Mathematical Quotes

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To the author the main charm of probability theory lies in the enormous variability of its applications. Few mathematical disciplines have contributed to as wide a spectrum of subjects, a spectrum ranging from number theory to physics, and even fewer have penetrated so decisively the whole of our scientific thinking.

Our world rests on mathematical foundations, and mathematics is unavoidably embedded in our global culture.

Every new body of discovery is mathematical in form, because there is no other guidance we can have.

Charles Galton Darwin

The analytical geometry of Descartes and the calculus of Newton and Leibniz have expanded into the marvelous mathematical method

Nicholas Murray Butler

The knowledge that is suited to our situation and powers, the whole compass of moral, natural, and mathematical science, was neglected by the new Platonists; whilst they exhausted their strength in the verbal disputes of metaphysics, attempted to explore the secrets of the invisible world, and studied to reconcile Aristotle with Plato, on subjects of which both these philosophers were as ignorant as the rest of mankind.

The greatest writers on mathematical subjects have a genius which saves them from their own slips, and guides them to true results through inaccurate expression, and sometimes through absolute error.

Augustus De Morgan

It will seem not a little paradoxical to ascribe a great importance to observations even in that part of the mathematical sciences which is usually called Pure Mathematics, since the current opinion is that observations are restricted to physical objects that make impressions on the senses.

The essential fact is simply that all the pictures which science now draws of nature, and which alone seem capable of according with observational fact, are mathematical pictures.

Toward the end of the last century, many physicists felt that the mathematical description of physics was getting ever more complicated. Instead, the mathematics involved has become ever more abstract, rather than more complicated. The mind of God appears to be abstract but not complicated. He also appears to like group theory.

Frank Lloyd Wright

Wheresoever the carcass is, there will the eagles be gathered together, and where the symbols of the mathematical physicists flock, there presumably is some prey for them to settle on, which the plain man at least will prefer to call by a name suggestive of something more than passive emptiness.

Arthur Eddington

One cannot escape the feeling that these mathematical formulas have an independent existence and an intelligence of their own, that they are wiser than we are, wiser even than their discoverers, that we get more out of them than was originally put into them.

This intuition of mathematical order, which enables us to perceive harmonies and hidden relations, cannot be present in everyone.

Henri Poincaré

[The Riemann Hypothesis has] no longer just analytic number theorists involved, but all mathematicians know about the problem, and many realize that they may have useful insights to offer. As far as I can see, a solution is as likely to come from a probabilist, geometer or mathematical physicist, as from a number theorist.

Roger Heath-Brown

An age being mathematical, these flowers Of linear stalks and spheroid blooms were prized.

The essential feature of mathematical creativity is the exploration, under the pressure of powerful implosive forces, of difficult problems for whose validity and importance the explorer is eventually held accountable by reality.

The mathematical formulas indeed no longer portray nature, but rather our knowledge of nature.

Werner Heisenberg

The Mathematical Theory of Ignorance: The Statistical Approach to the Study of Man

Science uses the senses but does not enjoy them; finally buries them under theory, abstraction, mathematical generalization

Theodore Roszak

Littlewood's proof... revealed that prime numbers are masters of disguise. They hide their true colours in the deep recesses of the universe of numbers, so deep that witnessing their true nature may be beyond the computational power of humankind. Their true behavior can be seen only through the penetrating eyes of abstract mathematical proof.

Marcus du Sautoy

A complete acquaintance with Physical Astronomy can only be attained by those who are well versed in the higher branches of mathematical and mechanical science: such alone can appreciate the extreme beauty of the results, and of the means by which these results are obtained.

Mary Somerville

The usefulness of mathematics in furthering the sciences is commonly acknowledged: but outside the ranks of the experts there is little inquiry into its nature and purpose as a deliberate human activity. Doubtless this is due to the inevitable drawback that mathematical study is saturated with technicalities from beginning to end.

Herbert Turnbull

Mathematical reasoning is deductive in the sense that it is based upon definitions which, as far as the validity of the reasoning is concerned (apart from any existential import) needs only the test of self-consistency. Thus no external verification of definitions is required in mathematics, as long as it is considered merely as mathematics.

Alfred North Whitehead

If indeed, as Hilbert asserted, mathematics is a meaningless game played with meaningless marks on paper, the only mathematical experience to which we can refer is the making of marks on paper.

Eric Temple Bell

Understanding natural science has been, historically, an important source of mathematical inspiration. So it is frustrating that, at the outset of the new century, the main framework used by physicists for describing the laws of nature is not accessible mathematically.

The space you occupy and the authority you exercise may be measured with mathematical exactness by the service you render.