Mathematical Quotes - Page 29

• So, ultimately, in order to understand nature it may be necessary to have a deeper understanding of mathematical relationships. But the real reason is that the subject is enjoyable, and although we humans cut nature up in different ways, and we have different courses in different departments, such compartmentaliz ation is really artificial, and we should take our intellectual pleasures where we find them.

  Richard P. Feynman

  Real, Cutting, Order

  Richard P. Feynman, Robert B. Leighton, Matthew Sands (2013). “The Feynman Lectures on Physics, Desktop Edition Volume I”, Basic Books

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• Irrigation, unscientifically conducted, would not give us such truly wonderful mathematical fitness [as we observe in the Martian canals]. . . . A mind of no mean order would seem to have presided over the system we see-a mind certainly of considerably more comprehensiveness than that which presides over the various department of our own public works.

  Percival Lowell

  Mean, Order, Giving

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• Why you were born and why you are living depend entirely on what you are getting out of this world and what you are giving to it. I cannot prove that this is a balance of mathematical perfection, but my own observation of life leads me to the conclusion that there is a very real friendship, both quantitatively and qualitatively, between what you contribute and what you get out of life.

  Oscar Hammerstein II

  Real, Giving, Perfection

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• It is almost possible to say that there is a mathematical relationship between the beauty of his surroundings and the activity of the child; he will make discoveries rather more voluntarily in a gracious setting than in an ugly one.

  Maria Montessori

  Children, Discovery, Ugly

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• I know this world is ruled by Infinite Intelligence. It required Infinite Intelligence to create it and it requires Infinite Intelligence to keep it on its course ... It is mathematical in its precision.

  Thomas A. Edison

  God, Infinite Intelligence, World

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• It is a safe rule to apply that, when a mathematical or philosophical author writes with a misty profundity, he is talking nonsense.

  Alfred North Whitehead

  Philosophical, Writing, Talking

  1911 Introduction to Mathematics.

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• Before a kid learns how to use a computer that can solve mathematical problems, he or she should know how to do arithmetic without a computer.

  Andy Rooney

  Kids, Use, Computer

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• In this age of specialization, I sometimes think of myself as the last 'generalist' in economics, with interests that range from mathematical economics down to current financial journalism. My real interests are research and teaching.

  Paul Samuelson

  Real, Teaching, Thinking

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• If indeed, as Hilbert asserted, mathematics is a meaningless game played with meaningless marks on paper, the only mathematical experience to which we can refer is the making of marks on paper.

  Eric Temple Bell

  Games, Paper, Mathematics

  Eric Temple Bell (1988). “Mathematics, queen and servant of science”, Tempus Books

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• It is my conviction that pure mathematical construction enables us to discover the concepts and the laws connecting them, which gives us the key to the understanding of nature ... In a certain sense, therefore, I hold it true that pure thought can grasp reality, as the ancients dreamed.

  Albert Einstein

  Reality, Keys, Law

  "On the Method of Theoretical Physics". Lecture at the University of Oxford (1933), as quoted in Mathematics Magazine, Vol. 63., p. 237, 1990.

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• The peculiarity of the evidence of mathematical truths is that all the argument is on one side.

  John Stuart Mill

  Sides, Argument, Truth Is

  John Stuart Mill (1989). “J. S. Mill: 'On Liberty' and Other Writings”, p.38, Cambridge University Press

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• Traditionally, scientists have treated the laws of physics as simply 'given,' elegant mathematical relationships that were somehow imprinted on the universe at its birth, and fixed thereafter. Inquiry into the origin and nature of the laws was not regarded as a proper part of science.

  Paul Davies

  Law, Inquiry, Birth

  "Yes, the universe looks like a fix. But that doesn't mean that a god fixed it" by Paul Davies, www.theguardian.com. June 25, 2007.

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• We will never fully explain the world by appealing to something outside it that must simply be accepted on faith, be it an unexplained God or an unexplained set of mathematical laws.

