Quotes on Math Education

Mathematics is a more powerful instrument of knowledge than any other that has been bequeathed to us by human agency.

It is the duty of all teachers, and of teachers of mathematics in particular, to expose their students to problems much more than to facts.

I am persuaded that this method [for calculating the volume of a sphere] will be of no little service to mathematics. For I foresee that once it is understood and established, it will be used to discover other theorems which have not yet occurred to me, by other mathematicians, now living or yet unborn.

Mathematics is a game played according to certain simple rules with meaningless marks on paper.

Learning without thought is labor lost; thought without learning is perilous.

But in the new (math) approach, the important thing is to understand what you're doing, rather than to get the right answer.

I often say that when you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it; but when you cannot measure it, when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meagre and unsatisfactory kind.

The whole art of teaching is only the art of awakening the natural curiosity of young minds for the purpose of satisfying it afterwards.

I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy.

From the very beginning of his education, the child should experience the joy of discovery.

A man is like a fraction whose numerator is what he is and whose denominator is what he thinks of himself. The larger the denominator, the smaller the fraction.

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

Pure mathematics is, in its way, the poetry of logical ideas.

Each problem that I solved became a rule, which served afterwards to solve other problems.

It is not enough to have a good mind. The main thing is to use it well.

What science can there be more noble, more excellent, more useful for men, more admirably high and demonstrative, than this of mathematics?

Mathematics is the queen of the sciences.

Algebra is the intellectual instrument which has been created for rendering clear the quantitative aspects of the world.

Where there is matter, there is geometry.

In a completely rational society, the best of us would aspire to be teachers and the rest of us would have to settle for something less, because passing civilization along from one generation to the next ought to be the highest honor and the highest responsibility anyone could have.

In a completely rational society, the best of us would be teachers and the rest of us would have to settle for something else.