Math Love Quotes

• The hardest arithmetic to master is that which enables us to count our blessings.

  Eric Hoffer

  Thank You, Thankful, Gratitude

  "Reflections on the Human Condition" by Eric Hoffer, (Section 172), 1973.

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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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• The pursuit of mathematics is a divine madness of the human spirit.

  Alfred North Whitehead

  Math, Spirit, Madness

  Alfred North Whitehead (1997). “Science and the Modern World”, p.20, Simon and Schuster

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

  Paul Halmos

  Learning, Math, Way

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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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• My kids used to love math. Now it makes them cry. Thanks standardized testing and common core!

  Louis C. K.

  Kids, Math, Thanks

  "Give parents some choice! Our kids' education should not be controlled by a monopoly" by John Stossel, www.foxnews.com. September 23, 2014.

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• If a man's wit be wandering, let him study the mathematics.

  Francis Bacon

  Science, Math, Men

  Francis Bacon, Basil Montagu (1821). “A critique of Bacon's "Novum Organum," by Basil Montagu, extracted from the Retrospective Review, 1821. Few MS. notes”, p.285

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• A mathematician is a device for turning coffee into theorems.

  Paul Erdos

  Witty, Humorous, Coffee

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• The most savage controversies are about matters as to which there is no good evidence either way.

  Bertrand Russell

  Anger, Math, Religion

  Bertrand Russell (2009). “The Basic Writings of Bertrand Russell”, p.67, Routledge

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• If equations are trains threading the landscape of numbers, then no train stops at pi.

  Richard Preston

  Math, Numbers, Landscape

  "The Mountains of Pi" by Richard Preston, www.newyorker.com. March 02, 1992.

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• To most outsiders, modern mathematics is unknown territory. Its borders are protected by dense thickets of technical terms; its landscapes are a mass of indecipherable equations and incomprehensible concepts. Few realize that the world of modern mathematics is rich with vivid images and provocative ideas.

  Ivars Peterson

  Math, Ideas, World

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• Still more astonishing is that world of rigorous fantasy which we call mathematics.

  Gregory Bateson

  Math, World, Fantasy

  "Steps to an Ecology of Mind: Collected Essays in Anthropology, Psychiatry, Evolution, and Epistemology".

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• Even stranger things have happened; and perhaps the strangest of all is the marvel that mathematics should be possible to a race akin to the apes.

  Eric Temple Bell

  Math, Race, Apes

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• The cowboys have a way of trussing up a steer or a pugnacious bronco which fixes the brute so that it can neither move nor think. This is the hog-tie, and it is what Euclid did to geometry.

  Eric Bell

  Moving, Math, Cowboy

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• With my full philosophical rucksack I can only climb slowly up the mountain of mathematics.

  Ludwig Wittgenstein

  Philosophical, Math, Mountain

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• The mathematics are distinguished by a particular privilege, that is, in the course of ages, they may always advance and can never recede.

  Edward Gibbon

  Math, Epic, Age

  Edward Gibbon (1862). “The history of the decline and fall of the Roman empire”, p.401

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• Arithmetic is numbers you squeeze from your head to your hand to your pencil to your paper till you get the answer.

  Carl Sandburg

  Math, Hands, Numbers

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

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• Music is the pleasure the human mind experiences from counting without being aware that it is counting.

  Gottfried Leibniz

  Music, Math, Science

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• If a man's wit be wandering, let him study the mathematics; for in demonstrations, if his wit be called away never so little, he must begin again.

  Francis Bacon

  Math, Men, Littles

  Francis Bacon, Basil Montagu (1821). “A critique of Bacon's "Novum Organum," by Basil Montagu, extracted from the Retrospective Review, 1821. Few MS. notes”, p.285

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• Mathematics is the only good metaphysics.

  Lord Kelvin

  Math, Numbers, Metaphysics

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• Reductio ad absurdum, which Euclid loved so much, is one of a mathematician's finest weapons. It is a far finer gambit than any chess play: a chess player may offer the sacrifice of a pawn or even a piece, but a mathematician offers the game.

  G. H. Hardy

  Love, Sacrifice, Math

  G. H. Hardy, C. P. Snow (2012). “A Mathematician's Apology”, p.94, Cambridge University Press

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• Mathematics is as much an aspect of culture as it is a collection of algorithms.

  Carl Benjamin Boyer

  Math, Science, Culture

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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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• But mathematics is the sister, as well as the servant, of the arts and is touched with the same madness and genius.

  Marston Morse

  Art, Math, Science

  Marston Morse, Raoul Bott (1981). “Selected papers”, Springer Verlag

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• Few realize that the world of modern mathematics is rich with vivid images and provocative ideas.

  Ivars Peterson

  Math, Ideas, Vivid

  Ivars Peterson (1998). “The Mathematical Tourist: New and Updated Snapshots of Modern Mathematics”, p.6, Macmillan

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