Math Quotes - Page 16

If one has really technically penetrated a subject, things that previously seemed in complete contrast, might be purely mathematical transformations of each other.

Mathematics is not a spectator sport!

Mathematics would certainly have not come into existence if one had known from the beginning that there was in nature no exactly straight line, no actual circle, no absolute magnitude.

...mathematics is distinguished from all other sciences except only ethics, in standing in no need of ethics. Every other science, even logic, especially in its early stages, is in danger of evaporating into airy nothingness, degenerating, as the Germans say, into an arachnoid film, spun from the stuff that dreams are made of. There is no such danger for pure mathematics; for that is precisely what mathematics ought to be.

Mathematics exists solely for the honour of the human mind.

There is no national science, just as there is no national multiplication table; what is national is no longer science.

We humans have a wide range of abilities that help us perceive and analyze mathematical content. We perceive abstract notions not just through seeing but also by hearing, by feeling, by our sense of body motion and position. Our geometric and spatial skills are highly trainable, just as in other high-performance activities. In mathematics we can use the modules of our minds in flexible ways - even metaphorically. A whole-mind approach to mathematical thinking is vastly more effective than the common approach that manipulates only symbols.

Mathematics is the gate and key to science.

To not know math is a severe limitation to understanding the world.

What are the chances you’d ever meet someone like that? he wondered. Someone you could love forever, someone who would forever love you back? And what did you do when that person was born half a world away? The math seemed impossible.

Everything useful in mathematics has been devised for a purpose. Even if you don't know it, the guy who did it first, he knew what he was doing. Banach didn't just develop Banach spaces for the sake of it. He wanted to put many spaces under one heading. Without knowing the examples, the whole thing is pointless.

It is hard to communicate understanding because that is something you get by living with a problem for a long time. You study it, perhaps for years, you get the feel of it and it is in your bones. You can't convey that to anyone else. Having studied the problem for five years you may be able to present it in such a way that it would take somebody else less time to get to that point than it took you. But if they haven't struggled with the problem and seen all the pitfalls, then they haven't really understood it.

In my free time I do differential and integral calculus.

The description of right lines and circles, upon which geometry is founded, belongs to mechanics. Geometry does not teach us to draw these lines, but requires them to be drawn.

In mathematics, the art of asking questions is more valuable than solving problems.

Nature is written in mathematical language.

Asked if he believes in one G-d, a mathematician answered: "Yes, up to isomorphism".

Archimedes will be remembered when Aeschylus is forgotten, because languages die and mathematical ideas do not. "Immortality" may be a silly word, but probably a mathematician has the best chance of whatever it may mean.

If we take in our hand any volume; of divinity or school metaphysics, for instance; let us ask, Does it contain any abstract reasoning concerning quantity or number? No. Does it contain any experimental reasoning concerning matter of fact and existence? No. Commit it then to the flames: for it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion.

I didn't work especially hard at mathematics at school, because I knew that's what I'd be doing later.

Philosophy: A route of many roads leading from nowhere to nothing.

Your faith is very important. I have done the math, and you are going to be dead a whole lot longer that you will be alive.

Je serais reconnaissant a toute personne ayant compris cette demonstration de me l'expliquer.

My mother always told me I had to do 100 times better than a man. I had to work hard at maths, and learn four languages.

A fist is more than the sum of its fingers.