Quotes About Mathematics

It is impossible to overstate the imporance of problems in mathematics. It is by means of problems that mathematics develops and actually lifts itself by its own bootstraps... Every new discovery in mathematics, results from an attempt to solve some problem.

Mathematics is the queen of science, and arithmetic the queen of mathematics.

What, after all, is mathematics but the poetry of the mind, and what is poetry but the mathematics of the heart?

Just as music comes alive in the performance of it, the same is true of mathematics. The symbols on the page have no more to do with mathematics than the notes on a page of music. They simply represent the experience.

As I considered the matter carefully it gradually came to light that all those matters only were referred to mathematics in which order and measurements are investigated, and that it makes no difference whether it be in numbers, figures, stars, sounds or any other object that the question of measurement arises. I saw consequently that there must be some general science to explain that element as a whole which gives rise to problems about order and measurement, restricted as these are to no special subject matter. This, I perceived was called 'universal mathematics'.

Doing research in mathematics is frustrating and if being frustrated is something you cannot get used to, then mathematics may not be an ideal occupation for you.

We know that mathematicians care no more for logic than logicians for mathematics. The two eyes of science are mathematics and logic; the mathematical set puts out the logical eye, the logical set puts out the mathematical eye; each believing that it sees better with one eye than with two. Note that De Morgan, himself, only had sight with only one eye.

Mathematics without natural history is sterile, but natural history without mathematics is muddled.

Of these austerer virtues the love of truth is the chief, and in mathematics, more than elsewhere, the love of truth may find encouragement for waning faith. Every great study is not only an end in itself, but also a means of creating and sustaining a lofty habit of mind; and this purpose should be kept always in view throughout the teaching and learning of mathematics.

Given the brief - and generally misleading - exposure most people have to mathematics at school, raising the public awareness of mathematics will always be an uphill battle.

Mathematicians care no more for logic than logicians for mathematics.

If a lunatic scribbles a jumble of mathematical symbols it does not follow that the writing means anything merely because to the inexpert eye it is indistinguishable from higher mathematics.

Mathematics is an obscure field, an abstruse science, complicated and exact; yet so many have attained perfection in it that we might conclude almost anyone who seriously applied himself would achieve a measure of success.

You can not apply mathematics as long as words still becloud reality.

In the realm of ideas, of mental objects, those ideas whose properties are reproducible are called mathematical objects, and the study of mental objects with reproducible properties is called mathematics.

I read one or two other books which gave me a background in mathematics other than logic.

The word "mathematics" is a Greek word and, by origin, it means "something that has been learned or understood," or perhaps "acquired knowledge," or perhaps even, somewhat against grammar, "acquirable knowledge," that is, "learnable knowledge," that is, "knowledge acquirable by learning."

Poetry is a mystic, sensuous mathematics of fire, smoke-stacks, waffles, pansies, people, and purple sunsets.

In no other branch of mathematics is it so easy for experts to blunder as in probability theory.

For most people, the major hurdle in grasping modern insights into the nature of the universe is that these developments are usually phrased using mathematics.

Cryptography shifts the balance of power from those with a monopoly on violence to those who comprehend mathematics and security design.

Mathematics is fun if you don't let mathematicians push you around when you are doing it.

Mathematics is distinguished from all other sciences except only ethics, in standing in no need of ethics.

If people do not believe that mathematics is simple, it is only because they do not realize how complicated life is.

The science of pure mathematics, in its modern developments, may claim to be the most original creation of the human spirit.

In any case, do you really think kids even want something that is relevant to their daily lives? You think something practical like compound interest is going to get them excited? People enjoy fantasy, and that is just what mathematics can provide - a relief from daily life, an anodyne to the practical workaday world.

I think the biggest misconception is that everybody has to learn mathematics. That seems to be a complete mistake.

If I had to design a mechanism for the express purpose of destroying a child's natural curiosity and love of pattern-making, I couldn't possibly do as good a job as is currently being done-I simply wouldn't have the imagination to come up with the kind of senseless, soul-crushing ideas that constitute contemporary mathematics education.

Mathematics - this may surprise or shock some - is never deductive in creation.

My interest in the sciences started with mathematics in the very beginning, and later with chemistry in early high school and the proverbial home chemistry set.

Why does man freeze to death trying to reach the North Pole? Why does man drive himself to suffer the steam and heat of the Amazon? Why does he stagger his mind with the mathematics of the sky? Once the question mark has arisen in the human brain the answer must be found, if it takes a hundred years. A thousand years.

Perfection is crucial in building an aircraft, a bridge, or a high-speed train. The code and mathematics residing just below the surface of the Internet is also this way. Things are either perfectly right or they will not work. So much of the world we work and live in is based upon being correct, being perfect.

And as for Mixed Mathematics, I may only make this prediction, that there cannot fail to be more kinds of them, as nature grows further disclosed.

Modern bodybuilding is ritual, religion, sport, art, and science, awash in Western chemistry and mathematics. Defying nature, it surpasses it.

Why don't we want our children to learn to do mathematics? Is it that we don't trust them, that we think it's too hard? We seem to feel that they are capable of making arguments and coming to their own conclusions about Napoleon. Why not about triangles?

I found in rules of mathematics a peace and a trust that I could not place in human beings. This sublimation was total and remained total.

[The] humanization of mathematical teaching, the bringing of the matter and the spirit of mathematics to bear not merely upon certain fragmentary faculties of the mind, but upon the whole mind, that this is the greatest desideratum is. I assume, beyond dispute.

Regarding the fundamental investigations of mathematics, there is no final ending ... no first beginning.

As one reads mathematics, one needs to have an active mind, asking questions, forming mental connections between the current topic and other ideas from other contexts, so as to develop a sense of the structure, not just familiarity with a particular tour through the structure.

I did not have a very literary background. I came to poetry from the sciences and mathematics, and also through an interest in Japanese and Chinese poetry in translation.

Mathematics is a field which has often been compared with chess, but differs from the latter in that it is only one's best moments that count and not one's worst.

Anyone who believes a growth rate in excess of 15% per annum over the long term is attainable should pursue a career in sales, but avoid one in mathematics.

If we ever establish contact with intelligent aliens living on a planet around a distant star ... They would be made of similar atoms to us. They could trace their origins back to the big bang 13.7 billion years ago, and they would share with us the universe's future. However, the surest common culture would be mathematics.

Mathematics is the key and door to the sciences.

The economics profession went astray because economists, as a group, mistook beauty, clad in impressive-looking mathematics, for truth.

So-called "natural language" is wonderful for the purposes it was created for, such as to be rude in, to tell jokes in, to cheat or to make love in (and Theorists of Literary Criticism can even be content-free in it), but it is hopelessly inadequate when we have to deal unambiguously with situations of great intricacy, situations which unavoidably arise in such activities as legislation, arbitration, mathematics or programming.

We chose to do this work mathematically, which has the advantage of precision but is not always appreciated by readers. It is perhaps for this reason that anthropologists have not shown much interest in these models, unlike economists, for example, for whom the use of mathematics poses no problem. However, one could reach the same conclusions by using just a bit of common sense.

It is generally recognised that women are better than men at languages, personal relations and multi-tasking, but less good at map-reading and spatial awareness. It is therefore not unreasonable to suppose that women might be less good at mathematics and physics.