Marston Morse Quotes

7 Sourced Quotes

But mathematics is the sister, as well as the servant, of the arts and is touched with the same madness and genius.

Marston Morse
The creative scientist lives in a 'wildness of logic,' where reason is the handmaiden and not the master.

Marston Morse
Discovery in mathematics is not a matter of logic. It is rather the result of mysterious powers which no one understands, and in which unconscious recognition of beauty must play an important part. Out of an infinity of designs, a mathematician chooses one pattern for beauty's sake and pulls it down to earth.

Marston Morse
As Durer knew full well, there is a center and final substance in mathematics whose perfect beauty is rational, but rational "in retrospect." The discovery which comes before, those rare moments which elevate man, and the searchings of the heart which come after are not rational. They are groupings filled with wonder and sometimes sorrow.

Marston Morse
What is it that a mathematician wants as an artist. I believe that he wishes merely to understand and to create. He wishes to understand, simply, if possible - but in any case to understand; and to create, beautifully, if possible - but in any case to create.

Marston Morse
Mathematicians of today are perhaps too exuberant in their desire to build new logical foundations for everything. Forever the foundation and never the cathedral.

Marston Morse
Most convincing to me of the spiritual relations between mathematics and music, is my own very personal experience. Composing in an amateurish way, I get exactly the same elevation from a prelude that has come to me at the piano, as I do from a new idea that has come to me in mathematics.

Marston Morse