Popular quotes about Math! Wisdom and inspiration are here! | page 24
I got good grades in math, but I never really enjoyed it. My favorite part of math was algebra, but geometry was the worst.
Nathan KressIn our travels, we have come across many equations--math for understanding the universe, for making music, for mapping stars, and also for tipping, which is important. Here is our favorite equation: Us plus Them equals All of Us. It is very simple math. Try it sometime. You probably wonโt even need a pencil.
Libba BrayI never made a career decision based solely on my desire to be an astronaut. I attended the Naval Academy because I wanted to be a Navy pilot. I majored in math because math had always come pretty easily to me and I liked it.
John L. PhillipsI take great solace that Einstein failed math. I failed math. I also failed English and home economics. Einstein was an underachiever.
Danny BonaduceIf a child is poor in math but good at tennis, most people would hire a math tutor. I would rather hire a tennis coach.
Deepak ChopraI was good at math, math was my thing - but I was not nearly good enough to be an astrophysicist. I was way outta my league. I realized this very quickly.
Sam TrammellThe vast majority of us imagine ourselves as like literature people or math people. But the truth is that the massive processor known as the human brain is neither a literature organ or a math organ. It is both and more.
John GreenOn the Upper East Side, women are prisoners to the ideology of intensive motherhood, which is that you should be enriching your child's well-being on every measure you possibly can at every moment. So when your kid is sitting down playing with Legos, intensive motherhood dictates that you should be engaging with him or her somehow, praising, questioning, making it into a learning opportunity. It's not enough to just tell your child, "Do your homework." It's not enough to help with the homework. You go to the school and learn how they do math, so that you can tutor your child in math.
Wednesday MartinMy character, Taylor McKessie, is a little bit brighter in the math and science department than I am... okay, a lot.
Monique ColemanI knew I wanted to be a writer from as far back as I can remember. That was my talent. Lord knows it wasn't math.
Kevin ManeyJust as I had long suspected, a person didn't really need math for anything anyway. Maybe some people did. Some limited people.
Augusten BurroughsI went home every night to New Jersey - or most nights - and to help with the six-grade math homework or to make breakfast in the morning, just to make sure that that was there. When I was single and didn't have children, I used to laugh at this notion of quality time.
Kellyanne Conway[Math is] not at all like science. There's no experiment I can do with test tubes and equipment and whatnot that will tell me the truth about a figment of my imagination. The only way to get at the truth about our imaginations is to use our imaginations.
Paul LockhartIn a way, math isn't the art of answering mathematical questions, it is the art of asking the right questions, the questions that give you insight, the ones that lead you in interesting directions, the ones that connect with lots of other interesting questions -the ones with beautiful answers.
Gregory ChaitinDad claims that library science is the foundation of all sciences just as math is the key -- and we will survive or founder, depending on how well the librarians do their jobs. Librarians didn't look glamorous to me but maybe Dad had hit on a not very obvious truth.
Robert A. HeinleinThe ways in which acquired savants show up are usually the same ways that congenital, or non-acquired, savant syndrome shows up. They tend to show up in the same areas: music, art, math, visual, spatial skills, and calendar calculating, although calendar calculating probably isn't quite as prominent in that group. They tend to show up quite quickly, or sort of explode on the scene and they then tend to have an obsessive sort of forceful quality about them in the same way as savant skills. So they tend to show up in the same ways.
Darold TreffertAin't all buttons and charts, little albatross. Know what the first rule of flying is? Well I s'pose you do, since you already know what I'm 'bout to say. I do. But I like to hear you say it. Love. Can know all the math in the 'verse but take a boat in the air that you don't love? She'll shake you off just as sure as a turn in the worlds. Love keeps her in the air when she oughta fall down...tell you she's hurtin' 'fore she keens...makes her a home.
Joss WhedonWho's counting? It was, of course, the minority who were counting. It always is. Most of the women I know today would dearly like to use their fingers and toes for some activity more enthralling than counting. They have been counting for so long. But the peculiar problem of the new math is that every time we stop adding, somebody starts subtracting. At the very least (the advanced students will understand this) the rate of increase slows. ... The minority members of any group or profession have two answers: They can keep score or they can lose.
Ellen GoodmanThere are people at the extremes who aren't able to do anything musically, and then others sort of fall in the middle. And the same thing with math, and the same thing with art. You'll find people who are geniuses, or prodigies at the far end of the bell shaped curve, and I think you will find some of the acquired savants in that category who happened to have been endowed with that kind of talent, which explains why not everyone becomes an acquired savant.
Darold TreffertYes, I took a remedial algebra course in college. I struggled in math in high school and didnโt have confidence to plunge in with a for-credit algebra course. The remedial course gave me a lot of confidence so that when I took the for-credit algebra course it was fairly easy and I got a โB,โ of which I remain proud today!
