Quotes on Numbers And Math

Why are numbers beautiful? It’s like asking why is Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony beautiful._x000D_ If you don’t see why, someone can’t tell you. I know numbers are beautiful._x000D_ If they aren’t beautiful, nothing is.

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.

Music is the pleasure the human mind experiences from counting without being aware that it is counting.

I know that two and two make four - and should be glad to prove it too if I could - though I must say if by any sort of process I could convert 2 and 2 into five it would give me much greater pleasure.

Mathematics are well and good but Nature keeps dragging us around by the nose.

Twice two makes four seems to me simply a piece of insolence. Twice two makes four is a pert coxcomb who stands with arms akimbo barring your path and spitting. I admit that twice two makes four is an excellent thing, but if we are to give everything its due, twice two makes five is sometimes a very charming thing too.

Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking of them.

Can you do Division? Divide a loaf by a knife - what's the answer to that?

I like mathematics because it is not human and has nothing particular to do with this planet or with the whole accidental universe - because, like Spinoza's God, it won't love us in return.

He is unworthy of the name of man who is ignorant of the fact that the diagonal of a square is incommensurable with its side.

Six is a number perfect in itself, and not because God created the world in six days; rather the contrary is true. God created the world in six days because this number is perfect, and it would remain perfect, even if the work of the six days did not exist.

Mathematics allows for no hypocrisy and no vagueness.

A mathematician is a device for turning coffee into theorems.

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

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.

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

If a man's wit be wandering, let him study the mathematics; for in demonstrations, if his wit be called away never so little, he must begin again.

Physics is mathematical not because we know so much about the physical world, but because we know so little; it is only its mathematical properties that we can discover.

If a man's wit be wandering, let him study the mathematics.

The pursuit of mathematics is a divine madness of the human spirit.