Mathematics Quotes - Page 9

• I am interested in mathematics only as a creative art.

  G. H. Hardy

  Art, Creativity, Creative

  G. H. Hardy, C. P. Snow (2012). “A Mathematician's Apology”, p.115, Cambridge University Press

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• I remember once going to see him [Ramanujan] when he was lying ill at Putney. I had ridden in taxi-cab No. 1729, and remarked that the number seemed to me rather a dull one, and that I hoped it was not an unfavourable omen. "No," he replied, "it is a very interesting number; it is the smallest number expressible as a sum of two cubes in two different ways."

  G. H. Hardy

  Lying, Two, Numbers

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• Yet what are all such gaieties to me whose thoughts are full of indices and surds?

  Lewis Carroll

  Math, Gaiety

  Lewis Carroll (1960). “The Humorous Verse of Lewis Carroll”, p.223, Courier Corporation

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• Don't just read it; fight it! Ask your own question, look for your own examples, discover your own proofs. Is the hypothesis necessary? Is the converse true? ... Where does the proof use the hypothesis?

  Paul Halmos

  Fighting, Example, Doe

  "I Want to be a Mathematician: An Automathography". Book by Paul Halmos, 1985.

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• In one word he told me the secret of success in mathematics: plagiarize; only be sure always to call it . . . research.

  Tom Lehrer

  Success, Secret, Research

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• All these people that I used to know, they're an illusion to me now. Some are mathematicians, some are carpenters' wives.

  Bob Dylan

  People, Wife, Illusion

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• Why waste words? Geometry existed before the Creation, is co-eternal with the mind of God, is God himself (what exists in God that is not God himself?): geometry provided God with a model for the Creation and was implanted into man, together with God's own likeness - and not merely conveyed to his mind through the eyes.

  Johannes Kepler

  Eye, Men, History

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• Thus God himself was too kind to remain idle and began to play the game of signatures signing his likeness unto the world: therefore I chance to think that all nature and the graceful sky are symbolized in the art of Geometria.

  Johannes Kepler

  Art, Thinking, Sky

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• Now, as God the maker play'd he taught the game to Nature whom he created in his image; taught her the selfsame game which he played to her.

  Johannes Kepler

  Games, Play, History

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• Premature optimization is the root of all evil.

  Donald Knuth

  Science, Roots, Evil

  Donald Ervin Knuth (1986). “TEX: The Program”, Addison-Wesley Professional

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• 

  Mathematical reasoning may be regarded.

  Alan Turing

  May, Mathematical, Reasoning

  Alan Mathison Turing, B. J. Copeland (2004). “The Essential Turing”, p.192, Oxford University Press

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• I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy.

  John Adams

  Education, Philosophy, War

  John Adams (2003). “The Letters of John and Abigail Adams”, p.264, Penguin

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• If I am given a formula, and I am ignorant of its meaning, it cannot teach me anything, but if I already know it what does the formula teach me?

  Saint Augustine

  Math, Ignorant, Doe

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• I hope that posterity will judge me kindly, not only as to the things which I have explained, but also to those which I have intentionally omitted so as to leave to others the pleasure of discovery.

  Rene Descartes

  Math, Science, Discovery

  Rene Descartes (2007). “The Geometry of Rene Descartes”, p.240, Cosimo, Inc.

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• And believe me, if I were again beginning my studies, I should follow the advice of Plato and start with the mathematical sciences, which proceed very cautiously and admit nothing as established until it has been rigorously demonstrated.

  Galileo Galilei

  Education, Plato, Math

  "The Essential Galileo".

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• We must admit with humility that, while number is purely a product of our minds, space has a reality outside our minds, so that we cannot completely prescribe its properties a priori.

  Carl Friedrich Gauss

  Humility, Math, Reality

  Letter to Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel, 1830.

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• It is now quite lawful for a Catholic woman to avoid pregnancy by a resort to mathematics, though she is still forbidden to resort to physics or chemistry.

  H. L. Mencken

  Women, Pregnancy, Science

  Minority Report: H. L. Mencken's Notebooks (1956)

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• Language is remarkable, except under the extreme constraints of mathematics and logic, it never can talk only about what it's supposed to talk about but is always spreading around.

  Howard Nemerov

  Sensual, Logic, Language

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• If two wrongs don't make a right, try three.

  Laurence J. Peter

  Funny, Witty, Revenge

  Laurence J. Peter (1979). “Peter's people”, W. Morrow

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• If your experiment needs statistics, you ought to have done a better experiment.

  Ernest Rutherford

  Math, Science, Needs

  Quoted in N.T. Bailey's The Mathematical Approach to Biology and Medicine Chapter 2 (p. 23)

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• My work always tried to unite the true with the beautiful; but when I had to choose one or the other, I usually chose the beautiful.

  Tom Stoppard

  Beautiful, Truth, Work

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• Everything of importance has been said before by somebody who did not discover it.

  Alfred North Whitehead

  Wisdom, Math, Science

  "The Organization of Thought" (1917)

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• Our minds are finite, and yet even in these circumstances of finitude we are surrounded by possibilities that are infinite, and the purpose of life is to grasp as much as we can out of that infinitude.

  Alfred North Whitehead

  Life, Math, Mind

  Alfred North Whitehead, Lucien Price (2001). “Dialogues of Alfred North Whitehead”, p.160, David R. Godine Publisher

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• How happy is the lot of the mathematician! He is judged solely by his peers, and the standard is so high that no colleague or rival can ever win a reputation he does not deserve. No cashier writes a letter to the press complaining about the incomprehensibility of Modern Mathematics and comparing it unfavorably with the good old days when mathematicians were content to paper irregularly shaped rooms and fill bathtubs without closing the waste pipe.

  W. H. Auden

  Writing, Winning, Paper

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• Fifty percent of all doctors graduate in the bottom half of their class - Hope your surgery went well!

  Simone Elkeles

  Math, Class, Doctors

  Simone Elkeles (2011). “Rules of Attraction”, p.133, Simon and Schuster

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