Abel, Niels H. (1802 - 1829)
If you disregard the very simplest cases, there is in all of mathematics not a single
infinite series whose sum has been rigorously determined. In other words,the most
important parts of mathematics stand without a foundation.
In G. F. Simmons, Calculus Gems, New York: Mcgraw Hill, Inc., 1992, p. 188.
Abel, Niels H. (1802 - 1829)
[A reply to a question about how he got his expertise:]
By studying the masters and not their pupils.
Abel, Niels H. (1802 - 1829)
[About Gauss' mathematical writing style]
He is like the fox, who effaces his tracks in the sand with his tail.
In G. F. Simmons, Calculus Gems, New York: Mcgraw Hill, Inc., 1992, p. 177.
Adams, Douglas (1952 - 2001)
Bistromathics itself is simply a revolutionary new way of understanding the behavior
of numbers. Just as Einstein observed that space was not an absolute but depended on the
observer's movement in space, and that time was not an absolute, but depended on the
observer's movement in time, so it is now realized that numbers are not absolute, but
depend on the observer's movement in restaurants.
Life, the Universe and Everything. New York: Harmony Books, 1982.
Adams, Douglas (1952 - 2001)
The first nonabsolute number is the number of people for whom the table is reserved.
This will vary during the course of the first three telephone calls to the restaurant, and
then bear no apparent relation to the number of people who actually turn up, or to the
number of people who subsequently join them after the show/match/party/gig, or to the
number of people who leave when they see who else has turned up.
The second nonabsolute number is the given time of arrival, which is now known to be one
of the most bizarre of mathematical concepts, a recipriversexcluson, a number whose
existence can only be defined as being anything other than itself. In other words, the
given time of arrival is the one moment of time at which it is impossible that any member
of the party will arrive. Recipriversexclusons now play a vital part in many branches of
math, including statistics and accountancy and also form the basic equations used to
engineer the Somebody Else's Problem field.
The third and most mysterious piece of nonabsoluteness of all lies in the relationship
between the number of items on the bill, the cost of each item, the number of people at
the table and what they are each prepared to pay for. (The number of people who have
actually brought any money is only a subphenomenon of this field.)
Life, the Universe and Everything. New York: Harmony Books, 1982.
Adams, Douglas (1952 - 2001)
Numbers written on restaurant bills within the confines of restaurants do not follow
the same mathematical laws as numbers written on any other pieces of paper in any other
parts of the Universe.
This single statement took the scientific world by storm. It completely revolutionized it.
So many mathematical conferences got held in such good restaurants that many of the finest
minds of a generation died of obesity and heart failure and the science of math was put
back by years.
Life, the Universe and Everything. New York: Harmony Books, 1982.
Adams, John (1735 - 1826)
I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and
philosophy. My sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history,
naval architecture, navigation, commerce and agriculture in order to give their children a
right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry, and porcelain.
Letter to Abigail Adams, May 12, 1780.
Adler, Alfred
Each generation has its few great mathematicians, and mathematics would not even
notice the absence of the others. They are useful as teachers, and their research harms no
one, but it is of no importance at all. A mathematician is great or he is nothing.
"Mathematics and Creativity." The New Yorker Magazine, February 19, 1972.
Adler, Alfred
The mathematical life of a mathematician is short. Work rarely improves after the age
of twenty-five or thirty. If little has been accomplished by then, little will ever be
accomplished.
"Mathematics and Creativity." The New Yorker Magazine, February 19, 1972.
Adler, Alfred
In the company of friends, writers can discuss their books, economists the state of
the economy, lawyers their latest cases, and businessmen their latest acquisitions, but
mathematicians cannot discuss their mathematics at all. And the more profound their work,
the less understandable it is.
Reflections: mathematics and creativity, New Yorker, 47(1972), no. 53, 39 -
45.
Aiken, Conrad
[At a musical concert:]
...the music's pure algebra of enchantment.
Allen, Woody
Standard mathematics has recently been rendered obsolete by the discovery that for
years we have been writing the numeral five backward. This has led to reevaluation of
counting as a method of getting from one to ten. Students are taught advanced concepts of
Boolean algebra, and formerly unsolvable equations are dealt with by threats of reprisals.
In Howard Eves' Return to Mathematical Circles, Boston: Prindle, Weber, and
Schmidt, 1988.
Anglin, W.S.
Mathematics is not a careful march down a well-cleared highway, but a journey into a
strange wilderness, where the explorers often get lost. Rigour should be a signal to the
historian that the maps have been made, and the real explorers have gone elsewhere.
"Mathematics and History", Mathematical Intelligencer, v. 4, no. 4.
Anonymous
If thou art able, O stranger, to find out all these things and gather them together in
your mind, giving all the relations, thou shalt depart crowned with glory and knowing that
thou hast been adjudged perfect in this species of wisdom.
In Ivor Thomas "Greek Mathematics" in J. R. Newman (ed.) The World of
Mathematics, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1956.
Anonymous
Defendit numerus: There is safety in numbers.
In J. R. Newman (ed.) The World of Mathematics, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1956,
p. 1452.
Anonymous
Like the crest of a peacock so is mathematics at the head of all knowledge.
[An old Indian saying. Also, "Like the Crest of a Peacock" is the title
of a book by G.G. Joseph]
Anonymous
Referee's report: This paper contains much that is new and much that is true.
Unfortunately, that which is true is not new and that which is new is not true.
In H.Eves Return to Mathematical Circles, Boston: Prindle, Weber, and Schmidt,
1988.
Arbuthnot, John
The Reader may here observe the Force of Numbers, which can be successfully applied,
even to those things, which one would imagine are subject to no Rules. There are very few
things which we know, which are not capable of being reduc'd to a Mathematical Reasoning;
and when they cannot it's a sign our knowledge of them is very small and confus'd; and
when a Mathematical Reasoning can be had it's as great a folly to make use of any other,
as to grope for a thing in the dark, when you have a Candle standing by you.
Of the Laws of Chance. (1692)
Aristophanes (ca 444 - 380 BC)
Meton: With the straight ruler I set to work
To make the circle four-cornered
[First(?) allusion to the problem of squaring the circle]
Aristotle (ca 330 BC)
Now that practical skills have developed enough to provide adequately for material
needs, one of these sciences which are not devoted to utilitarian ends [mathematics] has
been able to arise in Egypt, the priestly caste there having the leisure necessary for
disinterested research.
Metaphysica, 1-981b
Aristotle (ca 330 BC)
The whole is more than the sum of its parts.
Metaphysica 10f-1045a
Aristotle
The so-called Pythagoreans, who were the first to take up mathematics, not only
advanced this subject, but saturated with it, they fancied that the principles of
mathematics were the principles of all things.
Metaphysica 1-5
Aristotle
It is not once nor twice but times without number that the same ideas make their
appearance in the world.
"On The Heavens", in T. L. Heath Manual of Greek Mathematics, Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1931.
Aristotle
To Thales the primary question was not what do we know, but how do we know it.
Mathematical Intelligencer v. 6, no. 3, 1984.
Aristotle
The mathematical sciences particularly exhibit order, symmetry, and limitation; and
these are the greatest forms of the beautiful.
Metaphysica, 3-1078b.
Ascham, Roger (1515-1568)
Mark all mathematical heads which be wholly and only bent on these sciences, how
solitary they be themselves, how unfit to live with others, how unapt to serve the world.
In E G R Taylor, Mathematical Practitioners of Tudor and Stuart England, Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1954.
Aubrey, John (1626-1697)
[About Thomas Hobbes:]
He was 40 years old before he looked on geometry; which happened accidentally. Being in a
gentleman's library, Euclid's Elements lay open, and "twas the 47 El. libri I"
[Pythagoras' Theorem]. He read the proposition "By God", sayd he, "this is
impossible:" So he reads the demonstration of it, which referred him back to such a
proposition; which proposition he read. That referred him back to another, which he also
read. Et sic deinceps, that at last he was demonstratively convinced of that
trueth. This made him in love with geometry.
In O. L. Dick (ed.) Brief Lives, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1960, p. 604.
Auden, W. H. (1907-1973)
How happy 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.
The Dyer's Hand, London: Faber & Faber, 1948.
Auden, W. H. (1907-1973)
Thou shalt not answer questionnaires
Or quizzes upon world affairs,
Nor with compliance
Take any test. Thou shalt not sit
with statisticians nor commit
A social science.
"Under which lyre" in Collected Poems of W H Auden, London: Faber and
Faber.
Augarten, Stan
Computers are composed of nothing more than logic gates stretched out to the horizon
in a vast numerical irrigation system.
State of the Art: A Photographic History of the Integrated Circuit. New York:
Ticknor and Fields.
St. Augustine (354-430)
Six is a number perfect in itself, and not because God created the world in six days;
rather the contrary is true. God created the world in six days because this number is
perfect, and it would remain perfect, even if the work of the six days did not exist.
The City of God.
St. Augustine (354-430)
The good Christian should beware of mathematicians, and all those who make empty
prophecies. The danger already exists that the mathematicians have made a covenant with
the devil to darken the spirit and to confine man in the bonds of Hell.
DeGenesi ad Litteram, Book II, xviii, 37 [Note: mathematician = astrologer]
St. Augustine (354-430)
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?
De Magistro ch X, 23.
Babbage, Charles (1792-1871)
Errors using inadequate data are much less than those using no data at all.
Babbage, Charles (1792-1871)
On two occasions I have been asked [by members of Parliament], 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if
you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able
rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question.
Babbage, Charles (1792-1871)
I wish to God these calculations had been executed by steam.
In H. Eves In Mathematical Circles,, Boston: Prindle, Weber and Schmidt, 1969.
Bacon, Sir Francis (1561-1626)
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.
Advancement of Learning book 2; De Augmentis book 3.
Bacon, Roger
For the things of this world cannot be made known without a knowledge of mathematics.
Opus Majus part 4 Distinctia Prima cap 1, 1267.
Bacon, Roger
In the mathematics I can report no deficience, except that it be that men do not
sufficiently understand the excellent use of the pure mathematics, in that they do remedy
and cure many defects in the wit and faculties intellectual. For if the wit be too dull,
they sharpen it; if too wandering, they fix it; if too inherent in the sense, they
abstract it. So that as tennis is a game of no use in itself, but of great use in respect
it maketh a quick eye and a body ready to put itself into all postures; so in the
mathematics, that use which is collateral and intervenient is no less worthy than that
which is principal and intended.
John Fauvel and Jeremy Gray (eds.) A History of Mathematics: A Reader, Sheridan
House, 1987.
Baker, H. F.
[On the concept of group:]
... what a wealth, what a grandeur of thought may spring from what slightbeginnings.
Florian Cajori, A History of Mathematics, New York, 1919, p 283.
Bagehot, Walter
Life is a school of probability.
Quoted in J. R. Newman (ed.) The World of Mathematics, Simon and Schuster, New
York,1956, p. 1360.
Balzac, Honore de (1799 - 1850)
Numbers are intellectual witnesses that belong only to mankind.
Banville, John
Throughout the 1960s and 1970s devoted Beckett readers greeted each successively
shorter volume from the master with a mixture of awe and apprehensiveness; it was like
watching a great mathematician wielding an infinitesimal calculus, his equations
approaching nearer and still nearer to the null point.
Quoted in a review of Samuel Beckett's Nohow On: I11 Seen I11 Said, Worstward Ho,
in The New York Review of Books, August 13, 1992.
Bell, Eric Temple (1883-1960)
Euclid taught me that without assumptions there is no proof. Therefore, in any
argument, examine the assumptions.
In H. Eves Return to Mathematical Circles., Boston: Prindle, Weber and Schmidt,
1988.
Bell, Eric Temple (1883-1960)
Wherever groups disclosed themselves, or could be introduced, simplicity crystallized
out of comparative chaos.
Mathematics, Queen and Servant of Science, New York, 1951, p 164.
Bell, Eric Temple (1883-1960)
It is the perennial youthfulness of mathematics itself which marks it off with a
disconcerting immortality from the other sciences.
Bell, Eric Temple (1883-1960)
The Handmaiden of the Sciences.
[Book by that title.]
Bell, Eric Temple (1883-1960)
Abstractness, sometimes hurled as a reproach at mathematics, is its chief glory and
its surest title to practical usefulness. It is also the source of such beauty as may
spring from mathematics.
Bell, Eric Temple (1883-1960)
Guided only by their feeling for symmetry, simplicity, and generality, and an
indefinable sense of the fitness of things, creative mathematicians now, as in the past,
are inspired by the art of mathematics rather than by any prospect of ultimate usefulness.
Bell, Eric Temple (1883-1960)
"Obvious" is the most dangerous word in mathematics.
Bell, Eric Temple (1883-1960)
The pursuit of pretty formulas and neat theorems can no doubt quickly degenerate into
a silly vice, but so can the quest for austere generalities which are so very general
indeed that they are incapable of application to any particular.
In H. Eves Mathematical Circles Squared, Boston: Prindle, Weber and Schmidt, 1972.
Bell, Eric Temple (1883-1960)
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.
In J. R. Newman (ed.) The World of Mathematics, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1956,
p. 308.
Bell, Eric Temple (1883-1960)
The longer mathematics lives the more abstract -- and therefore, possibly also the
more practical -- it becomes.
In The Mathematical Intelligencer, vol. 13, no. 1, Winter 1991.
Bell, Eric Temple (1883-1960)
The cowboys have a way of trussing up a steer or a pugnacious bronco which fixes the
brute so that it can neither move nor think. This is the hog-tie, and it is what Euclid
did to geometry.
In R Crayshaw-Williams The Search For Truth, p. 191.
Bell, Eric Temple (1883-1960)
If "Number rules the universe" as Pythagoras asserted, Number is merely our
delegate to the throne, for we rule Number.
In H. Eves Mathematical Circles Revisited, Boston: Prindle, Weber and Schmidt,
1971.
Bell, Eric Temple (1883-1960)
I have always hated machinery, and the only machine I ever understood was a
wheelbarrow, and that but imperfectly.
In H. Eves Mathematical Circles Adieu, Boston: Prindle, Weber and Schmidt, 1977.
Belloc, Hillaire (1870-1953)
Statistics are the triumph of the quantitative method, and the quantitative method is
the victory of sterility and death.
The Silence of the Sea
Bentham, Jeremy (1748-1832)
O Logic: born gatekeeper to the Temple of Science, victim of capricious destiny:
doomed hitherto to be the drudge of pedants: come to the aid of thy master, Legislation.
In J. Browning (ed.) Works.
Bernoulli, Daniel
...it would be better for the true physics if there were no mathematicians on earth.
In The Mathematical Intelligencer, v. 13, no. 1, Winter 1991.
Bernoulli, Jacques (Jakob?) (1654-1705)
I recognize the lion by his paw.
[After reading an anonymous solution to a problem that he realized was Newton's solution.]
In G. Simmons, Calculus Gems, New York: McGraw Hill, 1992, p. 136.
Bernoulli, Johann
But just as much as it is easy to find the differential of a given quantity, so it is
difficult to find the integral of a given differential. Moreover, sometimes we cannot say
with certainty whether the integral of a given quantity can be found or not.
Besicovitch, A.S.
A mathematician's reputation rests on the number of bad proofs he has given.
In J. E. Littlewood A Mathematician's Miscellany, Methuen & Co. Ltd., 1953.
Blake
God forbid that Truth should be confined to Mathematical Demonstration!
Notes on Reynold's Discourses, c. 1808.
Blake
What is now proved was once only imagin'd.
The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, 1790-3.
Bohr, Niels Henrik David (1885-1962)
An expert is a man who has made all the mistakes, which can be made, in a very narrow
field.
The Bible
I returned and saw under the sun that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to
the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet
favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all.
Ecclesiastes.
Bolyai, J�os (1802 - 1860)
Out of nothing I have created a strange new universe.
[A reference to the creation of a non-euclidean geometry.]
Bolyai, Wolfgang (1775-1856)
[To son J�os:]
For God's sake, please give it up. Fear it no less than the sensual passion, because it,
too, may take up all your time and deprive you of your health, peace of mind and happiness
in life.
[Bolyai's father urging him to give up work on non-Euclidian geometry.]
In P. Davis and R. Hersh The Mathematical Experience , Boston: Houghton Mifflin
Co., 1981, p. 220.
Bourbaki
Structures are the weapons of the mathematician.
Bridgman, P. W.
It is the merest truism, evident at once to unsophisticated observation, that
mathematics is a human invention.
The Logic of Modern Physics, New York, 1972.
Brown, George Spencer (1923 - )
To arrive at the simplest truth, as Newton knew and practiced, requires years of
contemplation. Not activity Not reasoning. Not calculating. Not busy behaviour of any
kind. Not reading. Not talking. Not making an effort. Not thinking. Simply bearing in mind
what it is one needs to know. And yet those with the courage to tread this path to real
discovery are not only offered practically no guidance on how to do so, they are actively
discouraged and have to set abut it in secret, pretending meanwhile to be diligently
engaged in the frantic diversions and to conform with the deadening personal opinions
which are continually being thrust upon them.
The Laws of Form. 1969.
Browne, Sir Thomas (1605-1682)
God is like a skilful Geometrician.
Religio Medici I, 16.
Browne, Sir Thomas (1605-1682)
All things began in Order, so shall they end, and so shall they begin again, according
to the Ordainer of Order, and the mystical mathematicks of the City of Heaven.
Hydriotaphia, Urn-burial and the Garden of Cyrus, 1896.
Browne, Sir Thomas (1605-1682)
...indeed what reason may not go to Schoole to the wisdome of Bees, Aunts, and
Spiders? what wise hand teacheth them to doe what reason cannot teach us? ruder heads
stand amazed at those prodigious pieces of nature, Whales, Elephants, Dromidaries and
Camels; these I confesse, are the Colossus and Majestick pieces of her hand; but in these
narrow Engines there is more curious Mathematicks, and the civilitie of these little
Citizens more neatly sets forth the wisedome of their Maker.
In J. R. Newman (ed.) The World of Mathematics, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1956,
p. 1001.
Buck, Pearl S. (1892 - 1973)
No one really understood music unless he was a scientist, her father had declared, and
not just a scientist, either, oh, no, only the real ones, the theoreticians, whose
language mathematics. She had not understood mathematics until he had explained to her
that it was the symbolic language of relationships. "And relationships," he had
told her, "contained the essential meaning of life."
The Goddess Abides, Pt. I, 1972.
Burke, Edmund
The age of chivalry is gone. That of sophisters, economists and calculators has
succeeded.
Reflections on the Revolution in France.
Butler, Bishop
To us probability is the very guide of life.
Preface to Analogy.
Butler, Samuel (1612 - 1680)
... There can be no doubt about faith and not reason being the ultima ratio. Even
Euclid, who has laid himself as little open to the charge of credulity as any writer who
ever lived, cannot get beyond this. He has no demonstrable first premise. He requires
postulates and axioms which transcend demonstration, and without which he can do nothing.
His superstructure indeed is demonstration, but his ground his faith. Nor again can he get
further than telling a man he is a fool if he persists in differing from him. He says
"which is absurd," and declines to discuss the matter further. Faith and
authority, therefore, prove to be as necessary for him as for anyone else.
The Way of All Flesh.
Byron
When Newton saw an apple fall, he found ...
A mode of proving that the earth turnd round
In a most natural whirl, called gravitation;
And thus is the sole mortal who could grapple
Since Adam, with a fall or with an apple.
Caballero, James
I advise my students to listen carefully the moment they decide to take no more
mathematics courses. They might be able to hear the sound of closing doors.
Everybody a mathematician?,CAIP Quarterly 2 (Fall, 1989).
Cardano, Girolamo (1501 - 1576)
To throw in a fair game at Hazards only three-spots, when something great is at stake,
or some business is the hazard, is a natural occurrence and deserves to be so deemed; and
even when they come up the same way for a second time if the throw be repeated. If the
third and fourth plays are the same, surely there is occasion for suspicion on the part of
a prudent man.
De Vita Propria Liber.
Carlyle, Thomas (1795 - 1881)
It is a mathematical fact that the casting of this pebble from my hand alters the
centre of gravity of the universe.
Sartor Resartus III.
Carlyle, Thomas (1795-1881)
Teaching school is but another word for sure and not very slow destruction.
In H. Eves In Mathematical Circles, Boston: Prindle, Weber and Schmidt, 1969.
Carlyle, Thomas (1795-1881)
A witty statesman said, you might prove anything by figures.
Chartism.
Carroll, Lewis
What I tell you three times is true.
The Hunting of the Snark.
Carroll, Lewis
The different branches of Arithmetic -- Ambition, Distraction, Uglification, and
Derision.
Alice in Wonderland.
Carroll, Lewis
"Can you do addition?" the White Queen asked. "What's one and one and
one and one and one and one and one and one and one and one?" "I don't
know," said Alice. "I lost count."
Through the Looking Glass.
Carroll, Lewis
"Alice laughed: "There's no use trying," she said; "one can't
believe impossible things."
"I daresay you haven't had much practice," said the Queen. "When I was
younger, I always did it for half an hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as
six impossible things before breakfast."
Alice in Wonderland.
Carroll, Lewis
"Then you should say what you mean," the March Hare went on.
"I do, " Alice hastily replied; "at least I mean what I say, that's the
same thing, you know."
"Not the same thing a bit!" said the Hatter. "Why, you might just as well
say that "I see what I eat" is the same thing as "I eat what I see!"
Alice in Wonderland.
Carroll, Lewis
"It's very good jam," said the Queen.
"Well, I don't want any to-day, at any rate."
"You couldn't have it if you did want it," the Queen said. "The rule is jam
tomorrow and jam yesterday but never jam to-day."
"It must come sometimes to "jam to-day,""Alice objected.
"No it can't," said the Queen. "It's jam every other day; to-day isn't any
other day, you know."
"I don't understand you," said Alice. "It's dreadfully confusing."
Through the Looking Glass.
Carroll, Lewis
"When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said, in a rather scornful tone, "it
means just what I choose it to mean - neither more nor less."
"The question is," said Alice, "whether you can make words mean so many
different things."
"The question is," said Humpty Dumpty, "which is to be master - that's
all."
Through the Looking Glass.
C�ine, Louis-Ferdinand (1894 - 1961)
Entre le p�is et les math�atiques... il n'existe rien. Rien! C'est le vide.
Voyage au bout de la nuit. Paris: Gallimard.
Carmichael, R. D.
A thing is obvious mathematically after you see it.
In N. Rose (ed.) Mathematical Maxims and Minims, Raleigh NC: Rome Press Inc., 1988.
Cauchy, Augustin-Louis (1789 - 1857)
Men pass away, but their deeds abide.
[His last words (?)]
In H. Eves Mathematical Circles Revisted, Boston: Prindle, Weber and Schmidt, 1971.
Cayley, Arthur
As for everything else, so for a mathematical theory: beauty can be perceived but not
explained.
In J. R. Newman (ed.) The World of Mathematics, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1956.
Cayley, Arthur
Projective geometry is all geometry.
In J. R. Newman (ed.) The World of Mathematics, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1956.
C�anne, Paul (1839 - 1906)
...treat Nature by the sphere, the cylinder and the cone...
Chebyshev
To isolate mathematics from the practical demands of the sciences is to invite the
sterility of a cow shut away from the bulls.
In G. Simmons, Calculus Gems, New York: Mcgraw Hill, Inc., 1992, page 198.
Chekov, Anton (1860 - 1904)
There is no national science just as there is no national multiplication table; what
is national is no longer science.
In V. P. Ponomarev Mysli o nauke Kishinev, 1973.
Chesterton, G. K. (1874 - 1936)
Poets do not go mad; but chess-players do. Mathematicians go mad, and cashiers; but
creative artists very seldom. I am not, as will be seen, in any sense attacking logic: I
only say that this danger does lie in logic, not in imagination.
Orthodoxy ch. 2.
Chesterton, G. K. (1874 - 1936)
You can only find truth with logic if you have already found truth without it.
The Man who was Orthodox. 1963.
Chesterton, G. K. (1874 - 1936)
It isn't that they can't see the solution. It is that they can't see the problem.
The Point of a Pin in The Scandal of Father Brown.
Christie, Agatha
"I think you're begging the question," said Haydock, "and I can see
looming ahead one of those terrible exercises in probability where six men have white hats
and six men have black hats and you have to work it out by mathematics how likely it is
that the hats will get mixed up and in what proportion. If you start thinking about things
like that, you would go round the bend. Let me assure you of that!"
