Mathematician Quotes - Page 8

• I don't think that everyone should become a mathematician, but I do believe that many students don't give mathematics a real chance. I did poorly in math for a couple of years in middle school; I was just not interested in thinking about it. I can see that without being excited mathematics can look pointless and cold. The beauty of mathematics only shows itself to more patient followers.

  Maryam Mirzakhani

  Couple, Real, Believe

  Source: www.theguardian.com

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• And when I go around and talk to schools, what I tell the kids are, first of all, you have to accept each other's differences. Some of you are going to be a crappy football player, some of you are going to be a great mathematician. Whatever it is, accept each other's differences and help prop each other up.

  Vince Flynn

  Football, School, Kids

  "Glenn Beck: An Hour With Author Vince Flynn". "Glenn Beck", www.foxnews.com. November 23, 2009.

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• Every good mathematician is at least half a philosopher, and every good philosopher is at least half a mathematician.

  Gottlob Frege

  Philosophy, Science, Analysis

  Attributed in "Mathematics as grammar: 'Grammar' in Wittgenstein's philosophy of mathematics during the Middle Period" by A. A. B. Aspeitia, Indiana University, (p. 25), 2000.

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• A mathematician makes plans to travel backwards in time through a wormhole to a parallel universe when he can't even make it to Mars with the fastest rocket on hand today.

  Bill Gaede

  Hands, Today, Rockets

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• A mathematician believes that describing the speed of Mercury with equations amounts to science.

  Bill Gaede

  Believe, Mercury, Speed

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• A mathematician is an individual who believes that prophesying that his dog will die if he deprives it of food constitutes a prediction.

  Bill Gaede

  Dog, Believe, Individual

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• A mathematician says that an electromagnetic wave travels from Andromeda to your eye and that it also extends from Andromeda to your eye.

  Bill Gaede

  Eye, Wave, Andromeda

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• Programming is one of the most difficult branches of applied mathematics; the poorer mathematicians had better remain pure mathematicians.

  Edsger Dijkstra

  Branches, Mathematics, Programming

  Edsger W. Dijkstra (2012). “Selected Writings on Computing: A personal Perspective”, p.129, Springer Science & Business Media

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• The pure mathematician, like the musician, is a free creator of his world of ordered beauty.

  Bertrand Russell

  Science, Musician, World

  Bertrand Russell (2008). “History of Western Philosophy”, p.33, Simon and Schuster

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• The mathematician is in much more direct contact with reality. ... [Whereas] the physicist's reality, whatever it may be, has few or none of the attributes which common sense ascribes instinctively to reality. A chair may be a collection of whirling electrons.

  G. H. Hardy

  Science, Reality, Common Sense

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• It may be true that people who are merely mathematicians have certain specific shortcomings; however that is not the fault of mathematics, but is true of every exclusive occupation. Likewise a mere linguist, a mere jurist, a mere soldier, a mere merchant, and so forth. One could add such idle chatter that when a certain exclusive occupation is often connected with certain specific shortcomings, it is on the other hand always free of certain other shortcomings.

  Carl Friedrich Gauss

  Science, Hands, People

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• No one gets angry at a mathematician or a physicist whom he or she doesn't understand, or at someone who speaks a foreign language, but rather at someone who tampers with your own language.

  Jacques Derrida

  Language, Speak, Physicist

  Jacques Derrida (1995). “Points . .: Interviews, 1974-1994”, p.115, Stanford University Press

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• I have also known some of the world's finest brains and some of these, though passionately fond of chess, have been pretty poor players. I used to know one of the world's leading mathematicians and whenever we played chess I had to give him the odds of a Queen to make matters more equal, and even then I always won.

  Harry Golombek

  Success, Queens, Player

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• It was long before I got at the maxim, that in reading an old mathematician you will not read his riddle unless you plough with his heifer; you must see with his light, if you want to know how much he saw.

  Augustus De Morgan

  Reading, Science, Light

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• Mathematical knowledge is not-as all Cambridge men are surely aware-the result of any special gift. It is merely the development of those conceptions of form and number which every human being possesses; and any person of average intellect can make himself a fair mathematician if he will only pay continuous attention; in plain English, think enough about the subject.

  Charles Kingsley

  Science, Men, Thinking

  Charles Kingsley (2008). “Scientific Lectures and Essays”, p.93, ReadHowYouWant.com

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• Oh these mathematicians make me tired! When you ask them to work out a sum they take a piece of paper, cover it with rows of A's, B's, and X's and Y's ... scatter a mess of flyspecks over them, and then give you an answer that's all wrong!

  Thomas A. Edison

  Tired, Science, Giving

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• The calculus of probabilities, when confined within just limits, ought to interest, in an equal degree, the mathematician, the experimentalist, and the statesman.

  Francois Arago

  Science, Degrees, Limits

  François Arago, Robert GRANT (F.R.A.S.), Baden Powell, William Henry SMYTH (Rear Admiral.) (1857). “Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men ... Translated by ... W. H. Smyth ... the Rev. Baden Powell ... and R. Grant”, p.235

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• The mathematical giant [Gauss], who from his lofty heights embraces in one view the stars and the abysses.

  Farkas Bolyai

  Stars, Science, Views

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• A mathematician is an individual who calls himself a 'physicist' and does 'physics' and physical experiments with abstract concepts.

  Bill Gaede

  Doe, Physics, Individual

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• Atheism is the opium of the mathematicians. Atheism is the religion of Mathematics.

  Bill Gaede

  Atheist, Atheism, Mathematics

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• What is the origin of the urge, the fascincation that drives physicists, mathematicians, and presumably other scientists as well? Psychoanalysis suggests that it is sexual curiosity. You start by asking where little babies come from, one thing leads to another, and you find yourself preparing nitroglycerine or solving differential equations. This explanation is somewhat irritating, and therefore probably basically correct.

  David Ruelle

  Baby, Science, Finding Yourself

  David Ruelle (1993). “Chance and Chaos”, p.164, Princeton University Press

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• Geniuses of certain kinds - mathematicians, chess players, computer programmers - seem, if not mad, at least lacking in the social skills most easily identified with sanity.

  James Gleick

  Player, Skills, Mad

  James Gleick (1992). “Genius: the life and science of Richard Feynman”, Pantheon

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• When a student comes and asks, "Should I become a mathematician?" the answer should be no. If you have to ask, you shouldn't even ask.

  Paul Halmos

  Math, Answers, Students

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• Physicists are more like avant-garde composers, willing to bend traditional rules... Mathematicians are more like classical composers.

  Brian Greene

  Science, Avant Garde, Mathematics

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• The Mathematician's Shiva is a brilliant and compelling family saga full of warmth, pathos, history, and humor, not to mention a cast of delightfully quirky characters, and a math lesson or two; all together, a winning equation! When Rojstaczer writes about mathematics, you'd think he was writing about poetry.

  Jonathan Evison

  Writing, Character, Math

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