Quotes on Math

Mathematics seems to endow one with something like a new sense.

Perfect clarity would profit the intellect but damage the will.

Mathematics consists in proving the most obvious thing in the least obvious way.

If there is a problem you can't solve, then there is an easier problem you can't solve: find it.

Mathematicians are born, not made.

Number theorists are like lotus-eaters -- having once tasted of this food they can never give it up.

It should seem that it is easier to square the circle than to get round a mathematician.

The shortest path between two truths in the real domain passes through the complex domain.

It has been said that figures rule the world. Maybe. But I am sure that figures show us whether it is being ruled well or badly.

Besides language and music, mathematics is one of the primary manifestations of the free creative power of the human mind.

Geometry existed before creation.

The introduction of the cipher 0 or the group concept was general nonsense too, and mathematics was more or less stagnating for thousands of years because nobody was around to take such childish steps.

There are things which seem incredible to most men who have not studied Mathematics.

Mathematics is the queen of the sciences.

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

I will not go so far as to say that to construct a history of thought without profound study of the mathematical ideas of successive epochs is like omitting Hamlet from the play which is named after him. That would be claiming too much. But it is certainly analogous to cutting out the part of Ophelia. This simile is singularly exact. For Ophelia is quite essential to the play, she is very charming . . . and a little mad.

But the creative principle resides in mathematics. In a certain sense, therefore, I hold true that pure thought can grasp reality, as the ancients dreamed.

To the extent math refers to reality, we are not certain to the extent we are certain, math does not refer to reality.

Everybody's a mad scientist, and life is their lab. We're all trying to experiment to find a way to live, to solve problems, to fend off madness and chaos.

Physics is to mathematics what sex is to masturbation.

All musicians are subconsciously mathematicians.