Mathematical Quotes - Page 17

• A mathematical formula should never be "owned" by anybody! Mathematics belong to God.

  Donald Knuth

  Science, Technology, Mathematics

  "Digital Typography". Book by Donald Knuth, 1999.

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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, Math, Amusing

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• The art of doing mathematics consists in finding that special case which contains all the germs of generality.

  David Hilbert

  Art, Math, Special

  "Hilbert". Book by Constance Reid, 1970.

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• Nature laughs at the difficulties of integration.

  Pierre-Simon Laplace

  Nature, Laughing, Mathematics

  "The Armchair Science Reader". Book by Isabel S. Gordon and Sophie Sorkin, 1959.

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• How happy the lot of the mathematician. He is judged solely by his peers, and the standard is so high that no colleague or rival can ever win a reputation he does not deserve.

  W. H. Auden

  Happiness, Math, Science

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• The principle is so perfectly general that no particular application of it is possible.

  George Polya

  Knowledge, Math, Principles

  George Pólya (1948). “How to solve it: a new aspect of mathematical method”

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• Mathematics may be compared to a mill of exquisite workmanship, which grinds your stuff to any degree of fineness.

  Thomas Huxley

  Math, Stuff, Degrees

  Thomas Henry Huxley, Henrietta A. Huxley (1908). “Aphorisms and reflections”

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• In order to solve this differential equation you look at it until a solution occurs to you.

  George Polya

  Math, Order, Looks

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• Black holes result from God dividing the universe by zero.

  Steven Wright

  Zero, Math, Black

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• What is the difference between method and device? A method is a device which you use twice.

  George Polya

  Math, Differences, Use

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  Truth is ever to be found in the simplicity, and not in the multiplicity and confusion of things.

  Isaac Newton

  Math, Confusion, Simplicity

  Isaac Newton (1994). “Trattato sull Apocalisse”

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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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• Euclid taught me that without assumptions there is no proof. Therefore, in any argument, examine the assumptions.

  Eric Temple Bell

  Math, Intelligence, Taught

  Mathematics Magazine, Vol. 23-24, (p. 161), 1949.

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• There are many questions which fools can ask that wise men cannot answer.

  George Polya

  Wise, Knowledge, Science

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• Mathematics has the completely false reputation of yielding infallible conclusions. Its infallibility is nothing but identity. Two times two is not four, but it is just two times two, and that is what we call four for short. But four is nothing new at all. And thus it goes on and on in its conclusions, except that in the higher formulas the identity fades out of sight.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Math, Two, Sight

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• Mathematical reasoning may be regarded rather schematically as the exercise of a combination of two facilities, which we may call intuition and ingenuity.

  Alan Turing

  Exercise, Two, Intuition

  "Systems of Logic Based on Ordinals". Proceedings of the London Mathematical Society, Series 2, Volume 45, 1939.

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  Mathematical reasoning may be regarded.

  Alan Turing

  May, Mathematics, Reasoning

  Alan Mathison Turing, B. J. Copeland (2004). “The Essential Turing”, p.192, Oxford University Press

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• It is clear that the chief end of mathematical study must be to make the students think.

  John Wesley Young

  Math, Thinking, Students

  John Wesley Young, William Wells Denton, Ulysses Grant Mitchell (1930). “Lectures on fundamental concepts of algebra and geometry”

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• Sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.

  Lewis Carroll

  Children, Creativity, Ignorance

  Through the Looking-Glass ch. 5 (1872)

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• There still remain three studies suitable for free man. Arithmetic is one of them.

  Plato

  Plato, Math, Men

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• But just as much as it is easy to find the differential [derivative] of a given quantity, so it is difficult to find the integral of a given differential. Moreover, sometimes we cannot say with certainty whether the integral of a given quantity can be found or not.

  Johann Bernoulli

  Education, Math, Derivatives

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• With me, everything turns into mathematics.

  Rene Descartes

  Math, Mathematics, Turns

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• A mathematician who is not also something of a poet will never be a complete mathematician.

  Karl Weierstrass

  Math, Poet, Mathematics

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• Statistics are the triumph of the quantitative method, and the quantitative method is the victory of sterility and death.

  Hilaire Belloc

  Science, Objectivity, Victory

  The Silence of the Sea On Statistics (p. 173)

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• Logic, like whiskey, loses its beneficial effect when taken in too large quantities.

  Lord Dunsany

  Taken, Math, Statistics

  "My Ireland". Book by Lord Dunsany (Chapter XIX: Weeds and Moss), 1937.

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