Mathematics Quotes - Page 22

• In mathematics the art of proposing a question must be held of higher value than solving it.

  Georg Cantor

  Art, Math, Higher

  Doctoral thesis, 1867.

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• To most outsiders, modern mathematics is unknown territory. Its borders are protected by dense thickets of technical terms; its landscapes are a mass of indecipherable equations and incomprehensible concepts. Few realize that the world of modern mathematics is rich with vivid images and provocative ideas.

  Ivars Peterson

  Math, Ideas, World

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• The mind uses its faculty for creativity only when experience forces it to do so.

  Henri Poincare

  Creativity, Math, Mind

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• All the mathematical sciences are founded on relations between physical laws and laws of numbers.

  James Clerk Maxwell

  Education, Math, Numbers

  "The Scientific Papers of James Clerk Maxwell".

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• Many teachers are concerned about the amount of material they must cover in a course. One cynic suggested a formula: since, he said, students on the average remember only about 40% of what you tell them, the thing to do is to cram into each course 250% of what you hope will stick.

  Paul Halmos

  Education, Teacher, Math

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• There should be no such thing as boring mathematics.

  Edsger Dijkstra

  Boring, Should

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• As for everything else, so for a mathematical theory: beauty can be perceived but not explained.

  Arthur Cayley

  Beauty, Math, Theory

  Arthur Cayley (1895). “The Collected Mathematical Papers of Arthur Cayley”

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• The truth always turns out to be simpler than you thought.

  Richard P. Feynman

  Truth, Science, Simplicity

  "Sympathetic Vibrations: Reflections on Physics as a Way of Life". Book by K. C. Cole, 1985.

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  Truth is ever to be found in the simplicity, and not in the multiplicity and confusion of things.

  Isaac Newton

  Math, Confusion, Simplicity

  Isaac Newton (1994). “Trattato sull Apocalisse”

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• As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain, and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality.

  Albert Einstein

  Inspirational, Funny, Wisdom

  Address to Prussian Academy of Sciences, Berlin, 27 Jan. 1921

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• Anyone who cannot cope with mathematics is not fully human. At best, he is a tolerable subhuman who has learned to wear his shoes, bathe, and not make messes in the house.

  Robert A. Heinlein

  Learning, Math, Shoes

  Time Enough for Love "Intermission" (1973)

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• I recall a lecture by John Glenn, the first American to go into orbit. When asked what went through his mind while he was crouched in the rocket nose-cone, awaiting blast-off, he replied, "I was thinking that the rocket has 20,000 components, and each was made by the lowest bidder."

  Martin Rees

  Thinking, Mind, Orbit

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• The value of a problem is not so much coming up with the answer as in the ideas and attempted ideas it forces on the would be solver.

  Israel Nathan Herstein

  Teaching, Math, Ideas

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• Nature imitates mathematics.

  Gian-Carlo Rota

  Gian-Carlo Rota (2009). “Indiscrete Thoughts”, p.213, Springer Science & Business Media

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• Mathematics consists in proving the most obvious thing in the least obvious way.

  George Polya

  Knowledge, Math, Obvious Things

  George Pólya (1968). “Mathematical discovery: on understanding, learning, and teaching problem solving”

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• It will be another million years, at least, before we understand the primes.

  Paul Erdos

  Teaching, Math, Years

  "The indivisible man" by Andrew Anthony, www.theguardian.com. August 3, 2003.

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• The mathematical sciences wield their particular language made of digits and signs, no less subtle than any other.

  Jorge Luis Borges

  Language, Subtle, Made

  Jorge Luis Borges (1999). “Selected Non-Fictions”, Penguin Group USA

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• The hardest arithmetic to master is that which enables us to count our blessings.

  Eric Hoffer

  Thank You, Thankful, Gratitude

  "Reflections on the Human Condition" by Eric Hoffer, (Section 172), 1973.

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• The mathematics are distinguished by a particular privilege, that is, in the course of ages, they may always advance and can never recede.

  Edward Gibbon

  Math, Epic, Age

  Edward Gibbon (1862). “The history of the decline and fall of the Roman empire”, p.401

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• Whoever despises the high wisdom of mathematics nourishes himself on delusion and will never still the sophistic sciences whose only product is an eternal uproar.

  Leonardo da Vinci

  Wisdom, Math, Eternity

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• The advantage is that mathematics is a field in which one's blunders tend to show very clearly and can be corrected or erased with a stroke of the pencil.

  Norbert Wiener

  Math, Fields, Logic

  "Ex-Prodigy: My Childhood and Youth". Book by Norbert Wiener, 1964.

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• One good thing about teaching calculus is that you develop a hardened attitude towards repeating yourself.

  Philip J. Hanlon

  Attitude, Teaching, Statistics

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• A mathematical proof must be perspicuous.

  Ludwig Wittgenstein

  Proof, Mathematical, Mathematical Proof

  Ludwig Wittgenstein, Gertrude Elizabeth Margaret Anscombe, Rush Rhees, Georg Henrik Wright (1967). “Remarks on the foundations of mathematics”

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• If there is anything that can bind the heavenly mind of man to this dreary exile of our earthly home and can reconcile us with our fate so that one can enjoy living,-then it is verily the enjoyment of the mathematical sciences and astronomy.

  Johannes Kepler

  Home, Fate, Men

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• The end of the eighteenth and the commencement of the nineteenth century are remarkable for the small amount of scientific movement going on in this country, especially in its more exact departments. Mathematics were at the last gasp, and astronomy nearly so; I mean in those members of its frame which depend upon precise measurement and systematic calculation. The chilling torpor of routine had begun to spread itself over all those branches of Science which wanted the excitement of experimental research.

  John Herschel

  Country, Mean, Science

  "Memoir of Francis Baily".

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