Mathematics Quotes - Page 10

• There is no branch of mathematics, however abstract, which may not some day be applied to phenomena of the real world.

  Nikolai Lobachevsky

  Real, Math, Science

  "The Foundations of Geometry and the Non-Euclidean Plane". Book by George Edward Martin, 1975.

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• Two wrongs don't make a right.

  Roald Dahl

  Revenge, Humorous, Math

  Roald Dahl (2016). “The GFG: The Guid Freendly Giant: The BFG in Scots”, p.145, Black & White Publishing

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• Every moment dies a man,
  Every moment one is born.

  Alfred Lord Tennyson

  Time, Men, Born

  'The Vision of Sin' (1842) pt. 4, st. 9.

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• I often say that when you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it; but when you cannot measure it, when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meagre and unsatisfactory kind.

  Lord Kelvin

  Math, Science, Numbers

  Popular Lectures and Addresses "Electrical Units of Measurement" (1889).

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• How can it be that mathematics, being after all a product of human thought which is independent of experience, is so admirably appropriate to the objects of reality?

  Albert Einstein

  Independent, Science, Reality

  Albert Einstein, Stephen W. Hawking (2007). “A Stubbornly Persistent Illusion: The Essential Scientific Works of Albert Einstein”, p.249, Running Press

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• Mathematics is the tool specially suited for dealing with abstract concepts of any kind and there is no limit to its power in this field.

  Paul Dirac

  Math, Power, Tools

  Paul Adrien Maurice Dirac (1995). “Sammlung”, p.457, Cambridge University Press

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• Mathematics may be compared to a mill of exquisite workmanship, which grinds you stuff of any degree of fineness; but, nevertheless, what you get out depends upon what you put in; and as the grandest mill in the world will not extract wheat-flour from peascods, so pages of formulae will not get a definite result out of loose data.

  Thomas Huxley

  Work, Data, May

  "Geological Reform". Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society of London, Volume 25, 1869.

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• Only mathematics and mathematical logic can say as little as the physicist means to say.

  Bertrand Russell

  Mean, Science, Mathematical Logic

  Bertrand Russell (1992). “The Basic Writings of Bertrand Russell, 1903-1959”, p.626, Psychology Press

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• The fact that all Mathematics is Symbolic Logic is one of the greatest discoveries of our age; and when this fact has been established, the remainder of the principles of mathematics consists of the analysis of Symbolic Logic itself.

  Bertrand Russell

  Discovery, Mathematical Logic, Age

  Bertrand Russell (2009). “Principles of Mathematics”, p.5, Routledge

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• We often hear that mathematics consists mainly of "proving theorems." Is a writer's job mainly that of "writing sentences?"

  Gian-Carlo Rota

  Jobs, Writing, Math

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• Cardinal arithmetic will be quite important for us, so we spend some time on it. Since, however, it tends to be trivial, we shall not need to spend much of this time on proofs.

  Keith Devlin

  Important, Needs, Proof

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• One man may have some special knowledge at first-hand about the character of a river or a spring, who otherwise knows only what everyone else knows. Yet to give currency to this shred of information, he will undertake to write on the whole science of physics. From this fault many great troubles spring.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Spring, Writing, Character

  Michel de Montaigne (1958). “Essays”

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• Mathematics never reveals man to the degree, never expresses him in the way, that any other field of human endeavour does: the extent of the negation of man's corporeal self that mathematics achieves cannot be compared with anything. Whoever is interested in this subject I refer to my articles. Here I will say only that the world injected its patterns into human language at the very inception of that language; mathematics sleeps in every utterance, and can only be discovered, never invented.

  Stanislaw Lem

  Sleep, Men, Self

  Stanislaw Lem (1984). “His Master's Voice”, p.20, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• You can see the meaning of the statement that "Literature is a living art" most easily and clearly, perhaps, by contrasting Science and Art at their two extremes - say Pure Mathematics and Acting. Science as a rule deals with things, Art with man's thought and emotion about things.

  Arthur Quiller-Couch

  Art, Men, Two

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• A proposition of geometry does not compete with life; and a proposition of geometry is a fair and luminous parallel for a work of art. Both are reasonable, both untrue to the crude fact; both inhere in nature, neither represents it.

  Robert Louis Stevenson

  Art, Doe, Facts

  Robert Louis Stevenson (1999). “The Lantern-Bearers and Other Essays”, p.195, Cooper Square Press

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• Everybody who reasons carefully about anything is making a contribution ... and if you abstract it away and send it to the Department of Mathematics they put it in books.

  Richard P. Feynman

  Book, Reason, Abstract

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• There was a time when the newspapers said that only twelve men understood the theory of relativity. I do not believe there ever was such a time ... On the other hand, I think I can safely say that nobody understands quantum mechanics.

  Richard P. Feynman

  Believe, Men, Thinking

  The Character of Physical Law ch. 6 (1965)

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• Perhaps I could best describe my experience of doing mathematics in terms of entering a dark mansion. You go into the first room and it's dark, completely dark. You stumble around, bumping into the furniture. Gradually, you learn where each piece of furniture is. And finally, after six months or so, you find the light switch and turn it on. Suddenly, it's all illuminated and you can see exactly where you were. Then you enter the next dark room.

  Andrew Wiles

  Dark, Light, Pieces

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• Mathematics takes us into the region of absolute necessity, to which not only the actual word, but every possible word, must conform.

  Bertrand Russell

  Math, Conformity, Regions

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• Mathematics is the queen of sciences and number theory is the queen of mathematics. She often condescends to render service to astronomy and other natural sciences, but in all relations she is entitled to the first rank.

  Carl Friedrich Gauss

  Queens, Numbers, Firsts

  "Gauss zum Gedächtniss". Book by Wolfgang Sartorius von Waltershausen, 1856.

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• Lully's machine, Mill's fear and Lasswitz's chaotic library can be the subject of jokes, but they exaggerate a propensity which is common: making metaphysics and the arts into a kind of play with combinations.

  Jorge Luis Borges

  Art, Play, Library

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• ... combinatorics, a sort of glorified dice-throwing.

  Robert Kanigel

  Dice, Throwing

  Robert Kanigel (2016). “The Man Who Knew Infinity: A Life of the Genius Ramanujan”, p.250, Simon and Schuster

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• Thus you see, most noble Sir, how this type of solution to the Königsberg bridge problem bears little relationship to mathematics, and I do not understand why you expect a mathematician to produce it, rather than anyone else, for the solution is based on reason alone, and its discovery does not depend on any mathematical principle.

  Leonhard Euler

  Discovery, Bridges, Principles

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• In the meantime, most noble Sir, you have assigned this question to the geometry of position, but I am ignorant as to what this new discipline involves, and as to which types of problem Leibniz and Wolff expected to see expressed in this way.

  Leonhard Euler

  Discipline, Ignorant, Noble

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• It was the sheer force of the letters themselves which brought forth the meaning, since the only link between the Sephirot of non-verbal Wisdom and verbal Intelligence was through the letters of the alphabet.

  Johanna Drucker

  Links, Letters, Alphabet

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