Mathematician Quotes

Galileo Galilei

Isaac Newton

Archimedes

Nicolaus Copernicus

Carl Friedrich Gauss

Blaise Pascal

Pythagoras

Thou shalt likewise know that according to Law, the nature of this universe is in all things a like.

Any solid lighter than a fluid will, if placed in the fluid, be so far immersed that the weight of the solid will be equal to the weight of the fluid displaced.

Sneezing absorbs all the functions of the soul just as much as the [sexual] act, but we do not draw from it the same conclusions against the greatness of man, because it is involuntary; although we bring it about, we do so involuntarily. It is not for the sake of the thing in itself but for another end, and is therefore not a sign of man's weakness, or his subjection to this act.

Good things should be cast in bronze and bad ones cast to the winds.

Galileo Galilei

And as far as hypotheses go, let no one expect anything in the way of certainty from astronomy, since astronomy can offer us nothing certain, lest, if anyone take as true that which has been constructed for another use, he go away from this discipline a bigger fool than when he came to it.

Nicolaus Copernicus

In the Theory of Numbers it happens rather frequently that, by some unexpected luck, the most elegant new truths spring up by induction.

Carl Friedrich Gauss

From the same principles, I now demonstrate the frame of the System of the World.

One cannot guess the real difficulties of a problem before having solved it.

Carl Ludwig Siegel

It is not so much whether a theorem is useful that matters, but how elegant it is.

And how admirable and rare an ornament, O good God, is mildenesse in a divine? And how much is it to be wished in this age, that all divines were mathematicians? that is men gentle and meeke.

Bartholomaeus Pitiscus

Mathematics is an aspect of culture as well as a collection of algorithms.

Can the difficulty of an exam be measured by how many bits of information a student would need to pass it? This may not be so absurd in the encyclopedic subjects but in mathematics it doesn't make any sense since things follow from each other and, in principle, whoever knows the bases knows everything. All of the results of a mathematical theorem are in the axioms of mathematics in embryonic form, aren't they?

The laws of nature are but the mathematical thoughts of God.

In science nothing capable of proof ought to be accepted without proof.

Richard Dedekind

My thesis, paradoxically, and a little provocatively, but nonetheless genuinely, is simply this : PROBABILITY DOES NOT EXIST. The abandonment of superstitious beliefs about theexistence of Phlogiston, the Cosmic Ether, Absolute Space and Time,..., or Fairies and Witches, was an essential step along the road to scientific thinking. Probability, too, if regarded as something endowed with some kind of objective existence, is no less a misleading misconception, an illusory attempt to exteriorize or materialize our true probabilistic beliefs.

Bruno de Finetti

I think I perceive or remember something but am not sure; this would seem to give me some ground for believing it, contrary to Mr. Keynes' theory, by which the degree of belief in it which it would be rational for me to have is that given by the probability relation between the proposition in question and the things I know for certain.

Frank P. Ramsey

If we arrive at an equation containing on each side the same term but with different coefficients, we must take equals from equals until we get one term equal to another term. But, if there are on one or on both sides negative terms, the deficiencies must be added on both bides until all the terms on both sides are positive. Then we must take equals from equals until one term is left on each side.

The triplet of specifications - the product-market scope, the growth vector and the competitive advantage - describes the firm's product-market path in the external environment.

But in the present century, thanks in good part to the influence of Hilbert, we have come to see that the unproved postulates with which we start are purely arbitrary. They must be consistent, they had better lead to something interesting.

Julian Coolidge

I wonder what an astronomy would look like which has been rigorously demonstrated in every respect. It seems as if one can get to the truth only through a series of hypotheses, and that one has to reject each previous one to espouse the next and to abandon it again.

Johann Heinrich Lambert

The nice thing about mathematics is doing mathematics.

Mathematics is the science of the connection of magnitudes. Magnitude is anything that can be put equal or unequal to another thing. Two things are equal when in every assertion each may be replaced by the other.

Hermann Grassmann

Almost everyone has heard that "figures don't lie, but liars can figure." We need statistics, but liars give them a bad name, so to be able to tell the liars from the statisticians is crucial.

Robert Hooke (mathematician)

A formal manipulator in mathematics often experiences the discomforting feeling that his pencil surpasses him in intelligence.

Mathematics... is a bit like discovering oil... But mathematics has one great advantage over oil, in that no one has yet... found a way that you can keep using the same oil forever.