The Mirror Crack'd. Toronto: Bantam Books, 1962.
Christie, Agatha
I continued to do arithmetic with my father, passing proudly through fractions to
decimals. I eventually arrived at the point where so many cows ate so much grass, and
tanks filled with water in so many hours I found it quite enthralling.
An Autobiography.
Churchill, [Sir] Winston Spencer (1874-1965)
It is a good thing from an uneducated man to read books of quotations.
Roving Commission in My Early Life. 1930.
Churchill, Sir Winston Spencer (1874-1965)
I had a feeling once about Mathematics - that I saw it all. Depth beyond depth was
revealed to me - the Byss and Abyss. I saw - as one might see the transit of Venus or even
the Lord Mayor's Show - a quantity passing through infinity and changing its sign from
plus to minus. I saw exactly why it happened and why the tergiversation was inevitable but
it was after dinner and I let it go.
In H. Eves Return to Mathematical Circles, Boston: Prindle, Weber and Schmidt,
1988.
Churchman, C. W.
The measure of our intellectual capacity is the capacity to feel less and less
satisfied with our answers to better and better problems.
In J.E. Littlewood A Mathematician's Miscellany. Methuen and Co., Ltd. 1953.
Cocteau
The composer opens the cage door for arithmetic, the draftsman gives geometry its
freedom.
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor (1772-1834)
...from the time of Kepler to that of Newton, and from Newton to Hartley, not only all
things in external nature, but the subtlest mysteries of life and organization, and even
of the intellect and moral being, were conjured within the magic circle of mathematical
formulae.
The Theory of Life.
Comte, Auguste (1798-1857)
C'este donc par l'�ude des math�atiques, et seulement par elle, que l'on
peut se faire une id� juste et approfondie de ce que c'est qu'une science.
Quoted by T. H. Huxley in Fortnightly Review, Vol. II, N.S. 5.
Conrad, Joseph
Don't talk to me of your Archimedes' lever. He was an absentminded person with a
mathematical imagination. Mathematics commands all my respect, but I have no use for
engines. Give me the right word and the right accent and I will move the world.
Preface to A Personal Record.
Coolidge, Julian Lowell (1873 - 1954)
[Upon proving that the best betting strategy for "Gambler's Ruin" was to bet
all on the first trial.]
It is true that a man who does this is a fool. I have only proved that a man who does
anything else is an even bigger fool.
In H. Eves Return to Mathematical Circles, Boston: Prindle, Weber and Schmidt,
1988.
Copernicus, Nicholaus (1473-1543)
Mathematics is written for mathematicians.
De Revolutionibus.
Crick, Francis Harry Compton (1916 - )
In my experience most mathematicians are intellectually lazy and especially dislike
reading experimental papers. He (Ren�Thom) seemed to have very strong biological
intuitions but unfortunately of negative sign.
What Mad Pursuit. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1988.
Crowe, Michael
Revolutions never occur in mathematics.
Historia Mathematica. 1975.
D'Alembert, Jean Le Rond (1717-1783)
Just go on..and faith will soon return.
[To a friend hesitant with respect to infinitesimals.]
In P. J. Davis and R. Hersh The Mathematical Experience, Boston: Birkh�ser, 1981.
D'Alembert, Jean Le Rond (1717-17830
Thus metaphysics and mathematics are, among all the sciences that belong to reason,
those in which imagination has the greatest role. I beg pardon of those delicate spirits
who are detractors of mathematics for saying this .... The imagination in a mathematician
who creates makes no less difference than in a poet who invents.... Of all the great men
of antiquity, Archimedes may be the one who most deserves to be placed beside Homer.
Discours Preliminaire de L'Encyclopedie, Tome 1, 1967. pp 47 - 48.
Dantzig
The mathematician may be compared to a designer of garments, who is utterly oblivious
of the creatures whom his garments may fit. To be sure, his art originated in the
necessity for clothing such creatures, but this was long ago; to this day a shape will
occasionally appear which will fit into the garment as if the garment had been made for
it. Then there is no end of surprise and delight.
Dantzig
Neither in the subjective nor in the objective world can we find a criterion for the
reality of the number concept, because the first contains no such concept, and the second
contains nothing that is free from the concept. How then can we arrive at a criterion? Not
by evidence, for the dice of evidence are loaded. Not by logic, for logic has no existence
independent of mathematics: it is only one phase of this multiplied necessity that we call
mathematics.
How then shall mathematical concepts be judged? They shall not be judged. Mathematics is
the supreme arbiter. From its decisions there is no appeal. We cannot change the rules of
the game, we cannot ascertain whether the game is fair. We can only study the player at
his game; not, however, with the detached attitude of a bystander, for we are watching our
own minds at play.
Darwin, Charles
Every new body of discovery is mathematical in form, because there is no other
guidance we can have.
In N. Rose (ed.) Mathematical Maxims and Minims, Raleigh NC: Rome Press Inc., 1988.
Darwin, Charles
Mathematics seems to endow one with something like a new sense.
In N. Rose (ed.) Mathematical Maxims and Minims, Raleigh NC: Rome Press Inc., 1988.
Davis, Philip J.
The numbers are a catalyst that can help turn raving madmen into polite humans.
In N. Rose (ed.) Mathematical Maxims and Minims, Raleigh NC: Rome Press Inc., 1988.
Davis, Philip J.
One of the endlessly alluring aspects of mathematics is that its thorniest paradoxes
have a way of blooming into beautiful theories.
Number, Scientific American, 211, (Sept. 1964), 51 - 59.
Davis, Philip J. and Hersh, Reuben
One began to hear it said that World War I was the chemists' war, World War II was the
physicists' war, World War III (may it never come) will be the mathematicians' war.
The Mathematical Experience, Boston: Birkh�ser, 1981.
Dehn, Max
Mathematics is the only instructional material that can be presented in an entirely
undogmatic way.
In The Mathematical Intelligencer, v. 5, no. 2, 1983.
De Morgan, Augustus (1806-1871)
[When asked about his age.] I was x years old in the year x^2.
In H. Eves In Mathematical Circles, Boston: Prindle, Weber and Schmidt, 1969.
De Morgan, Augustus (1806-1871)
It is easier to square the circle than to get round a mathematician.
In H. Eves In Mathematical Circles, Boston: Prindle, Weber and Schmidt, 1969.
De Morgan, Augustus (1806-1871)
Every science that has thriven has thriven upon its own symbols: logic, the only
science which is admitted to have made no improvements in century after century, is the
only one which has grown no symbols.
Transactions Cambridge Philosophical Society, vol. X, 1864, p. 184.
Descartes, Ren�(1596-1650)
Of all things, good sense is the most fairly distributed: everyone thinks he is so
well supplied with it that even those who are the hardest to satisfy in every other
respect never desire more of it than they already have.
Discours de la M�hode. 1637.
Descartes, Ren�(1596-1650)
Each problem that I solved became a rule which served afterwards to solve other
problems.
Discours de la M�hode. 1637.
Descartes, Ren�(1596-1650)
If I found any new truths in the sciences, I can say that they follow from, or depend
on, five or six principal problems which I succeeded in solving and which I regard as so
many battles where the fortunes of war were on my side.
Discours de la M�hode. 1637.
Descartes, Ren�(1596-1650)
I concluded that I might take as a general rule the principle that all things which we
very clearly and obviously conceive are true: only observing, however, that there is some
difficulty in rightly determining the objects which we distinctly conceive.
Discours de la M�hode. 1637.
Descartes, Ren�(1596-1650)
I thought the following four [rules] would be enough, provided that I made a firm and
constant resolution not to fail even once in the observance of them. The first was never
to accept anything as true if I had not evident knowledge of its being so; that is,
carefully to avoid precipitancy and prejudice, and to embrace in my judgment only what
presented itself to my mind so clearly and distinctly that I had no occasion to doubt it.
The second, to divide each problem I examined into as many parts as was feasible, and as
was requisite for its better solution. The third, to direct my thoughts in an orderly way;
beginning with the simplest objects, those most apt to be known, and ascending little by
little, in steps as it were, to the knowledge of the most complex; and establishing an
order in thought even when the objects had no natural priority one to another. And the
last, to make throughout such complete enumerations and such general surveys that I might
be sure of leaving nothing out.
Discours de la M�hode. 1637.
Descartes, Ren�(1596-1650)
These long chains of perfectly simple and easy reasonings by means of which geometers
are accustomed to carry out their most difficult demonstrations had led me to fancy that
everything that can fall under human knowledge forms a similar sequence; and that so long
as we avoid accepting as true what is not so, and always preserve the right order of
deduction of one thing from another, there can be nothing too remote to be reached in the
end, or to well hidden to be discovered.
Discours de la M�hode. 1637.
Descartes, Ren�(1596-1650)
When writing about transcendental issues, be transcendentally clear.
In G. Simmons Calculus Gems. New York: McGraw Hill Inc., 1992.
Descartes, Ren�(1596-1650)
If we possessed a thorough knowledge of all the parts of the seed of any animal (e.g.
man), we could from that alone, be reasons entirely mathematical and certain, deduce the
whole conformation and figure of each of its members, and, conversely if we knew several
peculiarities of this conformation, we would from those deduce the nature of its seed.
Descartes, Ren�(1596-1650)
Cogito Ergo Sum. "I think, therefore I am."
Discours de la M�hode. 1637.
Descartes, Ren�(1596-1650)
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.
La Geometrie.
Descartes, Ren�(1596-1650)
Perfect numbers like perfect men are very rare.
In H. Eves Mathematical Circles Squared, Boston: Prindle, Weber and Schmidt, 1972.
Descartes, Ren�(1596-1650)
omnia apud me mathematica fiunt.
With me everything turns into mathematics.
Descartes, Ren�(1596-1650)
It is not enough to have a good mind. The main thing is to use it well.
Discours de la M�hode. 1637.
Descartes, Ren�(1596-1650)
If you would be a real seeker after truth, you must at least once in your life doubt,
as far as possible, all things.
Discours de la M�hode. 1637.
De Sua, F. (1956)
Suppose we loosely define a religion as any discipline whose foundations rest on an
element of faith, irrespective of any element of reason which may be present. Quantum
mechanics for example would be a religion under this definition. But mathematics would
hold the unique position of being the only branch of theology possessing a rigorous
demonstration of the fact that it should be so classified.
In H. Eves In Mathematical Circles, Boston: Prindle, Weber and Schmidt, 1969.
Diophantus
[His epitaph.]
This tomb hold Diophantus Ah, what a marvel! And the tomb tells scientifically the measure
of his life. God vouchsafed that he should be a boy for the sixth part of his life; when a
twelfth was added, his cheeks acquired a beard; He kindled for him the light of marriage
after a seventh, and in the fifth year after his marriage He granted him a son. Alas!
late-begotten and miserable child, when he had reached the measure of half his father's
life, the chill grave took him. After consoling his grief by this science of numbers for
four years, he reached the end of his life.
In Ivor Thomas Greek Mathematics, in J. R. Newman (ed.) The World of Mathematics,
New York: Simon and Schuster, 1956.
Dirac, Paul Adrien Maurice (1902- )
I think that there is a moral to this story, namely that it is more important to have
beauty in one's equations that to have them fit experiment. If Schroedinger had been more
confident of his work, he could have published it some months earlier, and he could have
published a more accurate equation. It seems that if one is working from the point of view
of getting beauty in one's equations, and if one has really a sound insight, one is on a
sure line of progress. If there is not complete agreement between the results of one's
work and experiment, one should not allow oneself to be too discouraged, because the
discrepancy may well be due to minor features that are not properly taken into account and
that will get cleared up with further development of the theory.
Scientific American, May 1963.
Dirac, Paul Adrien Maurice (1902- )
Mathematics is the tool specially suited for dealing with abstract concepts of any
kind and there is no limit to its power in this field.
In P. J. Davis and R. Hersh The Mathematical Experience, Boston: Birkh�ser, 1981.
Dirac, Paul Adrien Maurice (1902- )
In science one tries to tell people, in such a way as to be understood by everyone,
something that no one ever knew before. But in poetry, it's the exact opposite.
In H. Eves Mathematical Circles Adieu, Boston: Prindle, Weber and Schmidt, 1977.
Disraeli, Benjamin
There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.
Mark Twain. Autobiography.
Donatus, Aelius (4th Century)
Pereant qui ante nos nostra dixerunt.
"To the devil with those who published before us."
[Quoted by St. Jerome, his pupil]
Doyle, Sir Arthur Conan (1859-1930)
Detection is, or ought to be, an exact sciences and should be treated in the same cold
and unemotional manner. You have attempted to tinge it with romanticism, which produces
much the same effect as if you worked a love story or an elopement into the fifth
proposition of Euclid.
The Sign of Four.
Doyle, Sir Arthur Conan (1859-1930)
When you have eliminated the impossible, what ever remains, however improbable must be
the truth.
The Sign of Four.
Doyle, Sir Arthur Conan (1859-1930)
From a drop of water a logician could predict an Atlantic or a Niagara.
A study in Scarlet 1929.
Doyle, Sir Arthur Conan (1859-1930)
It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data.
Scandal in Bohemia.
Dryden, John (1631-1700)
Mere poets are sottish as mere drunkards are, who live in a continual mist, without
seeing or judging anything clearly. A man should be learned in several sciences, and
should have a reasonable, philosophical and in some measure a mathematical head, to be a
complete and excellent poet.
Notes and Observations on The Empress of Morocco. 1674.
Dubos, Ren�J.
Gauss replied, when asked how soon he expected to reach certain mathematical
conclusions, that he had them long ago, all he was worrying about was how to reach them!
In Mechanisms of Discovery in I. S. Gordon and S. Sorkin (eds.) The Armchair
Science Reader, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1959.
Dunsany, Lord
Logic, like whiskey, loses its beneficial effect when taken in too large quantities.
In J. R. Newman (ed.) The World of Mathematics, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1956.
Drer, Albrecht (1471-1528)
But when great and ingenious artists behold their so inept performances, not
undeservedly do they ridicule the blindness of such men; since sane judgment abhors
nothing so much as a picture perpetrated with no technical knowledge, although with plenty
of care and diligence. Now the sole reason why painters of this sort are not aware of
their own error is that they have not learnt Geometry, without which no one can either be
or become an absolute artist; but the blame for this should be laid upon their masters,
who are themselves ignorant of this art.
The Art of Measurement. 1525.
Drer, Albrecht (1471-1528)
Whoever ... proves his point and demonstrates the prime truth geometrically should be
believed by all the world, for there we are captured.
J Heidrich (ed.) Albrecht Drer's schriftlicher Nachlass Berlin, 1920.
Drer, Albrecht (1471-1528)
And since geometry is the right foundation of all painting, I have decided to teach
its rudiments and principles to all youngsters eager for art...
Course in the Art of Measurement
Dyson, Freeman
I am acutely aware of the fact that the marriage between mathematics and physics,
which was so enormously fruitful in past centuries, has recently ended in divorce.
Missed Opportunities, 1972. (Gibbs Lecture?)
Dyson, Freeman
For a physicist mathematics is not just a tool by means of which phenomena can be
calculated, it is the main source of concepts and principles by means of which new
theories can be created.
Mathematics in the Physical Sciences.
Dyson, Freeman
The bottom line for mathematicians is that the architecture has to be right. In all
the mathematics that I did, the essential point was to find the right architecture. It's
like building a bridge. Once the main lines of the structure are right, then the details
miraculously fit. The problem is the overall design.
"Freeman Dyson: Mathematician, Physicist, and Writer". Interview with Donald J.
Albers, The College Mathematics Journal, vol 25, no. 1, January 1994.
Eddington, Sir Arthur (1882-1944)
Proof is the idol before whom the pure mathematician tortures himself.
In N. Rose Mathematical Maxims and Minims, Raleigh NC: Rome Press Inc., 1988.
Eddington, Sir Arthur (1882-1944)
We used to think that if we knew one, we knew two, because one and one are two. We are
finding that we must learn a great deal more about `and'.
In N. Rose Mathematical Maxims and Minims, Raleigh NC: Rome Press Inc., 1988.
Eddington, Sir Arthur (1882-1944)
We have found a strange footprint on the shores of the unknown. We have devised
profound theories, one after another, to account for its origins. At last, we have
succeeded in reconstructing the creature that made the footprint. And lo! It is our own.
Space, Time and Gravitation. 1920.
Eddington, Sir Arthur (1882-1944)
It is impossible to trap modern physics into predicting anything with perfect
determinism because it deals with probabilities from the outset.
In J. R. Newman (ed.) The World of Mathematics, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1956.
Eddington, Sir Arthur (1882-1944)
I believe there are
15,747,724,136,275,002,577,605,653,961,181,555,468,044,717,914,527,116,709,366,231,425,076,185,631,031,296
protons in the universe and the same number of electrons.
The Philosophy of Physical Science. Cambridge, 1939.
Eddington, Sir Arthur (1882-1944)
To the pure geometer the radius of curvature is an incidental characteristic - like
the grin of the Cheshire cat. To the physicist it is an indispensable characteristic. It
would be going too far to say that to the physicist the cat is merely incidental to the
grin. Physics is concerned with interrelatedness such as the interrelatedness of cats and
grins. In this case the "cat without a grin" and the "grin without a
cat" are equally set aside as purely mathematical phantasies.
The Expanding Universe..
Eddington, Sir Arthur (1882-1944)
Human life is proverbially uncertain; few things are more certain than the solvency of
a life-insurance company.
In J. R. Newman (ed.) The World of Mathematics, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1956.
Edwards, Jonathon When I am violently beset with temptations, or cannot rid
myself of evil thoughts, [I resolve] to do some Arithmetic, or Geometry, or some other
study, which necessarily engages all my thoughts, and unavoidably keeps them from
wandering.
In T. Mallon A Book of One's Own. Ticknor & Fields, New York, 1984, p. 106-107.
Egrafov, M.
If you ask mathematicians what they do, yo always get the same answer. They think.
They think about difficult and unusual problems. They do not think about ordinary
problems: they just write down the answers.
Mathematics Magazine, v. 65 no. 5, December 1992.
Eigen, Manfred (1927 - )
A theory has only the alternative of being right or wrong. A model has a third
possibility: it may be right, but irrelevant.
Jagdish Mehra (ed.) The Physicist's Conception of Nature, 1973.
Einstein, Albert (1879-1955)
[During a lecture:]This has been done elegantly by Minkowski; but chalk is cheaper
than grey matter, and we will do it as it comes.
[Attributed by Plya.]
J.E. Littlewood, A Mathematician's Miscellany, Methuen and Co. Ltd., 1953.
Einstein, Albert (1879-1955)
Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.
Reader's Digest. Oct. 1977.
Einstein, Albert (1879-1955)
I don't believe in mathematics.
Quoted by Carl Seelig. Albert Einstein.
Einstein, Albert (1879-1955)
Imagination is more important than knowledge.
On Science.
Einstein, Albert (1879-1955)
The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all
true art and science.
What I Believe.
Einstein, Albert (1879-1955)
The bitter and the sweet come from the outside, the hard from within, from one's own
efforts.
Out of My Later Years.
Einstein, Albert (1879-1955)
Gott wrfelt nicht.
Einstein, Albert (1879-1955)
Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen.
In E. T. Bell Mathematics, Queen and Servant of the Sciences. 1952.
Einstein, Albert (1879-1955)
God does not care about our mathematical difficulties. He integrates empirically.
L. Infeld Quest, 1942.
Einstein, Albert (1879-1955)
How can it be that mathematics, being after all a product of human thought independent
of experience, is so admirably adapted to the objects of reality?
Einstein, Albert (1879-1955)
[About Newton]
Nature to him was an open book, whose letters he could read without effort.
In G. Simmons Calculus Gems, New York: McGraw Hill, 1992.
Einstein, Albert (1879-1955)
As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain; and as far
as they are certain, they do not refer to reality.
In J. R. Newman (ed.) The World of Mathematics, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1956.
Einstein, Albert (1879-1955)
What is this frog and mouse battle among the mathematicians?
[i.e. Brouwer vs. Hilbert]
In H. Eves Mathematical Circles Squared Boston: Prindle, Weber and Schmidt, 1972.
Einstein, Albert (1879-1955)
Raffiniert ist der Herr Gott, aber boshaft ist er nicht. God is subtle, but he
is not malicious.
Inscribed in Fine Hall, Princeton University.
Einstein, Albert (1879-1955)
Nature hides her secrets because of her essential loftiness, but not by means of ruse.
Einstein, Albert (1879-1955)
The human mind has first to construct forms, independently, before we can find them in
things.
Einstein, Albert (1879-1955)
Since the mathematicians have invaded the theory of relativity, I do not understand it
myself anymore.
In A. Sommerfelt "To Albert Einstein's Seventieth Birthday" in Paul A. Schilpp
(ed.) Albert Einstein, Philosopher-Scientist, Evanston, 1949.
Einstein, Albert (1879-1955)
Do not worry about your difficulties in mathematics, I assure you that mine are
greater.
Einstein, Albert (1879-1955)
The truth of a theory is in your mind, not in your eyes.
In H. Eves Mathematical Circles Squared, Boston: Prindle, Weber and Schmidt, 1972.
Einstein, Albert (1879-1955)
These thoughts did not come in any verbal formulation. I rarely think in words at all.
A thought comes, and I may try to express it in words afterward.
In H. Eves Mathematical Circles Adieu, Boston: Prindle, Weber and Schmidt, 1977.
Einstein, Albert (1879-1955)
A human being is a part of the whole, called by us "Universe," a part
limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something
separated from the resta kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a
kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few
persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our
circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its
beauty. Nobody is able to achieve this completely, but the striving for such achievement
is in itself a part of the liberation and a foundation for inner security.
In H. Eves Mathematical Circles Adieu, Boston: Prindle, Weber and Schmidt, 1977.
Einstein, Albert (1879-1955)
The world needs heroes and it's better they be harmless men like me than villains like
Hitler.
In H. Eves Return to Mathematical Circles, Boston: Prindle, Weber and Schmidt,
1988.
Einstein, Albert (1879-1955)
It is nothing short of a miracle that modern methods of instruction have not yet
entirely strangled the holy curiousity of inquiry.
In H. Eves Return to Mathematical Circles, Boston: Prindle, Weber and Schmidt,
1988.
Einstein, Albert (1879-1955)
Everything that is really great and inspiring is created by the individual who can
labor in freedom.
In H. Eves Return to Mathematical Circles, Boston: Prindle, Weber and Schmidt,
1988.
Einstein, Albert (1879-1955)
The search for truth is more precious than its possession.
The American Mathematical Monthly v. 100 no. 3.
Einstein, Albert (1879-1955)
If my theory of relativity is proven successful, Germany will claim me as a German and
France will declare that I am a citizen of the world. Should my theory prove untrue,
France will say that I am a German and Germany will declare that I am a Jew.
Address at the Sorbonne, Paris.
Einstein, Albert (1879-1955)
We come now to the question: what is a priori certain or necessary, respectively in
geometry (doctrine of space) or its foundations? Formerly we thought everything; nowadays
we think nothing. Already the distance-concept is logically arbitrary; there need be no
things that correspond to it, even approximately.
"Space-Time." Encyclopaedia Britannica, 14th ed.
Einstein, Albert (1879-1955)
Most of the fundamental ideas of science are essentially simple, and may, as a rule,
be expressed in a language comprehensible to everyone.
The Evolution of Physics.
Einstein, Albert (1879-1955)
Science without religion is lame; religion without science is blind.
Reader's Digest, Nov. 1973.
Ellis, Havelock
The mathematician has reached the highest rung on the ladder of human thought.
The Dance of Life.
Ellis, Havelock
It is here [in mathematics] that the artist has the fullest scope of his imagination.
The Dance of Life.
Erath, V.
God is a child; and when he began to play, he cultivated mathematics. It is the most
godly of man's games.
Das blinde Spiel. 1954.
Erds, Paul
Mathematics is not yet ready for such problems.
[Attributed by Paul Halmos.]
The American Mathematical Monthly, Nov. 1992
Erds, Paul
A Mathematician is a machine for turning coffee into theorems.
Euler, Leonhard (1707 - 1783)
If a nonnegative quantity was so small that it is smaller than any given one, then it
certainly could not be anything but zero. To those who ask what the infinitely small
quantity in mathematics is, we answer that it is actually zero. Hence there are not so
many mysteries hidden in this concept as they are usually believed to be. These supposed
mysteries have rendered the calculus of the infinitely small quite suspect to many people.
