Popular quotes about Mathematics! Wisdom and inspiration are here! | page 41
If you ask ... the man in the street ... the human significance of mathematics, the answer of the world will be, that mathematics has given mankind a metrical and computatory art essential to the effective conduct of daily life, that mathematics admits of countless applications in engineering and the natural sciences, and finally that mathematics is a most excellent instrumentality for giving mental discipline... [A mathematician will add] that mathematics is the exact science, the science of exact thought or of rigorous thinking.
Cassius Jackson KeyserThere is no thing as a man who does not create mathematics and yet is a fine mathematics teacher. Textbooks, course material-these do not approach in importance the communication of what mathematics is really about, of where it is going, and of where it currently stands with respect to the specific branch of it being taught. What really matters is the communication of the spirit of mathematics. It is a spirit that is active rather than contemplative-a spirit of disciplined search for adventures of the intellect. Only as adventurer can really tell of adventures.
Alfred AdlerAll our surest statements about the nature of the world are mathematical statements, yet we do not know what mathematics "is"... and so we find that we have adapted a religion strikingly similar to many traditional faiths. Change "mathematics" to "God" and little else might seem to change. The problem of human contact with some spiritual realm, of timelessness, of our inability to capture all with language and symbol-all have their counterparts in the quest for the nature of Platonic mathematics.
John D. BarrowThe branches of mathematics are as various as the sciences to which they belong, and each subject of physical enquiry has its appropriate mathematics. In every form of material manifestation, there is a corresponding form of human thought, so that the human mind is as wide in its range of thought as the physical universe in which it thinks.
Benjamin PeirceMathematics knows no races or geographic boundaries; for mathematics, the cultural world is one country.
David HilbertLet me also remind you that zero, like all of mathematics, is fictional and an idealization. It is impossible to reach absolute zero temperature or to get perfect vacuum. Luckily, mathematics is a fairyland where ideal and fictional objects are possible.
Doron ZeilbergerMathematics and logic have been proved to be one; a fact from which it seems to follow that mathematics may successfully deal with non-quantitative problems in a much broader sense than was suspected to be possible.
Alfred KorzybskiYes, I share your concern: how to program well -though a teachable topic- is hardly taught. The situation is similar to that in mathematics, where the explicit curriculum is confined to mathematical results; how to do mathematics is something the student must absorb by osmosis, so to speak. One reason for preferring symbol-manipulating, calculating arguments is that their design is much better teachable than the design of verbal/pictorial arguments. Large-scale introduction of courses on such calculational methodology, however, would encounter unsurmoutable political problems.
Edsger DijkstraThe propositions of mathematics have, therefore, the same unquestionable certainty which is typical of such propositions as "All bachelors are unmarried," but they also share the complete lack of empirical content which is associated with that certainty: The propositions of mathematics are devoid of all factual content; they convey no information whatever on any empirical subject matter.
Carl Gustav HempelMathematics without natural history is sterile, but natural history without mathematics is muddled.
John Maynard SmithThe research reported on in our book "A=B", has moved a whole active field of mathematics from the province of human thought to the realm of computer-fodder. It is quite exciting to think about what other fields of pure mathematics, hitherto thought to be reserved to human intelligence, might be moved to that realm next. The goal is to put ourselves out of business completely, and the work is well underway.
Herbert WilfA Noah's Ark of mathematicians, their lives, loves, hard times, and madnesses, Loving and Hating Mathematics shows our community with all its warts as well as its triumphs. I especially liked the chapter on much-hated school mathematics, 'Almost All Children Left Behind.'
David MumfordMathematics is a part of physics. Physics is an experimental science, a part of natural science. Mathematics is the part of physics where experiments are cheap.
Vladimir ArnoldIt was as though applied mathematics was my spouse, and pure mathematics was my secret lover.
Edward FrenkelMathematics is the cheapest science. Unlike physics or chemistry, it does not require any expensive equipment. All one needs for mathematics is a pencil and paper.
George PolyaI am ever more intrigued by the correspondence between mathematics and physical facts. The adaptability of mathematics to the description of physical phenomena is uncanny.
Nicolaas BloembergenThe principles of logic and mathematics are true simply because we never allow them to be anything else. And the reason for this is that we cannot abandon them without contradicting ourselves, without sinning against the rules which govern the use of language, and so making our utterances self-stultifying. In other words, the truths of logic and mathematics are analytic propositions or tautologies.
