is poetry – our efforts to crystallise the unglimpsed connections between things. Poetry that bridges and magnifies the mysteries of the galaxy. But the signs and symbols and equations sentients employ to express these connections are not discoveries but the teasing out of secrets that have always existed.

Is everyone with one face called a Milo?""Oh no," Milo replied; "some are called Henry or George or Robert or John or lots of other things.""How terribly confusing," he cried. "Everything here is called exactly what it is. The triangles are called triangles, the circles are called circles, and even the same numbers have the same name. Why, can you imagine what would happen if we named all the twos Henry or George or Robert or John or lots of other things? You'd have to say Robert plus John equals four, and if the four's name were Albert, things would be hopeless.""I never thought of it that way," Milo admitted."Then I suggest you begin at once," admonished the Dodecahedron from his admonishing face, "for here in Digitopolis everything is quite precise.

But in my opinion, all things in nature occur mathematically.

Mathematics has always shown a curious ability to be applicable to nature, and this may express a deep link between our minds and nature. We are the Universe speaking out, a part of nature. So it is not so surprising that our systems of logic and mathematics sing in tune with nature.

There is a unique Math behind the very notion of life, I seek it.

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

What believer of faith among us can claim to understand the exact mechanistic structure of a world created by a god/God?

Who rebels with mathematics?

Lots of people wrote to the magazine to say that Marilyn vos Savant was wrong, even when she explained very carefully why she was right. Of the letters she got about the problem, 92% said that she was wrong and lots of these were from mathematicians and scientists. Here are some of the things they said: 'I'm very concerned with the general public's lack of mathematical skills. Please help by confessing your error.' -Robert Sachs, Ph.D., George Mason University ... 'I am sure you will receive many letters from high school and college students. Perhaps you should keep a few addresses for future columns.' -W. Robert Smith, Ph.D., Georgia State University... 'If all those Ph.D.'s were wrong, the country would be in very serious trouble.' -Everett Harman, Ph.D., U.S. Army Research Institute

For the things of this world cannot be made known without a knowledge of mathematics.

I couldn't claim that I was smarter than sixty-five other guys--but the average of sixty-five other guys, certainly!

From the age of 13, I was attracted to physics and mathematics. My interest in these subjects derived mostly from popular science books that I read avidly. Early on I was fascinated by theoretical physics and determined to become a theoretical physicist. I had no real idea what that meant, but it seemed incredibly exciting to spend one's life attempting to find the secrets of the universe by using one's mind.

The geometer offers to the physicist a whole set of maps from which to choose. One map, perhaps, will fit the facts better than others, and then the geometry which provides that particular map will be the geometry most important for applied mathematics.

Mathematics effectively began when a few Greek friends got together to talk about numbers and lines and angles.

Neglect of mathematics work injury to all knowledge, since he who is ignorant of it cannot know the other sciences or things of this world. And what is worst, those who are thus ignorant are unable to perceive their own ignorance, and so do not seek a remedy.

We are not told, or not told early enough so that it sinks in, that mathematics is a language, and that we can learn it like any other, including our own. We have to learn our own language twice, first when we learn to speak it, second when we learn to read it. Fortunately, mathematics has to be learned only once, since it is almost wholly a written language.

One must divide one's time between politics and equations. But our equations are much more important to me, because politics is for the present, while our equations are for eternity.

One can be enlightened about proofs as well as theorems. Without enlightenment, one is merely reduced to memorizing proofs. With enlightenment about a proof, its flow becomes clear and it can become an item of astonishing beauty. In addition, the need to memorize disappears because the proof has become part of your soul.

College is the grinding machine of the Mathematical Establishment, a conveyor belt that takes individuals from one cookie cutter to another so that the product comes within tight control limits out of the assembly line.

My sub doesn't pay for me,” he says, pulling me to my feet. “That just doesn't happen.”“But we ordered so much,” I say helpl

[Mathematics] is security. Certainty. Truth. Beauty. Insight. Structure. Architecture. I see mathematics, the part of human knowledge that I call mathematics, as one thing—one great, glorious thing. Whether it is differential topology, or functional analysis, or homological algebra, it is all one thing. ... They are intimately interconnected, they are all facets of the same thing. That interconnection, that architecture, is secure truth and is beauty. That's what mathematics is to me.

Mathematicians deal with large numbers sometimes, but never in their income.

I could never have gone far in any science because on the path of every science the lion Mathematics lies in wait for you.

Doing mathematics should always mean finding patterns and crafting beautiful and meaningful explanations.

And, believe me, if I were again beginning my studies, I should follow the advice of Plato and start with mathematics.

Scientists and inventors of the USA (especially in the so-called "blue state" that voted overwhelmingly against Trump) have to think long and hard whether they want to continue research that will help their government remain the world's superpower. All the scientists who worked in and for Germany in the 1930s lived to regret that they directly helped a sociopath like Hitler harm millions of people. Let us not repeat the same mistakes over and over again.