Those doubts that remain we shall thoroughly remove in the following pages, where we shall
explain this calculus.
Euler, Leonhard (1707-1783)
Mathematicians have tried in vain to this day to discover some order in the sequence
of prime numbers, and we have reason to believe that it is a mystery into which the human
mind will never penetrate.
In G. Simmons Calculus Gems, New York: McGraw Hill Inc., 1992.
Euler, Leonhard (1707-1783)
[upon losing the use of his right eye]
Now I will have less distraction.
In H. Eves In Mathematical Circles, Boston: Prindle, Weber and Schmidt, 1969.
Everett, Edward (1794-1865)
In the pure mathematics we contemplate absolute truths which existed in the divine
mind before the morning stars sang together, and which will continue to exist there when
the last of their radiant host shall have fallen from heaven.
Quoted by E.T. Bell in The Queen of the Sciences, Baltimore, 1931.
Eves, Howard W.
A formal manipulator in mathematics often experiences the discomforting feeling that
his pencil surpasses him in intelligence.
In Mathematical Circles, Boston: Prindle, Weber and Schmidt, 1969.
Eves, Howard W.
An expert problem solver must be endowed with two incompatible qualities, a restless
imagination and a patient pertinacity.
In Mathematical Circles, Boston: Prindle, Weber and Schmidt, 1969.
Eves, Howard W.
Mathematics may be likened to a large rock whose interior composition we wish to
examine. The older mathematicians appear as persevering stone cutters slowly attempting to
demolish the rock from the outside with hammer and chisel. The later mathematicians
resemble expert miners who seek vulnerable veins, drill into these strategic places, and
then blast the rock apart with well placed internal charges.
In Mathematical Circles, Boston: Prindle, Weber and Schmidt, 1969.
Eves, Howard W.
One is hard pressed to think of universal customs that man has successfully
established on earth. There is one, however, of which he can boast the universal adoption
of the Hindu-Arabic numerals to record numbers. In this we perhaps have man's unique
worldwide victory of an idea.
Mathematical Circles Squared, Boston: Prindle, Weber and Schmidt, 1972.
Ewing, John
If the entire Mandelbrot set were placed on an ordinary sheet of paper, the tiny
sections of boundary we examine would not fill the width of a hydrogen atom. Physicists think
about such tiny objects; only mathematicians have microscopes fine enough to actually
observe them.
"Can We See the Mandelbrot Set?", The College Mathematics Journal, v. 26,
no. 2, March 1995.
Focus Newsletter (MAA)
Sample recommendation letter:
Dear Search Committee Chair,
I am writing this letter for Mr. John Smith who has applied for a position in your
department. I should start by saying that I cannot recommend him too highly.
In fact, there is no other student with whom I can adequately compare him, and I am sure
that the amount of mathematics he knows will surprise you.
His dissertation is the sort of work you don't expect to see these days. It definitely
demonstrates his complete capabilities.
In closing, let me say that you will be fortunate if you can get him to work for you.
Sincerely,
A. D. Visor (Prof.)
de Fermat, Pierre (1601?-1665)
[In the margin of his copy of Diophantus' Arithmetica, Fermat wrote]
To divide a cube into two other cubes, a fourth power or in general any power whatever
into two powers of the same denomination above the second is impossible, and I have
assuredly found an admirable proof of this, but the margin is too narrow to contain it.
de Fermat, Pierre (1601?-1665)
And perhaps, posterity will thank me for having shown it that the ancients did not
know everything.
In D. M. Burton, Elementary Number Theory, Boston: Allyn and Bacon, Inc., 1976.
Feynman, Richard Philips (1918 - 1988)
We have a habit in writing articles published in scientific journals to make the work
as finished as possible, to cover up all the tracks, to not worry about the blind alleys
or describe how you had the wrong idea first, and so on. So there isn't any place to
publish, in a dignified manner, what you actually did in order to get to do the work.
Nobel Lecture, 1966.
Finkel, Benjamin Franklin
The solution of problems is one of the lowest forms of mathematical research, ... yet
its educational value cannot be overestimated. It is the ladder by which the mind ascends
into higher fields of original research and investigation. Many dormant minds have been
aroused into activity through the mastery of a single problem.
The American Mathematical Monthly, no. 1.
Fisher, Irving
The effort of the economist is to "see," to picture the interplay of
economic elements. The more clearly cut these elements appear in his vision, the better;
the more elements he can grasp and hold in his mind at once, the better. The economic
world is a misty region. The first explorers used unaided vision. Mathematics is the
lantern by which what before was dimly visible now looms up in firm, bold outlines. The
old phantasmagoria disappear. We see better. We also see further.
Transactions of Conn. Academy, 1892.
Fisher, Ronald Aylmer (1890 - 1962)
Natural selection is a mechanism for generating an exceedingly high degree of
improbability.
Fisher, Ronald Aylmer (1890-1962)
To call in the statistician after the experiment is done may be no more than asking hm
to perform a postmortem examination: he may be able to say what the experiment died of.
Indian Statistical Congress, Sankhya, ca 1938.
Flaubert, Gustave (1821-1880)
Poetry is as exact a science as geometry.
Flaubert, Gustave (1821-1880)
Since you are now studying geometry and trigonometry, I will give you a problem. A
ship sails the ocean. It left Boston with a cargo of wool. It grosses 200 tons. It is
bound for Le Havre. The mainmast is broken, the cabin boy is on deck, there are 12
passengers aboard, the wind is blowing East-North-East, the clock points to a quarter past
three in the afternoon. It is the month of May. How old is the captain?
Fontenelle, Bernard Le Bovier (1657-1757)
Mathematicians are like lovers. Grant a mathematician the least principle, and he will
draw from it a consequence which you must also grant him, and from this consequence
another.
Quoted in V. H. Larney Abstract Algebra: A First Course, Boston: Prindle, Weber and
Schmidt, 1975.
Fontenelle, Bernard Le Bovier (1657-1757)
A work of morality, politics, criticism will be more elegant, other things being
equal, if it is shaped by the hand of geometry.
Preface sur l'Utilit�des Math�atiques et de la Physique, 1729.
Fontenelle, Bernard Le Bovier (1657-1757)
Leibniz never married; he had considered it at the age of fifty; but the person he had
in mind asked for time to reflect. This gave Leibniz time to reflect, too, and so he never
married.
Eloge de le Leibniz.
Frankland, W.B.
Whereas at the outset geometry is reported to have concerned herself with the
measurement of muddy land, she now handles celestial as well as terrestrial problems: she
has extended her domain to the furthest bounds of space.
Hodder and Stoughton, The Story of Euclid. 1901.
Frayn, Michael
For hundreds of pages the closely-reasoned arguments unroll, axioms and theorems
interlock. And what remains with us in the end? A general sense that the world can be
expressed in closely-reasoned arguments, in interlocking axioms and theorems.
Constructions. 1974.
Frederick the Great (1712-1786)
To your care and recommendation am I indebted for having replaced a half-blind
mathematician with a mathematician with both eyes, which will especially please the
anatomical members of my Academy.
[To D'Alembert about Lagrange. Euler had vacated the post.]
In D. M. Burton, Elementary Number Theory, Boston: Allyn and Bacon, Inc., 1976.
Frege, Gottlob (1848 - 1925)
A scientist can hardly meet with anything more undesirable than to have the
foundations give way just as the work is finished. I was put in this position by a letter
from Mr. Bertrand Russell when the work was nearly through the press.
In Scientific American, May 1984, p 77.
Galbraith, John Kenneth
There can be no question, however, that prolonged commitment to mathematical exercises
in economics can be damaging. It leads to the atrophy of judgement and intuition...
Economics, Peace, and Laughter.
Galilei, Galileo (1564 - 1642)
[The universe] cannot be read until we have learnt the language and become familiar
with the characters in which it is written. It is written in mathematical language, and
the letters are triangles, circles and other geometrical figures, without which means it
is humanly impossible to comprehend a single word.
Opere Il Saggiatore p. 171.
Galilei, Galileo (1564 - 1642)
Measure what is measurable, and make measurable what is not so.
Quoted in H. Weyl "Mathematics and the Laws of Nature" in I Gordon and S. Sorkin
(eds.) The Armchair Science Reader, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1959.
Galilei, Galileo (1564 - 1642)
And who can doubt that it will lead to the worst disorders when minds created free by
God are compelled to submit slavishly to an outside will? When we are told to deny our
senses and subject them to the whim of others? When people devoid of whatsoever competence
are made judges over experts and are granted authority to treat them as they please? These
are the novelties which are apt to bring about the ruin of commonwealths and the
subversion of the state.
[On the margin of his own copy of Dialogue on the Great World Systems].
In J. R. Newman (ed.) The World of Mathematics, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1956,
p. 733.
Galois, Evariste
Unfortunately what is little recognized is that the most worthwhile scientific books
are those in which the author clearly indicates what he does not know; for an author most
hurts his readers by concealing difficulties.
In N. Rose (ed.) Mathematical Maxims and Minims, Raleigh NC: Rome Press Inc., 1988.
Galton, [Sir] Francis (1822-1911)
Whenever you can, count.
In J. R. Newman (ed.) The World of Mathematics, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1956.
Galton, Sir Francis (1822-1911)
[Statistics are] the only tools by which an opening can be cut through the formidable
thicket of difficulties that bars the path of those who pursue the Science of Man.
Pearson, The Life and Labours of Francis Galton, 1914.
Galton, Sir Francis (1822-1911)
I know of scarcely anything so apt to impress the imagination as the wonderful form of
cosmic order expressed by the "Law of Frequency of Error." The law would have
been personified by the Greeks and deified, if they had known of it. It reigns with
serenity and in complete self-effacement, amidst the wildest confusion. The huger the mob,
and the greater the apparent anarchy, the more perfect is its sway. It is the supreme law
of Unreason. Whenever a large sample of chaotic elements are taken in hand and marshaled
in the order of their magnitude, an unsuspected and most beautiful form of regularity
proves to have been latent all along.
In J. R. Newman (ed.) The World of Mathematics, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1956.
p. 1482.
Gardner, Martin
Biographical history, as taught in our public schools, is still largely a history of
boneheads: ridiculous kings and queens, paranoid political leaders, compulsive voyagers,
ignorant generals -- the flotsam and jetsam of historical currents. The men who radically
altered history, the great scientists and mathematicians, are seldom mentioned, if at all.
In G. Simmons Calculus Gems, New York: McGraw Hill, 1992.
Gardner, Martin
Mathematics is not only real, but it is the only reality. That is that entire universe
is made of matter, obviously. And matter is made of particles. It's made of electrons and
neutrons and protons. So the entire universe is made out of particles. Now what are the
particles made out of? They're not made out of anything. The only thing you can say about
the reality of an electron is to cite its mathematical properties. So there's a sense in
which matter has completely dissolved and what is left is just a mathematical structure.
Gardner on Gardner: JPBM Communications Award Presentation. Focus-The Newsletter of the
Mathematical Association of America v. 14, no. 6, December 1994.
Gauss, Karl Friedrich (1777-1855) I confess that Fermat's Theorem as an isolated
proposition has very little interest for me, because I could easily lay down a multitude
of such propositions, which one could neither prove nor dispose of.
[A reply to Olbers' attempt in 1816 to entice him to work on Fermat's Theorem.] In J. R.
Newman (ed.) The World of Mathematics, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1956. p. 312.
Gauss, Karl Friedrich (1777-1855)
If others would but reflect on mathematical truths as deeply and as continuously as I
have, they would make my discoveries.
In J. R. Newman (ed.) The World of Mathematics, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1956.
p. 326.
Gauss, Karl Friedrich (1777-1855)
There are problems to whose solution I would attach an infinitely greater importance
than to those of mathematics, for example touching ethics, or our relation to God, or
concerning our destiny and our future; but their solution lies wholly beyond us and
completely outside the province of science.
In J. R. Newman (ed.) The World of Mathematics, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1956.
p. 314.
Gauss, Karl Friedrich (1777-1855)
You know that I write slowly. This is chiefly because I am never satisfied until I
have said as much as possible in a few words, and writing briefly takes far more time than
writing at length.
In G. Simmons Calculus Gems, New York: McGraw Hill inc., 1992.
Gauss, Karl Friedrich (1777-1855)
God does arithmetic.
Gauss, Karl Friedrich (1777-1855)
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.
Letter to Bessel, 1830.
Gauss, Karl Friedrich (1777-1855)
I mean the word proof not in the sense of the lawyers, who set two half proofs equal
to a whole one, but in the sense of a mathematician, where half proof = 0, and it is
demanded for proof that every doubt becomes impossible.
In G. Simmons Calculus Gems, New York: McGraw Hill inc., 1992.
Gauss, Karl Friedrich (1777-1855)
I have had my results for a long time: but I do not yet know how I am to arrive at
them.
In A. Arber The Mind and the Eye 1954.
Gauss, Karl Friedrich (1777-1855)
[His motto:]
Few, but ripe.
Gauss, Karl Friedrich (1777-1855)
[His second motto:]
Thou, nature, art my goddess; to thy laws my services are bound...
W. Shakespeare King Lear.
Gauss, Karl Friedrich (1777-1855)
[attributed to him by H.B Lbsen]
Theory attracts practice as the magnet attracts iron.
Foreword of H.B Lbsen's geometry textbook.
Gauss, Karl Friedrich (1777-1855)
It is not knowledge, but the act of learning, not possession but the act of getting
there, which grants the greatest enjoyment. When I have clarified and exhausted a subject,
then I turn away from it, in order to go into darkness again; the never-satisfied man is
so strange if he has completed a structure, then it is not in order to dwell in it
peacefully, but in order to begin another. I imagine the world conqueror must feel thus,
who, after one kingdom is scarcely conquered, stretches out his arms for others.
Letter to Bolyai, 1808.
Gauss, Karl Friedrich (1777-1855)
Finally, two days ago, I succeeded - not on account of my hard efforts, but by the
grace of the Lord. Like a sudden flash of lightning, the riddle was solved. I am unable to
say what was the conducting thread that connected what I previously knew with what made my
success possible.
In H. Eves Mathematical Circles Squared, Boston: Prindle, Weber and Schmidt, 1972.
Gauss, Karl Friedrich (1777-1855)
A great part of its [higher arithmetic] theories derives an additional charm from the
peculiarity that important propositions, with the impress of simplicity on them, are often
easily discovered by induction, and yet are of so profound a character that we cannot find
the demonstrations till after many vain attempts; and even then, when we do succeed, it is
often by some tedious and artificial process, while the simple methods may long remain
concealed.
In H. Eves Mathematical Circles Adieu, Boston: Prindle, Weber and Schmidt, 1977.
Gauss, Karl Friedrich (1777-1855)
I am coming more and more to the conviction that the necessity of our geometry cannot
be demonstrated, at least neither by, nor for, the human intellect...geometry should be
ranked, not with arithmetic, which is purely aprioristic, but with mechanics.
Quoted in J. Koenderink Solid Shape, Cambridge Mass.: MIT Press, 1990.
Gay, John
Lest men suspect your tale untrue,
Keep probability in view.
In J. R. Newman (ed.) The World of Mathematics, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1956.
p. 1334.
Gibbs, Josiah Willard (1839 - 1903)
One of the principal objects of theoretical research in my department of knowledge is
to find the point of view from which the subject appears in its greatest simplicity.
Gibbs, Josiah Willard (1839-1903)
Mathematics is a language.
Gilbert, W. S. (1836 - 1911)
I'm very good at integral and differential calculus, I know the scientific names of
beings animalculous; In short, in matters vegetable, animal, and mineral, I am the very
model of a modern Major-General.
The Pirates of Penzance. Act 1.
Glaisher, J.W.
The mathematician requires tact and good taste at every step of his work, and he has to
learn to trust to his own instinct to distinguish between what is really worthy of his
efforts and what is not.
In H. Eves Mathematical Circles Squared, Boston: Prindle, Weber and Schmidt, 1972.
Glanvill, Joseph
And for mathematical science, he that doubts their certainty hath need of a dose of
hellebore.
In J. R. Newman (ed.) The World of Mathematics, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1956,
p. 548.
Goedel, Kurt
I don't believe in natural science.
[Said to physicist John Bahcall.]
Ed Regis, Who Got Einstein's Office? Addison Wesley, 1987.
Goethe
It has been said that figures rule the world. Maybe. But I am sure that figures show
us whether it is being ruled well or badly.
In J. P. Eckermann, Conversations with Goethe.
Goethe
Mathematics has the completely false reputation of yielding infallible conclusions.
Its infallibility is nothing but identity. Two times two is not four, but it is just two
times two, and that is what we call four for short. But four is nothing new at all. And
thus it goes on and on in its conclusions, except that in the higher formulas the identity
fades out of sight.
In J. R. Newman (ed.) The World of Mathematics, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1956,
p. 1754.
Goodman, Nicholas P.
There are no deep theorems -- only theorems that we have not understood very well.
The Mathematical Intelligencer, vol. 5, no. 3, 1983.
Gordon, P
This is not mathematics, it is theology.
[On being exposed to Hilbert's work in invariant theory.]
Quoted in P. Davis and R. Hersh The Mathematical Experience, Boston: Birkh�ser,
1981.
Graham, Ronald
It wouild be very discouraging if somewhere down the line you could ask a computer if
the Riemann hypothesis is correct and it said, `Yes, it is true, but you won't be able to
understand the proof.'
John Horgan. Scientific American 269:4 (October 1993) 92-103.
Grnbaum, Branko (1926 - ), and Shephard, G. C. (?)
Mathematicians have long since regarded it as demeaning to work on problems related to
elementary geometry in two or three dimensions, in spite of the fact that it it precisely
this sort of mathematics which is of practical value.
Handbook of Applicable Mathematics.
Hadamard, Jacques
The shortest path between two truths in the real domain passes through the complex
domain.
Quoted in The Mathematical Intelligencer, v. 13, no. 1, Winter 1991.
Hadmard, Jacques
Practical application is found by not looking for it, and one can say that the whole
progress of civilization rests on that principle.
In H. Eves Mathematical Circles Squared, Boston: Prindle, Weber and Schmidt, 1972.
Haldane, John Burdon Sanderson (1892-1964)
In scientific thought we adopt the simplest theory which will explain all the facts
under consideration and enable us to predict new facts of the same kind. The catch in this
criterion lies in the world "simplest." It is really an aesthetic canon such as
we find implicit in our criticisms of poetry or painting. The layman finds such a law as
dx/dt = K(d^2x/dy^2) much less simple than "it oozes," of which it is the
mathematical statement. The physicist reverses this judgment, and his statement is
certainly the more fruitful of the two, so far as prediction is concerned. It is, however,
a statement about something very unfamiliar to the plainman, namely, the rate of change of
a rate of change.
Possible Worlds, 1927.
Haldane, John Burdon Sanderson (1892-1964)
A time will however come (as I believe) when physiology will invade and destroy
mathematical physics, as the latter has destroyed geometry.
Daedalus, or Science and the Future, London: Kegan Paul, 1923.
Halmos, Paul R.
Mathematics is not a deductive science -- that's a cliche. When you try to prove a
theorem, you don't just list the hypotheses, and then start to reason. What you do is
trial and error, experimentation, guesswork.
I Want to be a Mathematician, Washington: MAA Spectrum, 1985.
Halmos, Paul R.
... the student skit at Christmas contained a plaintive line: "Give us Master's
exams that our faculty can pass, or give us a faculty that can pass our Master's
exams."
I Want to be a Mathematician, Washington: MAA Spectrum, 1985.
Halmos, Paul R.
I remember one occasion when I tried to add a little seasoning to a review, but I
wasn't allowed to. The paper was by Dorothy Maharam, and it was a perfectly sound
contribution to abstract measure theory. The domains of the underlying measures were not
sets but elements of more general Boolean algebras, and their range consisted not of
positive numbers but of certain abstract equivalence classes. My proposed first sentence
was: "The author discusses valueless measures in pointless spaces."
I want to be a Mathematician, Washington: MAA Spectrum, 1985, p. 120.
Halmos, Paul R.
...the source of all great mathematics is the special case, the concrete example. It
is frequent in mathematics that every instance of a concept of seemingly great generality
is in essence the same as a small and concrete special case.
I Want to be a Mathematician, Washington: MAA Spectrum, 1985.
Halmos, Paul R.
The joy of suddenly learning a former secret and the joy of suddenly discovering a
hitherto unknown truth are the same to me -- both have the flash of enlightenment, the
almost incredibly enhanced vision, and the ecstasy and euphoria of released tension.
I Want to be a Mathematician, Washington: MAA Spectrum, 1985.
Halmos, Paul R.
Don't just read it; fight it! Ask your own questions, look for your own examples,
discover your own proofs. Is the hypothesis necessary? Is the converse true? What happens
in the classical special case? What about the degenerate cases? Where does the proof use
the hypothesis?
I Want to be a Mathematician, Washington: MAA Spectrum, 1985.
Halmos, Paul R.
To be a scholar of mathematics you must be born with talent, insight, concentration,
taste, luck, drive and the ability to visualize and guess.
I Want to be a Mathematician, Washington: MAA Spectrum, 1985.
Hamilton, [Sir] William Rowan (1805-1865)
Who would not rather have the fame of Archimedes than that of his conqueror Marcellus?
In H. Eves Mathematical Circles Revisited, Boston: Prindle, Weber and Schmidt,
1971.
Hamilton, Sir William Rowan (1805-1865)
I regard it as an inelegance, or imperfection, in quaternions, or rather in the state
to which it has been hitherto unfolded, whenever it becomes or seems to become necessary
to have recourse to x, y, z, etc..
In a letter from Tait to Cayley.
Hamilton, Sir William Rowan (1805-1865)
On earth there is nothing great but man; in man there is nothing great but mind.
Lectures on Metaphysics.
Hamming, Richard W.
Does anyone believe that the difference between the Lebesgue and Riemann integrals can
have physical significance, and that whether say, an airplane would or would not fly could
depend on this difference? If such were claimed, I should not care to fly in that plane.
In N. Rose Mathematical Maxims and Minims, Raleigh NC: Rome Press Inc., 1988.
Hamming, Richard W.
Mathematics is an interesting intellectual sport but it should not be allowed to stand
in the way of obtaining sensible information about physical processes.
In N. Rose Mathematical Maxims and Minims, Raleigh NC: Rome Press Inc., 1988.
Hardy, Godfrey H. (1877 - 1947)
[On Ramanujan]
I remember once going to see him when he was lying ill at Putney. I had ridden in taxi cab
number 1729 and remarked that the number seemed to me rather a dull one, and that I hoped
it was not an unfavorable omen. "No," he replied, "it is a very interesting
number; it is the smallest number expressible as the sum of two cubes in two different
ways."
Ramanujan, London: Cambridge Univesity Press, 1940.
Hardy, Godfrey H. (1877 - 1947)
Reductio ad absurdum, which Euclid loved so much, is one of a mathematician's finest
weapons. It is a far finer gambit than any chess play: a chess player may offer the
sacrifice of a pawn or even a piece, but a mathematician offers the game.
A Mathematician's Apology, London, Cambridge University Press, 1941.
Hardy, Godfrey H. (1877 - 1947)
I am interested in mathematics only as a creative art.
A Mathematician's Apology, London, Cambridge University Press, 1941.
Hardy, Godfrey H. (1877 - 1947)
Pure mathematics is on the whole distinctly more useful than applied. For what is
useful above all is technique, and mathematical technique is taught mainly through pure
mathematics.
Hardy, Godfrey H. (1877 - 1947)
In great mathematics there is a very high degree of unexpectedness, combined with
inevitability and economy.
A Mathematician's Apology, London, Cambridge University Press, 1941.
Hardy, Godfrey H. (1877 - 1947)
There is no scorn more profound, or on the whole more justifiable, than that of the
men who make for the men who explain. Exposition, criticism, appreciation, is work for
second-rate minds.
A Mathematician's Apology, London, Cambridge University Press, 1941.
Hardy, Godfrey H. (1877 - 1947)
Young Men should prove theorems, old men should write books.
Quoted by Freeman Dyson in Freeman Dyson: Mathematician, Physicist, and Writer. Interview
with Donald J. Albers, The College Mathematics Journal, vol. 25, No. 1, January 1994.
Hardy, Godfrey H. (1877 - 1947)
A science is said to be useful of its development tends to accentuate the existing
inequalities in the distribution of wealth, or more directly promotes the destruction of
human life.
