Quotes About Mathematics

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.

Mathematics is much more than computation with pencil and a paper and getting answers to routine exercises. In fact, it can easily be argued that computation, such as doing long division, is not mathematics at all. Calculators can do the same thing and calculators can only calculate they cannot do mathematics.

This is a wonderful book, unique and engaging. Diaconis and Graham manage to convey the awe and marvels of mathematics, and of magic tricks, especially those that depend fundamentally on mathematical ideas. They range over many delicious topics, giving us an enchanting personal view of the history and practice of magic, of mathematics, and of the fascinating connection between the two cultures. Magical Mathematics will have an utterly devoted readership.

Today, it is not only that our kings do not know mathematics, but our philosophers do not know mathematics and - to go a step further - our mathematicians do not know mathematics.

One may say that mathematics talks about the things which are of no concern to men. Mathematics has the inhuman quality of starlight - brilliant, sharp but cold ... thus we are clearest where knowledge matters least: in mathematics, especially number theory.

One of the chief triumphs of modern mathematics consists in having discovered what mathematics really is.

Mathematics, rightly viewed, possesses not only truth, but supreme beauty a beauty cold and austere, like that of sculpture, without appeal to any part of our weaker nature, without the georgeous trappings of painting or music, yet sublimely pure, and capable of a stern perfection such as only the greatest art can show. The true spirit of delight, the exaltation, the sense of being more than Man, which is the touchstone of the highest excellence, is to be found in mathematics as surely as in poetry.

Mathematics is the surest way to immortality. If you make a big discovery in mathematics, you will be remembered after everyone else will be forgotten

Mathematics is not just a language. Mathematics is a language plus reasoning.

I tell you that studying humanities in high school is more important than mathematics - mathematics is too sharp an instrument, no good for kids.

The 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.

Mathematics is being lazy. Mathematics is letting the principles do the work for you so that you do not have to do the work for yourself

Taking mathematics from the beginning of the world to the time when Newton lived, what he had done was much the better half.

We are servants rather than masters in mathematics.

Mathematics is a dangerous profession; an appreciable proportion of us go mad.

I doubt not, but from self-evident Propositions, by necessary Consequences, as incontestable as those in Mathematics, the measures of right and wrong might be made out.

I went to Princeton from Amherst, where I split my interests between mathematics and philosophy.

Few realize that the world of modern mathematics is rich with vivid images and provocative ideas.

Mathematics is the art of accurate reasoning on inaccurately-drawn figures... let that be our motto.

That sometimes clear ... and sometimes vague stuff ... which is ... mathematics.

What humans do with the language of mathematics is to describe patterns.

... we should not be disappointed that everyday language does not work any longer at the apex of our little theory. It is natural; like poetry, the very reason for the existence of mathematics is that it expresses thoughts and feelings which we cannot express in mundane everyday language.

Mathematics is the abstract key which turns the lock of the physical universe.

The mathematics is not there till we put it there.

There are fields of scientific work...which have been explored from the different sides of pure mathematics, statistics, electrical engineering, and neurophysiology...in which every single notion receives a separate and different name from each group, and in which important work has been triplicated or quadruplicated, while still other important work is delayed by the unavailability in one field of results that may have already become classical in the next field.

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

The mathematics of rhythm are universal. They don't belong to any particular culture.

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.

One would have to have completely forgotten the history of science so as to not remember that the desire to know nature has had the most constant and the happiest influence on the development of mathematics.

In my schooling through high school, I excelled mainly in chemistry, physics and mathematics.

If the proof starts from axioms, distinguishes several cases, and takes thirteen lines in the text book ... it may give the youngsters the impression that mathematics consists in proving the most obvious things in the least obvious way.

Integers are the fountainhead of all mathematics.

When we cannot use the compass of mathematics or the torch of experience...it is certain we cannot take a single step forward.

It may be more important in the mathematics class how you teach than what you teach.

Mathematics is, in many ways, the most precious response that the human spirit has made to the call of the infinite.

Mathematics began to seem too much like puzzle solving. Physics is puzzle solving, too, but of puzzles created by nature, not by the mind of man.

The fact that mathematics does such a good job of describing the Universe is a mystery that we don't understand. And a debt that we will probably never be able to repay.

A typical mathematician does not actively try to be useful. Individual mathematicians are motivated primarily by a subtle mixture of ambition and intellectual curiosity, and not by a wish to benefit society, nevertheless, mathematics as a whole does benefit society.

I hated science in high school. Technology? Engineering? Math? Why would I ever need this? Little did I realize that music was also about science, technology, engineering and mathematics, all rolled into one.

Logic issues in tautologies, mathematics in identities, philosophy in definitions; all trivial, but all part of the vital work of clarifying and organising our thought.

There is no place for [the Bantu] in the European community above the level of certain forms of labour ... What is the use of teaching the Bantu child mathematics when it cannot use it in practice? That is quite absurd. Education must train people in accordance with their opportunities in life, according to the sphere in which they live.

Consequently he who wishes to attain to human perfection, must therefore first study Logic, next the various branches of Mathematics in their proper order, then Physics, and lastly Metaphysics.

Mathematics has beauty and romance. It's not a boring place to be, the mathematical world. It's an extraordinary place; it's worth spending time there.

Mathematics seems to endow one with something like a new sense.

We could use up two Eternities in learning all that is to be learned about our own world and the thousands of nations that have arisen and flourished and vanished from it. Mathematics alone would occupy me eight million years.

In Mathematics it is always best to cheat.

Like musicians who can read and write complicated scores in a world without sounds, for us mathematics is a source of delight, excitement, and even controversy which are hard to share with non mathematicians. In our small micro-cosmos we should ever seek the right balance between competition and solidarity, criticism and empathy, exclusion and inclusion.