Quotes on Mathematics

Mathematics is the gate and key to science.

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

Perfect clarity would profit the intellect but damage the will.

The pleasure we obtain from music comes from counting, but counting unconsciously. Music is nothing but unconscious arithmetic.

It has become almost a cliché to remark that nobody boasts of ignorance of literature, but it is socially acceptable to boast ignorance of science and proudly claim incompetence in mathematics.

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

The best of ideas is hurt by uncritical acceptance and thrives on critical examination.

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

This system in which a child is constantly moving objects with his hands and actively exercising his senses, also takes into account a child's special aptitude for mathematics. When they leave the material, the children very easily reach the point where they wish to write out the operation. They can thus carryout an abstract mental operation and acquire a kind of natural and spontaneous inclination for mental calculations.

Modern bodybuilding is ritual, religion, sport, art, and science, awash in Western chemistry and mathematics. Defying nature, it surpasses it.

We have a closed circle of consistency here: the laws of physics produce complex systems, and these complex systems lead to consciousness, which then produces mathematics, which can then encode in a succinct and inspiring way the very underlying laws of physics that gave rise to it.

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

It appears to me that if one wants to make progress in mathematics, one should study the masters and not the pupils.

Mathematicians are born, not made.

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

If only I had the Theorems! Then I should find the proofs easily enough.

Either mathematics is too big for the human mind or the human mind is more than a machine.

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.

Any impatient student of mathematics or science or engineering who is irked by having algebraic symbolism thrust upon him should try to get along without it for a week.