A Mathematician's Apology, London, Cambridge University Press, 1941.
Hardy, Godfrey H. (1877 - 1947)
The mathematician's patterns, like the painter's or the poet's must be beautiful; the
ideas, like the colors or the words must fit together in a harmonious way. Beauty is the
first test: there is no permanent place in this world for ugly mathematics.
A Mathematician's Apology, London, Cambridge University Press, 1941.
Hardy, Godfrey H. (1877 - 1947)
I believe that mathematical reality lies outside us, that our function is to discover
or observe it, and that the theorems which we prove, and which we describe grandiloquently
as our "creations," are simply the notes of our observations.
A Mathematician's Apology, London, Cambridge University Press, 1941.
Hardy, Godfrey H. (1877 - 1947)
Archimedes will be remembered when Aeschylus is forgotten, because languages die and
mathematical ideas do not. "Immortality" may be a silly word, but probably a
mathematician has the best chance of whatever it may mean.
A Mathematician's Apology, London, Cambridge University Press,1941.
Hardy, Godfrey H. (1877 - 1947)
The fact is that there are few more "popular" subjects than mathematics.
Most people have some appreciation of mathematics, just as most people can enjoy a
pleasant tune; and there are probably more people really interested in mathematics than in
music. Appearances may suggest the contrary, but there are easy explanations. Music can be
used to stimulate mass emotion, while mathematics cannot; and musical incapacity is
recognized (no doubt rightly) as mildly discreditable, whereas most people are so
frightened of the name of mathematics that they are ready, quite unaffectedly, to
exaggerate their own mathematical stupidity.
A Mathematician's Apology, London, Cambridge University Press, 1941.
Hardy, Thomas
...he seemed to approach the grave as an hyperbolic curve approaches a line, less
directly as he got nearer, till it was doubtful if he would ever reach it at all.
Far from the Madding Crowd.
Harish-Chandra
I have often pondered over the roles of knowledge or experience, on the one hand, and
imagination or intuition, on the other, in the process of discovery. I believe that there
is a certain fundamental conflict between the two, and knowledge, by advocating caution,
tends to inhibit the flight of imagination. Therefore, a certain naivete, unburdened by
conventional wisdom, can sometimes be a positive asset.
R. Langlands, "Harish-Chandra," Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal
Society 31 (1985) 197 - 225.
Harris, Sydney J.
The real danger is not that computers will begin to think like men, but that men will
begin to think like computers.
In H. Eves Return to Mathematical Circles, Boston: Prindle, Weber and Schmidt,
1988.
Hawking, Stephen Williams (1942- ) God not only plays dice. He also sometimes
throws the dice where they cannot be seen.
[See related quotation from Albert Einstein.] Nature 1975 257.
Heath, Sir Thomas
[The works of Archimedes] are without exception, monuments of mathematical exposition;
the gradual revelation of the plan of attack, the masterly ordering of the propositions,
the stern elimination of everything not immediately relevant to the purpose, the finish of
the whole, are so impressive in their perfection as to create a feeling akin to awe in the
mind of the reader.
A History of Greek Mathematics. 1921.
Heaviside, Oliver (1850-1925)
[Criticized for using formal mathematical manipulations, without understanding how
they worked:]
Should I refuse a good dinner simply because I do not understand the process of digestion?
Heinlein, Robert A.
Anyone who cannot cope with mathematics is not fully human. At best he is a tolerable
subhuman who has learned to wear shoes, bathe, and not make messes in the house.
Time Enough for Love.
Heisenberg, Werner (1901-1976)
An expert is someone who knows some of the worst mistakes that can be made in his
subject, and how to avoid them.
Physics and Beyond. 1971.
Hempel, Carl G.
The 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.
"On the Nature of Mathematical Truth" in J. R. Newman (ed.) The World of
Mathematics, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1956.
Hempel, Carl G.
The most distinctive characteristic which differentiates mathematics from the various
branches of empirical science, and which accounts for its fame as the queen of the
sciences, is no doubt the peculiar certainty and necessity of its results.
"Geometry and Empirical Science" in J. R. Newman (ed.) The World of
Mathematics, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1956.
Hempel, Carl G.
...to characterize the import of pure geometry, we might use the standard form of a
movie-disclaimer: No portrayal of the characteristics of geometrical figures or of the
spatial properties of relationships of actual bodies is intended, and any similarities
between the primitive concepts and their customary geometrical connotations are purely
coincidental.
"Geometry and Empirical Science" in J. R. Newman (ed.) The World of
Mathematics, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1956.
Henkin, Leon
One of the big misapprehensions about mathematics that we perpetrate in our classrooms
is that the teacher always seems to know the answer to any problem that is discussed. This
gives students the idea that there is a book somewhere with all the right answers to all
of the interesting questions, and that teachers know those answers. And if one could get
hold of the book, one would have everything settled. That's so unlike the true nature of
mathematics.
L.A. Steen and D.J. Albers (eds.), Teaching Teachers, Teaching Students, Boston:
Birkh�ser, 1981, p89.
Hermite, Charles (1822 - 1901)
There exists, if I am not mistaken, an entire world which is the totality of
mathematical truths, to which we have access only with our mind, just as a world of
physical reality exists, the one like the other independent of ourselves, both of divine
creation.
In The Mathematical Intelligencer, v. 5, no. 4.
Hermite, Charles (1822-1901)
Abel has left mathematicians enough to keep them busy for 500 years.
In G. F. Simmons Calculus Gems, New York: McGraw Hill Inc., 1992.
Hermite, Charles (1822-1901)
We are servants rather than masters in mathematics.
In H. Eves Mathematical Circles Squared, Boston: Prindle, Weber and Schmidt, 1972.
Hertz, Heinrich
One cannot escape the feeling that these mathematical formulas have an independent
existence and an intelligence of their own, that they are wiser that we are, wiser even
than their discoverers, that we get more out of them than was originally put into them.
Quoted by ET Bell in Men of Mathematics, New York, 937.
Hesse, Hermann (1877-1962)
You treat world history as a mathematician does mathematics, in which nothing but laws
and formulae exist, no reality, no good and evil, no time, no yesterday, no tomorrow,
nothing but an eternal, shallow, mathematical present.
The Glass Bead Game, 1943.
Hilbert, David (1862-1943)
Wir mssen wissen.
Wir werden wissen.
[Engraved on his tombstone in Gttingen.]
Hilbert, David (1862-1943)
Before beginning I should put in three years of intensive study, and I haven't that
much time to squander on a probable failure.
[On why he didn't try to solve Fermat's last theorem]
Quoted in E.T. Bell Mathematics, Queen and Servant of Science, New York: McGraw
Hill Inc., 1951.
Hilbert, David (1862-1943)
Galileo was no idiot. Only an idiot could believe that science requires martyrdom -
that may be necessary in religion, but in time a scientific result will establish itself.
In H. Eves Mathematical Circles Squared, Boston: Prindle, Weber and Schmidt, 1971.
Hilbert, David (1862-1943)
Mathematics is a game played according to certain simple rules with meaningless marks
on paper.
In N. Rose Mathematical Maxims and Minims, Raleigh NC: Rome Press Inc., 1988.
Hilbert, David (1862-1943)
Physics is much too hard for physicists.
C. Reid Hilbert, London: Allen and Unwin, 1970.
Hilbert, David (1862-1943)
How thoroughly it is ingrained in mathematical science that every real advance goes
hand in hand with the invention of sharper tools and simpler methods which, at the same
time, assist in understanding earlier theories and in casting aside some more complicated
developments.
Hilbert, David (1862-1943)
The art of doing mathematics consists in finding that special case which contains all
the germs of generality.
In N. Rose Mathematical Maxims and Minims, Raleigh NC: Rome Press Inc., 1988.
Hilbert, David (1862-1943)
The further a mathematical theory is developed, the more harmoniously and uniformly
does its construction proceed, and unsuspected relations are disclosed between hitherto
separated branches of the science.
In N. Rose Mathematical Maxims and Minims, Raleigh NC: Rome Press Inc., 1988.
Hilbert, David (1862-1943)
I have tried to avoid long numerical computations, thereby following Riemann's postulate
that proofs should be given through ideas and not voluminous computations.
Report on Number Theory, 1897.
Hilbert, David (1862-1943)
One can measure the importance of a scientific work by the number of earlier
publications rendered superfluous by it.
In H. Eves Mathematical Circles Revisited, Boston: Prindle, Weber and Schmidt,1971.
Hilbert, David (1862-1943)
Mathematics knows no races or geographic boundaries; for mathematics,the cultural
world is one country.
In H. Eves Mathematical Circles Squared, Boston: Prindle, Weber and Schmidt, 1972.
Hilbert, David (1862-1943)
The infinite! No other question has ever moved so profoundly the spirit of man.
In J. R. Newman (ed.) The World of Mathematics, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1956.
Hirst, Thomas Archer
10th August 1851: On Tuesday evening at Museum, at a ball in the gardens. The night
was chill, I dropped too suddenly from Differential Calculus into ladies' society, and
could not give myself freely to the change. After an hour's attempt so to do, I returned,
cursing the mode of life I was pursuing; next morning I had already shaken hands, however,
with Diff. Calculus, and forgot the ladies....
J. Helen Gardner and Robin J. Wilson, "Thomas Archer Hirst - Mathematician Xtravagant
II - Student Days in Germany", The American Mathematical Monthly , v. 6, no.
100.
Hobbes, Thomas
There is more in Mersenne than in all the universities together.
In G. Simmons Calculus Gems, New York: McGraw Hill Inc., 1992.
Hobbes, Thomas
To understand this for sense it is not required that a man should be a geometrician or
a logician, but that he should be mad.
["This" is that the volume generated by revolving the region under 1/x from 1 to
infinity has finite volume.]
In N. Rose Mathematical Maxims and Minims, Raleigh NC: Rome Press Inc., 1988.
Hobbes, Thomas
Geometry, which is the only science that it hath pleased God hitherto to bestow on
mankind.
In J. R. Newman (ed.) The World of Mathematics, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1956.
Hobbes, Thomas
The errors of definitions multiply themselves according as the reckoning proceeds; and
lead men into absurdities, which at last they see but cannot avoid, without reckoning anew
from the beginning.
In J. R. Newman (ed.) The World of Mathematics, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1956.
Holmes, Oliver Wendell
Descartes commanded the future from his study more than Napoleon from the throne.
In G. Simmons Calculus Gems, New York: McGraw Hill Inc., 1992.
Holmes, Oliver Wendell
Certitude is not the test of certainty. We have been cocksure of many things that are
not so.
In G. Simmons Calculus Gems, New York: McGraw Hill Inc., 1992.
Holmes, Oliver Wendell
I was just going to say, when I was interrupted, that one of the many ways of
classifying minds is under the heads of arithmetical and algebraical intellects. All
economical and practical wisdom is an extension of the following arithmetical formula: 2 +
2 = 4. Every philosophical proposition has the more general character of the expression a
+ b = c. We are mere operatives, empirics, and egotists until we learn to think in letters
instead of figures.
The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table.
Holt, M. and Marjoram, D. T. E.
The truth of the matter is that, though mathematics truth may be beauty, it can be
only glimpsed after much hard thinking. Mathematics is difficult for many human minds to
grasp because of its hierarchical structure: one thing builds on another and depends on
it.
Mathematics in a Changing World Walker, New York 1973.
Hofstadter, Douglas R. (1945 - )
Hofstadter's Law: It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into
account Hofstadter's Law.
Gdel, Escher, Bach 1979.
Hughes, Richard
Science, being human enquiry, can hear no answer except an answer couched somehow in
human tones. Primitive man stood in the mountains and shouted against a cliff; the echo
brought back his own voice, and he believed in a disembodied spirit. The scientist of
today stands counting out loud in the face of the unknown. Numbers come back to him - and
he believes in the Great Mathematician.
In J. R. Newman (ed.) The World of Mathematics, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1956.
Hume, David (1711 - 1776)
If we take in our hand any volume; of divinity or school metaphysics, for instance;
let us ask, `Does it contain any abstract reasoning concerning quantity or number?' No.
`Does it contain any experimental reasoning concerning matter of fact and existence?' No.
Commit it then to the flames: for it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion.
Treatise Concerning Human Understanding.
Huxley, Aldous
I admit that mathematical science is a good thing. But excessive devotion to it is a
bad thing.
Interview with J. W. N. Sullivan, Contemporary Mind, London, 1934.
Huxley, Aldous
If we evolved a race of Isaac Newtons, that would not be progress. For the price
Newton had to pay for being a supreme intellect was that he was incapable of friendship,
love, fatherhood, and many other desirable things. As a man he was a failure; as a monster
he was superb.
Interview with J. W. N. Sullivan, Contemporary Mind, London, 1934.
Huxley, Aldous
...[he] was as much enchanted by the rudiments of algebra as he would have been if I
had given him an engine worked by steam, with a methylated spirit lamp to heat the boiler;
more enchanted, perhapsfor the engine would have got broken, and, remaining always itself,
would in any case have lost its charm, while the rudiments of algebra continued to grow
and blossom in his mind with an unfailing luxuriance. Every day he made the discovery of
something which seemed to him exquisitely beautiful; the new toy was inexhaustible in its
potentialities.
Young Archimedes.
Huxley, Thomas Henry (1825-1895)
This seems to be one of the many cases in which the admitted accuracy of mathematical
processes is allowed to throw a wholly inadmissible appearance of authority over the
results obtained by them. Mathematics may be compared to a mill of exquisite workmanship,
which grinds your stuff of any degree of fineness; but, nevertheless, what you get out
depends on what you put in; and as the grandest mill in the world will not extract wheat
flour from peascods, so pages of formulae will not get a definite result out of loose
data.
Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society, 25,1869.
Huxley, Thomas Henry (1825-1895)
The mathematician starts with a few propositions, the proof of which is so obvious
that they are called selfevident, and the rest of his work consists of subtle deductions
from them. The teaching of languages, at any rate as ordinarily practised, is of the same
general nature authority and tradition furnish the data, and the mental operations are
deductive.
"Scientific Education -Notes of an After-dinner Speech." Macmillan's Magazine
Vol XX, 1869.
Huxley, Thomas Henry (1825-1895)
It is the first duty of a hypothesis to be intelligible.
Ibn Khaldun (1332-1406)
Geometry enlightens the intellect and sets one's mind right. All of its proofs are
very clear and orderly. It is hardly possible for errors to enter into geometrical
reasoning, because it is well arranged and orderly. Thus, the mind that constantly applies
itself to geometry is not likely to fall into error. In this convenient way, the person
who knows geometry acquires intelligence.
The Muqaddimah. An Introduction to History.
Isidore of Seville (ca 600 ad)
Take from all things their number and all shall perish.
Jacobi, Carl
It is true that Fourier had the opinion that the principal aim of mathematics was
public utility and explanation of natural phenomena; but a philosopher like him should
have known that the sole end of science is the honor of the human mind, and that under
this title a question about numbers is worth as much as a question about the system of the
world.
In N. Rose Mathematical Maxims and Minims, Raleigh NC:Rome Press Inc., 1988.
Jacobi, Carl
God ever arithmetizes.
In H. Eves Mathematical Circles Revisited, Boston: Prindle, Weber and Schmidt,
1971.
Jacobi, Carl
One should always generalize.
(Man muss immer generalisieren)
In P. Davis and R. Hersh The Mathematical Experience, Boston: Birkh�ser,
1981.
Jacobi, Carl
The real end of science is the honor of the human mind.
In H. Eves In Mathematical Circles, Boston: Prindle, Weber and Schmidt, 1969.
Jacobi, Carl
It is often more convenient to possess the ashes of great men than to possess the men
themselves during their lifetime.
[Commenting on the return of Descartes' remains to France]
In H. Eves Mathematical Circles Adieu, Boston: Prindle, Weber and Schmidt, 1977.
Jacobi, Carl
Mathematics is the science of what is clear by itself.
In J. R. Newman (ed.) The World of Mathematics, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1956.
James, William (1842 - 1910)
The union of the mathematician with the poet, fervor with measure, passion with
correctness, this surely is the ideal.
Collected Essays.
Jeans, Sir James
The essential fact is that all the pictures which science now draws of nature, and
which alone seem capable of according with observational facts, are mathematical pictures.
In J. R. Newman (ed.) The World of Mathematics, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1956.
Jeans, Sir James
From the intrinsic evidence of his creation, the Great Architect of the Universe now
begins to appear as a pure mathematician.
Mysterious Universe.
Jefferson, Thomas
...the science of calculation also is indispensable as far as the extraction of the
square and cube roots: Algebra as far as the quadratic equation and the use of logarithms
are often of value in ordinary cases: but all beyond these is but a luxury; a delicious
luxury indeed; but not be in indulged in by one who is to have a profession to follow for
his subsistence.
In J. Robert Oppenheimer "The Encouragement of Science" in I. Gordon and S.
Sorkin (eds.) The Armchair Science Reader, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1959.
Jevons, William Stanley
It is clear that Economics, if it is to be a science at all, must be a mathematical
science.
Theory of Political Economy.
Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)
Sir, I have found you an argument. I am not obliged to find you an understanding.
J. Boswell The Life of Samuel Johnson, 1784.
Jowett, Benjamin (1817 - 1893)
Logic is neither a science or an art, but a dodge.
In J. R. Newman (ed.) The World of Mathematics, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1956.
Kant, Emmanual (1724 - 1804)
The science of mathematics presents the most brilliant example of how pure reason may
successfully enlarge its domain without the aid of experience.
The Mathematical Intelligencer, v. 13, no. 1, Winter 1991.
Kant, Emmanual (1724 - 1804)
All human knowledge thus begins with intuitions, proceeds thence to concepts, and ends
with ideas.
Quoted in Hilbert's Foundations of Geometry.
Kaplan, Abraham
Mathematics is not yet capable of coping with the naivete of the mathematician
himself.
Sociology Learns the Language of Mathematics.
Kaplansky, Irving
We [he and Halmos] share a philosophy about linear algebra: we think basis-free, we
write basis-free , but when the chips are down we close the office door and compute with
matrices like fury.
Paul Halmos: Celebrating 50 Years of Mathematics.
Karlin, Samuel (1923 - )
The purpose of models is not to fit the data but to sharpen the questions.
11th R A Fisher Memorial Lecture, Royal Society 20, April 1983.
Kasner, E. and Newman, J.
Mathematics is man's own handiwork, subject only to the limitations imposed by the
laws of thought.
Mathematics and the Imagination, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1940.
Kasner, E. and Newman, J.
...we have overcome the notion that mathematical truths have an existence independent
and apart from our own minds. It is even strange to us that such a notion could ever have
existed.
Mathematics and the Imagination, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1940.
Kasner, E. and Newman, J.
Mathematics is the science which uses easy words for hard ideas.
Mathematics and the Imagination, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1940.
Kasner, E. and Newman, J.
Mathematics is often erroneously referred to as the science of common sense. Actually,
it may transcend common sense and go beyond either imagination or intuition. It has become
a very strange and perhaps frightening subject from the ordinary point of view, but anyone
who penetrates into it will find a veritable fairyland, a fairyland which is strange, but
makes sense, if not common sense.
Mathematics and the Imagination, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1940.
Kasner, E. and Newman, J.
Perhaps the greatest paradox of all is that there are paradoxes in mathematics.
Mathematics and the Imagination, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1940.
Kasner, E. and Newman, J.
When the mathematician says that such and such a proposition is true of one thing, it
may be interesting, and it is surely safe. But when he tries to extend his proposition to
everything, though it is much more interesting, it is also much more dangerous. In the
transition from one to all, from the specific to the general, mathematics has made its
greatest progress, and suffered its most serious setbacks, of which the logical paradoxes
constitute the most important part. For, if mathematics is to advance securely and
confidently it must first set its affairs in order at home.
Mathematics and the Imagination, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1940.
Kasner, E. and Newman, J. R.
The testament of science is so continually in a flux that the heresy of yesterday is
the gospel of today and the fundamentalism of tomorrow.
E. Kasner and J. R. Newman, Mathematics and the Imagination, Simon and Schuster,
1940.
Keller, Helen (1880 - 1968)
Now I feel as if I should succeed in doing something in mathematics, although I cannot
see why it is so very important... The knowledge doesn't make life any sweeter or happier,
does it?
The Story of My Life. 1903.
Kelley, John
A topologist is one who doesn't know the difference between a doughnut and a coffee
cup.
In N. Rose Mathematical Maxims and Minims, Raleigh NC:Rome Press Inc., 1988.
Kepler, Johannes (1571-1630)
A mind is accustomed to mathematical deduction, when confronted with the faulty
foundations of astrology, resists a long, long time, like an obstinate mule, until
compelled by beating and curses to put its foot into that dirty puddle.
In G. Simmons Calculus Gems, New York: McGraw Hill Inc., 1992.
Kepler, Johannes (1571-1630)
Where there is matter, there is geometry.
(Ubi materia, ibi geometria.)
J. Koenderink Solid Shape, Cambridge Mass.: MIT Press, 1990
Kepler, Johannes (1571-1630)
The chief aim of all investigations of the external world should be to discover the
rational order and harmony which has been imposed on it by God and which He revealed to us
in the language of mathematics.
Kepler, Johannes (1571-1630)
Nature uses as little as possible of anything.
Keynes, John Maynard
It has been pointed out already that no knowledge of probabilities, less in degree
than certainty, helps us to know what conclusions are true, and that there is no direct
relation between the truth of a proposition and its probability. Probability begins and
ends with probability.
The Application of Probability to Conduct.
Kleinhenz, Robert J.
When asked what it was like to set about proving something, the mathematician likened
proving a theorem to seeing the peak of a mountain and trying to climb to the top. One
establishes a base camp and begins scaling the mountain's sheer face, encountering
obstacles at every turn, often retracing one's steps and struggling every foot of the
journey. Finally when the top is reached, one stands examining the peak, taking in the
view of the surrounding countrysideand then noting the automobile road up the other side!
Kline, Morris
A proof tells us where to concentrate our doubts.
In N. Rose Mathematical Maxims and Minims, Raleigh NC:Rome Press Inc., 1988.
Kline, Morris
Statistics: the mathematical theory of ignorance.
In N. Rose Mathematical Maxims and Minims, Raleigh NC:Rome Press Inc., 1988.
Kline, Morris
Logic is the art of going wrong with confidence.
In N. Rose Mathematical Maxims and Minims, Raleigh NC:Rome Press Inc., 1988.
Kline, Morris
Universities hire professors the way some men choose wives - they want the ones the
others will admire.
Why the Professor Can't Teach. St. Martin's Press, 1977. p 92.
Koestler, Arthur (1905- )
In the index to the six hundred odd pages of Arnold Toynbee's A Study of History,
abridged version, the names of Copernicus, Galileo, Descartes and Newton do not occur yet
their cosmic quest destroyed the medieval vision of an immutable social order in a
walled-in universe and transformed the European landscape, society, culture, habits and
general outlook, as thoroughly as if a new species had arisen on this planet.
In G. Simmons Calculus Gems, New York: McGraw Hill Inc., 1992.
Koestler, Arthur (1905- )
Nobody before the Pythagoreans had thought that mathematical relations held the secret
of the universe. Twenty-five centuries later, Europe is still blessed and cursed with
their heritage. To non-European civilizations, the idea that numbers are the key to both
wisdom and power, seems never to have occurred.
The Sleepwalkers. 1959.
Kovalevsky, Sonja
Say what you know, do what you must, come what may.
[Motto on her paper "On the Problem of the Rotation of a Solid Body about a Fixed
Point."]
Kraft, Prinz zu Hohlenlohe-Ingelfingen (1827 - 1892)
Mathematics is indeed dangerous in that it absorbs students to such a degree that it
dulls their senses to everything else.
Attributed by Karl Schellbach. In H. Eves Mathematical Circles Adieu, Boston:
Prindle, Weber and Schmidt, 1977.
Kronecker, Leopold (1823 - 1891)
God made the integers, all else is the work of man.
(Die ganzen Zahlen hat Gott gemacht, alles andere ist Menschenwerk.)
Jahresberichte der Deutschen Mathematiker Vereinigung.
Kronecker, Leopold (1823-1891)
Number theorists are like lotus-eaters -- having once tasted of this food they can
never give it up.
In H. Eves Mathematical Circles Squared, Boston: Prindle, Weber and Schmidt, 1972.
La Touche, Mrs.
I do hate sums. There is no greater mistake than to call arithmetic an exact science.
