Mathematics Quotes - Page 37

• If "Number rules the universe" as Pythagoras asserted, Number is merely our delegate to the throne, for we rule Number.

  Eric Temple Bell

  Math, Numbers, Thrones

  Eric Temple Bell (1945). “Men of Mathematics”

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• Teaching school is but another word for sure and not very slow destruction.

  Thomas Carlyle

  Teaching, School, Math

  Thomas Carlyle (1886). “Early Letters”, p.281, Georg Olms Verlag

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• Just go on..and faith will soon return.

  Jean le Rond d'Alembert

  Math, Goes On, Return

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• I concluded that I might take as a general rule the principle that all things which we very clearly and obviously conceive are true: only observing, however, that there is some difficulty in rightly determining the objects which we distinctly conceive.

  Rene Descartes

  Math, Principles, Might

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• When writing about transcendental issues, be transcendentally clear.

  Rene Descartes

  Writing, Math, Issues

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• Gauss replied, when asked how soon he expected to reach certain mathematical conclusions, that he had them long ago, all he was worrying about was how to reach them!

  Rene Dubos

  Math, Long Ago, Worry

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• This has been done elegantly by Minkowski; but chalk is cheaper than grey matter, and we will do it as it comes.

  Albert Einstein

  Math, Grey Matter, Done

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• What is this frog and mouse battle among the mathematicians?

  Albert Einstein

  Math, Battle, Frogs

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• To your care and recommendation am I indebted for having replaced a half-blind mathematician with a mathematician with both eyes, which will especially please the anatomical members of my Academy.

  Frederick The Great

  Eye, Math, Half

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• A scientist can hardly meet with anything more undesirable than to have the foundations give way just as the work is finished. I was put in this position by a letter from Mr. Bertrand Russell when the work was nearly through the press.

  Gottlob Frege

  Math, Giving, Foundation

  Note in the appendix of "Grundlagen der Arithmetik" (Vol. 2), after Frege had received a letter of Bertrand Russell in which Russell had explained his discovery of, what is now known as, Russell's paradox, 1903.

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• [Statistics are] the only tools by which an opening can be cut through the formidable thicket of difficulties that bars the path of those who pursue the Science of Man.

  Francis Galton

  Cutting, Math, Men

  Natural Inheritance Normal Variability (pp. 62-3)

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• I am coming more and more to the conviction that the necessity of our geometry cannot be demonstrated, at least neither by, nor for, the human intellect. . . Geometry should be ranked, not with arithmetic, which is purely aprioristic, but with mechanics.

  Carl Friedrich Gauss

  Math, Science, Mechanic

  "Solid Shape". Book by Jan J. Koenderink, 1990.

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• I don't believe in natural science.

  Kurt Gödel

  Believe, Math, Natural

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• Practical application is found by not looking for it, and one can say that the whole progress of civilization rests on that principle.

  Jacques Hadamard

  Math, Civilization, Progress

  Jacques Hadamard (1954). “An Essay on the Psychology of Invention in the Mathematical Field”, p.124, Courier Corporation

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• I remember one occasion when I tried to add a little seasoning to a review, but I wasn't allowed to. The paper was by Dorothy Maharam, and it was a perfectly sound contribution to abstract measure theory. The domains of the underlying measures were not sets but elements of more general Boolean algebras, and their range consisted not of positive numbers but of certain abstract equivalence classes. My proposed first sentence was: "The author discusses valueless measures in pointless spaces."

  Paul Halmos

  Math, Class, Numbers

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• ...he seemed to approach the grave as an hyperbolic curve approaches a line, less directly as he got nearer, till it was doubtful if he would ever reach it at all.

  Thomas Hardy

  Math, Curves, Lines

  Thomas Hardy (2016). “Far from the Madding Crowd: Works of Hardy”, p.66, 谷月社

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• [The works of Archimedes] are without exception, monuments of mathematical exposition; the gradual revelation of the plan of attack, the masterly ordering of the propositions, the stern elimination of everything not immediately relevant to the purpose, the finish of the whole, are so impressive in their perfection as to create a feeling akin to awe in the mind of the reader.

  Thomas Little Heath

  Math, Perfection, Feelings

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• ...to characterize the import of pure geometry, we might use the standard form of a movie-disclaimer: No portrayal of the characteristics of geometrical figures or of the spatial properties of relationships of actual bodies is intended, and any similarities between the primitive concepts and their customary geometrical connotations are purely coincidental.

  Carl Gustav Hempel

  Math, Might Use, Body

  Carl Gustav Hempel (2001). “The Philosophy of Carl G. Hempel: Studies in Science, Explanation, and Rationality”, p.24, Oxford University Press on Demand

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• I have tried to avoid long numerical computations, thereby following Riemann's postulate that proofs should be given through ideas and not voluminous computations.

  David Hilbert

  Math, Ideas, Long

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• There is more in Mersenne than in all the universities together.

  Thomas Hobbes

  Math, Together, University

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• Say what you know, do what you must, come what may.

  Sofia Kovalevskaya

  Math, May, Knows

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• Man follows only phantoms.

  Pierre-Simon Laplace

  Math, Science, Men

  "Budget of Paradoxes". Book by Augustus De Morgan, 1866.

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• Nothing is more important than to see the sources of invention which are, in my opinion more interesting than the inventions themselves.

  Gottfried Leibniz

  Math, Interesting, Important

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• The art of discovering the causes of phenomena, or true hypotheses, is like the art of deciphering, in which an ingenious conjecture often greatly shortens the road.

  Gottfried Leibniz

  Art, Math, Causes

  "New Essays Concerning Human Understanding with an Appealing". Transtated from the Original Latin, French and German Writeen,

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• Inequality is the cause of all local movements.

  Leonardo da Vinci

  Math, Movement, Causes

  Leonardo (da Vinci) (1958). “The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci”

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