Math Quotes - Page 27

• In the physical world, one cannot increase the size or quantity of anything without changing its quality. Similar figures exist only in pure geometry.

  Paul Valery

  Quality, World, Size

  7 Copy quote

• Thou shalt not answer questionnaires Or quizzes upon world affairs, Nor with compliance Take any test. Thou shalt not sit with statisticians nor commit A social science.

  W. H. Auden

  Tests, Answers, World

  W.H. Auden (2016). “Canción de cuna y otros poemas”, p.219, DEBOLS!LLO

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• Geometry enlightens the intellect and sets one's mind right. All of its proofs are very clear and orderly. It is hardly possible for errors to enter into geometrical reasoning, because it is well arranged and orderly. Thus, the mind that constantly applies itself to geometry is not likely to fall into error. In this convenient way, the person who knows geometry acquires intelligence.

  Ibn Khaldun

  Fall, Errors, Mind

  214 Copy quote

• I will be sufficiently rewarded if when telling it to others you will not claim the discovery as your own, but will say it was mine.

  Thales

  Science, Discovery, Engineering

  43 Copy quote

• I cannot judge my work while I am doing it. I have to do as painters do, stand back and view it from a distance, but not too great a distance. How great? Guess.

  Blaise Pascal

  Work, Distance, Views

  4 Copy quote

• The reader will find no figures in this work. The methods which I set forth do not require either constructions or geometrical or mechanical reasonings: but only algebraic operations, subject to a regular and uniform rule of procedure.

  Joseph-Louis Lagrange

  Work, Uniforms, Construction

  27 Copy quote

• I am encouraged as I look at some of those who have listened to their "different drum": Einstein was hopeless at school math and commented wryly on his inadequacy in human relations. Winston Churchill was an abysmal failure in his early school years. Byron, that revolutionary student, had to compensate for a club foot; Demosthenes for a stutter; and Homer was blind. Socrates couldn't manage his wife, and infuriated his countrymen. And what about Jesus, if we need an ultimate example of failure with one's peers? Or an ultimate example of love?

  Madeleine L'Engle

  Love, Jesus, School

  Madeleine L'Engle (2016). “A Circle of Quiet”, p.36, Open Road Media

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• What is necessary for 'the very existence of science,' and what the characteristics of nature are, are not to be determined by pompous preconditions, they are determined always by the material with which we work, by nature herself. We look, and we see what we find, and we cannot say ahead of time successfully what it is going to look like. ... It is necessary for the very existence of science that minds exist which do not allow that nature must satisfy some preconceived conditions.

  Richard P. Feynman

  Science, Mind, Looks

  4 Copy quote

• The principle of science, the definition, almost, is the following: The test of all knowledge is experiment. Experiment is the sole judge of scientific "truth." But what is the source of knowledge? Where do the laws that are to be tested come from? Experiment, itself, helps to produce these laws, in the sense that it gives us hints. But also needed is imagination to create from these hints the great generalizations--to guess at the wonderful, simple, but very strange patterns beneath them all, and then to experiment to check again whether we have made the right guess.

  Richard P. Feynman

  Science, Simple, Law

  Richard P. Feynman, Robert B. Leighton, Matthew Sands (2015). “The Feynman Lectures on Physics, Vol. I: The New Millennium Edition: Mainly Mechanics, Radiation, and Heat”, p.45, Basic Books

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• One may ask the question as to the extent to which the quest for beauty is an aim in the pursuit of science. . . . It is, indeed, an incredible fact that what the human mind, at its deepest and most profound, perceives as beautiful finds its realization in external nature. What is intelligible is also beautiful.

  Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar

  Beautiful, Science, Profound

  45 Copy quote

• Why should there be the method of science? There is not just one way to build a house, or even to grow tomatoes. We should not expect something as motley as the growth of knowledge to be strapped to one methodology.