There are permutations and aberrations discernible to minds entirely noble like mine;
subtle variations which ordinary accountants fail to discover; hidden laws of number which
it requires a mind like mine to perceive. For instance, if you add a sum from the bottom
up, and then from the top down, the result is always different.
Mathematical Gazette, v. 12.
LaGrange, Joseph-Louis
The reader will find no figures in this work. The methods which I set forth do not
require either constructions or geometrical or mechanical reasonings: but only algebraic
operations, subject to a regular and uniform rule of procedure.
Preface to M�anique Analytique.
LaGrange, Joseph-Louis
[said about the chemist Lavoisier:]
It took the mob only a moment to remove his head; a century will not suffice to reproduce
it.
H. Eves An Introduction to the History of Mathematics, 5th Ed., Saunders.
LaGrange, Joseph-Louis
When we ask advice, we are usually looking for an accomplice.
Lakatos, Imre
That sometimes clear ... and sometimes vague stuff ... which is ... mathematics.
In P. Davis and R. Hersh The Mathematical Experience, Boston: Birkh�ser, 1981.
Lanczos, Cornelius
Most of the arts, as painting, sculpture, and music, have emotional appeal to the
general public. This is because these arts can be experienced by some one or more of our
senses. Such is not true of the art of mathematics; this art can be appreciated only by
mathematicians, and to become a mathematician requires a long period of intensive
training. The community of mathematicians is similar to an imaginary community of musical
composers whose only satisfaction is obtained by the interchange among themselves of the
musical scores they compose.
In H. Eves Mathematical Circles Squared, Boston: Prindle, Weber and Schmidt, 1972.
Landau, E.
[Asked for a testimony to the effect that Emmy Noether was a great woman
mathematician, he said:]
I can testify that she is a great mathematician, but that she is a woman, I cannot swear.
J.E. Littlewood, A Mathematician's Miscellany, Methuen and Co ltd., 1953.
Landau, Susan
There's a touch of the priesthood in the academic world, a sense that a scholar should
not be distracted by the mundane tasks of day-to-day living. I used to have great
stretches of time to work. Now I have research thoughts while making peanut butter and
jelly sandwiches. Sure it's impossible to write down ideas while reading "curious
George" to a two-year-old. On the other hand, as my husband was leaving graduate
school for his first job, his thesis advisor told him, "You may wonder how a
professor gets any research done when one has to teach, advise students, serve on
committees, referee papers, write letters of recommendation, interview prospective
faculty. Well, I take long showers."
In Her Own Words: Six Mathematicians Comment on Their Lives and Careers. Notices of
the AMS, V. 38, no. 7 (September 1991), p. 704.
Lang, Andrew (1844-1912)
He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lamp posts -- for support rather than
illumination.
Treasury of Humorous Quotations.
Langer, Rudoph E.
[about Fourier] It was, no doubt, partially because of his very disregard for rigor
that he was able to take conceptual steps which were inherently impossible to men of more
critical genius.
In P. Davis and R. Hersh The Mathematical Experience, Boston: Birkh�ser, 1981.
Lao Tze (604-531 B.C.)
A good calculator does not need artificial aids.
Tao Te Ching, ch 27.
de Laplace, Pierre-Simon (1749 - 1827)
What we know is not much. What we do not know is immense.
(Allegedly his last words.)
DeMorgan's Budget of Paradoxes.
de Laplace, Pierre-Simon (1749 - 1827)
[His last words, according to De Morgan:]
Man follows only phantoms.
DeMorgan's Budget of Paradoxes.
de Laplace, Pierre-Simon (1749 - 1827)
Nature laughs at the difficulties of integration.
In J. W. Krutch "The Colloid and the Crystal", in I. Gordon and S. Sorkin (eds.)
The Armchair Science Reader, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1959.
de Laplace, Pierre-Simon (1749 - 1827)
Read Euler: he is our master in everything.
In G. Simmons Calculus Gems, New York: McGraw Hill Inc., 1992.
de Laplace, Pierre-Simon (1749 - 1827)
Such is the advantage of a well constructed language that its simplified notation
often becomes the source of profound theories.
In N. Rose Mathematical Maxims and Minims, Raleigh NC:Rome Press Inc., 1988.
de Laplace, Pierre-Simon (1749 - 1827)
Napoleon: You have written this huge book on the system of the world without once
mentioning the author of the universe.
Laplace: Sire, I had no need of that hypothesis.
Later when told by Napoleon about the incident, Lagrange commented: Ah, but that is a fine
hypothesis. It explains so many things.
DeMorgan's Budget of Paradoxes.
de Laplace, Pierre-Simon (1749 - 1827)
[said about Napier's logarithms:]
...by shortening the labors doubled the life of the astronomer.
In H. Eves In Mathematical Circles, Boston: Prindle, Weber and Schmidt, 1969.
de Laplace, Pierre-Simon (1749 - 1827)
It is India that gave us the ingenious method of expressing all numbers by means of
ten symbols, each symbol receiving a value of position as well as an absolute value; a
profound and important idea which appears so simple to us now that we ignore its true
merit. But its very simplicity and the great ease which it has lent to computations put
our arithmetic in the first rank of useful inventions; and we shall appreciate the
grandeur of the achievement the more when we remember that it escaped the genius of
Archimedes and Apollonius, two of the greatest men produced by antiquity.
In H. Eves Return to Mathematical Circles, Boston: Prindle, Weber and Schmidt,
1988.
Leach, Edmund Ronald (1910 - 1989)
How can a modern anthropologist embark upon a generalization with any hope of arriving
at a satisfactory conclusion? By thinking of the organizational ideas that are present in
any society as a mathematical pattern.
Rethinking Anthropology. 1961.
Leacock, Stephen
How can you shorten the subject? That stern struggle with the multiplication table,
for many people not yet ended in victory, how can you make it less? Square root, as
obdurate as a hardwood stump in a pasturenothing but years of effort can extract it. You
can't hurry the process. Or pass from arithmetic to algebra; you can't shoulder your way
past quadratic equations or ripple through the binomial theorem. Instead, the other way;
your feet are impeded in the tangled growth, your pace slackens, you sink and fall
somewhere near the binomial theorem with the calculus in sight on the horizon. So died,
for each of us, still bravely fighting, our mathematical training; except for a set of
people called "mathematicians" -- born so, like crooks.
In H. Eves Return to Mathematical Circles, Boston: Prindle, Weber and Schmidt,
1988.
Lebesgue, Henri (1875 - 1941)
In my opinion, a mathematician, in so far as he is a mathematician, need not preoccupy
himself with philosophy -- an opinion, moreover, which has been expressed by many
philosophers.
Scientific American, 211, September 1964, p. 129.
Lehrer, Thomas Andrew (1928- )
In one word he told me the secret of success in mathematics: plagiarize only be sure
always to call it please research.
Lobachevski (A musical recording.)
Leibniz, Gottfried Whilhem (1646-1716)
[about him:]
It is rare to find learned men who are clean, do not stink and have a sense of humour.
[attributed variously to Charles Louis de Secondat Montesquieu and to the Duchess of
Orl�ns]
Leibniz, Gottfried Whilhem (1646-1716)
Nothing is more important than to see the sources of invention which are, in my
opinion more interesting than the inventions themselves.
J. Koenderink, Solid Shape, Cambridge Mass.: MIT Press, 1990.
Leibniz, Gottfried Whilhem (1646-1716)
Music is the pleasure the human soul experiences from counting without being aware
that it is counting.
In N. Rose Mathematical Maxims and Minims, Raleigh NC:Rome Press Inc., 1988.
Leibniz, Gottfried Whilhem (1646-1716)
The imaginary number is a fine and wonderful recourse of the divine spirit, almost an
amphibian between being and not being.
Leibniz, Gottfried Whilhem (1646-1716)
He who understands Archimedes and Apollonius will admire less the achievements of the
foremost men of later times.
In G. Simmons Calculus Gems, New York: McGraw Hill Inc., 1992.
Leibniz, Gottfried Whilhem (1646-1716)
In symbols one observes an advantage in discovery which is greatest when they express
the exact nature of a thing briefly and, as it were, picture it; then indeed the labor of
thought is wonderfully diminished.
In G. Simmons Calculus Gems, New York: McGraw Hill Inc., 1992.
Leibniz, Gottfried Whilhem (1646-1716)
The art of discovering the causes of phenomena, or true hypothesis, is like the art of
decyphering, in which an ingenious conjecture greatly shortens the road.
New Essays Concerning Human Understanding, IV, XII.
Leibniz, Gottfried Whilhem (1646-1716)
Although the whole of this life were said to be nothing but a dream and the physical
world nothing but a phantasm, I should call this dream or phantasm real enough, if, using
reason well, we were never deceived by it.
In J. R. Newman (ed.) The World of Mathematics, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1956.
Leibniz, Gottfried Whilhem (1646-1716)
The soul is the mirror of an indestructible universe.
The Monadology.
da Vinci, Leonardo (1452-1519)
Whoever despises the high wisdom of mathematics nourishes himself on delusion and will
never still the sophistic sciences whose only product is an eternal uproar.
In N. Rose Mathematical Maxims and Minims, Raleigh NC:Rome Press Inc., 1988.
da Vinci, Leonardo (1452 - 1519)
Mechanics is the paradise of the mathematical sciences, because by means of it one
comes to the fruits of mathematics.
Notebooks, v. 1, ch. 20.
da Vinci, Leonardo (1452-1519)
He who loves practice without theory is like the sailor who boards ship without a
rudder and compass and never knows where he may cast.
da Vinci, Leonardo (1452-1519)
No human investigation can be called real science if it cannot be demonstrated
mathematically.
da Vinci, Leonardo (1452-1519)
Inequality is the cause of all local movements.
Leybourn, William (1626-1700)
But leaving those of the Body, I shall proceed to such Recreation as adorn the Mind;
of which those of the Mathematicks are inferior to none.
Pleasure with Profit, 1694.
Lichtenberg, Georg Christoph (1742 - 1799)
All mathematical laws which we find in Nature are always suspect to me, in spite of
their beauty. They give me no pleasure. They are merely auxiliaries. At close range it is
all not true.
In J P Stern Lichtenberg, 1959.
Lichtenberg, Georg Christoph (1742 - 1799)
The great trick of regarding small departures from the truth as the truth itself -- on
which is founded the entire integral calculus -- is also the basis of our witty
speculations, where the whole thing would often collapse if we considered the departures
with philosophical rigour.
Aphorisms.
Lichtenberg, Georg Christoph (1742 - 1799)
In mathematical analysis we call x the undetermined part of line a: the
rest we don't call y, as we do in common life, but a-x. Hence mathematical
language has great advantages over the common language.
Lichtenberg, Georg Christoph (1742 - 1799)
I have often noticed that when people come to understand a mathematical proposition in
some other way than that of the ordinary demonstration, they promptly say, "Oh, I
see. That's how it must be." This is a sign that they explain it to themselves from
within their own system.
le Lionnais, Francois
Who has not be amazed to learn that the function y = e^x , like a phoenix rising again
from its own ashes, is its own derivative?
Great Currents of Mathematical Thought, vol. 1, New York: Dover Publications.
Lippman, Gabriel (1845-1921)
[On the Gaussian curve, remarked to Poincar�]
Experimentalists think that it is a mathematical theorem while the mathematicians believe
it to be an experimental fact.
In D'Arcy Thompson On Growth and Form, 1917.
Littlewood, J. E. (1885 -1977)
It is true that I should have been surprised in the past to learn that Professor Hardy
had joined the Oxford Group. But one could not say the adverse chance was 1:10.
Mathematics is a dangerous profession; an appreciable proportion of us go mad, and then
this particular event would be quite likely.
A Mathematician's Miscellany, Methuen and Co. ltd., 1953.
Littlewood, J. E. (1885 -1977)
A good mathematical joke is better, and better mathematics, than a dozen mediocre
papers.
A Mathematician's Miscellany, Methuen and Co. ltd., 1953.
Littlewood, J. E. (1885 -1977)
I recall once saying that when I had given the same lecture several times I couldn't
help feeling that they really ought to know it by now.
A Mathematician's Miscellany, Methuen and Co. ltd., 1953.
Littlewood, J. E. (1885 -1977)
In passing, I firmly believe that research should be offset by a certain amount of
teaching, if only as a change from the agony of research. The trouble, however, I freely
admit, is that in practice you get either no teaching, or else far too much.
"The Mathematician's Art of Work" in B�a Bollob� (ed.) Littlewood's
Miscellany, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986.
Littlewood, J. E. (1885 -1977)
It is possible for a mathematician to be "too strong" for a given occasion.
He forces through, where another might be driven to a different, and possible more
fruitful, approach. (So a rock climber might force a dreadful crack, instead of finding a
subtle and delicate route.)
A Mathematician's Miscellany, Methuen and Co. ltd., 1953.
Littlewood, J. E. (1885 -1977)
I constantly meet people who are doubtful, generally without due reason, about their
potential capacity [as mathematicians]. The first test is whether you got anything out of
geometry. To have disliked or failed to get on with other [mathematical] subjects need
mean nothing; much drill and drudgery is unavoidable before they can get started, and bad
teaching can make them unintelligible even to a born mathematician.
A Mathematician's Miscellany, Methuen and Co. ltd., 1953.
Littlewood, J. E. (1885 -1977)
The infinitely competent can be uncreative.
In H. Eves Mathematical Circles Squared, Boston: Prindle, Weber and Schmidt, 1972.
Littlewood, J. E. (1885 -1977)
In presenting a mathematical argument the great thing is to give the educated reader
the chance to catch on at once to the momentary point and take details for granted: his
successive mouthfuls should be such as can be swallowed at sight; in case of accidents, or
in case he wishes for once to check in detail, he should have only a clearly circumscribed
little problem to solve (e.g. to check an identity: two trivialities omitted can add up to
an impasse). The unpractised writer, even after the dawn of a conscience, gives him no
such chance; before he can spot the point he has to tease his way through a maze of
symbols of which not the tiniest suffix can be skipped.
A Mathematician's Miscellany, Methuen Co. Ltd., 1953.
Littlewood, J. E. (1885 -1977)
A linguist would be shocked to learn that if a set is not closed this does not mean
that it is open, or again that "E is dense in E" does not mean the same thing as
"E is dense in itself".
A Mathematician's Miscellany, Methuen Co. Ltd., 1953.
Littlewood, J. E. (1885 -1977)
The surprising thing about this paper is that a man who could write it would.
A Mathematician's Miscellany, Methuen Co. Ltd., 1953.
Littlewood, J. E. (1885 -1977)
A precisian professor had the habit of saying: "... quartic polynomial
ax^4+bx^3+cx^2+dx+e , where e need not be the base of the natural logarithms."
A Mathematician's Miscellany, Methuen Co. Ltd., 1953.
Littlewood, J. E. (1885 -1977)
I read in the proof sheets of Hardy on Ramanujan: "As someone said, each of the
positive integers was one of his personal friends." My reaction was, "I wonder
who said that; I wish I had." In the next proof-sheets I read (what now stands),
"It was Littlewood who said..."
A Mathematician's Miscellany, Methuen Co. Ltd, 1953.
Littlewood, J. E. (1885 -1977)
We come finally, however, to the relation of the ideal theory to real world, or
"real" probability. If he is consistent a man of the mathematical school washes
his hands of applications. To someone who wants them he would say that the ideal system
runs parallel to the usual theory: "If this is what you want, try it: it is not my
business to justify application of the system; that can only be done by philosophizing; I
am a mathematician". In practice he is apt to say: "try this; if it works that
will justify it". But now he is not merely philosophizing; he is committing the
characteristic fallacy. Inductive experience that the system works is not evidence.
A Mathematician's Miscellany, Methuen Co. Ltd, 1953.
Littlewood, J. E. (1885 -1977)
The theory of numbers is particularly liable to the accusation that some of its
problems are the wrong sort of questions to ask. I do not myself think the danger is
serious; either a reasonable amount of concentration leads to new ideas or methods of
obvious interest, or else one just leaves the problem alone. "Perfect numbers"
certainly never did any good, but then they never did any particular harm.
A Mathematician's Miscellany, Methuen Co. Ltd., 1953.
Lobatchevsky, Nikolai
There is no branch of mathematics, however abstract, which may not some day be applied
to phenomena of the real world.
In N. Rose Mathematical Maxims and Minims, Raleigh NC:Rome Press Inc., 1988.
Locke, John
...mathematical proofs, like diamonds, are hard and clear, and will be touched with
nothing but strict reasoning.
D. Burton, Elementary Number Theory, Boston: Allyn and Bacon 1980.
Luther, Martin (1483-1546)
Medicine makes people ill, mathematics make them sad and theology makes them sinful.
Mach, Ernst (1838 - 1916)
Archimedes constructing his circle pays with his life for his defective biological
adaptation to immediate circumstances.
Mach, Ernst (1838-1916)
The mathematician who pursues his studies without clear views of this matter, must
often have the uncomfortable feeling that his paper and pencil surpass him in
intelligence.
"The Economy of Science" in J. R. Newman (ed.) The World of Mathematics,
New York: Simon and Schuster, 1956.
Mackay, Alan Lindsay (1926- )
Like the ski resort full of girls hunting for husbands and husbands hunting for girls,
the situation is not as symmetrical as it might seem.
A Dictionary of Scientific Quotations, Bristol: IOP Publishing, 1991.
Mackay, Charles (1814-1889)
Truth ... and if mine eyes
Can bear its blaze, and trace its symmetries,
Measure its distance, and its advent wait,
I am no prophet -- I but calculate.
The Poetical Works of Charles Mackay. 1876.
Maistre Joseph Marie de (1753 - 1821)
The concept of number is the obvious distinction between the beast and man. Thanks to
number, the cry becomes a song, noise acquires rhythm, the spring is transformed into a
dance, force becomes dynamic, and outlines figures.
Mann, Thomas (1875-1955)
A great truth is a truth whose opposite is also a great truth.
Essay on Freud. 1937.
Mann, Thomas (1875-1955)
I tell them that if they will occupy themselves with the study of mathematics they
will find in it the best remedy against the lusts of the flesh.
The Magic Mountain. 1927.
Mann, Thomas (1875-1955)
Some of the men stood talking in this room, and at the right of the door a little knot
had formed round a small table, the center of which was the mathematics student, who ws
eagerly talking. He had made the assertion that one could draw through a given point more
than one parallel to a straight line; Frau Hagenstrm had cried out that this was
impossible, and he had gone on to prove it so conclusively that his hearers were
constrained to behave as though they understood.
Little Herr Friedemann.
Mathesis, Adrian
If your new theorem can be stated with great simplicity, then there will exist a
pathological exception.
In H. Eves Return to Mathematical Circles, Boston: Prindle, Weber and Schmidt,
1988.
Mathesis, Adrian
All great theorems were discovered after midnight.
In H. Eves Return to Mathematical Circles, Boston: Prindle, Weber and Schmidt,
1988.
Mathesis, Adrian
The greatest unsolved theorem in mathematics is why some people are better at it than
others.
In H. Eves Return to Mathematical Circles, Boston: Prindle, Weber and Schmidt,
1988.
Matthias, Bernd T
If you see a formula in the Physical Review that extends over a quarter of a page,
forget it. It's wrong. Nature isn't that complicated.
Maxwell, James Clerk (1813-1879)
... that, in a few years, all great physical constants will have been approximately
estimated, and that the only occupation which will be left to men of science will be to
carry these measurements to another place of decimals.
Scientific Papers 2, 244, October 1871.
Mayer, Maria Goeppert (1906 -1972)
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.
J. Dash, Maria Goeppert-Mayer, A Life of One's Own.
McDuff, Dusa
Gel'fand amazed me by talking of mathematics as though it were poetry. He once said
about a long paper bristling with formulas that it contained the vague beginnings of an
idea which could only hint at and which he had never managed to bring out more clearly. I
had always thought of mathematics as being much more straightforward: a formula is a
formula, and an algebra is an algebra, but Gel'fand found hedgehogs lurking in the rows of
his spectral sequences!
Mathematical Notices v. 38, no. 3, March 1991, pp. 185-7.
McShane, E. J.
There are in this world optimists who feel that any symbol that starts off with an
integral sign must necessarily denote something that will have every property that they
should like an integral to possess. This of course is quite annoying to us rigorous
mathematicians; what is even more annoying is that by doing so they often come up with the
right answer.
Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society, v. 69, p. 611, 1963.
Mencken, H. L. (1880 - 1956)
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 and chemistry.
Notebooks, "Minority Report".
Mermin, N. David (1935 -)
Bridges would not be safer if only people who knew the proper definition of a real
number were allowed to design them.
"Topological Theory of Defects" in Review of Modern Physics, v. 51 no. 3,
July 1979.
Millay, Edna St. Vincent (1892 - 1950)
Euclid alone has looked on Beauty bare.
Let all who prate of Beauty hold their peace,
And lay them prone upon the earth and cease
To ponder on themselves, the while they stare
At nothing, intricately drawn nowhere
In shapes of shifting lineage; let geese
Gabble and hiss, but heroes seek release
From dusty bondage into luminous air.
O blinding hour, O holy, terrible day,
When first the shaft into his vision shone
Of light anatomized! Euclid alone
Has looked on Beauty bare. Fortunate they
Who, though once only and then but far away,
Have heard her massive sandal set on stone.
Milton, John (1608 - 1674)
From Man or Angel the great Architect
Did wisely to conceal, and not divulge,
His secrets, to be scanned by them who ought
Rather admire. Or, if they list to try
Conjecture, he his fabric of the Heavens
Hath left to their disputes -- perhaps to move
His laughter at their quaint opinions wide
Hereafter, when they come to model Heaven
And calculate the stars: how they will wield
The mighty frame: how build, unbuild, contrive
To save appearances; how gird the Sphere
With Centric and Eccentric scribbled o'er,
Cycle and Epicycle, Orb in Orb.
Paradise Lost.
Milton, John (1608-1674)
Chaos umpire sits
And by decision more
embroils the fray
by which he reigns: next
him high arbiter
Chance governs all.
Minkowski, Herman
From henceforth, space by itself, and time by itself, have vanished into the merest
shadows and only a kind of blend of the two exists in its own right.
In J. R. Newman (ed.) The World of Mathematics, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1956.
Minsky, Marvin Lee (1927 -)
Logic doesn't apply to the real world.
D. R. Hofstadter and D. C. Dennett (eds.) The Mind's I, 1981.
Mitchell, Margaret
...She knew only that if she did or said thus-and-so, men would unerringly respond
with the complimentary thus-and-so. It was like a mathematical formula and no more
difficult, for mathematics was the one subject that had come easy to Scarlett in her
schooldays.
Gone With the Wind.
Mittag-Leffler, Gsta
The mathematician's best work is art, a high perfect art, as daring as the most secret
dreams of imagination, clear and limpid. Mathematical genius and artistic genius touch one
another.
In N. Rose Mathematical Maxims and Minims, Raleigh NC:Rome Press Inc., 1988.
Mordell, L.J.
Neither you nor I nor anybody else knows what makes a mathematician tick. It is not a
question of cleverness. I know many mathematicians who are far abler than I am, but they
have not been so lucky. An illustration may be given by considering two miners. One may be
an expert geologist, but he does not find the golden nuggets that the ignorant miner does.
In H. Eves Mathematical Circles Adieu, Boston: Prindle, Weber and Schmidt, 1977.
Moore, E.H. (1862 - 1932)
We lay down a fundamental principle of generalization by abstraction:
"The existence of analogies between central features of various theories implies the
existence of a general theory which underlies the particular theories and unifies them
with respect to those central features...."
In H. Eves Mathematical Circles Revisited, Boston: Prindle, Weber and Schmidt,
1971.
Moroney, M.J.
The words figure and fictitious both derive from the same Latin root, fingere. Beware!
Facts from Figures.
Mueller, Ian
[about Hypatia:]
In an era in which the domain of intellect and politics were almost exclusively male,
Theon [her father] was an unusually liberated person who taught an unusually gifted
daughter and encouraged her to achieve things that, as far as we know, no woman before her
did or perhaps even dreamed of doing.
In G. Simmons Calculus Gems, New York: McGraw Hill Inc., 1992.
Napoleon (1769-1821)
A mathematician of the first rank, Laplace quickly revealed himself as only a mediocre
administrator; from his first work we saw that we had been deceived. Laplace saw no
question from its true point of view; he sought subtleties everywhere; had only doubtful
ideas, and finally carried the spirit of the infinitely small into administration.
