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Imagine Aristotle revivified and visiting Manhattan. Nothing in our social, political, economic, artistic, sexual or religious life would mystify him, but he would be staggered by our technology. Its products—skyscrapers, cars, airplanes, television, pocket calculators—would have been impossible without calculus.

— Martin Gardner

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More quotes by Martin Gardner

Mathemagical mathematics combines the beauty of mathematical structure with the entertainment value of a trick.

There is still a difference between something and nothing, but it is purely geometrical and there is nothing behind the geometry.

The Mathematical Magic Show (1978)

In many cases a dull proof can be supplemented by a geometric analogue so simple and beautiful that the truth of a theorem is almost seen at a glance.

Although Lewis Carroll thought of The Hunting of the Snark as a nonsense ballad for children, it is hard to imagine—in fact one shudders to imagine—a child of today reading and enjoying it.

The Annotated Snark (1962)

As I have often said, electrons and gerbils don't cheat. People do.

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We must do away with the absolutely specious notion that everybody has to earn a living.

Buckminster Fuller

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

Alfred North Whitehead An Introduction to Mathematics (1911)

The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it.

John Gilmore

If technical progress is not matched by corresponding progress in man's ethical formation, in man's inner growth, then it is not progress at all, but a threat for man and for the world.

Pope Benedict XVI

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Martin Gardner (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.