Mathematician Quotes - Page 18

• There is nothing as dreamy and poetic, nothing as radical, subversive, and psychedelic, as mathematics. It is every bit as mind blowing as cosmology or physics (mathematicians conceived of black holes long before astronomers actually found any), and allows more freedom of expression than poetry, art, or music (which depends heavily on properties of the physical universe). Mathematics is the purest of the arts, as well as the most misunderstood.

  Paul Lockhart

  Art, Expression, Long

  "A Mathematician’s Lament". genius.com. January 1, 2002.

  12 Copy quote

  Show source

• In mathematical quarters, the regular division of the plane has been considered theoretically. ... [Mathematicians] have opened the gate leading to an extensive domain, but they have not entered this domain themselves. By their very nature they are more interested in the way in which the gate is opened than in the garden lying behind it.

  M. C. Escher

  Lying, Garden, Division

  34 Copy quote

• Outside observers often assume that the more complicted a piece of mathematics is, the more mathematicians admire it. Nothing could be further from the truth. Mathematicians admire elegance and simplicity above all else, and the ultimate goal in solving a problem is to find the method that does the job in the most efficient manner. Though the major accolades are given to the individual who solves a particular problem first, credit (and gratitude) always goes to those who subsequently find a simpler solution.

  Keith Devlin

  Gratitude, Jobs, Goal

  4 Copy quote

• Elegance? It may seem odd to non-scientists, but there is an aesthetic in software as there is in every other area of intellectual endeavour. Truly great programmers are like great poets or great mathematicians - they can achieve in a few lines what lesser mortals can only approach in three volumes

  John Naughton

  Intellectual, Three, Lines

  4 Copy quote

• Mathematics is not yet capable of coping with the naïveté of the mathematician himself.

  Abraham Kaplan

  Vets, Coping, Mathematics

  8 Copy quote

• The discovery in 1846 of the planet Neptune was a dramatic and spectacular achievement of mathematical astronomy. The very existence of this new member of the solar system, and its exact location, were demonstrated with pencil and paper; there was left to observers only the routine task of pointing their telescopes at the spot the mathematicians had marked.

  James R Newman

  Math, Discovery, Achievement

  James R. Newman (2000). “The World of Mathematics”, p.820, Рипол Классик

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• I'm no mathematician, so I'm stuck with the graphic representations.

  Hugh Hopper

  Stuck, Graphic, Representation

  6 Copy quote

• Mathematics are the result of mysterious powers which no one understands, and which the unconscious recognition of beauty must play an important part. Out of an infinity of designs a mathematician chooses one pattern for beauty's sake and pulls it down to earth.

  Marston Morse

  Play, Design, Important

  Marston Morse, Raoul Bott (1981). “Selected papers”, Springer Verlag

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• By analyzing data from Greenwich Observatory in the period 1836-1953, John A. Eddy [Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and High Altitude Observatory in Boulder] and Aram A. Boornazian [mathematician with S. Ross and Co. in Boston] have found evidence that the sun has been contracting about 0.1% per century during that time, corresponding to a shrinkage rate of about 5 feet per hour. And digging deep into historical records, Eddy has found 400-year-old eclipse observations that are consistent with such a shrinkage.

  Jonathan Sarfati

  Years, Data, Feet

  6 Copy quote

• There's nothing so unreliable as figures, and everybody but a mathematician knows that. Figures lie right to your face.

  Marjorie Benton Cooke

  Lying, Data, Faces

  4 Copy quote

• As far as I know, Clifford Pickover is the first mathematician to write a book about areas where math and theology overlap. Are there mathematical proofs of God? Who are the great mathematicians who believed in a deity? Does numerology lead anywhere when applied to sacred literature? Pickover covers these and many other off-trail topics with his usual verve, humor, and clarity. And along the way the reader will learn a great deal of serious mathematics.

  Martin Gardner

  Book, Writing, Math

  6 Copy quote

• I'm a mathematician, basically. What I do is look around for problems where I can find useful applications for mathematics. All I do, really, is the math, and other people have the ideas.

  Freeman Dyson

  Math, Ideas, People

  Interview with Suzan Mazur, www.counterpunch.org. June 27, 2012.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• The first night Stephen and I slept together, he whispered numbers into my ear: long, high numbers -- distances between planets, seconds in a life. He spoke as if they were poetry, and they became poetry. Later, when he fell asleep, I leaned over him and watched, trying to picture a mathematician's dreams. I concluded that Stephen must dream in abstract, cool designs like Mondrian paintings.

