Mathematician Quotes - Page 21

• For other great mathematicians or philosophers, he [Gauss] used the epithets magnus, or clarus, or clarissimus; for Newton alone he kept the prefix summus.

  W. W. Rouse Ball

  Science, Philosopher, Newton

  W. W. Rouse Ball (2012). “A Short Account of the History of Mathematics”, p.352, Courier Corporation

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• An artist has to train his responses more than other people do. He has to be as disciplined as a mathematician. Discipline is not a restriction but an aid to freedom. It prepares an artist to choose his own limitations.

  Wayne Thiebaud

  Artist, Discipline, People

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• [On the Gaussian curve, remarked to Poincaré:] Experimentalists think that it is a mathematical theorem while the mathematicians believe it to be an experimental fact.

  Gabriel Lippmann

  Believe, Thinking, Curves

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• In fact, the answer to the question "What is mathematics?" has changed several times during the course of history... It was only in the last twenty years or so that a definition of mathematics emerged on which most mathematicians agree: mathematics is the science of patterns.

  Keith Devlin

  Years, History, Twenties

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• Mathematicians enjoy thinking about the simplest possible things, and the simplest possible things are imaginary.

  Paul Lockhart

  Thinking, Enjoy, Imaginary

  "A Mathematician's Lament: How School Cheats Us Out of Our Most Fascinating and Imaginative Art Form". Book by Paul Lockhart, 2009.

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• The calendar is intolerable to all wisdom, the horror of all astronomy, and a laughing stock from a mathematician's point of view.

  Roger Bacon

  Views, Laughing, Calendars

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• Mankind has moved away from the heart of the world to the logic of the mind, and their belief is in the chemist, the physicist, and the mathematician. Science has proven to them that all this ancient belief in ceremony is simply ignorance.

  Drunvalo Melchizedek

  Heart, Ignorance, Mind

  Drunvalo Melchizedek (2010). “Serpent of Light: The Movement of the Earth's Kundalini and the Rise of the Female Light, 1949 to 2013”, p.7, ReadHowYouWant.com

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• It's your life story if you're a mathematician: every time you discover something neat, you discover that Gauss or Newton knew it in his crib.

  Bill Gosper

  Stories, Newton, Life Story

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• Silicon Valley, "the largest legal creation of wealth in history," was built largely by unprofessional amateurs using math, sand, and the institutions of freedom. The Soviet Union had the greatest mathematicians on earth, and plenty of sand, but without the institutions of freedom their brilliant mathematicians were not empowered to create those devices that are changing the world.

  Michael Strong

  Freedom, Business, Math

  Michael Strong, John Mackey (2009). “Be the Solution: How Entrepreneurs and Conscious Capitalists Can Solve All the World?s Problems”, p.60, John Wiley and Sons

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• Every mathematician worthy of the name has experienced . . . the state of lucid exaltation in which one thought succeeds another as if miraculously . . . this feeling may last for hours at a time, even for days. Once you have experienced it, you are eager to repeat it but unable to do it at will, unless perhaps by dogged work. . . .

  Andre Weil

  Time, Work, Math

  Andre Weil (2012). “The Apprenticeship of a Mathematician”, p.91, Birkhäuser

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• Every good mathematician should also be a good chess player and vice versa.

  Henri Poincare

  Science, Player, Vices

  Henri Poincare (2012). “The Value of Science: Essential Writings of Henri Poincare”, p.642, Modern Library

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• One of the chief duties of the mathematician in acting as an advisor ... is to discourage ... from expecting too much from mathematics.

  Norbert Wiener

  Learning, Science, Discovery

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• The mathematician who pursues his studies without clear views of this matter, must often have the uncomfortable feeling that his paper and pencil surpass him in intelligence.

  Ernst Mach

  Math, Views, Uncomfortable Feeling

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• It is amusing to discover, in the twentieth century, that the quarrels between two lovers, two mathematicians, two nations, two economic systems, usually assumed insoluble in a finite period should exhibit one mechanism, the semantic mechanism of identification - the discovery of which makes universal agreement possible, in mathematics and in life.

  Alfred Korzybski

  Two Nations, Discovery, Agreement

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• The mathematician knows some things, no doubt, but not those things one usually wants to get from him.

  Albert Einstein

  Science, Doubt, Want

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• The mathematician is entirely free, within the limits of the imagination, to construct what worlds he pleases.

  J. W. N. Sullivan

  Math, Imagination, World

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• In my experience most mathematicians are intellectually lazy.

  Francis Crick

  Math, Lazy, Logic

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• Mathematicians are a bit like the laconic Vermonter who, when asked if he's lived in the state his whole life, replies, "Not yet."

  John Allen Paulos

  Mathematics, States, Laconic

  John Allen Paulos (2007). “Irreligion: A Mathematician Explains Why the Arguments for God Just Don't Add Up”, p.8, Macmillan

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• Puzzles are made of the things that the mathematician, no less than the child, plays with, and dreams and wonders about, for they are made of things and circumstances of the world he [or she] live in.

  Edward Kasner

  Dream, Children, Play

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• To every problem there is already a solution, whether you know it or not. To every sum in there is already a correct answer, whether the mathematician has found it or not.

  Grenville Kleiser

  Answers, Problem, Found

  Grenville Kleiser (1917). “Inspiration and Ideals: Thoughts for Every Day”

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• 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

  Math, Numbers, Use

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• To create a healthy philosophy you should renounce metaphysics but be a good mathematician.

  Bertrand Russell

  Philosophy, Renounce, Should

  "The Collected Papers of Bertrand Russell".

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• When a mathematician engaged in investigating physical actions and results has arrived at his own conclusions, may they not be expressed in common language as fully, clearly, and definitely as in mathematical formulae? If so, would it not be a great boon to such as well to express them so -- translating them out of their hieroglyphics that we might also work upon them by experiment?

  Michael Faraday

  Words Of Wisdom, Hieroglyphics, May

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• Most geometricians, chemists, mathematicians, and great scientists submit religion to reason only to discover a problem as unsolvable as that of squaring a circle.

  Honore de Balzac

  Circles, Problem, Reason

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• "I am not much of a mathematician," said the cigarette, "but I can add to a man's nervous troubles, I can subtract from his physical energy, I can multiply his aches and pains, I can divide his mental powers, I take interest from his work, and discount his chances for success."

  David Starr Jordan

  Pain, Work, Men

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