Mathematics

Euclid (holding calipers), Greek mathematician, 3rd century BC, as imagined by Raphael in this detail from The School of Athens.

It was mathematics, the non-empirical science par excellence, wherein the mind appears to play only with itself, that turned out to be the science of sciences, delivering the key to those laws of nature and the universe that are concealed by appearances. ~ Hannah Arendt

Number rules the universe. ~ Pythagoras

Mathematics is the body of knowledge centered on concepts such as quantity, structure, space, and change, and the academic discipline which studies them.

CONTENTS
Quotes by mathematicians and philosophers
A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I-J, K, L, M, N, O, P, Q, R, S, T, U, W, Y-Z
Quotes that mention mathematics
A'-C', D'-L', M'-Z'
Misattributed, See also

⚡

Quotes that mention mathematics

A

• Prometheus: ...
  List rather to the deeds
  I did for mortals; how being fools before,
  I made them wise and true in aim of soul. ...
  But teaching you the intention of my gifts,
  How first beholding, they beheld in vain,
  And hearing, heard not, but, like shapes in dreams,
  Mixed all things wildly down the tedious time,
  Nor knew to build a house against the sun...
  But lived like silly ants, beneath the ground
  In hollow caves unsunned. There, came to them
  No steadfast sign of winter, nor of spring...
  But blindly and lawlessly they did all things,
  Until I taught them how the stars do rise
  And set in mystery, and devised for them
  Number, the inducer of philosophies,
  The synthesis of Letters, and, beside,
  The artificer of all things, Memory,
  That sweet Muse-mother.
  • Aeschylus (or by his son Euphorion), Prometheus bound (ca. 480-430 BC).

• The land of easy mathematics where he who works adds up and he who retires subtracts.
  • Núria Añó, 2066. Beginning the age of correction.

B

• Susan: What is algebra exactly; is it those three-cornered things?
  Phoebe: It is x minus y equals z plus y and things like that. And all the time you are saying they are equal, you feel in your heart, why should they be.
  • James M. Barrie, Quality Street, act II.

• I can’t help it, gas escapes from my fundament on the least pretext, it’s hard not to mention it now and then, however great my distaste. One day I counted them. Three hundred and fifteen farts in nineteen hours, or an average of over sixteen farts an hour. After all it’s not excessive. Four farts every fifteen minutes. It’s nothing. Not even one fart every four minutes. It’s unbelievable. Damn it, I hardly fart at all, I should never have mentioned it. Extraordinary how mathematics help you to know yourself.
  • Samuel Beckett, Molloy.

• They who study mathematiks only to fix their minds, and render them the steadyer to apply to all other things, as there are many who profess to do, are as wise as those who think by rowing boats, to learn to swim.
  • Samuel Butler, Prose Observations (Oxford: 1979), p. 4.

C

• Mathematical development in England was at a low ebb in the early decades of the nineteenth century, with Cambridge stagnating in the shadow of Newton, who had produced his mathematics nearly a century and a half earlier. This dead hand of tradition, which stifled much initiative and originality, was in sharp contrast to the situation in France.
  • D. Mary Cannell, "George Green Mathematician and Physicist 1793-1841: The background to his life and work" p. xxviii (second edition, 2001).

• Advanced mathematics opens doors to many fields of study. More importantly, it expands the way you think.
  • Wesley Chu, The Rebirths of Tao (2015), ISBN 978-0-85766-430-3, p. 112

• Yeah, Silver and his math are jokes, because math has a liberal bias. After all, math is the reason Mitt Romney's tax plan doesn't add up.
  • Stephen Colbert, The Colbert Report (2012-11-05)[1].

• I was an atheist, finding no reason to postulate the existence of any truths outside of mathematics, physics and chemistry. But then I went to medical school, and encountered life and death issues at the bedsides of my patients. Challenged by one of those patients, who asked "What do you believe, doctor?", I began searching for answers.
  • Francis Collins, a geneticist who led the U.S. government’s effort to decipher the human genome (DNA). cnn.com.

• Magick, mysticism, and the mathematics are triplets.
  • Aleister Crowley, The Confessions of Aleister Crowley (1929), chapter 27.[2]

D'-L'

• 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.
  • Edward Everett (ca. 1850) as quoted by Eric Temple Bell, Mathematics, Queen and Servant of Science (1952) p. 21.

• A man with all the algebra in the world is often only an ass when he knows nothing else. Perhaps in ten years society may derive advantage from the curves which these visionary algebraists will have laboriously squared. I congratulate posterity beforehand. But to tell you the truth I see nothing but a scientific extravagance in all these calculations. That which is neither useful nor agreeable is worthless. And as for useful things, they have all been discovered; and to those which are agreeable, I hope that good taste will not admit algebra among them.
  • Frederick the Great, Letters of Voltaire and Frederick the Great (New York: Brentano's, 1927), transl. Richard Aldington, letter 93 from Frederick to Voltaire, 16 May 1749.