In N. Rose Mathematical Maxims and Minims, Raleigh NC:Rome Press Inc.,1988.
Nebeuts, E. Kim
Teach to the the problems, not to the text.
In H. Eves Return to Mathematical Circles, Boston: Prindle, Weber and Schmidt,
1988.
Nebeuts, E. Kim
To state a theorem and then to show examples of it is literally to teach backwards.
In H. Eves Return to Mathematical Circles, Boston: Prindle, Weber and Schmidt,
1988.
Nebeuts, E. Kim
A good preparation takes longer than the delivery.
In H. Eves Return to Mathematical Circles, Boston: Prindle, Weber and Schmidt,
1988.
Neumann, Franz Ernst (1798 - 1895)
The greatest reward lies in making the discovery; recognition can add little or
nothing to that.
von Neumann, Johann (1903 - 1957)
In mathematics you don't understand things. You just get used to them.
In G. Zukav The Dancing Wu Li Masters.
Newman, James R.
The most painful thing about mathematics is how far away you are from being able to
use it after you have learned it.
In J. R. Newman (ed.) The World of Mathematics, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1956.
Newman, James, R.
The discovery in 1846 of the planet Neptune was a dramatic and spectacular achievement
of mathematical astronomy. The very existence of this new member of the solar system, and
its exact location, were demonstrated with pencil and paper; there was left to observers
only the routine task of pointing their telescopes at the spot the mathematicians had
marked.
In J. R. Newman (ed.) The World of Mathematics, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1956.
Newman, James R.
It is hard to know what you are talking about in mathematics, yet no one questions the
validity of what you say. There is no other realm of discourse half so queer.
In J. R. Newman (ed.) The World of Mathematics, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1956.
Newman, James R.
Mathematical economics is old enough to be respectable, but not all economists respect
it. It has powerful supporters and impressive testimonials, yet many capable economists
deny that mathematics, except as a shorthand or expository device, can be applied to
economic reasoning. There have even been rumors that mathematics is used in economics (and
in other social sciences) either for the deliberate purpose of mystification or to confer
dignity upon common places as French was once used in diplomatic communications.
In J. R. Newman (ed.) The World of Mathematics, New Yorl: Simon and Schuster, 1956.
Newman, James R.
To be sure, mathematics can be extended to any branch of knowledge, including
economics, provided the concepts are so clearly defined as to permit accurate symbolic
representation. That is only another way of saying that in some branches of discourse it
is desirable to know what you are talking about.
In J. R. Newman (ed.) The World of Mathematics, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1956.
Newman, James R.
The Theory of Groups is a branch of mathematics in which one does something to
something and then compares the result with the result obtained from doing the same thing
to something else, or something else to the same thing.
In J. R. Newman (ed.) The World of Mathematics, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1956.
Newman, James R.
Games are among the most interesting creations of the human mind, and the analysis of
their structure is full of adventure and surprises. Unfortunately there is never a lack of
mathematicians for the job of transforming delectable ingredients into a dish that tastes
like a damp blanket.
In J. R. Newman (ed.) The World of Mathematics, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1956.
Newton, Isaac (1642-1727)
...from the same principles, I now demonstrate the frame of the System of the World.
Principia Mathematica.
Newton, Isaac (1642-1727)
Hypotheses non fingo.
I feign no hypotheses.
Principia Mathematica.
Newton, Isaac (1642-1727)
To explain all nature is too difficult a task for any one man or even for any one age.
`Tis much better to do a little with certainty, and leave the rest for others hat come
after you, than to explain all things.
In G. Simmons Calculus Gems, New York: McGraw Hill Inc., 1992.
Newton, Isaac (1642-1727)
The description of right lines and circles, upon which geometry is founded, belongs to
mechanics. Geometry does not teach us to draw these lines, but requires them to be drawn.
Principia Mathematica.
Newton, Isaac (1642-1727)
The latest authors, like the most ancient, strove to subordinate the phenomena of
nature to the laws of mathematics.
Newton, Isaac (1642-1727)
[His epitaph:]
Who, by vigor of mind almost divine, the motions and figures of the planets, the paths of
comets, and the tides of the seas first demonstrated.
Thomas R. Nicely
Usually mathematicians have to shoot somebody to get this much publicity.
[On the attention he received after finding the flaw in Intel's Pentium chip in 1994]
Cincinnati Enquirer, December 18, 1994, Section A, page 19.
Nightingale, Florence (1820-1910)
[Of her:]
Her statistics were more than a study, they were indeed her religion. For her Quetelet was
the hero as scientist, and the presentation copy of his Physique sociale is annotated by
her on every page. Florence Nightingale believed -- and in all the actions of her life
acted upon that belief -- that the administrator could only be successful if he were
guided by statistical knowledge. The legislator -- to say nothing of the politician -- too
often failed for want of this knowledge. Nay, she went further; she held that the universe
-- including human communities -- was evolving in accordance with a divine plan; that it
was man's business to endeavor to understand this plan and guide his actions in sympathy
with it. But to understand God's thoughts, she held we must study statistics, for these
are the measure of His purpose. Thus the study of statistics was for her a religious duty.
K. Pearson The Life, Letters and Labours for Francis Galton, vol. 2, 1924.
Oakley, C.O.
The study of mathematics cannot be replaced by any other activity that will train and
develop man's purely logical faculties to the same level of rationality.
The American Mathematical Monthly, 56, 1949, p19.
Ogyu, Sorai (1666 - 1729)
Mathematicians boast of their exacting achievements, but in reality they are absorbed
in mental acrobatics and contribute nothing to society.
Complete Works on Japan's Philosophical Thought. 1956.
Oppenheimer, Julius Robert (1904 - 1967)
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.
"The Tree of Knowledge" in Harper's, 217, 1958.
Osgood, W. F.
The calculus is the greatest aid we have to the application of physical truth in the
broadest sense of the word.
In N. Rose Mathematical Maxims and Minims, Raleigh NC:Rome Press Inc., 1988.
Pascal, Blaise (1623-1662)
We are usually convinced more easily by reasons we have found ourselves than by those
which have occurred to others.
Pensees. 1670.
Pascal, Blaise (1623-1662)
It is the heart which perceives God and not the reason.
Pensees. 1670.
Pascal, Blaise (1623-1662)
Man is equally incapable of seeing the nothingness from which he emerges and the
infinity in which he is engulfed.
Pensees. 1670.
Pascal, Blaise (1623-1662)
Our nature consists in movement; absolute rest is death.
Pensees. 1670.
Pascal, Blaise (1623-1662)
Man is full of desires: he loves only those who can satisfy them all. "This man
is a good mathematician," someone will say. But I have no concern for mathematics; he
would take me for a proposition. "That one is a good soldier." He would take me
for a besieged town. I need, that is to say, a decent man who can accommodate himself to
all my desires in a general sort of way.
W. H. Auden and L. Kronenberger (eds.) The Viking Book of Aphorisms, New York:
Viking Press, 1966.
Pascal, Blaise (1623-1662)
We run carelessly to the precipice, after we have put something before us to prevent
us from seeing it.
W. H. Auden and L. Kronenberger (eds.) The Viking Book of Aphorisms, New York:
Viking Press, 1966.
Pascal, Blaise (1623-1662)
We do not worry about being respected in towns through which we pass. But if we are
going to remain in one for a certain time, we do worry. How long does this time have to
be?
W. H. Auden and L. Kronenberger (eds.) The Viking Book of Aphorisms, New York:
Viking Press, 1966.
Pascal, Blaise (1623-1662)
Few men speak humbly of humility, chastely of chastity, skeptically of skepticism.
W. H. Auden and L. Kronenberger (eds.) The Viking Book of Aphorisms, New York:
Viking Press, 1966.
Pascal, Blaise (1623-1662)
Those who write against vanity want the glory of having written well, and their
readers the glory of reading well, and I who write this have the same desire, as perhaps
those who read this have also.
W. H. Auden and L. Kronenberger (eds.) The Viking Book of Aphorisms, New York:
Viking Press, 1966.
Pascal, Blaise (1623-1662)
Our notion of symmetry is derived form the human face. Hence, we demand symmetry
horizontally and in breadth only, not vertically nor in depth.
W. H. Auden and L. Kronenberger (eds.) The Viking Book of Aphorisms, New York:
Viking Press, 1966.
Pascal, Blaise (1623-1662)
When we encounter a natural style we are always surprised and delighted, for we
thought to see an author and found a man.
W. H. Auden and L. Kronenberger (eds.) The Viking Book of Aphorisms, New York:
Viking Press, 1966.
Pascal, Blaise (1623-1662)
Everything that is written merely to please the author is worthless.
W. H. Auden and L. Kronenberger (eds.) The Viking Book of Aphorisms, New York:
Viking Press, 1966.
Pascal, Blaise (1623-1662)
I cannot judge my work while I am doing it. I have to do as painters do, stand back
and view it from a distance, but not too great a distance. How great? Guess.
W. H. Auden and L. Kronenberger (eds.) The Viking Book of Aphorisms, New York:
Viking Press, 1966.
Pascal, Blaise (1623-1662)
Contradiction is not a sign of falsity, nor the lack of contradiction a sign of truth.
W. H. Auden and L. Kronenberger (eds.) The Viking Book of Aphorisms, New York:
Viking Press, 1966.
Pascal, Blaise (1623-1662)
All err the more dangerously because each follows a truth. Their mistake lies not in
following a falsehood but in not following another truth.
W. H. Auden and L. Kronenberger (eds.) The Viking Book of Aphorisms, New York:
Viking Press, 1966.
Pascal, Blaise (1623-1662)
Perfect clarity would profit the intellect but damage the will.
W. H. Auden and L. Kronenberger (eds.) The Viking Book of Aphorisms, New York:
Viking Press, 1966.
Pascal, Blaise (1623-1662)
Those who are accustomed to judge by feeling do not understand the process of
reasoning, because they want to comprehend at a glance and are not used to seeking for
first principles. Those, on the other hand, who are accustomed to reason from first
principles do not understand matters of feeling at all, because they look for first
principles and are unable to comprehend at a glance.
W. H. Auden and L. Kronenberger (eds.) The Viking Book of Aphorisms, New York:
Viking Press, 1966.
Pascal, Blaise (1623-1662)
To deny, to believe, and to doubt well are to a man as the race is to a horse.
W. H. Auden and L. Kronenberger (eds.) The Viking Book of Aphorisms, New York:
Viking Press, 1966.
Pascal, Blaise (1623-1662)
Words differently arranged have a different meaning and meanings differently arranged
have a different effect.
W. H. Auden and L. Kronenberger (eds.) The Viking Book of Aphorisms, New York:
Viking Press, 1966.
Pascal, Blaise (1623-1662)
Nature is an infinite sphere of which the center is everywhere and the circumference
nowhere.
Pensees. 1670.
Pascal, Blaise (1623-1662)
We arrive at truth, not by reason only, but also by the heart.
Pensees. 1670.
Pascal, Blaise (1623-1662)
When the passions become masters, they are vices.
Pensees. 1670.
Pascal, Blaise (1623-1662)
Men despise religion; they hate it, and they fear it is true.
Pensees. 1670.
Pascal, Blaise (1623-1662)
Religion is so great a thing that it is right that those who will not take the trouble
to seek it if it be obscure, should be deprived of it.
Pensees. 1670.
Pascal, Blaise (1623-1662)
It is not certain that everything is uncertain.
Pensees. 1670.
Pascal, Blaise (1623-1662)
We are so presumptuous that we should like to be known all over the world, even by
people who will only come when we are no more. Such is our vanity that the good opinion of
half a dozen of the people around us gives us pleasure and satisfaction.
Pensees. 1670.
Pascal, Blaise (1623-1662)
The sole cause of man's unhappiness is that he does not know how to stay quietly in
his room.
Pensees. 1670.
Pascal, Blaise (1623-1662)
Reason's last step is the recognition that there are an infinite number of things
which are beyond it.
Pensees. 1670.
Pascal, Blaise (1623-1662)
Through space the universe grasps me and swallows me up like a speck; through thought
I grasp it.
Pensees. 1670.
Pascal, Blaise (1623-1662)
Let no one say that I have said nothing new... the arrangement of the subject is new.
When we play tennis, we both play with the same ball, but one of us places it better.
Pensees. 1670.
Pascal, Blaise (1623-1662)
The excitement that a gambler feels when making a bet is equal to the amount he might
win times the probability of winning it.
In N. Rose Mathematical Maxims and Minims, Raleigh NC:Rome Press Inc., 1988.
Pascal, Blaise (1623-1662)
Reason is the slow and tortuous method by which these who do not know the truth
discover it. The heart has its own reason which reason does not know.
Pensees. 1670.
Pascal, Blaise (1623-1662)
Reverend Fathers, my letters did not usually follow each other at such close
intervals, nor were they so long.... This one would not be so long had I but the leisure
to make it shorter.
Lettres provinciales.
Pascal, Blaise (1623-1662)
The last thing one knows when writing a book is what to put first.
Pensees. 1670.
Pascal, Blaise (1623-1662)
What is man in nature? Nothing in relation to the infinite, all in relation to
nothing, a mean between nothing and everything.
Pensees. 1670.
Pascal, Blaise (1623-1662)
[I feel] engulfed in the infinite immensity of spaces whereof I know nothing, and
which know nothing of me, I am terrified The eternal silence of these infinite spaces
alarms me.
Pensees. 1670.
Pascal, Blaise (1623-1662)
Let us weigh the gain and the loss in wagering that God is. Let us consider the two
possibilities. If you gain, you gain all; if you lose, you lose nothing. Hesitate not,
then, to wager that He is.
Pensees. 1670.
Pascal, Blaise (1623-1662)
Look somewhere else for someone who can follow you in your researches about numbers.
For my part, I confess that they are far beyond me, and I am competent only to admire
them.
[Written to Fermat]
In G. Simmons Calculus Gems, New York: McGraw Hill Inc., 1992.
Pascal, Blaise (1623-1662)
The more I see of men, the better I like my dog.
In H. Eves Return to Mathematical Circles, Boston: Prindle, Weber and Schmidt,
1988.
Pascal, Blaise (1623-1662)
The more intelligent one is, the more men of originality one finds. Ordinary people
find no difference between men.
Pensees. 1670.
Pascal, Blaise (1623-1662)
However vast a man's spiritual resources, he is capable of but one great passion.
Discours sur les passions de l'amour. 1653.
Pascal, Blaise (1623-1662)
There are two types of mind ... the mathematical, and what might be called the
intuitive. The former arrives at its views slowly, but they are firm and rigid; the latter
is endowed with greater flexibility and applies itself simultaneously to the diverse
lovable parts of that which it loves.
Discours sur les passions de l'amour. 1653.
Passano, L.M.
This trend [emphasizing applied mathematics over pure mathematics] will make the queen
of the sciences into the quean of the sciences.
In H. Eves Mathematical Circles Squared, Boston: Prindle, Weber and Schmidt, 1972.
Pasteur, Louis Chance favors only the prepared mind.
In H. Eves Return to Mathematical Circles, Boston: Prindle, Weber and Schmidt,
1988.
Pearson, Karl
The mathematician, carried along on his flood of symbols, dealing apparently with
purely formal truths, may still reach results of endless importance for our description of
the physical universe.
In N. Rose Mathematical Maxims and Minims, Raleigh NC:Rome Press Inc., 1988.
Peirce, Benjamin (1809-1880)
Mathematics is the science which draws necessary conclusions.
Memoir read before the National Academy of Sciences in Washington, 1870.
Peirce, Charles Sanders (1839-1914)
The one [the logician] studies the science of drawing conclusions, the other [the
mathematician] the science which draws necessary conclusions.
"The Essence of Mathematics" in J. R. Newman (ed.) The World of Mathematics,
New York: Simon and Schuster, 1956.
Peirce, Charles Sanders (1839-1914)
...mathematics is distinguished from all other sciences except only ethics, in
standing in no need of ethics. Every other science, even logic, especially in its early
stages, is in danger of evaporating into airy nothingness, degenerating, as the Germans
say, into an arachnoid film, spun from the stuff that dreams are made of. There is no such
danger for pure mathematics; for that is precisely what mathematics ought to be.
"The Essence of Mathematics" in J. R. Newman (ed.) The World of Mathematics,
New York: Simon and Schuster, 1956.
Peirce, Charles Sanders (1839-1914)
Among the minor, yet striking characteristics of mathematics, may be mentioned the
fleshless and skeletal build of its propositions; the peculiar difficulty, complication,
and stress of its reasonings; the perfect exactitude of its results; their broad
universality; their practical infallibility.
"The Essence of Mathematics" in J. R. Newman (ed.) The World of Mathematics,
New York: Simon and Schuster, 1956.
Peirce, Charles Sanders (1839-1914)
The pragmatist knows that doubt is an art which hs to be acquired with difficulty.
Collected Papers.
Pedersen, Jean
Geometry is a skill of the eyes and the hands as well as of the mind.
Plato (ca 429-347 BC)
He who can properly define and divide is to be considered a god.
Plato (ca 429-347 BC)
The ludicrous state of solid geometry made me pass over this branch. Republic,
VII, 528.
Plato (ca 429-347 BC)
He is unworthy of the name of man who is ignorant of the fact that the diagonal of a
square is incommensurable with its side.
Plato (ca 429-347 BC)
Mathematics is like checkers in being suitable for the young, not too difficult,
amusing, and without peril to the state.
Plato (ca 429-347 BC)
The knowledge of which geometry aims is the knowledge of the eternal.
Republic, VII, 52.
Plato (ca 429-347 BC)
I have hardly ever known a mathematician who was capable of reasoning.
In N. Rose Mathematical Maxims and Minims, Raleigh NC:Rome Press Inc., 1988.
Plato (ca 429-347 BC)
There still remain three studies suitable for free man. Arithmetic is one of them.
In J. R. Newman (ed.) The World of Mathematics, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1956.
Plutarch (ca 46-127)
[about Archimedes:]
... being perpetually charmed by his familiar siren, that is, by his geometry, he
neglected to eat and drink and took no care of his person; that he was often carried by
force to the baths, and when there he would trace geometrical figures in the ashes of the
fire, and with his finger draws lines upon his body when it was anointed with oil, being
in a state of great ecstasy and divinely possessed by his science.
In G. Simmons Calculus Gems, New York: McGraw Hill Inc., 1992.
Poe, Edgar Allen
To speak algebraically, Mr. M. is execrable, but Mr. G. is (x + 1)- ecrable.
[Discussing fellow writers Cornelius Mathews and William Ellery Channing.]
In N. Rose Mathematical Maxims and Minims, Raleigh NC: Rome Press Inc., 1988.
Poincar� Jules Henri (1854-1912)
Mathematics is the art of giving the same name to different things.
[As opposed to the quotation: Poetry is the art of giving different names to the same
thing].
Poincar� Jules Henri (1854-1912)
Later generations will regard Mengenlehre (set theory) as a disease from which one has
recovered.
[Whether or not he actually said this is a matter of debate amongst historians of
mathematics.]
The Mathematical Intelligencer, vol 13, no. 1, Winter 1991.
Poincar� Jules Henri (1854-1912)
What is it indeed that gives us the feeling of elegance in a solution, in a
demonstration? It is the harmony of the diverse parts, their symmetry, their happy
balance; in a word it is all that introduces order, all that gives unity, that permits us
to see clearly and to comprehend at once both the ensemble and the details.
In N. Rose Mathematical Maxims and Minims, Raleigh NC:Rome Press Inc., 1988.
Poincar� Jules Henri (1854-1912)
Thus, be it understood, to demonstrate a theorem, it is neither necessary nor even
advantageous to know what it means. The geometer might be replaced by the "logic
piano" imagined by Stanley Jevons; or, if you choose, a machine might be imagined
where the assumptions were put in at one end, while the theorems came out at the other,
like the legendary Chicago machine where the pigs go in alive and come out transformed
into hams and sausages. No more than these machines need the mathematician know what he
does.
In J. R. Newman (ed.) The World of Mathematics, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1956.
Poincar� Jules Henri (1854-1912)
Talk with M. Hermite. He never evokes a concrete image, yet you soon perceive that the
more abstract entities are to him like living creatures.
In G. Simmons Calculus Gems, New York: McGraw Hill Inc., 1992.
Poincar� Jules Henri (1854-1912)
Science is built up with facts, as a house is with stones. But a collection of facts
is no more a science than a heap of stones is a house.
La Science et l'hypoth�e.
Poincar� Jules Henri (1854-1912)
A scientist worthy of his name, about all a mathematician, experiences in his work the
same impression as an artist; his pleasure is as great and of the same nature.
In N. Rose Mathematical Maxims and Minims, Raleigh NC:Rome Press Inc., 1988.
Poincar� Jules Henri (1854-1912)
The mathematical facts worthy of being studied are those which, by their analogy with
other facts, are capable of leading us to the knowledge of a physical law. They reveal the
kinship between other facts, long known, but wrongly believed to be strangers to one
another.
In N. Rose Mathematical Maxims and Minims, Raleigh NC:Rome Press Inc., 1988.
Poincar� Jules Henri (1854-1912)
Mathematicians do not study objects, but relations between objects. Thus, they are
free to replace some objects by others so long as the relations remain unchanged. Content
to them is irrelevant: they are interested in form only.
Poincar� Jules Henri (1854-1912)
Thought is only a flash between two long nights, but this flash is everything.
In J. R. Newman (ed.) The World of Mathematics, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1956.
Poincar� Jules Henri (1854-1912)
The mind uses its faculty for creativity only when experience forces it to do so.
Poincar� Jules Henri (1854-1912)
Mathematical discoveries, small or greatare never born of spontaneous generation They
always presuppose a soil seeded with preliminary knowledge and well prepared by labour,
both conscious and subconscious.
Poincar� Jules Henri (1854-1912)
Absolute space, that is to say, the mark to which it would be necessary to refer the
earth to know whether it really moves, has no objective existence.... The two
propositions: "The earth turns round" and "it is more convenient to suppose
the earth turns round" have the same meaning; there is nothing more in the one than
in the other.
La Science et l'hypoth�e.
Poincar� Jules Henri (1854-1912)
...by natural selection our mind has adapted itself to the conditions of the external
world. It has adopted the geometry most advantageous to the species or, in other words,
the most convenient. Geometry is not true, it is advantageous.
Science and Method.
Poisson, Sim�n (1781-1840)
Life is good for only two things, discovering mathematics and teaching mathematics.
Mathematics Magazine, v. 64, no. 1, Feb. 1991.
Poly� George (1887, 1985)
Mathematics consists of proving the most obvious thing in the least obvious way.
In N. Rose Mathematical Maxims and Minims, Raleigh NC:Rome Press Inc., 1988.
Poly� George (1887, 1985)
The traditional mathematics professor of the popular legend is absentminded. He
usually appears in public with a lost umbrella in each hand. He prefers to face the
blackboard and to turn his back to the class. He writes a, he says b, he means c; but it
should be d. Some of his sayings are handed down from generation to generation.
"In order to solve this differential equation you look at it till a solution occurs
to you."
"This principle is so perfectly general that no particular application of it is
possible."
"Geometry is the science of correct reasoning on incorrect figures."
"My method to overcome a difficulty is to go round it."
"What is the difference between method and device? A method is a device which you
used twice."
How to Solve It. Princeton: Princeton University Press. 1945.
Poly� George (1887, 1985)
Mathematics 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.
D. J. Albers and G. L. Alexanderson, Mathematical People, Boston: Birkh�ser,
1985.
Poly� George (1887, 1985)
There are many questions which fools can ask that wise men cannot answer.
In H. Eves Return to Mathematical Circles, Boston: Prindle, Weber and Schmidt,
1988.
Poly� George (1887, 1985)
When introduced at the wrong time or place, good logic may be the worst enemy of good
teaching.
The American Mathematical Monthly, v. 100, no. 3.
Poly� George (1887, 1985)
Even fairly good students, when they have obtained the solution of the problem and
written down neatly the argument, shut their books and look for something else. Doing so,
they miss an important and instructive phase of the work. ... A good teacher should
understand and impress on his students the view that no problem whatever is completely
exhausted.
One of the first and foremost duties of the teacher is not to give his students the
impression that mathematical problems have little connection with each other, and no
connection at all with anything else. We have a natural opportunity to investigate the
connections of a problem when looking back at its solution.
How to Solve It. Princeton: Princeton University Press. 1945.
Poly� George (1887, 1985)
In order to translate a sentence from English into French two things are necessary.
