Mathematician Quotes

The fixed stars appear to be of different bignesses, not because they really are so, but because they are not all equally distant from us; those that are nearest will excel in Luster and Bigness; the more remote stars will give a fainter Light, and appear smaller to the Eye.

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.

Very few people realize the enormous bulk of contemporary mathematics. Probably it would be easier to learn all the languanges of the world than to master all mathematics at present known.

Walter Warwick Sawyer

To history we shall adhere no farther, than is sufficient to preserve an unbroken series of methods gradually becoming more exact and extensive; the series beginning with the first rude, though perfectly just, method of James Bernoulli, and ending with Lagrange's exquisite and refined Calculus of Variations.

Robert Woodhouse

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

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.

Rationality of thought imposes a limit on a person's concept of his relation to the cosmos.

John Forbes Nash, Jr.

The characteristic which distinguishes the present-day professional statistician, is his interest and skill in the measurement of the fallibility of conclusions.

George W. Snedecor

The processes of nature lie so deep, that, after all the pains we can take, much, perhaps, will remain undiscovered beyond the reach of human art or skill. But this is no reason why we should give ourselves up to the belief of fictions, be they ever so ingenious, instead of hearkening to the unerring voice of nature...

Colin Maclaurin

What is mathematics? It has so many different aspects that the difficulties in trying to give a definition are similar to those encountered in trying to determine whether some living organisms are animal or vegetable.

Louis J. Mordell

A growing number of respectable scientists are defecting from the evolutionist camp.....moreover, for the most part these "experts" have abandoned Darwinism, not on the basis of religious faith or biblical persuasions, but on strictly scientific grounds, and in some instances, regretfully.

Nature might be somehow more powerful than a digital computer.

Aviezri Fraenkel

Geometric calculus consists in a system of operations analogous to those of algebraic calculus, but in which the entities on which the calculations are carried out, instead of being numbers, are geometric entities which we shall define.

The theory of probability as mathematical discipline can and should be developed from axioms in exactly the same way as Geometry and Algebra.

Andrey Kolmogorov

Faith is a response to evidence, not a rejoicing in the absence of evidence.

Science is one aspect of God's presence, and scientists therefore part of the company of His heralds.

Charles Coulson

Man is what he is, because a spiritual element has entered into, and taken possession of, animal consciousness. This spiritual element is not, according to Christian teaching, divine: but it is capable of entering into relations with God. It can perceive Him: in thought, it can reason as to His nature and actions: in will and feeling, it can serve and love Him, or disobey and fear Him. Such activity shows itself in what we call the working of conscience.

It would be rash to say that nothing remains for discovery or improvement even in the elements of mathematics; but it may be safely asserted that the ground has been so long and so thoroughly explored as to hold out little hope of profitable return for a casual adventurer.

Isaac Todhunter

One thing at least they have not forgotten, that geometry is nothing if it be not rigorous, and that the whole educational value of the study is lost, if strictness of demonstration be trifled with. The methods of Euclid are, by almost universal consent, unexceptionable in point of rigor. Opening Address by the President, Section A

Henry John Stephen Smith

My method to overcome a difficulty is to go round it.

Each atom of the Holy Spirit is intelligent, and like all other matter has solidity, form, and size, and occupies space.

Our brains are just not wired to do probability problems very well.

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

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

Very belatedly in 1947, Darwin [Sir Charles Darwin, great-grandson of the famous Charles Darwin] agreed to set up a very small electronics group [...] It was not easy to have the imagination to foresee that computers were to become one of the most important developments of the century.

James H. Wilkinson