Edward Kasner Quotes

8 Sourced Quotes

The infinite in mathematics is always unruly unless it is properly treated.

Edward Kasner
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.

Edward Kasner
Mathematics is an activity governed by the same rules imposed upon the symphonies of Beethoven, the paintings of DaVinci, and the poetry of Homer.

Edward Kasner
Mathematics is the science which uses easy words for hard ideas.

Edward Kasner
Today the mathematician admits the existence and the necessity of many theories, many geometries, each appealing to certain interests, each to be developed by the most appropriate methods; and he realizes that, no matter how large his conceptions and how powerful his methods, they will be replaced before long by others larger and more powerful.

Edward Kasner
Puzzles are made of the things that the mathematician, no less than the child, plays with, and dreams and wonders about, for they are made of things and circumstances of the world he [or she] live in.

Edward Kasner
There is a famous formula, perhaps the most compact and famous of all formulas - developed by Euler from a discovery of de Moivre: e^(i pi) + 1 = 0... It appeals equally to the mystic, the scientist, the philosopher, the mathematician.

Edward Kasner
The great mathematicians have acted on the principle "Devinez avant de d6montrer," and it is certainly true that almost all important discoveries are made in this fashion.

Edward Kasner