Mathematics Quotes - Page 40

• Some of the greatest advances in mathematics have been due to the invention of symbols, which it afterwards became necessary to explain; from the minus sign proceeded the whole theory of negative quantities.

  Aldous Huxley

  Math, Negative, Invention

  Aldous Huxley (1961). “Selected Essays”

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• The laws of Nature are written in the language of mathematics...the symbols are triangles, circles and other geometrical figures, without whose help it is impossible to comprehend a single word.

  Galileo Galilei

  Math, Circles, Law

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• I would not dare to say that there is a direct relation between mathematics and madness, but there is no doubt that great mathematicians suffer from maniacal characteristics, delirium and symptoms of schizophrenia.

  John Forbes Nash

  Math, Suffering, Doubt

  Statement of 1996, as quoted in "Dr. Riemann's Zeros" by Karl Sabbagh, (p. 88), 2003.

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• I was so pleased to be at university to do physics and mathematics.

  John Henry Carver

  Math, Physics, University

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• The writing in mathematics text is not only laconic to a fault; it is cold, monotonous, dry, dull, and even ungrammatical... The books are not only printed by machines; they are written by machines.

  Morris Kline

  Book, Writing, Faults

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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 dairy man had a Ph.D. in mathematics, and he must have had some training in philosophy. He liked what he was doing and he didn't want to be somewhere else - one of the few contented people I met in my whole journey.

  John Steinbeck

  Philosophy, Learning, Science

  John Steinbeck (1980). “Travels with Charley in Search of America”, p.19, Penguin

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• I am exclusively occupied with the problem of gravitation and hope with the help of a local mathematician friend [Marcel Grossman] to overcome all the difficulties. One thing is certain, however, that never in life have I been quite so tormented. A great respect for mathematics has been instilled within me, the subtler aspects of which, in my stupidity, I regarded until now as pure luxury.

  Albert Einstein

  Learning, Science, Discovery

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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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• [Kepler] preferred the hard truth to his dearest illusions, and that is the heart of science.

  Carl Sagan

  Heart, Science, Kepler

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• The scientist keeps the romantic honest, and the romantic keeps the scientist human.

  Tom Robbins

  Science, Honest, Scientist

  Tom Robbins (2003). “Another Roadside Attraction”, p.166, Bantam

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• It is certain that the real function of art is to increase our self-consciousness; to make us more aware of what we are, and therefore of what the universe in which we live really is. And since mathematics, in its own way, also performs this function, it is not only aesthetically charming but profoundly significant. It is an art, and a great art.

  J. W. N. Sullivan

  Art, Real, Science

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• In my family, as in most middle-class Indian families I knew when I was growing up, science and mathematics were held in awe.

  Aravind Adiga

  Growing Up, Class, My Family

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• I have deeply regretted that I did not proceed far enough at least to understand something of the great leading principles of mathematics, for men thus endowed seem to have an extra sense.

  Charles Darwin

  Men, Principles, Enough

  Charles Darwin (2010). “The Works of Charles Darwin, Volume 29: “Erasmus Darwin” by Ernest Krause, with a Preliminary Notice by Charles Darwin; “The Autobiography of Charles Darwin” Edited by Nora Barlow; and Consolidated Index”, p.101, NYU Press

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• At its heart, music is all higher mathematics.

  Mos Def

  Beauty, Art, Music Is

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• It can be argued that the mathematics behind these images [of the orbit diagram for quadratic functions and the Mandelbrot set] is even prettier than the pictures themselves.

  Robert L. Devaney

  Beauty, Art, Orbit

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• We have heard much about the poetry of mathematics, but very little of it has as yet been sung. The ancients had a juster notion of their poetic value than we. The most distinct and beautiful statements of any truth must take at last the mathematical form. We might so simplify the rules of moral philosophy, as well as of arithmetic, that one formula would express them both.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Beauty, Beautiful, Art

  Henry David Thoreau (1999). “Material Faith: Thoreau on Science”, p.12, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Mathematics and art are quite different. We could not publish so many papers that used, repeatedly, the same idea and still command the respect of our colleagues.

  Antoni Zygmund

  Beauty, Art, Ideas

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• The great advances in science usually result from new tools rather than from new doctrines.

  Freeman Dyson

  Science, Doctrine, Tools

  Freeman Dyson (2014). “The Scientist as Rebel”, p.29, New York Review of Books

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• I have tried, with little success, to get some of my friends to understand my amazement that the abstraction of integers for counting is both possible and useful. Is it not remarkable that 6 sheep plus 7 sheep makes 13 sheep; that 6 stones plus 7 stones make 13 stones? Is it not a miracle that the universe is so constructed that such a simple abstraction as a number is possible? To me this is one of the strongest examples of the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics. Indeed, I find it both strange and unexplainable.

  Richard Hamming

  Simple, Effectiveness, Numbers

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• This ambiguity is another example of a growing problem with mathematical notation: There aren't enough squiggles to go around.

  Jim Blinn

  Example, Growing, Problem

  Jim Blinn (1998). “Jim Blinn's Corner: Dirty Pixels”, p.94, Morgan Kaufmann

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• Geometry is the archetype of the beauty of the world.

  Johannes Kepler

  World, Geometry, Archetype

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• I think some intuition leaks out in every step of an induction proof.

  Jim Propp

  Thinking, Intuition, Steps

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• Well, part of it is a longstanding belief - it's been in our education establishment at least since the 1930s - that somehow children should be allowed to discover knowledge for themselves, that they should construct their own knowledge. This has surfaced most recently in connection with mathematics instruction, where the idea is that they need to discover how to add for themselves. Rather than being taught how to add, they should construct this knowledge on their own.

  Lynne Cheney

  Children, Ideas, Discovery

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• It was not until some weeks later that I realized there is no need to restrict oneself to 2 by 2 matrices. One could go on to 4 by 4 matrices, and the problem is then easily soluable. In retrospect, it seems strange that one can be so much held up over such an elementary point. The resulting wave equation for the electron turned out to be very successful. It led to correct values for the spin and the magnetic moment. This was quite unexpected. The work all followed from a study of pretty mathematics, without any thought being given to these physical properties of the electron.

  Paul Dirac

  Successful, Discovery, Goes On

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