Quotessence
Home / Topics / Mathematics Quotes

Mathematics Quotes

Browse 2551 quotes about Mathematics.

Related topics

MathScienceMathematicianIfsWorldEducationMenNumbersThinkingKnowsProblemLogicMayPhysicsLanguageWayShouldArtHumansStatisticsTheoryStudyMathematics And ScienceMindPeopleMath And ScienceDoeIdeasTwoFirstsSubjectsPureMathematics By MathematiciansGeometryFactsReasonProofGivingWellsUniverseLawTheoremsUseUnderstandingReasoningMath EducationSeemsDiscoveryNeedsRealNumbers And MathBelievePhilosophyCalculusMeanTeachingResultsHas BeensKindKnowledgeLittlesSchoolComputerNaturalSaidYearsFormMadeCertainPrinciplesRealityStudentsWritingDifferentFieldsImportantMathematical LogicWholeBookConceptsOrderSimpleTryingFunny MathematicsRelationArithmeticBeautifulBranchesLongModernUsedWould BeAnswersEquationsExampleFeelsHardImaginationIntellectualMightmore

Mathematics Quotes

“In the field of Egyptian mathematics Professor Karpinski of the University of Michigan has long insisted that surviving mathematical papyri clearly demonstrate the Egyptians' scientific interest in pure mathematics for its own sake. I have now no doubt that Professor Karpinski is right, for the evidence of interest in pure science, as such, is perfectly conclusive in the Edwin Smith Surgical Papyrus.”

LongInterestDoubtFieldsPureEvidenceMathematicsUniversitySakeMathematicalNo DoubtProfessorsSurvivingMichiganEgyptianUniversity Of MichiganPapyrus
Author:James Henry Breasted
Create image

“I came into history from a primary concern with mathematics and science. This has been a tremendous help to me as a person and as a historian, although it must be admitted it has served to make my historical interpretations less conventional than may be acceptable of many of my colleagues in the field.”

MayPersonsHas BeensHelpingFieldsConcernMathematicsHistoricalPrimariesInterpretationHistorianAcceptableConventionalColleaguesMathematics And Science
Book:The evolution of civilizations: an introduction to historical analysis
Create image

“Toward the end of his life, Gödel feared that he was being poisoned, and he starved himself to death. His theorem is one of the most extraordinary results in mathematics, or in any intellectual field in this century. If ever potential mental instability is detectable by genetic analysis, an embryo of someone with Kurt Gödel's gifts might be aborted.”

IfsEndsMightResultsCenturyFieldsIntellectualMathematicsExtraordinaryAnalysisInstabilityTheoremsEmbryos
Book:The Ascent of Science
Create image

“Creativity is essential to particle physics, cosmology, and to mathematics, and to other fields of science, just as it is to its more widely acknowledged beneficiaries - the arts and humanities.”

ArtScienceHumanityCreativityFieldsEssentialsMathematicsPhysicsPhysicistParticlesCosmologyCreativenessBeneficiariesSmart WomenArts And HumanitiesParticle Physics
Book:Knocking On Heaven's Door: How Physics and Scientific Thinking Illuminate our Universe
Create image

“Mathematics never reveals man to the degree, never expresses him in the way, that any other field of human endeavour does: the extent of the negation of man's corporeal self that mathematics achieves cannot be compared with anything. Whoever is interested in this subject I refer to my articles. Here I will say only that the world injected its patterns into human language at the very inception of that language; mathematics sleeps in every utterance, and can only be discovered, never invented.”

MenWorldWayHumansDoeSelfLanguageSleepAchieveSubjectsFieldsDegreesMathematicsPatternsArticlesEndeavourUtteranceNegationInceptionHuman Language
Book:His Master's Voice
Create image

“In my own professional work I have touched on a variety of different fields. I've done work in mathematical linguistics, for example, without any professional credentials in mathematics; in this subject I am completely self-taught, and not very well taught.”

WellsDifferentSelfDoneMy OwnSubjectsExampleFieldsTaughtMathematicsVarietyMathematicalTouchedLinguisticsCredentialsSelf TaughtProfessional Work
Book:The Chomsky-Foucault Debate: On Human Nature
Create image

“Compare mathematics and the political sciences - it's quite striking. In mathematics, in physics, people are concerned with what you say, not with your certification. But in order to speak about social reality, you must have the proper credentials, particularly if you depart from the accepted framework of thinking. Generally speaking, it seems fair to say that the richer the intellectual substance of a field, the less there is a concern for credentials, and the greater is the concern for content.”

PeopleIfsThinkingRealitySeemsPoliticalOrderSpeakSocialGreaterFieldsIntellectualConcernConcernedFairsMathematicsAcceptedPhysicsSubstanceCompareFrameworkPolitical ScienceCredentials
Book:The Chomsky-Foucault Debate: On Human Nature
Create image

“The research reported on in our book "A=B", has moved a whole active field of mathematics from the province of human thought to the realm of computer-fodder. It is quite exciting to think about what other fields of pure mathematics, hitherto thought to be reserved to human intelligence, might be moved to that realm next. The goal is to put ourselves out of business completely, and the work is well underway.”

ThinkingHumansWellsBookWholeMightScienceNextGoalFieldsPureComputerResearchExcitingMathematicsMovedActiveRealmsReservedProvincesHuman ThoughtHuman IntelligenceFodder
Author:Herbert Wilf
Create image

“The subject for which I am asking your attention deals with the foundations of mathematics. To understand the development of the opposing theories existing in this field one must first gain a clear understnding of the concept "science"; for it is as a part of science that mathematics originally took its place in human thought.”