First, we must understand thoroughly the English sentence. Second, we must be familiar
with the forms of expression peculiar to the French language. The situation is very
similar when we attempt to express in mathematical symbols a condition proposed in words.
First, we must understand thoroughly the condition. Second, we must be familiar with the
forms of mathematical expression.
How to Solve It. Princeton: Princeton University Press. 1945.
Pope, Alexander (1688-1744)
Epitaph on Newton:
Nature and Nature's law lay hid in night:
God said, "Let Newton be!," and all was light.
[added by Sir John Collings Squire:
It did not last: the Devil shouting "Ho.
Let Einstein be," restored the status quo]
[Aaron Hill's version:
O'er Nature's laws God cast the veil of night,
Out blaz'd a Newton's souland all was light.
Pope, Alexander (1688-1744)
Order is Heaven's first law.
An Essay on Man IV.
Pope, Alexander (1688-1744)
See skulking Truth to her old cavern fled,
Mountains of Casuistry heap'd o'er her head!
Philosophy, that lean'd on Heav'n before,
Shrinks to her second cause, and is no more.
Physic of Metaphysic begs defence,
And Metaphysic calls for aid on Sense!
See Mystery to Mathematics fly!
In J. R. Newman (ed.) The World of Mathematics, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1956.
Pordage, Matthew
One of the endearing things about mathematicians is the extent to which they will go
to avoid doing any real work.
In H. Eves Return to Mathematical Circles, Boston: Prindle, Weber and Schmidt,
1988.
Proclus Diadochus (412 - 485)
It is well known that the man who first made public the theory of irrationals perished
in a shipwreck in order that the inexpressible and unimaginable should ever remain veiled.
And so the guilty man, who fortuitously touched on and revealed this aspect of living
things, was taken to the place where he began and there is for ever beaten by the waves.
Scholium to Book X of Euclid V.
Purcell, E. and Varberg, D.
The Mean Value Theorem is the midwife of calculus -- not very important or glamorous
by itself, but often helping to delivery other theorems that are of major significance.
Calculus with Analytic Geomety, fifth edition, Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall,
1987.
Pushkin, Aleksandr Sergeyevich (1799 - 1837)
Inspiration is needed in geometry, just as much as in poetry.
Likhtenshtein
Quine, Willard Van Orman
Just as the introduction of the irrational numbers ... is a convenient myth [which]
simplifies the laws of arithmetic ... so physical objects are postulated entities which
round out and simplify our account of the flux of existence... The conceptional scheme of
physical objects is [likewise] a convenient myth, simpler than the literal truth and yet
containing that literal truth as a scattered part.
In J. Koenderink Solid Shape, Cambridge Mass.: MIT Press, 1990.
Raleigh, [Sir] Walter Alexander (1861-1922)
In an examination those who do not wish to know ask questions of those who cannot
tell.
Some Thoughts on Examinations.
Recorde, Robert (1557)
To avoide the tediouse repetition of these woordes: is equalle to: I will settle as I
doe often in woorke use, a paire of paralleles, or gemowe [twin] lines of one lengthe: =,
bicause noe .2. thynges, can be moare equalle.
In G. Simmons Calculus Gems, New York: McGraw Hill Inc., 1992.
Reid, Thomas
It is the invaluable merit of the great Basle mathematician Leonard Euler, to have
freed the analytical calculus from all geometric bounds, and thus to have established
analysis as an independent science, which from his time on has maintained an unchallenged
leadership in the field of mathematics.
In N. Rose Mathematical Maxims and Minims, Raleigh NC:Rome Press Inc., 1988.
Renan, Ernest
The simplest schoolboy is now familiar with facts for which Archimedes would have
sacrificed his life.
Souvenirs d'enfance et de jeunesse.
R�yi, Alfr�
If I feel unhappy, I do mathematics to become happy. If I am happy, I do mathematics
to keep happy.
P. Tur�, "The Work of Alfr� R�yi", Matematikai Lapok 21, 1970, pp
199 - 210.
Richardson, Lewis Fry (1881 - 1953)
Another advantage of a mathematical statement is that it is so definite that it might
be definitely wrong; and if it is found to be wrong, there is a plenteous choice of
amendments ready in the mathematicians' stock of formulae. Some verbal statements have not
this merit; they are so vague that they could hardly be wrong, and are correspondingly
useless.
Mathematics of War and Foreign Politics.
Riskin, Adrian
(after Edna St. Vincent Millay)
...Euclid alone
Has looked on Beauty bare.
He turned away at once;
Far too polite to stare.
The Mathematical Intelligencer, V. 16, no. 4 (Fall 1994), p. 20.
R. Rivest, A. Shamir, and L. Adleman
The magic words are squeamish ossifrage
[This sentence is the result when a coded message in Martin Gardner's column about
factoring the famous number RSA-129 is decoded. See the article whose title is the above
sentence by Barry Cipra, SIAM News July 1994, 1, 12-13.]
Rohault, Jacques (17th century)
It was by just such a hazard, as if a man should let fall a handful of sand upon a
table and the particles of it should be so ranged that we could read distinctly on it a
whole page of Virgil's Aenead.
Trait�de Physique, Paris, 1671.
Rosenblueth, A
[with Norbert Wiener]
The best material model of a cat is another, or preferably the same, cat.
Philosophy of Science 1945.
Rosenlicht, Max (1949)
You know we all became mathematicians for the same reason: we were lazy.
Hugo Rossi
In the fall of 1972 President Nixon announced that the rate of increase of inflation
was decreasing. This was the first time a sitting president used the third derivative to
advance his case for reelection.
Mathematics Is an Edifice, Not a Toolbox, Notices of the AMS, v. 43, no. 10,
October 1996.
Rota, Gian-carlo
We often hear that mathematics consists mainly of "proving theorems." Is a
writer's job mainly that of "writing sentences?"
In preface to P. Davis and R. Hersh The Mathematical Experience, Boston:
Birkh�ser, 1981.
Russell, Bertrand (1872-1970)
How dare we speak of the laws of chance? Is not chance the antithesis of all law?
Calcul des probabilit�.
Russell, Bertrand (1872-1970)
Mathematics takes us into the region of absolute necessity, to which not only the
actual word, but every possible word, must conform.
In N. Rose Mathematical Maxims and Minims, Raleigh NC:Rome Press Inc., 1988.
Russell, Bertrand (1872-1970)
Although this may seem a paradox, all exact science is dominated by the idea of
approximation.
W. H. Auden and L. Kronenberger (eds.) The Viking Book of Aphorisms, New York:
Viking Press, 1966.
Russell, Bertrand (1872-1970)
At the age of eleven, I began Euclid, with my brother as my tutor. This was one of the
great events of my life, as dazzling as first love. I had not imagined there was anything
so delicious in the world. From that moment until I was thirty-eight, mathematics was my
chief interest and my chief source of happiness.
The Autobiography of Bertrand Russell .
Russell, Bertrand (1872-1970)
A good notation has a subtlety and suggestiveness which at times make it almost seem
like a live teacher.
In J. R. Newman (ed.) The World of Mathematics, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1956.
Russell, Bertrand (1872-1970)
If I were a medical man, I should prescribe a holiday to any patient who considered
his work important.
The Autobiography of Bertrand Russell .
Russell, Bertrand (1872-1970)
Ordinary language is totally unsuited for expressing what physics really asserts,
since the words of everyday life are not sufficiently abstract. Only mathematics and
mathematical logic can say as little as the physicist means to say.
The Scientific Outlook, 1931.
Russell, Bertrand (1872-1970)
With equal passion I have sought knowledge. I have wished to understand the hearts of
men. I have wished to know why the stars shine. And I have tried to apprehend the
Pythagorean power by which number holds sway about the flux. A little of this, but not
much, I have achieved.
The Autobiography of Bertrand Russell .
Russell, Bertrand (1872-1970)
At first it seems obvious, but the more you think about it the stranger the deductions
from this axiom seem to become; in the end you cease to understand what is meant by it.
In N. Rose Mathematical Maxims and Minims, Raleigh NC:Rome Press Inc., 1988.
Russell, Bertrand (1872-1970)
Calculus required continuity, and continuity was supposed to require the infinitely
little; but nobody could discover what the infinitely little might be.
In N. Rose Mathematical Maxims and Minims, Raleigh NC:Rome Press Inc., 1988.
Russell, Bertrand (1872-1970)
The fact that all Mathematics is Symbolic Logic is one of the greatest discoveries of
our age; and when this fact has been established, the remainder of the principles of
mathematics consists in the analysis of Symbolic Logic itself.
Principles of Mathematics. 1903.
Russell, Bertrand (1872-1970)
A habit of basing convictions upon evidence, and of giving to them only that degree or
certainty which the evidence warrants, would, if it became general, cure most of the ills
from which the world suffers.
In G. Simmons Calculus Gems, New York: McGraw Hill Inc., 1992.
Russell, Bertrand (1872-1970)
The method of "postulating" what we want has many advantages; they are the
same as the advantages of theft over honest toil.
Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy, New York and London, 1919, p 71.
Russell, Bertrand (1872-1970)
Aristotle maintained that women have fewer teeth than men; although he was twice
married, it never occurred to him to verify this statement by examining his wives' mouths.
The Impact of Science on Society, 1952.
Russell, Bertrand (1872-1970)
[Upon hearing via Littlewood an exposition on the theory of relativity:]
To think I have spent my life on absolute muck.
J.E. Littlewood, A Mathematician's Miscellany, Methuen and Co. ltd., 1953.
Russell, Bertrand (1872-1970)
"But," you might say, "none of this shakes my belief that 2 and 2 are
4." You are quite right, except in marginal cases -- and it is only in marginal cases
that you are doubtful whether a certain animal is a dog or a certain length is less than a
meter. Two must be two of something, and the proposition "2 and 2 are 4" is
useless unless it can be applied. Two dogs and two dogs are certainly four dogs, but cases
arise in which you are doubtful whether two of them are dogs. "Well, at any rate
there are four animals," you may say. But there are microorganisms concerning which
it is doubtful whether they are animals or plants. "Well, then living
organisms," you say. But there are things of which it is doubtful whether they are
living organisms or not. You will be driven into saying: "Two entities and two
entities are four entities." When you have told me what you mean by
"entity," we will resume the argument.
In N. Rose Mathematical Maxims and Minims, Raleigh NC:Rome Press Inc., 1988.
Russell, Bertrand (1872-1970)
I wanted certainty in the kind of way in which people want religious faith. I thought
that certainty is more likely to be found in mathematics than elsewhere. But I discovered
that many mathematical demonstrations, which my teachers expected me to accept, were full
of fallacies, and that, if certainty were indeed discoverable in mathematics, it would be
in a new field of mathematics, with more solid foundations than those that had hitherto
been thought secure. But as the work proceeded, I was continually reminded of the fable
about the elephant and the tortoise. having constructed an elephant upon which the
mathematical world could rest, I found the elephant tottering, and proceeded to construct
a tortoise to keep the elephant from falling. But the tortoise was no more secure than the
elephant, and after some twenty years of very arduous toil, I came to the conclusion that
there was nothing more that I could do in the way of making mathematical knowledge
indubitable.
Portraits from Memory.
Russell, Bertrand (1872-1970)
Men who are unhappy, like men who sleep badly, are always proud of the fact.
W. H. Auden and L. Kronenberger (eds.) The Viking Book of Aphorisms, New York:
Viking Press, 1966.
Russell, Bertrand (1872-1970)
Work is of two kinds: first, altering the position of matter at or near the earth's
surface relatively to other such matter; second, telling other people to do so. The first
kind is unpleasant and ill paid; the second is pleasant and highly paid.
Russell, Bertrand (1872-1970)
A sense of duty is useful in work but offensive in personal relations. Certain
characteristics of the subject are clear. To begin with, we do not, in this subject, deal
with particular things or particular properties: we deal formally with what can be said
about "any" thing or "any" property. We are prepared to say that one
and one are two, but not that Socrates and Plato are two, because, in our capacity of
logicians or pure mathematicians, we have never heard of Socrates or Plato. A world in
which there were no such individuals would still be a world in which one and one are two.
It is not open to us, as pure mathematicians or logicians, to mention anything at all,
because, if we do so we introduce something irrelevant and not formal.
In J. R. Newman (ed.) The World of Mathematics, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1956.
Russell, Bertrand (1872-1970)
The desire to understand the world and the desire to reform it are the two great
engines of progress.
Marriage and Morals.
Russell, Bertrand (1872-1970)
It can be shown that a mathematical web of some kind can be woven about any universe
containing several objects. The fact that our universe lends itself to mathematical
treatment is not a fact of any great philosophical significance.
W. H. Auden and L. Kronenberger (eds.) The Viking Book of Aphorisms, New York:
Viking Press, 1966.
Rutherford, Ernest (1871-1937)
If your experiment needs statistics, you ought to have done a better experiment.
In N. T. J. Bailey the Mathematical Approach to Biology and Medicine, New York:
Wiley, 1967.
Sanford, T. H.
The modern, and to my mind true, theory is that mathematics is the abstract form of
the natural sciences; and that it is valuable as a training of the reasoning powers not
because it is abstract, but because it is a representation of actual things.
In N. Rose Mathematical Maxims and Minims, Raleigh NC:Rome Press Inc., 1988.
Santayana, George
It is a pleasant surprise to him (the pure mathematician) and an added problem if he
finds that the arts can use his calculations, or that the senses can verify them, much as
if a composer found that sailors could heave better when singing his songs.
In J. R. Newman (ed.) The World of Mathematics, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1956.
Sarton, G.
The main duty of the historian of mathematics, as well as his fondest privilege, is to
explain the humanity of mathematics, to illustrate its greatness, beauty and dignity, and
to describe how the incessant efforts and accumulated genius of many generations have
built up that magnificent monument, the object of our most legitimate pride as men, and of
our wonder, humility and thankfulness, as individuals. The study of the history of
mathematics will not make better mathematicians but gentler ones, it will enrich their
minds, mellow their hearts, and bring out their finer qualities.
Sayers, Dorothy L.
The biologist can push it back to the original protist, and the chemist can push it
back to the crystal, but none of them touch the real question of why or how the thing
began at all. The astronomer goes back untold million of years and ends in gas and
emptiness, and then the mathematician sweeps the whole cosmos into unreality and leaves
one with mind as the only thing of which we have any immediate apprehension. Cogito ergo
sum, ergo omnia esse videntur. All this bother, and we are no further than Descartes. Have
you noticed that the astronomers and mathematicians are much the most cheerful people of
the lot? I suppose that perpetually contemplating things on so vast a scale makes them
feel either that it doesn't matter a hoot anyway, or that anything so large and elaborate
must have some sense in it somewhere.
With R. Eustace, The Documents in the Case, New York: Harper and Row, 1930, p 54.
Schopenhauer
Of all the intellectual faculties, judgment is the last to mature. A child under the
age of fifteen should confine its attention either to subjects like mathematics, in which
errors of judgment are impossible, or to subjects in which they are not very dangerous,
like languages, natural science, history, etc.
Seneca
If you would make a man happy, do not add to his possessions but subtract from the sum
of his desires.
In H. Eves Return to Mathematical Circles, Boston: Prindle, Weber and Schmidt,
1988.
Shakespeare, William (1564 - 1616)
I cannot do it without comp[u]ters.
The Winter's Tale.
Shakespeare, William (1564-1616)
Though this be madness, yet there is method in't.
Shakespeare, William (1564-1616)
O God! I could be bounded in a nutshell, and count myself king of infinite space, were
it not that I have bad dreams.
Hamlet.
Shakespeare, William (1564-1616)
I am ill at these numbers.
Hamlet.
Shaw, George Bernard (1856-1950)
Tyndall declared that he saw in Matter the promise and potency of all forms of life,
and with his Irish graphic lucidity made a picture of a world of magnetic atoms, each atom
with a positive and a negative pole, arranging itself by attraction and repulsion in
orderly crystalline structure. Such a picture is dangerously fascinating to thinkers
oppressed by the bloody disorders of the living world. Craving for purer subjects of
thought, they find in the contemplation of crystals and magnets a happiness more dramatic
and less childish than the happiness found by mathematicians in abstract numbers, because
they see in the crystals beauty and movement without the corrupting appetites of fleshly
vitality.
Preface to Back to Methuselah.
Shaw, J. B.
The mathematician is fascinated with the marvelous beauty of the forms he constructs,
and in their beauty he finds everlasting truth.
In N. Rose Mathematical Maxims and Minims, Raleigh NC:Rome Press Inc., 1988.
Simmons, G. F.
Mathematical rigor is like clothing; in its style it ought to suit the occasion, and
it diminishes comfort and restrains freedom of movement if it is either too loose or too
tight.
In The Mathematical Intelligencer, v. 13, no. 1, Winter 1991.
Slaught, H.E.
...[E.H.] Moore ws presenting a paper on a highly technical topic to a large gathering
of faculty and graduate students from all parts of the country. When half way through he
discovered what seemed to be an error (though probably no one else in the room observed
it). He stopped and re-examined the doubtful step for several minutes and then, convinced
of the error, he abruptly dismissed the meeting -- to the astonishment of most of the
audience. It was an evidence of intellectual courage as well as honesty and
doubtless won for him the supreme admiration of every person in the group -- an admiration
which was in no wise diminished, but rather increased, when at a later meeting he
announced that after all he had been able to prove the step to be correct.
The American Mathematical Monthly, 40 (1933), 191-195.
Smith, Adam
I have no faith in political arithmetic.
Smith, David Eugene
One merit of mathematics few will deny: it says more in fewer words than any other
science. The formula, e^iπ = -1 expressed a world of thought, of truth, of poetry,
and of the religious spirit "God eternally geometrizes."
In N. Rose Mathematical Maxims and Minims, Raleigh NC:Rome Press Inc., 1988.
Smith, Henry John Stephen (1826 - 1883)
[His toast:]
Pure mathematics, may it never be of any use to anyone.
In H. Eves Mathematical Circles Squared, Boston: Prindle, Weber and Schmidt, 1972.
Smith, Henry John Stephen (1826-1883)
It is the peculiar beauty of this method, gentlemen, and one which endears it to the
really scientific mind, that under no circumstance can it be of the smallest possible
utility.
In H. Eves Mathematical Circles Squared, Boston: Prindle, Weber and Schmidt, 1972.
Soddy, Frederick (1877-1956)
Four circles to the kissing come,
The smaller are the benter.
The bend is just the inverse of
The distance from the centre.
Though their intrigue left Euclid dumb
There's now no need for rule of thumb.
Since zero bend's a dead straight line
And concave bends have minus sign,
The sum of squares of all four bends
Is half the square of their sum.
Nature, v. 137, 1936.
Somerville, Mary (1780-1872)
Nothing has afforded me so convincing a proof of the unity of the Deity as these
purely mental conceptions of numerical and mathematical science which have been by slow
degrees vouchsafed to man, and are still granted in these latter times by the Differential
Calculus, now superseded by the Higher Algebra, all of which must have existed in that
sublimely omniscient Mind from eternity.
Martha Somerville (ed.) Personal Recollections of Mary Somerville, Boston, 1874.
Spengler, Oswald (1880 -1936)
The mathematic, then, is an art. As such it has its styles and style periods. It is
not, as the layman and the philosopher (who is in this matter a layman too) imagine,
substantially unalterable, but subject like every art to unnoticed changes form epoch to
epoch. The development of the great arts ought never to be treated without an (assuredly
not unprofitable) side-glance at contemporary mathematics.
The Decline of the West.
Steiner, G.
For all their wealth of content, for all the sum of history and social institution
invested in them, music, mathematics, and chess are resplendently useless (applied
mathematics is a higher plumbing, a kind of music for the police band). They are
metaphysically trivial, irresponsible. They refuse to relate outward, to take reality for
arbiter. This is the source of their witchery.
The American Mathematical Monthly, v. 101, no. 9, November, 1994.
Steinmetz, Charles P.
Mathematics is the most exact science, and its conclusions are capable of absolute
proof. But this is so only because mathematics does not attempt to draw absolute
conclusions. All mathematical truths are relative, conditional.
In E. T. Bell Men of Mathematics, New York: Simona and Schuster, 1937.
Sternberg, S.
Kepler's principal goal was to explain the relationship between the existence of five
planets (and their motions) and the five regular solids. It is customary to sneer at
Kepler for this. It is instructive to compare this with the current attempts to
"explain" the zoology of elementary particles in terms of irreducible
representations of Lie groups.
Stewart, Ian
The successes of the differential equation paradigm were impressive and extensive.
Many problems, including basic and important ones, led to equations that could be solved.
A process of self-selection set in, whereby equations that could not be solved were
automatically of less interest than those that could.
Does God Play Dice? The Mathematics of Chaos. Blackwell, Cambridge, MA, 1989, p.
39.
Sullivan, John William Navin (1886 - 1937)
The mathematician is entirely free, within the limits of his imagination, to construct
what worlds he pleases. What he is to imagine is a matter for his own caprice; he is not
thereby discovering the fundamental principles of the universe nor becoming acquainted
with the ideas of God. If he can find, in experience, sets of entities which obey the same
logical scheme as his mathematical entities, then he has applied his mathematics to the
external world; he has created a branch of science.
Aspects of Science, 1925.
Sullivan, John William Navin (1886-1937)
Mathematics, as much as music or any other art, is one of the means by which we rise
to a complete self-consciousness. The significance of mathematics resides precisely in the
fact that it is an art; by informing us of the nature of our own minds it informs us of
much that depends on our minds.
Aspects of Science, 1925.
Sun Tze (5th - 6th century)
The control of large numbers is possible, and like unto that of small numbers, if we
subdivide them.
Sun Tze Ping Fa.
Swift, Jonathan
If they would, for Example, praise the Beauty of a Woman, or any other Animal, they
describe it by Rhombs, Circles, Parallelograms, Ellipses, and other geometrical terms ...
"A Voyage to Laputa" in Gulliver's Travels.
Jonathan Swift
What vexes me most is, that my female friends, who could bear me very well a dozen
years ago, have now forsaken me, although I am not so old in proportion to them as I
formerly was: which I can prove by arithmetic, for then I was double their age, which now
I am not.
Letter to Alexander Pope. 7 Feb. 1736.
Sylvester, J.J. (1814 - 1897)
...there is no study in the world which brings into more harmonious action all the
faculties of the mind than [mathematics], ... or, like this, seems to raise them, by
successive steps of initiation, to higher and higher states of conscious intellectual
being....
Presidential Address to British Association, 1869.
Sylvester, J.J. (1814 - 1897)
So long as a man remains a gregarious and sociable being, he cannot cut himself off
from the gratification of the instinct of imparting what he is learning, of propagating
through others the ideas and impressions seething in his own brain, without stunting and
atrophying his moral nature and drying up the surest sources of his future intellectual
replenishment.
Sylvester, J.J. (1814 - 1897)
[on graph theory...]
The theory of ramification is one of pure colligation, for it takes no account of
magnitude or position; geometrical lines are used, but these have no more real bearing on
the matter than those employed in genealogical tables have in explaining the laws of
procreation.
In H. Eves Mathematical Circles Adieu, Boston: Prindle, Weber and Schmidt, 1977.
Sylvester, J.J. (1814 - 1897)
Time was when all the parts of the subject were dissevered, when algebra, geometry,
and arithmetic either lived apart or kept up cold relations of acquaintance confined to
occasional calls upon one another; but that is now at an end; they are drawn together and
are constantly becoming more and more intimately related and connected by a thousand fresh
ties, and we may confidently look forward to a time when they shall form but one body with
one soul.
Presidential Address to British Association, 1869.
Sylvester, J.J. (1814 - 1897)
The world of ideas which it [mathematics] discloses or illuminates, the contemplation
of divine beauty and order which it induces, the harmonious connexion of its parts, the
infinite hierarchy and absolute evidence of the truths with which it is concerned, these,
and such like, are the surest grounds of the title of mathematics to human regard, and
would remain unimpeached and unimpaired were the plan of the universe unrolled like a map
at our feet, and the mind of man qualified to take in the whole scheme of creation at a
glance.
Presidential Address to British Association, 1869.
Sylvester, J.J. (1814 - 1897)
I know, indeed, and can conceive of no pursuit so antagonistic to the cultivation of
the oratorical faculty ... as the study of Mathematics. An eloquent mathematician must,
from the nature of things, ever remain as rare a phenomenon as a talking fish, and it is
certain that the more anyone gives himself up to the study of oratorical effect the less
will he find himself in a fit state to mathematicize.
