Quotes on Great Math

Why are numbers beautiful? It’s like asking why is Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony beautiful._x000D_ If you don’t see why, someone can’t tell you. I know numbers are beautiful._x000D_ If they aren’t beautiful, nothing is.

The chief aim of all investigations of the external world should be to discover the rational order and harmony which has been imposed on it by God and which He revealed to us in the language of mathematics.

The method of "postulating" what we want has many advantages; they are the same as the advantages of theft over honest toil.

I know that two and two make four - and should be glad to prove it too if I could - though I must say if by any sort of process I could convert 2 and 2 into five it would give me much greater pleasure.

The study of mathematics is apt to commence in disappointment... We are told that by its aid the stars are weighed and the billions of molecules in a drop of water are counted. Yet, like the ghost of Hamlet's father, this great science eludes the efforts of our mental weapons to grasp it.

Everything that is really great and inspiring is created by the individual who can labor in freedom.

Do not worry about your difficulties in Mathematics. I can assure you mine are still greater.

A great memory does not make a mind, any more than a dictionary is a piece of literature.

Small deeds done are better than great deeds planned.

In [great mathematics] there is a very high degree of unexpectedness, combined with inevitability and economy.

The mathematical sciences particularly exhibit order symmetry and limitations; and these are the greatest forms of the beautiful.