Mathematics Quotes

The best mathematics is serious as well as beautiful—‘important’ if you like, but the word is very a...

The physical method becomes a philosophy when it asserts there is no higher knowledge than the empir...

...317 is a prime, not because we think so, or because our minds are shaped in one way rather than a...

Beauty is the first test: there is no permanent place in the world for ugly mathematics.

It (proof by contradiction) is a far finer gambit than any chess gambit: a chess player may offer th...

The ‘seriousness’ of a mathematical theorem lies, not in its practical consequences, which are usual...

[I was advised] to read Jordan's 'Cours d'analyse'; and I shall never forget the astonishment with w...

Real mathematics must be justified as art if it can be justified at all.

I believe that mathematical reality lies outside us, that our function is to discover or observe it,...

The mathematician’s patterns, like the painter’s or the poet’s must be beautiful; the ideas like the...

[Regarding mathematics,] there are now few studies more generally recognized, for good reasons or ba...

In these days of conflict between ancient and modern studies, there must surely be something to be s...

Archimedes will be remembered when Aeschylus is forgotten, because languages die and mathematical id...

Most people have some appreciation of mathematics, just as most people can enjoy a pleasant tune; an...

It seems that mathematical ideas are arranged somehow in strata, the ideas in each stratum being lin...

The geometer offers to the physicist a whole set of maps from which to choose. One map, perhaps, wil...

The play is independent of the pages on which it is printed, and ‘pure geometries’ are independent o...

Reductio ad absurdum, which Euclid loved so much, is one of a mathematician's finest weapons. It is ...

Music at times is more like perfume than mathematics.

But however measurable, there is much more life in music than mathematics or logic ever dreamed of.

And, believe me, if I were again beginning my studies, I should follow the advice of Plato and start...

If I were again beginning my studies, I would follow the advice of Plato and start with mathematics.

The essence of mathematics lies in its freedom.

In mathematics the art of proposing a question must be held of higher value than solving it.

My beautiful proof lies all in ruins.

In Mathematics the art of proposing a question must be held of higher value than solving it.

The calculative exactness of practical life which the money economy has brought about corresponds to...

A distinguished writer [Siméon Denis Poisson] has thus stated the fundamental definitions of the sci...

There was yet another disadvantage attaching to the whole of Newton’s physical inquiries, ... the wa...

Essentially, all models are wrong, but some are useful

One of the first and foremost duties of the teacher is not to give his students the impression that ...

Mathematics is the cheapest science. Unlike physics or chemistry, it does not require any expensive ...

There was a seminar for advanced students in Zürich that I was teaching and von Neumann was in the c...

I started studying law, but this I could stand just for one semester. I couldn't stand more. Then I ...

The elegance of a mathematical theorem is directly proportional to the number of independent ideas o...

Questions that pertain to the foundations of mathematics, although treated by many in recent times, ...

What is it, in fact, that we are supposed to abstract from, in order to get, for example, from the m...

The truth, he thought, has never been of any real value to any human being- it is a symbol for mathe...

The new mathematics is a sort of supplement to language, affording a means of thought about form and...

A certain elementary training in statistical method is becoming as necessary for everyone living in ...

It appears that the solution of the problem of time and space is reserved to philosophers who, like ...

Of course, reading novels was just another form of escape. As soon as he closed their pages he had t...

Tengo's lectures took on uncommon warmth, and the students found themselves swept up in his eloquenc...

As a teacher, Tengo pounded into his students' heads how voraciously mathematics demanded logic. Her...

Physicists believe that the Gaussian law has been proved in mathematics while mathematicians think t...

Mathematics is the art of giving the same name to different things.

How is it that there are so many minds that are incapable of understanding mathematics? ... the skel...

If we wish to foresee the future of mathematics, our proper course is to study the history and prese...

The philosophers make still another objection: "What you gain in rigour," they say, "you lose in obj...

Pure analysis puts at our disposal a multitude of procedures whose infallibility it guarantees; it o...

With mathematics we stand precisely at that intersection of bondage and freedom that is the essence ...

Mathematics has the inhuman quality of starlight, brilliant and sharp, but cold.

So the mathematician and the artist are companioned in the same dark, and do obeisance to the same g...

In every department of physical science there is only so much science, properly so-called, as there ...

Mathematicians deal with large numbers sometimes, but never in their income.

Q. You do not consider your statement a disloyal one?A. No, sir. Scientific truth is beyond loyalty ...

Mr Baley", said Quemot, "you can't treat human emotions as though they were built about a positronic...

As the several items can be exchanged, they must be equal; but in what terms? Not in pounds, yards, ...

Newton was asked as a mathematician, not as a moralist. He replied 'Gentlemen, in applied mathematic...

Ideas that require people to reorganize their picture of the world provoke hostility.

The object of pure physics is the unfolding of the laws of the intelligible world the object of pure...

May not music be described as the mathematics of the sense, mathematics as music of the reason? The ...

Mathematics is the music of reason.

Mathematics is not a book confined within a cover and bound between brazen clasps, whose contents it...

If there is anything that can bind the mind of man to this dreary exile of our earthly home and can ...

I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy.

Mathematicians call it “the arithmetic of congruences.” You can think of it as clock arithmetic. Tem...

I would not dare to say that there is a direct relation between mathematics and madness, but there i...

The oldest problem in economic education is how to exclude the incompetent. A certain glib mastery o...

Too large a proportion of recent "mathematical" economics are mere concoctions, as imprecise as the ...

Whereas Nature does not admit of more than three dimensions ... it may justly seem very improper to ...

The integrals which we have obtained are not only general expressions which satisfy the differential...

The deep study of nature is the most fruitful source of mathematical discoveries. By offering to res...

Primary causes are unknown to us; but are subject to simple and constant laws, which may be discover...

There cannot be a language more universal and more simple, more free from errors and obscurities...m...

Who rebels with mathematics?

Nothing takes place in the world whose meaning is not that of some maximum or minimum.

Creativity is essential to particle physics, cosmology, and to mathematics, and to other fields of s...

The person who wishes to attain human perfection should study logic first, next mathematics, then ph...

I'm sorry to say that the subject I most disliked was mathematics. I have thought about it. I think ...

The power of mathematics is often to change one thing into another, to change geometry into language...

Mathematics has beauty and romance. It's not a boring place to be, the mathematical world. It's an e...

Every formula which expresses a law of nature is a hymn of praise to God.

We especially need imagination in science. It is not all mathematics, nor all logic, but it is somew...

In my opinion, defining intelligence is much like defining beauty, and I don’t mean that it’s in the...

It may be appropriate to quote a statement of Poincare, who said (partly in jest no doubt) that ther...

I had been to school most all the time, and could spell, and read, and write just a little, and coul...

Mathematics are the result of mysterious powers which no one understands, and which the unconscious ...

I don’t deny that it was more than a coincidence which made things turn out as they did, it was a wh...

If our 14 billion year cosmic history were scaled to 1 year, then 100,000 years of human history wou...

A lot of music is mathematics. It's balance.

Mathematics is much more than a language for dealing with the physical world. It is a source of mode...

Increasingly, the mathematics will demand the courage to face its implications.

Although personally, I think cyberspace means the end of our species.

Luck is the grand equalizer.

. . . the world in which we live has an increasing number of feedback loops, causing events to be th...

Jack had wondered how geometers could be so inventive as to produce so many types and families of cu...

Topology is destiny,' he said, and put the drawers on. One leg at a time.

If you can't test it, it's not theorics -- it's metatheorics. A branch of philosophy. So, if you wan...

It appeared that way, Lawrence, but this raised the question of was mathematics really true or was i...