Quotes on Mathematical

Like works of literature, mathematical ideas help expand our circle of empathy, liberating us from the tyranny of a single, parochial point of view. Numbers, properly considered, make us better people.

I do not know an instance of a major mathematical advance initiated by a man past fifty

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

Modern economics is a set of formal models and equations purporting to fully determine human behaviour, at least in the economic realm. And there is no way that uncertainty can be compressed into determinate mathematical models.

It is more important that a proposition be interesting than that it be true.

If I had inherited a fortune I should probably not have cast my lot with mathematics.

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.

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.

Cyberspace. A consensual hallucination experienced daily by billions of legitimate operators, in every nation, by children being taught mathematical concepts.

It is the heart which perceives God and not the reason.

Nature hides her secrets because of her essential loftiness, but not by means of ruse.

I became more and more convinced that even nature could be understood as a relatively simple mathematical structure.

The world looks like a multiplication-table, or a mathematical equation, which, turn it how you will, balances itself.

The calculus was the first achievement of modern mathematics and it is difficult to overestimate its importance. I think it defines more unequivocally than anything else the inception of modern mathematics; and the system of mathematical analysis, which is its logical development, still constitutes the greatest technical advance in exact thinking.

Arithmetic is numbers you squeeze from your head to your hand to your pencil to your paper till you get the answer.

I very rarely think in words at all. A thought comes, and I may try to express in words afterwards.

I don't believe in mathematics.

Einstein's relativity work is a magnificent mathematical garb which fascinates, dazzles and makes people blind to the underlying errors. The theory is like a beggar clothed in purple whom ignorant people take for a king... its exponents are brilliant men but they are metaphysicists rather than scientists.