A.J. AyerOf 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.
Bertrand RussellIt is well known that the central problem of the whole of modern mathematics is the study of transcendental functions defined by differential equations.
Felix KleinProbably no branch of mathematics has experienced a more surprising growth than has... topology... Considered as a most specialized and abstract subject in the early 1920's, it is today [1938] an indispensable equipment for the investigation of modern mathematical theories.
Raymond Louis WilderIn mathematics, two angles that are said to coincide fit together perfectly. The word "coincidence" does not describe luck or mistakes. It describes that which fits together perfectly.
Wayne DyerOne can understand nature only when one has learned the language and the signs in which it speaks to us; but this language is mathematics and these signs are methematical figures.
Galileo GalileiIn our civilization, there are permanent forms which are part of every epoch and every culture. They are not especially difficult to detect. A minimal knowledge of physics, astrophysics, and perhaps mathematics, brings to light certain patterns that make these subjects easier to understand. It is striking to see the extreme similarity between these scientific propositions and the forms that recur in all times, places and civilizations.
Philippe StarckThere is no branch of mathematics, however abstract, which may not some day be applied to phenomena of the real world.
Nikolai LobachevskyPerhaps the best reason for regarding mathematics as an art is not so much that it affords an outlet for creative activity as that it provides spiritual values. It puts man in touch with the highest aspirations and lofiest goals. It offers intellectual delight and the exultation of resolving the mysteries of the universe.
Morris KlineBut I simply can't stand a view limited to this earth, I feel life is so small unless it has windows into other worlds...I like mathematics largely because it is not human.
Bertrand RussellIn high school I was good at math and everybody wanted me to do something with that - mathematics or engineering - which was a nightmare scenario for me. Meeting other artists and going to punk rock shows at that age, there was a feeling of freedom and community that I wanted to partake in.
Laura OwensMy brain doesn't work very well, in terms of mathematics. I'm not one of those people who can just spout off numbers for things, if numbers are thrown at me.
Brit MarlingThe science of mathematics presents the most brilliant example of how pure reason may successfully enlarge its domain without the aid of experience
Immanuel KantBy simple mathematics giving is key to the world you seek to live in. If I take I alone gain. If I give or share then two at least are enriched.
Rasheed OgunlaruIn my family, as in most middle-class Indian families I knew when I was growing up, science and mathematics were held in awe.
Aravind AdigaCryptography shifts the balance of power from those with a monopoly on violence to those who comprehend mathematics and security design.
Jacob AppelbaumIt is perplexing to see the flexibility of the so-called 'exact sciences' which by cast-iron laws of logic and by the infallible help of mathematics can lead to conclusions which are diametrically opposite to one another.
Vasco RonchiIf people do not believe that mathematics is simple, it is only because they do not realize how complicated life is.
John von NeumannThe more reasonable a student was in mathematics, the more unreasonable she was in the affairs of real life, concerning which fewtrustworthy postulates have yet been ascertained.
George Bernard ShawThere are certainly lots of jobs in computer coding, but coding doesn't really require advanced mathematics. And engineering jobs, they vary widely in the amount of demand that we actually need. So, you know, the number of people for whom the job description includes Newton's calculus is not perhaps that high.
Anya KamenetzThe man ignorant of mathematics will be increasingly limited in his grasp of the main forces of civilization.
John G. KemenyEven when I was studying mathematics, physics, and computer science, it always seemed that the problem of consciousness was about the most interesting problem out there for science to come to grips with.
David ChalmersEvery education system on Earth has the same hierarchy of subjects: at the top are mathematics and languages, then the humanities, and the bottom are the arts.
Ken RobinsonThe scientists from Franklin to Morse were clear thinkers and did not produce erroneous theories. The scientists of today think deeply instead of clearly. One must be sane to think clearly, but one can think deeply and be quite insane. Today's scientists have substituted mathematics for experiments, and they wander off through equation after equation, and eventually build a structure which has no relation to reality.
Nikola TeslaAlthough I am even now still a layman in the area of mathematics, and although I lack theoretical knowledge, the mathematicians, and in particular the crystallographers, have had considerable influence on my work of the last twenty years. The laws of the phenomena around us--order, regularity, cyclical repetition, and renewals--have assumed greater and greater importance for me. The awareness of their presence gives me peace and provides me with support. I try in my prints to testify that we live in a beautiful and orderly world, and not in a formless chaos, as it sometimes seems.
M. C. Escher