  Ian Hacking

  Science, House, Growth

  Ian Hacking (1983). “Representing and Intervening: Introductory Topics in the Philosophy of Natural Science”, p.152, Cambridge University Press

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• Next you'd see a raft sliding by, away off yonder, and maybe a galoot on it chopping. . . you'd see the ax flash and come down-you don't hear nothing; you see the ax go up again, and by the time it's above the man's head then you hear the k'chunk!-it had took all that time to come over the water.

  Mark Twain

  Science, Men, Water

  Mark Twain, General Press (2016). “The Complete Works of Mark Twain: All 13 Novels, Short Stories, Poetry and Essays”, p.475, GENERAL PRESS

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• To the pure geometer the radius of curvature is an incidental characteristic - like the grin of the Cheshire cat. To the physicist it is an indispensable characteristic. It would be going too far to say that to the physicist the cat is merely incidental to the grin. Physics is concerned with interrelatedness such as the interrelatedness of cats and grins. In this case the "cat without a grin" and the "grin without a cat" are equally set aside as purely mathematical phantasies.

  Arthur Eddington

  Cat, Would Be, Physics

  Arthur Eddington (1933). “The Expanding Universe: Astronomy's 'Great Debate', 1900-1931”, p.103, Cambridge University Press

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Physics is much too hard for physicists.

  David Hilbert

  Physics, Physicist, Hard

  6 Copy quote

• We come now to the question: what is a priori certain or necessary, respectively in geometry (doctrine of space) or its foundations? Formerly we thought everything; nowadays we think nothing. Already the distance-concept is logically arbitrary; there need be no things that correspond to it, even approximately.

  Albert Einstein

  Distance, Thinking, Space

  8 Copy quote

• It can be shown that a mathematical web of some kind can be woven about any universe containing several objects. The fact that our universe lends itself to mathematical treatment is not a fact of any great philosophical significance.

  Bertrand Russell

  Kindness, Philosophical, Woven

  6 Copy quote

• How can a modern anthropologist embark upon a generalization with any hope of arriving at a satisfactory conclusion? By thinking of the organizational ideas that are present in any society as a mathematical pattern.

  Edmund Leach

  Hope, Thinking, Ideas

  6 Copy quote

• There was a young fellow from Trinity,
  Who took the square root of infinity.
  But the number of digits, Gave him the fidgets;
  He dropped Math and took up Divinity.

  George Gamow

  Science, Squares, Roots

  "One, Two, Three...Infinity". Book by George Gamow, 1947.

  27 Copy quote

  Show source

• He is like the fox, who effaces his tracks in the sand with his tail.

  Niels Henrik Abel

  Track, Tails, Abel

  30 Copy quote

• A number of aspects of mathematics are not much talked about in contemporary histories of mathematics. We have in mind business and commerce, war, number mysticism, astrology, and religion. In some instances, writers, hoping to assert for mathematics a noble parentage and a pure scientific experience, have turned away their eyes. Histories have been eager to put the case for science, but the Handmaiden of the Sciences has lived a far more raffish and interesting life than her historians allow.

  Eric Temple Bell

  Mathematics, Mathematical

  "The Mathematical Experience". Book by Philip J. Davis, "Underneath the Fig Leaf," p.89, 1980.

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• If "Number rules the universe" as Pythagoras asserted, Number is merely our delegate to the throne, for we rule Number.

  Eric Temple Bell

  Numbers, Thrones, Ifs

  Eric Temple Bell (1945). “Men of Mathematics”

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• Teaching school is but another word for sure and not very slow destruction.

  Thomas Carlyle

  Teaching, School, Destruction

  Thomas Carlyle (1886). “Early Letters”, p.281, Georg Olms Verlag

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• Just go on..and faith will soon return.

  Jean le Rond d'Alembert

  Goes On, Return, Hesitant

  37 Copy quote

• I concluded that I might take as a general rule the principle that all things which we very clearly and obviously conceive are true: only observing, however, that there is some difficulty in rightly determining the objects which we distinctly conceive.

  Rene Descartes

  Principles, Might, Difficulty

  7 Copy quote

• When writing about transcendental issues, be transcendentally clear.

  Rene Descartes

  Writing, Issues, Transcendental

  7 Copy quote