Quotes on Mathematics

There isn’t an education system on the planet that teaches dance everyday to children the way we teach them mathematics. Why?

Prayers for the condemned man will be offered on an adding machine. Numbers constitute the only universal language.

One factor that has remained constant through all the twists and turns of the history of physical science is the decisive importance of the mathematical imagination.

If we possessed a thorough knowledge of all the parts of the seed of any animal (e.g. man), we could from that alone, be reasons entirely mathematical and certain, deduce the whole conformation and figure of each of its members, and, conversely if we knew several peculiarities of this conformation, we would from those deduce the nature of its seed.

Geometry enlightens the intellect and sets one's mind right. All of its proofs are very clear and orderly. It is hardly possible for errors to enter into geometrical reasoning, because it is well arranged and orderly. Thus, the mind that constantly applies itself to geometry is not likely to fall into error. In this convenient way, the person who knows geometry acquires intelligence.

Of these austerer virtues the love of truth is the chief, and in mathematics, more than elsewhere, the love of truth may find encouragement for waning faith. Every great study is not only an end in itself, but also a means of creating and sustaining a lofty habit of mind; and this purpose should be kept always in view throughout the teaching and learning of mathematics.

We must say that there are as many squares as there are numbers.

Serial or sex murder, like fetishism, is a perversion of male intelligence. It is a criminal abstraction, masculine in its deranged egotism and orderliness. It is the asocial equivalent of philosophy, mathematics, and music. There is no female Mozart because there is no female Jack the Ripper.

When I was in Cambridge reading mathematics, I went to Amsterdam for the International Mathematics Congress. There I saw M.C. Escher's fascinating work. That inspired me to try my hand at drawing such impossibilities.

We must admit with humility that, while number is purely a product of our minds, space has a reality outside our minds, so that we cannot completely prescribe its properties a priori.

When we talk about music, we talk about our reaction to it. One person might say that music is so poetic, while another says it's all mathematics. Yet another might say it's about sensuality, and so on. That's all true. But music is not just one of these things. It's everything all at once.

It is the first duty of a hypothesis to be intelligible.

It is not of the essence of mathematics to be conversant with the ideas of number and quantity.

All mathematics is is a language that is well tuned, finely honed, to describe patterns; be it patterns in a star, which has five points that are regularly arranged, be it patterns in numbers like 2, 4, 6, 8, 10 that follow very regular progression.

I protest against the use of infinite magnitude ..., which is never permissible in mathematics.

Freeman denied the claim that he was a “man of God”, saying that “the question of faith is whatever you actually believe is. We take a lot of what we're talking about in science on faith; we posit a theory, and until it's dis-proven we have faith that it's true. If the mathematics work out, then it's true, until it's proven to be untrue.

A chess problem is genuine mathematics, but it is in some way "trivial" mathematics. However, ingenious and intricate, however original and surprising the moves, there is something essential lacking. Chess problems are unimportant. The best mathematics is serious as well as beautiful-"important" if you like, but the word is very ambiguous, and "serious" expresses what I mean much better.

Mathematics compares the most diverse phenomena and discovers the secret analogies that unite them.

Logic is the hygiene the mathematician practices to keep his ideas healthy and strong.

There still remain three studies suitable for free man. Arithmetic is one of them.

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