Jim StaffordIn art class at school we learned how to draw tanks and soldiers opening fire at [Iranian leader Ayatollah] Khomeini and his beard. They didn't teach us the names of the flowers that grew around us in the city - wild flowers of all kinds and all colors. The math teacher used to whip the kids with his trouser belt. My father was constantly violent toward my mother for the most trivial reasons.
Hassan BlasimSilicon Valley, "the largest legal creation of wealth in history," was built largely by unprofessional amateurs using math, sand, and the institutions of freedom. The Soviet Union had the greatest mathematicians on earth, and plenty of sand, but without the institutions of freedom their brilliant mathematicians were not empowered to create those devices that are changing the world.
Michael StrongThere's a fundamental disconnection in society in the way we live, this way we live that we take so for granted, and we've become very separate from one another and we don't really take lot of time to realize that. And the math is overwhelming to the point of despair, but the answers could be so simple.
Amanda PalmerLearning improves in school environments where there are comprehensive music and arts programs. They increase the ability of young people to do math. They increase the ability of young people to read. And most important of all, they're a lot of fun.
William J. ClintonI got into writing and thinking about politics because I was told there would be no math.
Jeff GreenfieldToday, over half of China's undergraduate degrees are in math, science technology and engineering, yet only 16 percent of America's undergraduates pursue these schools.
Cathy McMorris RodgersMath can explain the reason there's one out of four chance that I'd have blue eyes. But it doesn't explain why me.
HeidiIn American math classes, we teach a lot of concepts poorly over many years. In the Asian systems they teach you very few concepts very well over a few years.
Bill GatesIn the early days, I often felt that I was taking a math test when we were playing. It was a profound feeling of having to prove myself.
Chris SteinAll parents want to send their children to the best possible schools. But because a good school is a relative concept, a family cannot achieve its goal unless it outbids similar families for a house in a neighborhood served by such a school. Failure to do so often means having to send your kids to a school with metal detectors at the front entrance and students who score in the 20th percentile in reading and math. Most families will do everything possible to avoid having to send their kids to a school like that. But because of the logic of musical chairs, they're inevitably frustrated.
Robert H. FrankNo matter how clear things might become in the forest of story, there was never a clear-cut solution, as there was in math. The role of a story was, in the broadest terms, to transpose a problem into another form. Depending on the nature and the direction of the problem, a solution might be suggested in the narrative. Tengo would return to the real world with that solution in hand. It was like a piece of paper bearing the indecipherable text of a magic spell. It served no immediate practical purpose, but it contained a possibility.
Haruki MurakamiThe ultimate act of cowardice is the fat-headed wrestling guy sitting behind the frail kid in math class, clipping him on the ear, saying: 'What are you going to do about that, faggot?' That is cowardice. When the bullets start flying past that jock's saucer-shaped ears, that's not cowardice. That's payback.
Doug StanhopeI think I was born 'in to deep,' and bad things happen every day. Sometimes I have to stab hellions. Sometimes I have to frame friends for murder, and stab evil math teachers, and watch my best friend die. Again. We deal with it, then we move on.
Rachel VincentThe casinos believe in math (and I don't mean numerology).They believe in the power of percentages and short pays, not in the power of magic stones, amulets and omens.
Frank ScobleteCommon Core, the initiative that claims to more accurately measure K-12 student knowledge in English and math, also encourages children to step up their "critical thinking."
David HarsanyiAs a child it was clear to me that in some sense math was in the world around us. I became fascinated by what this means. When you look at the shape of the sun and the moon, they're circles, so every time you see a circular thing, there's pi embedded in it.
Margaret WertheimI actually don't believe that everybody should necessarily try to learn to code. I think it's reasonably specialized, and nobody really expects most people to have to do it. It's not like knowing how to read and write and do basic math.
Linus TorvaldsI'm a biologist, so... Which I think should be mandatory. Biology should be mandatory. Mathematics? They say we don't know enough about math and science. Well we don't know enough about science and particularly biology, which is such a huge field.
Greg GraffinHow can we accept a situation in which there are no longer orchestras, choruses, libraries or art classes to nourish our children? We need more support for the arts, not less -- particularly to make this rich world available to young people whose vision is choked by a stark reality. How many children, who have no other outlet in their lives for their grief, have found solace in an instrument to play or a canvas to paint on? When you take into consideration the development of the human heart, soul and imagination, don't the arts take on just as much importance as math or science?
Barbra StreisandPickover's lively, provocative travel guide takes readers into the fascinating realm of mystic math, from perfectly strange numbers to fractured geometries and other curious nooks and crannies of ancient worlds and modern times.
Ivars PetersonCapitalism is like math. It is amoral. It is good at producing wealth; it's bad at distributing wealth. Unless it operates within a moral framework it will produce an unjust society.
Charley ReeseI don't think they understand it's as important as math and science. It rounds you out as a person. I think it gives you a love of certain things. You don't have to become the next great composer. It's just nice to have heard certain things or to have seen certain things. It's part of being a human being.
Marvin Hamlisch