• As to your Newton, I confess I do not understand his void and his gravity; I admit he has demonstrated the movement of the heavenly bodies with more exactitude than his forerunners; but you will admit it is an absurdity to maintain the existence of Nothing.
  • Frederick the Great, Letters of Voltaire and Frederick the Great (New York: Brentano's, 1927), transl. Richard Aldington, letter 221 from Frederick to Voltaire, 25 November 1777.

• Euler calculated the force of the wheels necessary to raise the water in a reservoir … My mill was carried out geometrically and could not raise a drop of water fifty yards from the reservoir. Vanity of vanities! Vanity of geometry!
  • Frederick the Great, Letters of Voltaire and Frederick the Great (New York: Brentano's, 1927), transl. Richard Aldington, letter 221 from Frederick to Voltaire, 25 November 1777.

• Measuring is one of the more practical uses of mathematics, but the ability and desire to measure aren't always wrapped up with the need to know useful answers.
  • Kitty Ferguson, Measuring the Universe: Our Historic Quest to Chart the Horizons of, Space and Time, Prologue (p. 3), Walker & Company (1999).

• Letting numbers take us where we can't go in person — whether that's to the top of a windmill or to the origin and borders of the universe — has been and still is one of humankind's favorite intellectual adventures.
  • Kitty Ferguson, Measuring the Universe: Our Historic Quest to Chart the Horizons of, Space and Time, Prologue (p. 3), Walker & Company (1999).

• The Devil: Okay, boys...tonight's homework. Algebra. Xn + Yn = Zn. You're never gonna use that, are you? Imperialism and the First World War. What was done is done. No point thinking about it now. German, French, Spanish. Ja, ja, oui, oui, s, s. It's nonsense. Everyone speaks English anyway. And if they don't, they ought to. So, no homework tonight. But I want you to watch a lot of TV, don't neglect your video games...and I'll see you in the morning. Shall we say 10:00, 10:30? No point in getting up too early.
  • Larry Gelbart, Harold Ramis and Peter Tolan, Bedazzled (2000 film).

• Mathematics is really a liberal art if you look at it from a slightly different point of view.
  • Steve Jobs, Steve Jobs Lost Interview - A must watch for any entrepeneur (1990).

• The mathematical genius can only carry on from the point which mathematical knowledge within his culture has already reached. Thus if Einstein had been born into a primitive tribe which was unable to count beyond three, life-long application to mathematics probably would not have carried him beyond the development of a decimal system based on fingers and toes.
  • Ralph Linton, The Study of Man (1936).

M'-Z'

• So far, all of reality seems to be described by exquisite, elegant mathematical equations. We can’t stop now – it’s got to be beautiful all the way down!
  • Katie Mack, PhD Comic with attribution of quote at @astrokatie on twitter.

• Poetry is a sort of inspired mathematics, which gives us equations, not for abstract figures, triangles, squares, and the like, but for the human emotions. If one has a mind which inclines to magic rather than science, one will prefer to speak of these equations as spells or incantations; it sounds more arcane, mysterious, recondite.
  • Ezra Pound, The Spirit of Romance (1910), p. 5.

• Halakhic man, well furnished with rules, judgments, and fundamental principles, draws near the world with an a priori relation. His approach begins with an ideal creation and concludes with a real one. To whom may he be compared? To a mathematician who fashions an ideal world and then uses it for the purpose of establishing a relationship between it and the real world. ... The essence of the Halakhah, which was received from God, consists in creating an ideal world and cognizing the relationship between that ideal world and our concrete environment.
  • Joseph B. Soloveitchik, Halakhic Man (1983), p. 19.

• Mathematics is a versatile art; it can be applied to widely different purposes. Math has no morality; it does not care what it counts or what it proves.
  • Brian Stableford, Ashes and Tombstones, in Peter Crowther (ed.) Moon Shots (1999), reprinted in David G. Hartwell (ed.) Year's Best SF 5 (2000), p. 412.

• I had been to school most all the time and could spell and read and write just a little, and could say the multiplication table up to six times seven is thirty-five, and I don't reckon I could ever get any further than that if I was to live forever. I don't take no stock in mathematics anyway.
  • Mark Twain as Huckleberry Finn, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885).

• School children and students who love God should never say: “For my part I like mathematics”; “I like French”; “I like Greek.” They should learn to like all these subjects, because all of them develop that faculty of attention which, directed toward God, is the very substance of prayer.
  • Simone Weil, Waiting for God (1951), p. 105.

• The number 2 thought of by one man cannot be added to the number 2 thought of by another man so us to make up the number 4.
  • Simone Weil, Oppression and Liberty (1958), p. 82.

⚡

See also

• Algebra
• Calculus
• Foundations of mathematics
• History of logarithms
• History of mathematics
• Game theory
• Mathematics education
• Mathematical induction
• Mathematicians
• Statistics

Notes and references

External links

• Mathematics Quotes at Convergence
• Math Homework