Thales (CA 600 BC)
I will be sufficiently rewarded if when telling it to others you will not claim the
discovery as your own, but will say it was mine.
In H. Eves In Mathematical Circles, Boston: Prindle, Weber and Schmidt, 1969.
Thompson, D'Arcy Wentworth (1860-1948)
Cell and tissue, shell and bone, leaf and flower, are so many portions of matter, and
it is in obedience to the laws of physics that their particles have been moved, moulded
and conformed. They are no exceptions to the rule that God always geometrizes. Their
problems of form are in the first instance mathematical problems, their problems of growth
are essentially physical problems, and the morphologist is, ipso facto, a student
of physical science.
On Growth and Form, 1917.
Thomson, [Lord Kelvin] William (1824-1907)
Fourier is a mathematical poem.
Thoreau
He is not a true man of science who does not bring some sympathy to his studies, and
expect to learn something by behavior as well as by application. It is childish to rest in
the discovery of mere coincidences, or of partial and extraneous laws. The study of
geometry is a petty and idle exercise of the mind, if it is applied to no larger system
than the starry one. Mathematics should be mixed not only with physics but with ethics;
that is mixed mathematics. The fact which interests us most is the life of the naturalist.
The purest science is still biographical.
Tietze
The story was told that the young Dirichlet had as a constant companion all his
travels, like a devout man with his prayer book, an old, worn copy of the Disquisitiones
Arithmeticae of Gauss.
In G. Simmons Calculus Gems, New York: McGraw Hill Inc., 1992.
Tillotson, Archbishop
How often might a man, after he had jumbled a set of letters in a bag, fling them out
upon the ground before they would fall into an exact poem, yea, or so much as make a good
discourse in prose. And may not a little book be as easily made by chance as this great
volume of the world.
In J. R. Newman (ed.) The World of Mathematics, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1956.
Titchmarsh, E. C.
Perhaps the most surprising thing about mathematics is that it is so surprising. The
rules which we make up at the beginning seem ordinary and inevitable, but it is impossible
to foresee their consequences. These have only been found out by long study, extending
over many centuries. Much of our knowledge is due to a comparatively few great
mathematicians such as Newton, Euler, Gauss, or Riemann; few careers can have been more
satisfying than theirs. They have contributed something to human thought even more lasting
than great literature, since it is independent of language.
In N. Rose Mathematical Maxims and Minims, Raleigh NC:Rome Press Inc., 1988.
Titchmarsh, E. C.
It can be of no practical use to know that Pi is irrational, but if we can know, it
surely would be intolerable not to know.
In N. Rose Mathematical Maxims and Minims, Raleigh NC:Rome Press Inc., 1988.
Todhunter, Isaac (1820 - 1910)
[Asked whether he would like to see an experimental demonstration of conical
refraction]
No. I have been teaching it all my life, and I do not want to have my ideas upset.
Tolstoy, [Count] Lev Nikolgevich (1828-1920)
A modern branch of mathematics, having achieved the art of dealing with the infinitely
small, can now yield solutions in other more complex problems of motion, which used to
appear insoluble. This modern branch of mathematics, unknown to the ancients, when dealing
with problems of motion, admits the conception of the infinitely small, and so conforms to
the chief condition of motion (absolute continuity) and thereby corrects the inevitable
error which the human mind cannot avoid when dealing with separate elements of motion
instead of examining continuous motion. In seeking the laws of historical movement just
the same thing happens. The movement of humanity, arising as it does from innumerable
human wills, is continuous. To understand the laws of this continuous movement is the aim
of history. Only by taking an infinitesimally small unit for observation (the differential
of history, that is, the individual tendencies of man) and attaining to the art of
integrating them (that is, finding the sum of these infinitesimals) can we hope to arrive
at the laws of history.
War and Peace.
Tolstoy, Count Lev Nikolgevich (1828-1920)
A man is like a fraction whose numerator is what he is and whose denominator is what
he thinks of himself. The larger the denominator the smaller the fraction.
In H. Eves Return to Mathematical Circles, Boston: Prindle, Weber and Schmidt,
1989.
Truesdell, Clifford
This paper gives wrong solutions to trivial problems. The basic error,however, is not
new.
Mathematical Reviews 12, p561.
Turgenev, Ivan Sergeievich (1818 - 1883)
Whatever a man prays for, he prays for a miracle. Every prayer reduces itself to this:
`Great God, grant that twice two be not four'.
Turnbull, H.W.
Attaching significance to invariants is an effort to recognize what, because of its
form or colour or meaning or otherwise, is important or significant in what is only
trivial or ephemeral. A simple instance of failing in this is provided by the poll-man at
Cambridge, who learned perfectly how to factorize a^2 - b^2 but was floored because the
examiner unkindly asked for the factors of p^2 - q^2.
In J. R. Newman (ed.) The World of Mathematics, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1956.
Ulam, Stanislaw
In many cases, mathematics is an escape from reality. The mathematician finds his own
monastic niche and happiness in pursuits that are disconnected from external affairs. Some
practice it as if using a drug. Chess sometimes plays a similar role. In their unhappiness
over the events of this world, some immerse themselves in a kind of self-sufficiency in
mathematics. (Some have engaged in it for this reason alone.)
Adventures of a Mathematician, Scribner's, New York, 1976.
Val�y, Paul (1871 - 1945)
In the physical world, one cannot increase the size or quantity of anything without
changing its quality. Similar figures exist only in pure geometry.
van Vleck, E. B.
This new integral of Lebesque is proving itself a wonderful tool. I might compare it
with a modern Krupp gun, so easily does it penetrate barriers which were impregnable.
Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society, vol. 23, 1916.
Veblen, Thorstein (1857-1929)
The outcome of any serious research can only be to make two questions grow where only
one grew before.
The Place of Science in Modern Civilization and Other Essays.
Veblen, Thorstein (1857-1929)
Invention is the mother of necessity.
J. Gross, The Oxford Book of Aphorisms, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983.
Voltaire (1694-1778)
Vous avez trouve par de long ennuis
Ce que Newton trouva sans sortir de chez lui.
[Written to La Condamine after his measurement of the equator.]
In J. R. Newman (ed.) The World of Mathematics, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1956.
Voltaire (1694-1778)
He who has heard the same thing told by 12,000 eye-witnesses has only 12,000
probabilities, which are equal to one strong probability, which is far from certain.
In J. R. Newman (ed.) The World of Mathematics, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1956.
Voltaire (1694-1778)
There are no sects in geometry.
W. H. Auden and L. Kronenberger (eds.) The Viking Book of Aphorisms, New York:
Viking Press, 1962.
Walton, Izaak
Angling may be said to be so like mathematics that it can never be fully learned.
The Compleat Angler, 1653.
Warner, Sylvia Townsend
For twenty pages perhaps, he read slowly, carefully, dutifully, with pauses for
self-examination and working out examples. Then, just as it was working up and the pauses
should have been more scrupulous than ever, a kind of swoon and ecstasy would fall on him,
and he read ravening on, sitting up till dawn to finish the book, as though it were a
novel. After that his passion was stayed; the book went back to the Library and he was
done with mathematics till the next bout. Not much remained with him after these orgies,
but something remained: a sensation in the mind, a worshiping acknowledgment of something
isolated and unassailable, or a remembered mental joy at the rightness of thoughts coming
together to a conclusion, accurate thoughts, thoughts in just intonation, coming together
like unaccompanied voices coming to a close.
Mr. Fortune's Maggot.
Warner, Sylvia Townsend
Theology, Mr. Fortune found, is a more accommodating subject than mathematics; its
technique of exposition allows greater latitude. For instance when you are gravelled for
matter there is always the moral to fall back upon. Comparisons too may be drawn, leading
cases cited, types and antetypes analysed and anecdotes introduced. Except for Archimedes
mathematics is singularly naked of anecdotes.
Mr. Fortune's Maggot.
Warner, Sylvia Townsend
He resumed:
"In order to ascertain the height of the tree I must be in such a position that the
top of the tree is exactly in a line with the top of a measuring stick or any straight
object would do, such as an umbrella which I shall secure in an upright position between
my feet. Knowing then that the ratio that the height of the tree bears to the length of
the measuring stick must equal the ratio that the distance from my eye to the base of the
tree bears to my height, and knowing (or being able to find out) my height, the length of
the measuring stick and the distance from my eye to the base of the tree, I can,
therefore, calculate the height of the tree."
"What is an umbrella?"
Mr. Fortune's Maggot.
Warren, Robert Penn (1905-)
What if angry vectors veer
Round your sleeping head, and form.
There's never need to fear
Violence of the poor world's abstract storm.
Lullaby in Encounter, 1957.
Weil, Andre (1906 -1998)
Every mathematician worthy of the name has experienced ... the state of lucid
exaltation in which one thought succeeds another as if miraculously... this feeling may
last for hours at a time, even for days. Once you have experienced it, you are eager to
repeat it but unable to do it at will, unless perhaps by dogged work...
The Apprenticeship of a Mathematician.
Weil, Andre (1906- 1998)
God exists since mathematics is consistent, and the Devil exists since we cannot prove
it.
In H. Eves Mathematical Circles Adieu, Boston: Prindle, Weber and Schmidt, 1977.
Weil, Simone (1909 - 1943)
Algebra and money are essentially levelers; the first intellectually, the second
effectively.
W.H. Auden and L. Kronenberger The Viking Book of Aphorisms, New York: Viking
Press, 1966.
West, Nathanael
Prayers for the condemned man will be offered on an adding machine. Numbers constitute
the only universal language.
Miss Lonelyhearts.
Weyl, Hermann (1885 - 1955)
Our federal income tax law defines the tax y to be paid in terms of the income x; it
does so in a clumsy enough way by pasting several linear functions together, each valid in
another interval or bracket of income. An archeologist who, five thousand years from now,
shall unearth some of our income tax returns together with relics of engineering works and
mathematical books, will probably date them a couple of centuries earlier, certainly
before Galileo and Vieta.
The Mathematical Way of Thinking, an address given at the Bicentennial Conference
at the University of Pennsylvania, 1940.
Weyl, Hermann (1885 - 1955)
We are not very pleased when we are forced to accept a mathematical truth by virtue of
a complicated chain of formal conclusions and computations, which we traverse blindly,
link by link, feeling our way by touch. We want first an overview of the aim and of the
road; we want to understand the idea of the proof, the deeper context. Unterrichtsbl�ter
fr Mathematik und Naturwissenschaften, 38, 177-188 (1932). Translation by Abe
Shenitzer appeared in The American Mathematical Monthly, v. 102, no. 7
(August-September 1995), p. 646.
Weyl, Hermann (1885 - 1955)
A modern mathematical proof is not very different from a modern machine, or a modern
test setup: the simple fundamental principles are hidden and almost invisible under a mass
of technical details.
Unterrichtsbl�ter fr Mathematik und Naturwissenschaften, 38, 177-188 (1932).
Translation by Abe Shenitzer appeared in The American Mathematical Monthly, v. 102,
no. 7 (August-September 1995), p. 646.
Weyl, Hermann (1885-1955)
The constructs of the mathematical mind are at the same time free and necessary. The
individual mathematician feels free to define his notions and set up his axioms as he
pleases. But the question is will he get his fellow mathematician interested in the
constructs of his imagination. We cannot help the feeling that certain mathematical
structures which have evolved through the combined efforts of the mathematical community
bear the stamp of a necessity not affected by the accidents of their historical birth.
Everybody who looks at the spectacle of modern algebra will be struck by this
complementarity of freedom and necessity.
1951.
Weyl, Hermann (1885 - 1955)
My work has always tried to unite the true with the beautiful and when I had to choose
one or the other, I usually chose the beautiful.
In an obituary by Freeman J. Dyson in Nature, March 10, 1956.
Weyl, Hermann (1885 - 1955)
... numbers have neither substance, nor meaning, nor qualities. They are nothing but
marks, and all that is in them we have put into them by the simple rule of straight
succession.
"Mathematics and the Laws of Nature" in The Armchair Science Reader, New
York: Simon and Schuster, 1959.
Weyl, Hermann (1885 - 1955)
Without the concepts, methods and results found and developed by previous generations
right down to Greek antiquity one cannot understand either the aims or achievements of
mathematics in the last 50 years.
[Said in 1950]
The American Mathematical Monthly, v. 100. p. 93.
Weyl, Hermann (1885 - 1955)
Logic is the hygiene the mathematician practices to keep his ideas healthy and strong.
The American Mathematical Monthly, November, 1992.
Whewell
Nobody since Newton has been able to use geometrical methods to the same extent for
the like purposes; and as we read the Principia we feel as when we are in an ancient
armoury where the weapons are of gigantic size; and as we look at them we marvel what
manner of man he was who could use as a weapon what we can scarcely lift as a burden.
In E. N. Da C. Andrade "Isaac Newton" in J. R. Newman (ed.) The World of
Mathematics, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1956.
Whitehead, Alfred North (1861 - 1947)
The science of pure mathematics ... may claim to be the most original creation of the
human spirit.
Science and the Modern World.
Whitehead, Alfred North (1861 - 1947)
Mathematics as a science, commenced when first someone, probably a Greek, proved
propositions about "any" things or about "some" things, without
specifications of definite particular things.
Whitehead, Alfred North (1861 - 1947)
So far as the mere imparting of information is concerned, no university has had any
justification for existence since the popularization of printing in the fifteenth century.
The Aims of Education.
Whitehead, Alfred North (1861 - 1947)
No Roman ever died in contemplation over a geometrical diagram.
[A reference to the death of Archimedes.]
In H. Eves Mathematical Circles Squared, Boston: Prindle, Weber and Schmidt, 1972.
Whitehead, Alfred North (1861 - 1947)
Life is an offensive, directed against the repetitious mechanism of the Universe.
Adventures of Ideas, 1933.
Whitehead, Alfred North (1861 - 1947)
There is no nature at an instant.
Whitehead, Alfred North (1861 - 1947)
Let us grant that the pursuit of mathematics is a divine madness of the human spirit,
a refuge from the goading urgency of contingent happenings.
In N. Rose Mathematical Maxims and Minims, Raleigh NC:Rome Press Inc., 1988.
Whitehead, Alfred North (1861 - 1947)
There is a tradition of opposition between adherents of induction and of deduction. In
my view it would be just as sensible for the two ends of a worm to quarrel.
In N. Rose Mathematical Maxims and Minims, Raleigh NC:Rome Press Inc., 1988.
Whitehead, Alfred North (1861 - 1947)
It is a profoundly erroneous truism, repeated by all copy books and by eminent people
when they are making speeches, that we should cultivate the habit of thinking of what we
are doing. The precise opposite is the case. Civilization advances by extending the number
of important operations which we can perform without thinking about them.
An Introduction to Mathematics.
Whitehead, Alfred North (1861 - 1947)
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.
In N. Rose Mathematical Maxims and Minims, Raleigh NC:Rome Press Inc., 1988.
Whitehead, Alfred North (1861 - 1947)
In modern times the belief that the ultimate explanation of all things was to be found
in Newtonian mechanics was an adumbration of the truth that all science, as it grows
towards perfection, becomes mathematical in its ideas.
In N. Rose Mathematical Maxims and Minims, Raleigh NC:Rome Press Inc., 1988.
Whitehead, Alfred North (1861 - 1947)
Algebra reverses the relative importance of the factors in ordinary language. It is
essentially a written language, and it endeavors to exemplify in its written structures
the patterns which it is its purpose to convey. The pattern of the marks on paper is a
particular instance of the pattern to be conveyed to thought. The algebraic method is our
best approach to the expression of necessity, by reason of its reduction of accident to
the ghostlike character of the real variable.
W.H. Auden and L. Kronenberger The Viking Book of Aphorisms, New York: Viking
Press, 1966.
Whitehead, Alfred North (1861 - 1947)
Be relieving the brain of all unnecessary work, a good notation sets it free to
concentrate on more advanced problems, and, in effect, increases the mental power of the
race.
In P. Davis and R. Hersh The Mathematical Experience, Boston: Birkh�ser, 1981.
Whitehead, Alfred North (1861 - 1947)
Everything of importance has been said before by somebody who did not discover it.
In J. R. Newman (ed.) The World of Mathematics, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1956.
Whitehead, Alfred North (1861 - 1947)
Seek simplicity, and distrust it.
W.H. Auden and L. Kronenberger The Viking Book of Aphorisms, New York: Viking
Press, 1966.
Whitehead, Alfred North (1861 - 1947)
Fundamental progress has to do with the reinterpretation of basic ideas.
W.H. Auden and L. Kronenberger The Viking Book of Aphorisms, New York: Viking
Press, 1966.
Whitehead, Alfred North (1861 - 1947)
We think in generalities, but we live in details.
W.H. Auden and L. Kronenberger The Viking Book of Aphorisms, New York: Viking
Press, 1966.
Whitehead, Alfred North (1861 - 1947)
Apart from blunt truth, our lives sink decadently amid the perfume of hints and
suggestions.
W.H. Auden and L. Kronenberger The Viking Book of Aphorisms, New York: Viking
Press, 1966.
Whitehead, Alfred North (1861 - 1947)
"Necessity is the mother of invention" is a silly proverb. "Necessity
is the mother of futile dodges" is much nearer the truth.
W.H. Auden and L. Kronenberger The Viking Book of Aphorisms, New York: Viking
Press, 1966.
Whitehead, Alfred North (1861 - 1947)
It is more important that a proposition be interesting than that it be true. This
statement is almost a tautology. For the energy of operation of a proposition in an
occasion of experience is its interest and is its importance. But of course a true
proposition is more apt to be interesting than a false one.
W.H. Auden and L. Kronenberger The Viking Book of Aphorisms, New York: Viking
Press, 1966.
Whitehead, Alfred North (1861 - 1947)
War can protect; it cannot create.
W.H. Auden and L. Kronenberger The Viking Book of Aphorisms, New York: Viking
Press, 1966.
Whitehead, Alfred North (1861 - 1947)
The progress of Science consists in observing interconnections and in showing with a
patient ingenuity that the events of this ever-shifting world are but examples of a few
general relations, called laws. To see what is general in what is particular, and what is
permanent in what is transitory, is the aim of scientific thought.
An Introduction to Mathematics.
Whitehead, Alfred North (1861 - 1947)
Through and through the world is infested with quantity: To talk sense is to talk
quantities. It is not use saying the nation is large .. How large? It is no use saying the
radium is scarce ... How scarce? You cannot evade quantity. You may fly to poetry and
music, and quantity and number will face you in your rhythms and your octaves.
In J. R. Newman (ed.) The World of Mathematics, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1956.
Whitehead, Alfred North (1861 - 1947)
"One and one make two" assumes that the changes in the shift of circumstance
are unimportant. But it is impossible for us to analyze this notion of unimportant change.
W.H. Auden and L. Kronenberger The Viking Book of Aphorisms, New York: Viking
Press, 1966.
Whitehead, Alfred North (1861 - 1947)
I will not go so far as to say that to construct a history of thought without profound
study of the mathematical ideas of successive epochs is like omitting Hamlet from the play
which is named after him. That would be claiming too much. But it is certainly analogous
to cutting out the part of Ophelia. This simile is singularly exact. For Ophelia is quite
essential to the play, she is very charming ... and a little mad.
W.H. Auden and L. Kronenberger The Viking Book of Aphorisms, New York: Viking
Press, 1966.
Whitehead, Alfred North (1861 - 1947)
The study of mathematics is apt to commence in disappointment....We are told that by
its aid the stars are weighed and the billions of molecules in a drop of water are
counted. Yet, like the ghost of Hamlet's father, this greatest science eludes the efforts
of our mental weapons to grasp it.
An Introduction to Mathematics
Whitehead, Alfred North (1861 - 1947)
In the study of ideas, it is necessary to remember that insistence on hard-headed
clarity issues from sentimental feeling, as it were a mist, cloaking the perplexities of
fact. Insistence on clarity at all costs is based on sheer superstition as to the mode in
which human intelligence functions. Our reasonings grasp at straws for premises and float
on gossamers for deductions.
In J. R. Newman (ed.) The World of Mathematics, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1956.
Whitehead, Alfred North (1861 - 1947)
Familiar things happen, and mankind does not bother about them. It requires a very
unusual mind to undertake the analysis of the obvious.
Science and the Modern World.
Whitman, Walt (1819-1892)
Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself. (I am large, I contains
multitudes).
Song of Myself, 1939.
Whitman, Walt (1819-1892)
When I heard the learn'd astronomer,
When the proofs, the figure, were ranged in columns before me,
When I was shown the charts and diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them,
When I sitting heard the astronomer where he lectured with much applause in the lecture
room,
How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick,
Till rising and gliding out I wander'd off by myself,
In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,
Look'd up in perfect silence at the stars.
Wiener, Norbert (1894 - 1964)
A professor is one who can speak on any subject -- for precisely fifty minutes.
Wiener, Norbert (1894-1964)
The modern physicist is a quantum theorist on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday and a
student of gravitational relativity theory on Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday. On Sunday
he is neither, but is praying to his God that someone, preferably himself, will find the
reconciliation between the two views.
Wiener, Norbert (1894-1964)
Progress imposes not only new possibilities for the future but new restrictions.
The Human Use of Human Beings.
Wiener, Norbert (1894-1964)
The Advantage is that mathematics is a field in which one's blunders tend to show very
clearly and can be corrected or erased with a stroke of the pencil. It 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. A single inattention may lose a chess game,
whereas a single successful approach to a problem, among many which have been relegated to
the wastebasket, will make a mathematician's reputation.
Ex-Prodigy: My Childhood and Youth.
Wilder, R. L.
There is nothing mysterious, as some have tried to maintain, about the applicability
of mathematics. What we get by abstraction from something can be returned.
Introduction to the Foundations of Mathematics.
Wilder, R. L.
Mathematics was born and nurtured in a cultural environment. Without the perspective
which the cultural background affords, a proper appreciation of the content and state of
present-day mathematics is hardly possible.
In The American Mathematical Monthly, March 1994.
William of Occam (1300-1439)
[Occam's Razor:]
Entities should not be multiplied unnecessarily.
Quodlibeta.
Wilson, John (1741 - 1793)
A monument to Newton! a monument to Shakespeare! Look up to Heaven look into the Human
Heart. Till the planets and the passionsthe affections and the fixed stars are
extinguishedtheir names cannot die.
Wittgenstein, Ludwig (1889-1951)
We could present spatially an atomic fact which contradicted the laws of physics, but
not one which contradicted the laws of geometry.
Tractatus Logico Philosophicus, New York, 1922.
Wittgenstein, Ludwig (1889-1951)
Mathematics is a logical method ... Mathematical propositions express no thoughts. In
life it is never a mathematical proposition which we need, but we use mathematical
propositions only in order to infer from propositions which do not belong to mathematics
to others which equally do not belong to mathematics.
Tractatus Logico Philosophicus, New York, 1922, p. 169.
Wittgenstein, Ludwig (1889-1951)
There can never be surprises in logic.
In J. R. Newman (ed.) The World of Mathematics, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1956.
Wittgenstein, Ludwig (1889-1951)
The riddle does not exist. If a question can be put at all, then it can also be
answered.
Tractatus Logico Philosophicus, New York, 1922.
Wordsworth, William (1770 - 1850)
[Mathematics] is an independent world
Created out of pure intelligence.
Wren, Sir Christopoher
In things to be seen at once, much variety makes confusion, another vice of beauty. In
things that are not seen at once, and have no respect one to another, great variety is
commendable, provided this variety transgress not the rules of optics and geometry.
W.H. Auden and L. Kronenberger The Viking Book of Aphorisms, New York: Viking
Press, 1966.
X, Malcom
I'm sorry to say that the subject I most disliked was mathematics. I have thought
about it. I think the reason was that mathematics leaves no room for argument. If you made
a mistake, that was all there was to it.
Mascot.
Young, J. W. A.
Mathematics has beauties of its own -- a symmetry and proportion in its results, a
lack of superfluity, an exact adaptation of means to ends, which is exceedingly remarkable
and to be found only in the works of the greatest beauty When this subject is properly ...
presented, the mental emotion should be that of enjoyment of beauty, not that of repulsion
from the ugly and the unpleasant.
In H. Eves Mathematical Circles Squared, Boston: Prindle, Weber and Schmidt, 1972.
Zeeman, E Christopher (1925 - )
Technical skill is mastery of complexity while creativity is mastery of simplicity.
Catastrophe Theory, 1977.