Math Is Like Quotes

• Mathematics is like draughts in being suitable for the young, not too difficult, amusing, and without peril to the state.

  Plato

  Plato, Math, Amusing

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• A mathematician, like a painter or a poet, is a maker of patterns.

  G. H. Hardy

  Math, Patterns, Original Ideas

  G. H. Hardy (2012). “A Mathematician's Apology”, p.84, Cambridge University Press

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• The only way to learn mathematics is to do mathematics.

  Paul Halmos

  Learning, Math, Way

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• The mathematician's patterns, like the painter's or the poet's must be beautiful; the ideas, like the colours or the words must fit together in a harmonious way. Beauty is the first test: there is no permanent place in the world for ugly mathematics.

  G. H. Hardy

  Beauty, Beautiful, Math

  A Mathematician's Apology ch. 10 (1940)

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• A mathematician, like a painter or poet, is a maker of patterns. If his patterns are more permanent than theirs, it is because they are made with ideas.

  G. H. Hardy

  Education, Math, Unique

  G. H. Hardy (2012). “A Mathematician's Apology”, p.84, Cambridge University Press

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• The mathematician's patterns, like the painter's or the poet's, must be beautiful.

  G. H. Hardy

  Beautiful, Math, Patterns

  A Mathematician's Apology ch. 10 (1940)

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• Perfect numbers like perfect men are very rare.

  Rene Descartes

  Math, Men, Numbers

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• Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.

  Thomas A. Edison

  Funny, Life, Motivational

  "An Enemy Called Average". Book by John L. Mason, 1990.

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  A man is like a fraction whose numerator is what he is and whose denominator is what he thinks of himself. The larger the denominator, the smaller the fraction.

  Leo Tolstoy

  Math, Men, Thinking

  graf Leo Tolstoy (2006). “Leo Tolstoy: Spiritual Writings”

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• 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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• Angling may be said to be so like the mathematics that it can never be fully learned.

  Izaak Walton

  Learning, Math, Fishing

  'The Compleat Angler' (1653) 'Epistle to the Reader'

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• I like mathematics because it is not human and has nothing particular to do with this planet or with the whole accidental universe - because, like Spinoza's God, it won't love us in return.

  Bertrand Russell

  Math, Science, Return

  Bertrand Russell (1992). “The Selected Letters of Bertrand Russell: The private years, 1884-1914”, Allen Lane

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• Arithmetic is where numbers fly like pigeons in and out of your head.

  Carl Sandburg

  Math, Numbers, Pigeons

  Carl Sandburg, Frances Schoonmaker Bolin (1995). “Carl Sandburg”, p.17, Sterling Publishing Company, Inc.

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• Mathematical proofs, like diamonds, are hard and clear, and will be touched with nothing but strict reasoning.

  John Locke

  Math, Proof, Diamond

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• Why are numbers beautiful? It’s like asking why is Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony beautiful.
  If you don’t see why, someone can’t tell you. I know numbers are beautiful.
  If they aren’t beautiful, nothing is.

  Paul Erdos

  Beautiful, Education, Math

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• The reading of all good books is like a conversation with the finest minds of past centuries.

  Rene Descartes

  Wisdom, Book, Reading

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• The real danger is not that computers will begin to think like men, but that men will begin to think like computers.

  Sydney J. Harris

  Real, Math, Technology

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• Mathematics began to seem too much like puzzle solving. Physics is puzzle solving, too, but of puzzles created by nature, not by the mind of man.

  Maria Goeppert-Mayer

  Nature, Math, Men

  "A Course in Mathematical Methods for Physicists". Book by Russell L. Herman, p. 53, December 4, 2013.

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• When you are courting a nice girl an hour seems like a second. When you sit on a red-hot cinder a second seems like an hour. That's relativity.

  Albert Einstein

  Funny, Girl, Witty

  "News Chronicle" (March 14, 1949), as cited by "The Columbia World of Quotations", 1996.

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• When you are courting a nice girl an hour seems like a second.

  Albert Einstein

  Love, Girl, Funny Inspirational

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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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• The study of mathematics is apt to commence in disappointment... We are told that by its aid the stars are weighed and the billions of molecules in a drop of water are counted. Yet, like the ghost of Hamlet's father, this great science eludes the efforts of our mental weapons to grasp it.

  Alfred North Whitehead

  Stars, Disappointment, Father

  "An Introduction to Mathematics" by Alfred North Whitehead, Ch. 1, 1911.

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• Math is like going to the gym for your brain. It sharpens your mind.

  Danica McKellar

  Math, Brain, Mind

  "'Wonder Years' star insists smart is sexy". Interview with Katie McLaughlin, www.cnn.com. August 16, 2010.

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• There's no reason to stereotype yourself. Doing math is like going to the gym - it's a workout for your brain and it makes you smarter.

  Danica McKellar

  Workout, Math, Brain

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