Mathematician Quotes - Page 16

• You ought to have seen Frédéric with his monocle, his greying whiskers, his calm demeanour, carving his plump quack-quack, trussed and already flamed, throwing it into the pan, preparing the sauce, salting and peppering like Claude Monet's paintings, with the seriousness of a judge and the precision of a mathematician, and opening up, with a sure hand, in advance, every perspective of taste.

  Leon Daudet

  Opening Up, Ducks, Hands

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• It is the mark of an educated mind to expect that amount of exactness which the nature of the particular subject admits. It is equally unreasonable to accept merely probable conclusions from a mathematician and to demand strict demonstration from an orator.

  Aristotle

  Mind, Demand, Accepting

  Aristotle (1996). “The Nicomachean Ethics”, p.5, Wordsworth Editions

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• The most spectacular thing about Johnny [von Neumann] was not his power as a mathematician, which was great, or his insight and his clarity, but his rapidity; he was very, very fast. And like the modern computer, which no longer bothers to retrieve the logarithm of 11 from its memory (but, instead, computes the logarithm of 11 each time it is needed), Johnny didn't bother to remember things. He computed them. You asked him a question, and if he didn't know the answer, he thought for three seconds and would produce and answer.

  Paul Halmos

  Memories, Science, Thinking

  "PAUL HALMOS Celebrating 50 Years of Mathematics: Celebrating 50 Years of Mathematics".

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• I don't care if you are a good mathematician, or a good athletic, or not good at anything- that you think. But I'm gonna come and tell you that you're awesome the way you are.

  Nick Vujicic

  Thinking, Athletic, Care

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• The one [the logician] studies the science of drawing conclusions, the other [the mathematician] the science which draws necessary conclusions.

  Charles Sanders Peirce

  Science, Drawing, Study

  "The Philosophy of Peirce: Selected Writings".

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• One began to hear it said that World War I was the chemists' war, World War II was the physicists' war, World War III (may it never come) will be the mathematicians' war.

  Philip J. Davis

  War, Math, World

  Philip J. Davis, Reuben Hersh, Elena Anne Marchisotto (1995). “The Mathematical Experience: Study Edition”, p.104, Springer Science & Business Media

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• Mathematicians do not write for the circulating library.

  George Henry Lewes

  Writing, Science, Library

  George Henry Lewes (1891). “The Principles of Success in Literature”

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• Games are among the most interesting creations of the human mind, and the analysis of their structure is full of adventure and surprises. Unfortunately there is never a lack of mathematicians for the job of transforming delectable ingredients into a dish that tastes like a damp blanket.

  James R Newman

  Jobs, Adventure, Math

  James R. Newman (1956). “The World of Mathematics”, p.2414, Рипол Классик

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• The mathematician starts with a few propositions, the proof of which is so obvious that they are called self-evident, and the rest of his work consists of subtle deductions from them. The teaching of languages, at any rate as ordinarily practiced, is of the same general nature authority and tradition furnish the data, and the mental operations are deductive.

  Thomas Huxley

  Nature, Work, Teaching

  Thomas Henry Huxley (1872). “Lay Sermons, Addresses, and Reviews”, p.66

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• All musicians are subconsciously mathematicians.

  Thelonious Monk

  Math, Musician

  "Down Beat" Magazine, October 28, 1971.

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• If the NSF had never existed, if the government had never funded American mathematics, we would have half as many mathematicians as we now have, and I don't see anything wrong with that.

  Paul Halmos

  Science, Government, Half

  Paul Richard Halmos, John Ewing, F.W. Gehring (1991). “PAUL HALMOS Celebrating 50 Years of Mathematics: Celebrating 50 Years of Mathematics”, p.14, Springer Science & Business Media

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• Mathematicians come to the solution of a problem by the simple arrangement of the data, and reducing the reasoning to such simple operations, to judgments so brief, that they never lose sight of the evidence that serves as their guide.

  Antoine Lavoisier

  Science, Simple, Sight

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• If a man is in any sense a real mathematician, then it is a hundred to one that his mathematics will be far better than anything else he can do, and that he would be silly if he surrendered any decent opportunity of exercising his one talent in order to do undistinguished work in other fields. Such a sacrifice could be justified only by economic necessity of age.

