Mathematics Quotes

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Journalists say that when a dog bites a man, that is not news, but when a man bites a dog, that is news... Thanks to the mathematics of combinatorics, we will never run out of news.

Mathematics is whatever mathematicians are doing.

Mathematics in general is fundamentally the science of self evident things.

Mathematics is the science of order and mathematicians seek to identify instances of order and to formulate and understand concepts that enable us to perceive order in complicated situations.

Shlomo Sternberg

The person who wishes to understand the higher departments of chemistry, or to pursue them in their most interesting relations to the economy of Nature, ought to be well-grounded in elementary mathematics; he will oftener have to refer to arithmetic than algebra, and to algebra than to geometry. But all these sciences lend their aid to chemistry.

The merit of mathematics, in all its forms, consists in its truth; truth conveyed to the understanding, not directly by words but by symbols which serve as the world's only universal written language.

David Eugene Smith

Or as mathematics, a human invention... parallels but never touches reality, gives the astronomer Metaphors through which he may comprehend The powers and the flow of things.

Robinson Jeffers

The inner force that drives mathematicians isn't to look for applications; it's to understand the structure and inner beauty of mathematics.

William Thurston

Mathematics is a cruel profession. Solving a mathematical problem is for most mathematicians an arduous and lengthy process which may take years, even a lifetime. The final conquest of the truth comes, if ever, inevitably tinged with disillusion, soured by the realization of the ultimate irrelevance of all intellectual endeavor.

Gian-Carlo Rota

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

The field of mathematics is now so extensive that no one can [any] longer pretend to cover it, least of all the specialist in any one department. Furthermore it takes a century or more to weigh men and their discoveries, thus making the judgment of contemporaries often quite worthless.

David Eugene Smith

the mathematical physicist... obtains much prestige from the physicists because they are impressed with the amount of mathematics he knows, and much prestige from the mathematicians, because they are impressed with the amount of physics he knows.

William Francis Gray Swann

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

Induction and analogy are the special characteristics of modern mathematics, in which theorems have given place to theories and no truth is regarded otherwise than as a link in an infinite chain. "Omne exit in infinitum " is their favorite motto and accepted axiom.

James Joseph Sylvester

A traveler who refuses to pass over a bridge until he has personally tested the soundness of every part of it is not likely to go far; something must be risked, even in mathematics.

The vector equilibrium is the true zero reference of the energetic mathematics. Zero pulsation in the vector equilibrium is the nearest approach we will ever know to eternity and god: the zero phase of conceptual integrity inherent in the positive and negative asymmetries that propagate the differentials of consciousness.

Buckminster Fuller

Living mathematics rests on the fluctuation between the antithesis powers of intuition and logic, the individuality of "grounded" problems and the generality of far-reaching abstractions. We ourselves must prevent the development being forced to only one pole of the life-giving antithesis.

That the study of mathematics and their application to astronomy are full of interest will be allowed by all who have devoted their time and attention to these pursuits; and they only can estimate the delight of arriving at truth, whether it be in the discovery of a world, or of a new property of numbers.

Mary Somerville

The aim of mathematics is to explain as much as possible in simple terms.

The structure of mathematics and their propositions about them are ways for the imagination to travel and the wings, or legs, or vehicles to take you where you want to go.

I alternate between two attitudes [about attempts to communicate the beauty of mathematics to a wide audience]. Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays I believe it can be done if we do it properly; Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays I believe it cannot.

Adding, though pleasant and easy, is often inappropriate.... Recall that mathematics as simple as '1 + 1 = 2' can be thoughtlessly misapplied: If 1 cup of popcorn is added to 1 cup of water, we do not end up with 2 cups of soggy popcorn.

John Allen Paulos

Just as "beauty is its own excuse for being," so mathematics needs no apology for existing.

Eric Temple Bell

We have not begun to understand the relationship between combinatorics and conceptual mathematics.

Jean Dieudonné

Anything worth discovering in mathematics does not need proof; it needs only to be seen or understood.