  Peter Cameron

  Dream, Distance, Night

  Peter Cameron (2012). “One Way or Another: Stories”, p.63, Open Road Media

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• The Internet gives you access to a lot of material, and it's fun to sit and read. I go to something like Wikipedia and look at different topics... I find the subject fascinating. I like to read about concepts and mathematicians.

  Viswanathan Anand

  Fun, Giving, Wikipedia

  19 Copy quote

• The master-economist must possess a rare combination of gifts. He must reach a high standard in several different directions and must combine talents not often found together. He must be mathematician, historian, statesman, philosopher - in some degree. He must understand symbols and speak in words. He must contemplate the particular in terms of the general, and touch abstract and concrete in the same flight of thought. He must study the present in the light ofthe past for the purposes of the future

  John Maynard Keynes

  Past, Light, Together

  John Maynard Keynes, Royal Economic Society (Great Britain) (1971). “The Collected Writings of John Maynard Keynes: Essays in biography”

  95 Copy quote

  Show source

• It is the historical mind, rather than the scientific (in the physicist's sense), that destroyed the mythical orientation of European culture; the historian, not the mathematician, introduced the "higher criticism," the standard of actual fact. It is he who is the real apostle of the realistic age.

  Susanne Katherina Langer

  Real, Historical, Mind

  "Philosophy in a New Key". Book by Susanne Langer, 1941.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• TO ALL THE ambulance drivers firewatchers air-raid wardens nurses canteen workers airplane spotters rescue workers mathematicians vicars vergers shopgirls chorus girls librarians debutantes spinsters fishermen retired sailors servants evacuees Shakespearean actors and mystery novelists WHO WON THE WAR.

  Connie Willis

  Girl, War, Airplane

  4 Copy quote

• So now I'm going back again I got to get her somehow All the people we used to know They're an illusion to me now Some are mathematicians Some are carpenter's wives Don't know how it all got started I don't what they're doing with their lives But me I'm still on the road Heading for another joint We always did feel the same We just saw it from a different point of view Tangled up in Blue.

  Bob Dylan

  Blue, Views, Wife

  Song: Tangled Up in Blue

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• This is a question too difficult for a mathematician. It should be asked of a philosopher"(when asked about completing his income tax form)

  Albert Einstein

  Income, Philosopher, Form

  4 Copy quote

• You know" - Hale's breath was warm against Kat's ear in the chilly ballroom- "I don't know that both of us really have to be here...." The slide changed. While hundreds of mathematicians waited with baited breath, the boy beside Kat whispered, "I could go make some calls... check on some things..." "Play some blackjack?" "Well, when in Rome..." "Rome is tomorrow, babe," Kat reminded him. He nodded. "Right.

  Ally Carter

  Boys, Rome, Play

  54 Copy quote

• As a poet and as a mathematician, he would reason well; as a mere mathematician, he could not have reasoned at all.

  Edgar Allan Poe

  Reason, Poet, Wells

  Edgar Allan Poe, Stuart Levine, Susan Levine (1976). “The Short Fiction of Edgar Allan Poe: An Annotated Edition”, p.232, University of Illinois Press

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• Marya pinned out her childhood like a butterfly. She considered it the way a mathematician considers an equation.

  Catherynne M. Valente

  Butterfly, Childhood, Way

  Catherynne M. Valente (2011). “Deathless”, p.23, Macmillan

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• There are no words to express the abyss between isolation and having one ally. It may be conceded to the mathematician that four is twice two. But two is not twice one; two is two thousand times one.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Two, Allies, Four

  "The Man Who Was Thursday". Book by Gilbert K. Chesterton, Ch. VIII : The Professor Explains, 1908.

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• God is an awesome mathematician and physicist.

  Francis Collins

  Physicist

  5 Copy quote

• I used to be really cute. I could send you earlier photos where I'm stunning. But I've gained about twenty pounds over the past two years, and the more weight I've put on, the more success I've had. If you drew a diagram of weight gain and me getting more work, a mathematician would draw some conclusions from that.

  Zach Galifianakis

  Cute, Past, Years

  7 Copy quote