FirstsHumansDealsAttentionClearSubjectsFieldsTheoryDevelopmentConceptsGainsAskingMathematicsFoundationOpposingHuman Thought
Author:L. E. J. Brouwer
Create image

“I think mathematics is a vast territory. The outskirts of mathematics are the outskirts of mathematical civilization. There are certain subjects that people learn about and gather together. Then there is a sort of inevitable development in those fields. You get to the point where a certain theorem is bound to be proved, independent of any particular individual, because it is just in the path of development.”

PeopleThinkingTogetherCertainIndividualPathSubjectsFieldsParticularDevelopmentCivilizationMathematicsIndependentBoundsMathematicalInevitableTerritoryTheorems
Author:William Thurston
Create image

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

MayHas BeensStillsImportantDifferentNextNamesSidesResultsGroupsFieldsPureMathematicsNotionStatisticsEngineeringElectricalDelayedDifferent SidesImportant WorkDifferent NamesElectrical Engineering
Author:Norbert Wiener
Create image

“In general, I'm in support of promoting art and science in public schools. I think music and science are probably the most important factors for the human brain developing. Even more so than any other fields, because music covers mathematics, cognitive reasoning, motor skills, coordination, like, it's kind of everything.”

ThinkingHumansKindArtImportantSchoolBrainSupportFieldsSkillsMathematicsFactorsDevelopingReasoningPromotingPublic SchoolMotorCognitiveHuman BrainArt And ScienceCoordination
Author:Reggie Watts
Create image

“The world is a multiplicity, a harvest-field, a battle-ground; and thence arises through human contact ways of numbering, or mathematics, ways of tillage, or agriculture, ways of fighting, or military tactics and strategy, and these are incorporated in individuals as habits of life.”

WorldWayHumansFightingIndividualMilitaryFieldsHabitBattleMathematicsStrategyAriseContactAgricultureHarvestTacticsMultiplicityTactics And Strategy
Book:The Torch, and Other Lectures and Addresses
Create image

“The foundations of population genetics were laid chiefly by mathematical deduction from basic premises contained in the works of Mendel and Morgan and their followers. Haldane, Wright, and Fisher are the pioneers of population genetics whose main research equipment was paper and ink rather than microscopes, experimental fields, Drosophila bottles, or mouse cages. Theirs is theoretical biology at its best, and it has provided a guiding light for rigorous quantitative experimentation and observation.”

LightScienceFieldsPaperResearchMathematicsFoundationPopulationObservationMathematicalBiologyBottlesFollowersMiceEquipmentCagesInkTheoreticalPremisesPioneersGeneticsExperimentationMicroscopesDeductionsGuiding LightMendel
Author:Theodosius Dobzhansky
Create image

“Srinivasa Ramanujan was the strangest man in all of mathematics, probably in the entire history of science. He has been compared to a bursting supernova, illuminating the darkest, most profound corners of mathematics, before being tragically struck down by tuberculosis at the age of 33, like Riemann before him. Working in total isolation from the main currents of his field, he was able to rederive 100 years' worth of Western mathematics on his own. The tragedy of his life is that much of his work was wasted rediscovering known mathematics.”

MenLifeYearsHas BeensAgeAbleScienceLife IsKnownFieldsTragedyMathematicsProfoundWesternCurrentsCornersIsolationMathematicianBurstingIlluminatingHistory Of ScienceTuberculosisSupernovaRamanujan
Author:Michio Kaku
Create image

“There was a blithe certainty that came from first comprehending the full Einstein field equations, arabesques of Greek letters clinging tenuously to the page, a gossamer web. They seemed insubstantial when you first saw them, a string of squiggles. Yet to follow the delicate tensors as they contracted, as the superscripts paired with subscripts, collapsing mathematically into concrete classical entities - potential; mass; forces vectoring in a curved geometry - that was a sublime experience. The iron fist of the real, inside the velvet glove of airy mathematics.”

FirstsRealForceSawsFieldsMassPagesLettersMathematicsMathCertaintyMathematicalGreekIronStringsDelicateConcreteEntitySublimeEquationsFistsGeometryGlovesClingingVelvetAiryComprehendingBlithe
Author:Gregory Benford
Create image

“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.”

MayHas BeensMomentsShowsProblemSuccessGamesLosesSuccessfulWorstFieldsApproachAdvantageMathematicsMathChessReputationMathematicalLatterMathematicianStrokesPencilsBlundersChess GameBest MomentsInattention
Author:Norbert Wiener
Create image

“It is my experience that in some areas [my poodle] Charley is more intelligent that I am, but in others he is abysmally ignorant. He can't read, can't drive a car, and has no grasp of mathematics. But in his own field of endeavor, which he is now practicing, the slow, imperial smelling over and anointing on an area, he has no peer. Of course his horizons are limited, but how wide are mine?”

CoursesFriendshipDogCarFieldsMinesAreasIntelligentMathematicsWideIgnorantHorizonEndeavorPeersPoodlesAnointing
Author:John Steinbeck
Create image

“If a man is in any sense a real mathematician, then it is a hundred to one that his mathematics will be far better than anything else he can do, and that he would be silly if he surrendered any decent opportunity of exercising his one talent in order to do undistinguished work in other fields. Such a sacrifice could be justified only by economic necessity of age.”

IfsMenRealWould BeAgeScienceOrderOpportunityCan DoSacrificeEconomicTalentFieldsExerciseHundredMathematicsSillyDecentMathematicianJustifiedBeing Silly
Author:G. H. Hardy
Create image