  G. H. Hardy

  Real, Silly, Sacrifice

  "A Mathematician's Apology".

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• There is a theorem that colloquially translates, You cannot comb the hair on a bowling ball. ... Clearly, none of these mathematicians had Afros, because to comb an Afro is to pick it straight away from the scalp. If bowling balls had Afros, then yes, they could be combed without violation of mathematical theorems.

  Neil deGrasse Tyson

  Science, Hair, Balls

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• When I told my mother that I have to give a talk, and was debating what could I possibly say to non-mathematicians, she said: "You got what to wear?".

  Richard A. Falk

  Mother, Science, Giving

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• The result of the mathematician's creative work is demonstrative reasoning, a proof; but the proof is discovered by plausible reasoning, by guessing.

  George Polya

  Science, Creative, Guessing

  "Induction and Analogy in Mathematics". Book by George Polya, 1954.

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• The mathematicians have been very much absorbed with finding the general solution of algebraic equations, and several of them have tried to prove the impossibility of it. However, if I am not mistaken, they have not as yet succeeded. I therefore dare hope that the mathematicians will receive this memoir with good will, for its purpose is to fill this gap in the theory of algebraic equations.

  Niels Henrik Abel

  Purpose, Gaps, Theory

  "A Source Book in Mathematics". Book edited by David Eugene Smith, "A Memoir on Algebraic Equations, Proving the Impossibility of a Solution of the General Equation of the Fifth Degree" (1824), 1929.

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• When I told my son that I had to give a talk about my work to non-mathematicians, he warned me that regular people don't think like mathematicians.

  Richard A. Falk

  Son, Science, Thinking

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• The only thing that might have annoyed some mathematicians was the presumption of assuming that maybe the axiom of choice could fail, and that we should look into contrary assumptions.

  Alonzo Church

  Choices, Annoyed, Looks

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• One could perhaps describe the situation by saying that God is a mathematician of a very high order, and He used very advanced mathematics in constructing the universe.

  Paul Dirac

  Order, Mathematics, Used

  "The Evolution of the Physicist's Picture of Nature" by Paul Dirac, blogs.scientificamerican.com. June 25, 2010.

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• If enough money is involved and enough people believe that two plus two equals five the media will report the story with a straight face always adding a qualifying paragraph noting that mathematicians however say that two plus two still equals four.

  Susan Jacoby

  Believe, Media, Two

  FaceBook post by Susan Jacoby from Oct 13, 2012

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• A scientist worthy of his name, about all a mathematician, experiences in his work the same impression as an artist; his pleasure is as great and of the same nature.

  Henri Poincare

  Nature, Work, Math

  "Henri Poincaré, Critic of Crisis: Reflections on His Universe of Discourse". Book by Tobias Dantzig, p. 8, 1954.

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• The last level of metaphor in the Alice books is this: that life, viewed rationally and without illusion, appears to be a nonsense tale told by an idiot mathematician.

  Martin Gardner

  Book, Levels, Lasts

  Introduction to "The Annotated Alice. The Definitive Edition" by Lewis Carroll, 1999.

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• The sex illusion is not a fixed quantity: not what mathematicians call a constant. It varies from zero in my wife's case to madness in that of our stepsister.

  George Bernard Shaw

  Sex, Zero, Wife

  George Bernard Shaw (2015). “The Collected Works of George Bernard Shaw: Plays, Novels, Articles, Lectures, Letters and Essays: Pygmalion, Mrs. Warren’s Profession, Candida, Arms and The Man, Man and Superman, Caesar and Cleopatra, Androcles And The Lion, The New York Times Articles on War, Memories of Oscar Wilde and more”, p.5144, e-artnow

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• As for mathematicians themselves: don't expect too much help. Most of them are too far removed in their ivory towers to take up such challenges. And anyway, they are not competent. After all, they are just mathematicians-what we need is paramathematicians, like you... It is you who can be the welding force, between mathematicians and stories, in order to achieve the synthesis.

  Apostolos Doxiadis

  Science, Order, Ivory Tower

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