Math Quotes - Page 9

• No mathematician in the world would bother making these senseless distinctions: 2 1/2 is a "mixed number " while 5/2 is an "improper fraction." They're EQUAL for crying out loud. They are the exact same numbers and have the exact same properties. Who uses such words outside of fourth grade?

  Paul Lockhart

  Numbers, Use, World

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• Everything that is really great and inspiring is created by the individual who can labor in freedom.

  Albert Einstein

  Motivational, Education, Freedom

  Albert Einstein (1970). “Out of my later years”, Greenwood Pub Group

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• Anyone who cannot cope with mathematics is not fully human. At best, he is a tolerable subhuman who has learned to wear his shoes, bathe, and not make messes in the house.

  Robert A. Heinlein

  Learning, Shoes, House

  Time Enough for Love "Intermission" (1973)

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

  Alfred North Whitehead

  Spirit, Madness, Divine

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

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• Since the mathematicians have invaded the theory of relativity I do not understand it myself any more.

  Albert Einstein

  Computer, Theory, Understanding Myself

  Albert Einstein (1970). “Albert Einstein: philosopher-scientist”

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• Lottery: A tax on people who are bad at math.

  Ambrose Bierce

  Inspirational, Money, Gambling

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• Fifty percent of all doctors graduate in the bottom half of their class - Hope your surgery went well!

  Simone Elkeles

  Class, Doctors, Half

  Simone Elkeles (2011). “Rules of Attraction”, p.133, Simon and Schuster

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• In a completely rational society, the best of us would aspire to be teachers and the rest of us would have to settle for something less, because passing civilization along from one generation to the next ought to be the highest honor and the highest responsibility anyone could have.

  Lee Iacocca

  Education, Teacher, Responsibility

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• The good Christian should beware the mathematician and all those who make empty prophecies. The danger already exists that the mathematicians have made a covenant with the devil to darken the spirit and to confine man in the bonds of hell.

  Saint Augustine

  Inspirational, Life, Education

  "Mathematics in Western Culture". Book by Morris Kline, 1953.

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• Standard mathematics has recently been rendered obsolete by the discovery that for years we have been writing the numeral five backward. This has led to reevaluation of counting as a method of getting from one to ten. Students are taught advanced concepts of Boolean algebra, and formerly unsolvable equations are dealt with by threats of reprisals.

  Woody Allen

  Education, Writing, Science

  Woody Allen (2007). “The Insanity Defense: The Complete Prose”, Random House Incorporated

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• The science of mathematics presents the most brilliant example of how pure reason may successfully enlarge its domain without the aid of experience

  Immanuel Kant

  Science, Example, May

  Immanuel Kant (1881). “Critique of Pure Reason”

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• One of the endlessly alluring aspects of mathematics is that its thorniest paradoxes have a way of blooming into beautiful theories.

  Philip J. Davis

  Beautiful, Science, Blooming

  Philip J. Davis, William G. Chinn (1985). “3.1416 and all that”, Birkhauser

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• Mathematics is not a deductive science - that's a cliché. When you try to prove a theorem, you don't just list the hypotheses, and then start to reason. What you do is trial and error, experimentation, guesswork.

  Paul Halmos

  Science, Errors, Trying

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

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• The value of a problem is not so much coming up with the answer as in the ideas and attempted ideas it forces on the would be solver.

  Israel Nathan Herstein

  Teaching, Ideas, Would Be

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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

  Hands, Numbers, Answers

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

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• Algebra is the intellectual instrument which has been created for rendering clear the quantitative aspects of the world.

  Alfred North Whitehead

  Teaching, Intellectual, World

  Alfred North Whitehead (1967). “Aims of Education”, p.7, Simon and Schuster

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

  Plato

  Plato, Amusing, States

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• We never know what we are talking about.

  Karl Popper

  Talking, Mathematical Logic, Mathematics

  Karl Popper (2005). “Unended Quest: An Intellectual Autobiography”, p.26, Routledge

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• Wherever there is number, there is beauty.

  Proclus

  Numbers, Mathematical Beauty

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• The shortest path between two truths in the real domain passes through the complex domain.

  Jacques Hadamard

  Real, Two, Statistics

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• Mathematics is the science which uses easy words for hard ideas.

  Edward Kasner

  Ideas, Use, Statistics

  Edward Kasner, James Newman (2013). “Mathematics and the Imagination”, p.4, Courier Corporation

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• A GREAT discovery solves a great problem but there is a grain of discovery in any problem.

  George Polya

  Education, Knowledge, Discovery

  George Pólya (1957). “How to solve it: a new aspect of mathematical method”

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• Why don't we want our children to learn to do mathematics? Is it that we don't trust them, that we think it's too hard? We seem to feel that they are capable of making arguments and coming to their own conclusions about Napoleon. Why not about triangles?

  Paul Lockhart

  Children, Thinking, Why Not

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• By the end of the first month of the 1995 session, each senator will have made more money than any person who works 40 hours a week at minimum wage for the entire year.

  William J. Clinton

  Education, Years, Minimum Wage

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• 

  Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler.

  Albert Einstein

  Inspirational, Funny, Witty

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