Mathematics Quotes
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Perhaps, a bigger point is that it is perfectly OK if something is unclear. That’s how I feel 90 percent of the time when I do mathematics, so welcome to my world! The feeling of confusion (even frustration, sometimes) is an essential part of being a mathematician. But look at the bright side: how boring would life be if everything in it could be understood with little effort! What makes doing mathematics so exciting is our desire to overcome this confusion; to understand; to lift the veil on the unknown. And the feeling of personal triumph when we do understand something makes it all worthwhile.
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Religion has the same relation to man's heavenly condition that mathematics has to his earthly one: both the one and the other are merely the rules of the game. Belief in God and belief in numbers: local truth and truth of location.
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I didn't feel comfortable at first with pure mathematics, or as a professor of pure mathematics. I wanted to do a little bit of everything and explore the world.
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In mathematics I can report no deficiency, except it be that men do not sufficiently understand the excellent use of Pure Mathematics.
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If there be some who, though ignorant of all mathematics . . . dare to reprove this work, because of some passage of Scripture, which they have miserably warped to their purpose, I regard them not, and even despise their rash judgement.
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There is an underlying timelessness in the basic conversation that is mathematics.
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My interest in the sciences started with mathematics in the very beginning, and later with chemistry in early high school and the proverbial home chemistry set.
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I am ever more intrigued by the correspondence between mathematics and physical facts. The adaptability of mathematics to the description of physical phenomena is uncanny.
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In fact, the answer to the question "What is mathematics?" has changed several times during the course of history... It was only in the last twenty years or so that a definition of mathematics emerged on which most mathematicians agree: mathematics is the science of patterns.
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One can understand nature only when one has learned the language and the signs in which it speaks to us; but this language is mathematics and these signs are methematical figures.
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We know that nature is described by the best of all possible mathematics because God created it.
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It has been a fortunate fact in the modern history of physical science that the scientist constructing a new theoretical system has nearly always found that the mathematics. . . required. . . had already been worked out by pure mathematicians for their own amusement. . . . The moral for statesmen would seem to be that, for proper scientific "planning", pure mathematics should be endowed fifty years ahead of scientists.
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The propositions of mathematics are devoid of all factual content; they convey no information whatever on any empirical subject matter.
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I would love to see music reinstated as an essential part of schooling. The culture that it brings; the knowledge that it brings. Just learning how to read music requires metrics, and I think that helps you with mathematics. A lot of scientists and doctors have a musical background - it's very interesting.
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The indispensability argument says (roughly) that if you have ample reason to accept an empirical scientific theory that makes indispensable use of mathematics, and that theory entails that numbers exist, then you have ample reason to accept that numbers exist. The argument affirms the antecedent of this conditional, and concludes that you have ample reason to believe that numbers exist. What is striking about this argument is that it seems to show that the empirical reasons that suffice for accepting a scientific theory also suffice for accepting a metaphysical claim.
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Everybody who reasons carefully about anything is making a contribution ... and if you abstract it away and send it to the Department of Mathematics they put it in books.
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Perhaps the most surprising thing about mathematics is that it is so surprising. The rules which we make up at the beginning seem ordinary and inevitable, but it is impossible to foresee their consequences. These have only been found out by long study, extending over many centuries. Much of our knowledge is due to a comparatively few great mathematicians such as Newton, Euler, Gauss, or Riemann; few careers can have been more satisfying than theirs. They have contributed something to human thought even more lasting than great literature, since it is independent of language.
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Atheism is the opium of the mathematicians. Atheism is the religion of Mathematics.
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The highest form of pure thought is in mathematics.
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On all levels primary, and secondary and undergraduate - mathematics is taught as an isolated subject with few, if any, ties to the real world. To students, mathematics appears to deal almost entirely with things whlch are of no concern at all to man.
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Mathematics is the art of accurate reasoning on inaccurately-drawn figures... let that be our motto.
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It is given to us to live for the most part under the guidance of mathematics ... It is impossible to distinguish from other living creatures anyone who does not understand how to quantify.
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Mathematics is concerned with "all possible worlds."
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[The error in the teaching of mathematics is that] mathematics is expected either to be immediately attractive to students on its own merits or to be accepted by students solely on the basis of the teacher's assurance that it will be helpful in later life. [And yet,] mathematlcs is the key to understanding and mastering our physical, social and biological worlds.