  Paul Davies

  Law, World, Accepted

  "Yes, the universe looks like a fix. But that doesn't mean that a god fixed it" by Paul Davies, www.theguardian.com. June 25, 2007.

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• They [the mathematicians of the Enlightenment] defined their terms vaguely and used their methods loosely, and the logic of their arguments was made to fit the dictates of their intuition. In short, they broke all the laws of rigor and of mathematical decorum. The veritable orgy which followed the introduction of the infinitesimals... was but a natural reaction. Intuition had too long been held imprisoned by the severe rigor of the Greeks. Now it broke loose, and there were no Euclids to keep its romantic flight in check.

  Tobias Dantzig

  Law, History, Long

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• The analytical geometry of Descartes and the calculus of Newton and Leibniz have expanded into the marvelous mathematical method-more daring than anything that the history of philosophy records-of Lobachevsky and Riemann, Gauss and Sylvester. Indeed, mathematics, the indispensable tool of the sciences, defying the senses to follow its splendid flights, is demonstrating today, as it never has been demonstrated before, the supremacy of the pure reason.

  Nicholas Murray Butler

  Philosophy, Tools, Records

  NICHOLAS MURRAY BUTLER (1898). “THE MEANING OF EDUCATION AND OTHERS ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES”

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• I have the vagary of taking a lively interest in mathematical subjects only where I may anticipate ingenious association of ideas and results recommending themselves by elegance or generality.

  Carl Friedrich Gauss

  Science, Ideas, May

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• With a thousand joys I would accept a nonacademic job for which industriousness, accuracy, loyalty, and such are sufficient without specialized knowledge, and which would give a comfortable living and sufficient leisure, in order to sacrifice to my gods [mathematical research]. For example, I hope to get the editting of the census, the birth and death lists in local districts, not as a job, but for my pleasure and satisfaction.

  Carl Friedrich Gauss

  Loyalty, Jobs, Science

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• I am giving this winter two courses of lectures to three students, of which one is only moderately prepared, the other less than moderately, and the third lacks both preparation and ability. Such are the onera of a mathematical profession.

  Carl Friedrich Gauss

  Education, Winter, Science

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• It is from this absolute indifference and tranquillity of the mind, that mathematical speculations derive some of the most considerable advantages; because there is nothing to interest the imagination; because the judgment sits free and unbiased to examine the point. All proportions, every arrangement of quantity, is alike to the understanding, because the same truths result to it from all; from greater from lesser, from equality and inequality.

  Edmund Burke

  Imagination, Understanding, Mind

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• The universe can best be pictured as consisting of pure thought, the thought of what for want of a better word we must describe as a mathematical thinker.

  James Jeans

  Want, Thinker, Pure

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• Some people are born with a brain that has this weird, magical mathematical thing that makes them an amazing jazz musician.

  Andy Richter

  People, Brain, Musician

  Biography/Personal Quotes, www.imdb.com.

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• It seems that jazz is more cerebral and more mathematical in a sense.

  Rita Coolidge

  Jazz, Cerebral, Seems

  Interview with Donna Kimura, www.jazzreview.com. January 29, 2011.

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• Well, for me, the real excitement of doing physical things in films, whether you're talking about a fight scene or a stunt sequence or even a love scene, for that matter, is by necessity it has to be choreographed very much like a dance. That being said, you have to rehearse it over and over again and find a mathematical precision.

  Benjamin Bratt

  Real, Fighting, Talking

  "Interview:Benjamin Bratt" by Jeff Otto, www.ign.com. July 20, 2004.

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• Thus, the more succinctly a train of thought was expounded, and the more comprehensive the unity of its basic idea, the closer it would approximate to the prerequisites of the mathematical way of thinking.

  Max Bill

  Thinking, Train Of Thought, Ideas

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• A mathematical proof is beautiful, but when you're finished, it's really only about one thing. A story can be about many things.

  Bonnie Jo Campbell

  Beautiful, Stories, Proof

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