Math Quotes - Page 32

More than fifty years ago Sputnik dramatically raised the nation's awareness of what was lacking in science and math education in America. What we need to wake people up to now is the crisis in imagination and concern for the greater good.

A precisian professor had the habit of saying: "... quartic polynomial ax^4+bx^3+cx^2+dx+e , where e need not be the base of the natural logarithms."

What cannot be known is more revealing than what can.

I think, therefore I laugh.

Music is a science which should have definite rules; these rules should be drawn from an evident principle; and this principle cannot really be known to us without the aid of mathematics.

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

Like dreams, statistics are a form of wish fulfillment.

Few realize that the world of modern mathematics is rich with vivid images and provocative ideas.

I feign no hypotheses.

Mathematics - the unshaken Foundation of Sciences, and the plentiful Fountain of Advantage to human affairs.

Pure mathematics, may it never be of any use to anyone.

Geometry is not true, it is advantageous.

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

I continued to study Math and Physics on my own, but one and a half years later I realized that I did want to be a composer, and after that I never changed my mind.

In certain kinds of writing, particularly in art criticism and literary criticism, it is normal to come across long passages which are almost completely lacking in meaning.

The mathematician may be compared to a designer of garments, who is utterly oblivious of the creatures whom his garments may fit. To be sure, his art originated in the necessity for clothing such creatures, but this was long ago; to this day a shape will occasionally appear which will fit into the garment as if the garment had been made for it. Then there is no end of surprise and delight.

And what are these fluxions? The velocities of evanescent increments. And what are these same evanescent increments? They are neither finite quantities, nor quantities infinitely small, nor yet nothing. May we not call them the ghosts of departed quantities...?

This splendid subject [mathematics], queen of all exact sciences, and the ideal and norm of all careful thinking.

To me, mathematics is like playing the violin. Some people can do it - others can't. If you don't have it, then there's no point in pretending.

If a man's wit be wandering, let him study the mathematics; for in demonstrations, if his wit be called away never so little, he must begin again.

Logic is one thing and commonsense another.

In the pure mathematics we contemplate absolute truths which existed in the divine mind before the morning stars sang together, and which will continue to exist there when the last of their radiant host shall have fallen from heaven.

Spending time with math people is a lot of fun. As a result of the play, I've had semi-drunken dinners with mathematicians all over the country. I recommend the experience.

There's no reason to stereotype yourself. Doing math is like going to the gym - it's a workout for your brain and it makes you smarter.

... and it is probably that there is some secret here which remains to be discovered.