Math Quotes - Page 14

Even as the finite encloses an infinite series And in the unlimited limits appear, So the soul of immensity dwells in minutia And in the narrowest limits no limit in here. What joy to discern the minute in infinity! The vast to perceive in the small, what divinity!

I think part of the appeal of mathematical logic is that the formulas look mysterious - you write backward Es!

One geometry cannot be more true than another; it can only be more convenient.

There was a young fellow from Trinity, Who took the square root of infinity. But the number of digits, Gave him the fidgets; He dropped Math and took up Divinity.

Success is the result of hard work.

For the things of this world cannot be made known without a knowledge of mathematics.

What is especially striking and remarkable is that in fundamental physics, a beautiful or elegant theory is more likely to be right than a theory that is inelegant. A theory appears to be beautiful or elegant (or simple, if you prefer) when it can be expressed concisely in terms of mathematics we already have. Symmetry exhibits the simplicity. The Foundamental Law is such that the different skins of the onion resemble one another and therefore the math for one skin allows you to express beautifully and simply the phenomenon of the next skin.

Superstar lawyers and math whizzes and software entrepreneurs appear at first blush to lie outside ordinary experience. But they don't. They are products of history and community, of opportunity and legacy. Their success is not exceptional or mysterious. It is grounded in a web of advantages and inheritances, some deserved, some not, some earned, some just plain lucky - but all critical to making them who they are. The outlier, in the end, is not an outlier at all.

I was not; I have been; I am not; I do not mind.

When I became the NASA administrator — or before I became the NASA administrator — Barack Obama charged me with three things. One was he wanted me to help re-inspire children to want to get into science and math, he wanted me to expand our international relationships, and third, and perhaps foremost, he wanted me to find a way to reach out to the Muslim world and engage much more with dominantly Muslim nations to help them feel good about their historic contribution to science … and math and engineering.

Theorems are fun especially when you are the prover, but then the pleasure fades. What keeps us going are the unsolved problems.

When intuition and logic agree, you are always right.

It is impossible to trap modern physics into predicting anything with perfect determinism because it deals with probabilities from the outset.

Pure logic is the ruin of the spirit.

Since the mathematicians have invaded the theory of relativity I do not understand it myself any more.

Our eyes met in the math class. How were we to know that trigonometry would lead to matrimony?

You know the best thing about competition? There's this whole strategy game, and when it all works out its like solving that hard math equation. You finally get the answer and you're so happy.

Applied mathematics will always need pure mathematics just as anteaters will always need ants.

Instead of the animistic, mechanistic, or the mathematical universe, we see the genetic, organic, holistic universe.

One must acknowledge with cryptography no amount of violence will ever solve a math problem.

The ultimate act of cowardice is the fat-headed wrestling guy sitting behind the frail kid in math class, clipping him on the ear, saying: 'What are you going to do about that, faggot?' That is cowardice. When the bullets start flying past that jock's saucer-shaped ears, that's not cowardice. That's payback.

My success rate is 100 percent. Do the math.

Irrefragability, thy name is mathematics.

There is an astonishing imagination, even in the science of mathematics. ... We repeat, there was far more imagination in the head of Archimedes than in that of Homer.

Two things Florida can teach the other 49 states: how to make a good margarita and how to deal with the aftermath of a hurricane.